I still feel stunned when a woman tells me she's returning to live with a man who recently broke her jaw. With her teeth clenched and mouth wired shut, she says she's going back, "because he loves me and I love him."...
I still feel shaken by the boy who tells me, in great detail and with boundless enthusiasm, all about the father who abandoned him when he was 4-years-old. And I am still disturbed by the good soldier who blindly follows his leader's orders and marches into danger -- although his leader has shown, time and again, poor judgment, lack of planning, and disregard for the men who serve him.
As a psychologist, I should know better than to be stunned, shaken or disturbed by these images. After all, I know why humans behave irrationally. I even do it myself.
On Sept. 9, 2001, President George W. Bush's approval rating was 55 percent. Only three days later, after the worst attack on U.S. soil in history, his approval rating was 86 percent.
In psychology, the enhanced allegiance to a person associated with your abuse is referred to as trauma-bonding. It is a powerful phenomenon. It accounts for why a woman might return to the husband who broke her jaw. It explains why otherwise intelligent people begin worshiping those very people whose behaviors have threatened their safety.
...Bush and his people consistently claim to be results-oriented. That the American people and the press accept this statement is irrational. The facts and results suggest that Bush has repeatedly and sometimes perversely failed the American people.
...Bush said he was not interested in nation-building, but now we're begging the international community to help us build a new Iraq. He said he was a fiscal conservative but has racked up record budget deficits.
Still, despite the facts and, yes, flip-flops, we follow him. We still approve his performance. In this regard, we're being irrational in the massive and self-deceptive way characteristic only of humans.
The abuser never admits mistakes, never truly apologizes and never shows weakness. The abuser, despite his inconsistent and capricious decisions, insists he has not changed his philosophy. He is determined and resolute. The abuser manipulates us with fear.
Unfortunately, the abuser does not have our best interests at heart....He's interested in control and domination. He will act like he's concerned and compassionate, but when he has regained control, he will turn away from the poor, the weak, the hungry, the women and the children.
The choice is clear: Shall we believe in ourselves, risk his disfavor, and assert our independence, or will we continue to irrationally cling to our failed leader? Shall we boldly vote for change Nov. 2 or will we wire our jaws shut for another four years?
articleI still feel shaken by the boy who tells me, in great detail and with boundless enthusiasm, all about the father who abandoned him when he was 4-years-old. And I am still disturbed by the good soldier who blindly follows his leader's orders and marches into danger -- although his leader has shown, time and again, poor judgment, lack of planning, and disregard for the men who serve him.
As a psychologist, I should know better than to be stunned, shaken or disturbed by these images. After all, I know why humans behave irrationally. I even do it myself.
On Sept. 9, 2001, President George W. Bush's approval rating was 55 percent. Only three days later, after the worst attack on U.S. soil in history, his approval rating was 86 percent.
In psychology, the enhanced allegiance to a person associated with your abuse is referred to as trauma-bonding. It is a powerful phenomenon. It accounts for why a woman might return to the husband who broke her jaw. It explains why otherwise intelligent people begin worshiping those very people whose behaviors have threatened their safety.
...Bush and his people consistently claim to be results-oriented. That the American people and the press accept this statement is irrational. The facts and results suggest that Bush has repeatedly and sometimes perversely failed the American people.
...Bush said he was not interested in nation-building, but now we're begging the international community to help us build a new Iraq. He said he was a fiscal conservative but has racked up record budget deficits.
Still, despite the facts and, yes, flip-flops, we follow him. We still approve his performance. In this regard, we're being irrational in the massive and self-deceptive way characteristic only of humans.
The abuser never admits mistakes, never truly apologizes and never shows weakness. The abuser, despite his inconsistent and capricious decisions, insists he has not changed his philosophy. He is determined and resolute. The abuser manipulates us with fear.
Unfortunately, the abuser does not have our best interests at heart....He's interested in control and domination. He will act like he's concerned and compassionate, but when he has regained control, he will turn away from the poor, the weak, the hungry, the women and the children.
The choice is clear: Shall we believe in ourselves, risk his disfavor, and assert our independence, or will we continue to irrationally cling to our failed leader? Shall we boldly vote for change Nov. 2 or will we wire our jaws shut for another four years?
Mark Morford:
There are plenty of strangely unanswered questions about 9/11, about the stunning inaction of NORAD and Bush's stupefying nonreaction upon hearing of the attack, not to mention his administration's incredible attempts to halt any independent 9/11 investigations, and have you ever read a fully satisfying account of how this whole atrocity could have happened, one that answered all your questions and quelled your lingering doubts and squashed, once and for all, any hints of dread you had about our government's potential role in the tragedy? Neither have I. Neither has anyone.
Of course, no one in any major media will touch this stuff. It is professional suicide to dare suggest an alternate truth to the one supplied by the Pentagon and regurgitated by the media, despite the fact that most every journalist, trained as they are to be suspicious and wary and fully cognizant of the fact that there is always more to a given apocalypse than meets the eye, every journalist knows that buried just beneath the slippery surface of any good conspiracy theory is a gem or three of real truth, a question that begs to be solved or at least researched and, yet, most likely never will, because it has been cast into the madhouse of "outrageous" impossibility and is therefore rendered impotent and hopeless.
...And the truth is, we don't really want such unstable questions answered. We simply cannot tolerate to have our world, our leaders, our foundations so questioned. We prefer stasis to growth, security to true knowledge, blind faith to chaotic sticky self-defined wonder.
After all, once you allow the real possibility of UFOs or psychic healing or crop-circle phenomena or the notion that we could very well have a hugely malicious, criminal U.S. government capable of pulling a 9/11 on its own citizens, well, the happy capitalistic all-American Christian world begins to implode. Foundations crumble. Trust in our institutions vanishes. Gods fall and doctrines crumble and televangelists spontaneously combust and everyone starts reimagining the social order in ways that absolutely terrify those who now hold the reins.
Real truth, after all, often means anarchy, disorder, revolution. And God knows we can't have that.
article
Of course, no one in any major media will touch this stuff. It is professional suicide to dare suggest an alternate truth to the one supplied by the Pentagon and regurgitated by the media, despite the fact that most every journalist, trained as they are to be suspicious and wary and fully cognizant of the fact that there is always more to a given apocalypse than meets the eye, every journalist knows that buried just beneath the slippery surface of any good conspiracy theory is a gem or three of real truth, a question that begs to be solved or at least researched and, yet, most likely never will, because it has been cast into the madhouse of "outrageous" impossibility and is therefore rendered impotent and hopeless.
...And the truth is, we don't really want such unstable questions answered. We simply cannot tolerate to have our world, our leaders, our foundations so questioned. We prefer stasis to growth, security to true knowledge, blind faith to chaotic sticky self-defined wonder.
After all, once you allow the real possibility of UFOs or psychic healing or crop-circle phenomena or the notion that we could very well have a hugely malicious, criminal U.S. government capable of pulling a 9/11 on its own citizens, well, the happy capitalistic all-American Christian world begins to implode. Foundations crumble. Trust in our institutions vanishes. Gods fall and doctrines crumble and televangelists spontaneously combust and everyone starts reimagining the social order in ways that absolutely terrify those who now hold the reins.
Real truth, after all, often means anarchy, disorder, revolution. And God knows we can't have that.
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