It's mid August and much has happened since my last post. We continue our journey, we learn, we grow and some of us require a bit of prodding to move along-- Indeed, some of us need what I like to call "2x4 therapy" before we can wake up. The shift in our national leadership has been happily welcomed by many folks, here and around the world. But there are some among us who are so miffed, so angry that the Bush-Cheney regime was repudiated, that they are having a tantrum.....a nine month long tantrum! They are unable to see that they have been lied to.
It is too painful to recognize that husbands and wives, sons and daughters were sacrificed in a war that did not have to be. It is difficult to acknowledge that "our guys" used the tactics of torture that we accuse our "enemies" of employing. And-- yes, our girl , former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin continues to exemplify the latest in negative leadership and "makin' stuff up!" Her supporters still haven't really asked themselves why she quit-- because to answer this question would bring them to a very scary place. Delusions die hard.
Those of the right wing persuasion are truly suffering now. Why--because it is clear that the Palins and the Becks are as clueless and confused as the base they proport to lead. The anger of the teabaggers and the anti-healthcare mobs is easy to manipulate. These mobs are malleable because of their own personal historic traumas-- upsetting events in unexplored lives become the fuel for political reactivity. They can't defend themselves against their former abusers, so they "pay it forward" to the designated enemy du jour. They haven't been able to process years of humiliation, so they seek to frighten or shame others. This is why they are called "reactionaries."
LO AND BEHOLD, the right wing does not have a monopoly on this malady. Left wing, progressive, greenthinking folks can demonstrate "highminded"reactivity too. From the uber- vegetarians who deny their children appropriate protein, to the self-righteous peaceniks who HATE folks that disagee with them-- it goes on and on. Blind is blind whether from the left or the right. When we take our political direction from our own unexamined feelings, we are as lost and confused as the teabaggers, if slightly more literate. We can elect good leadership, pass good laws, clean the oceans and the rivers. But we leave the sewer of our emotional traumas undisturbed at our own peril.
