by Underground Panther in the Sky, Unknown News
Nov. 5, 2004
Is being "joyful" in the face of atrocity a solution to this? It only
goes so far until it begins to feel like denial.
When do we -- the kindhearted, the seekers of fairness and equality -- finally
say no more to these abusers of the disenfranchised, the human decency
and the good hearted in humanity. When do we bite the self-declared
"masters'" hands like we really meant it?
In my observation, some people really are choosing to be bullies in
their hearts and do not care whom they harm. I think some people are
truly evil inside. Some people are evil only partly, while others who are
around abusers tend to develop a problem akin to Stockholm syndrome --
when dealing with abusive systems, they identify with the abusers who ruin them in this
society. Their coping mechanisms are even toxic to relationships and our
collective cultural mental health.
Some folks are conditioned to "normalize" abuse. Some forget what
trauma is, and why it hurts. They grow thick skins (and encourage others to
do so), embracing callous disregard just to endure the cultural
coercion of tyrants over the years. Abusers are caustic, destructive to
healthy human relationships and any societies or cultures they are in. It's a destructive personality type, a little-recognized mental
illness, because it looks "normal" on the surface -- even "successful",
"charismatic" or "ambitious", or "cool and in control." But it
is all a lie, a very carefully-constructed mask over a seething cesspool
of a career asshole.
Abusers are
fine with oblivious joyful observers who blithely stand by. They
like denial, addiction, bribeablity, shame, cowardice, submission, selling
out, and cultural games of make believe. They encourage people to
pretend and believe you can "love away" all the evil choices they
make, like a fairy with a magic "light-worker" wand. It's magic, as if
positive thinking will make frowns of agony turn upside down with a
little sugar coating on the bitterest of pills. It's a lie.
Bullies love to abuse others and make them miserable, as long as they
never have to take what they dish out. Bullies are the perennial victim
when they are caught, but they are the victimizer when no-one sees, cares, or
complains. Pursuing power and domination through strife is their
love. They live for winning the game. They do not want people to feel
empowered or at peace together. They need us to give them the strife and
struggle that makes them feel alive, special, entitled, and powerful.
The way to stop bullies, I have found, is to give them no "culture of
tolerance" towards their abuses. And be absolute about it. It's not always
easy to take flack, but sometimes NO has to be said. Feigned joy in the
face of atrocity is not an effective answer to abuse. Boundaries and
limits are effective, when they are enforced on a personal level. Sometimes you have to not "by stand." You have to act to restrain or
interfere, embarrass or even harm a bully or an abuser, even if it risks
your own comforts and popularity among their enablers and those confused
people still in the grips of our cultural trance of Stockholm syndrome.
Justice without teeth is the kind of justice bullies prefer. Abusers of the human impulse of cooperation, trust, and goodwill, just laugh
at toothless justice, and keep on abusing, despite what we think or
say. Abusers know no shame, because to them might makes them
right. Abusers grow more cruel and brazen until someone limits their
reach, until their illusion of normalcy is destroyed by the patterns of
their actions and it cuts off (or threatens) the "narcissistic supply" --
whatever "reward" it is that they seek, by exercising power
over others -- whatever makes them numbs and excuses their depraved, diseased,
devouring, sadistic egos, and drives them to deny their consciences and
ignore the choices to be the way they are.
Evil is real and it lives in human hearts. Evil is expressed more fully
in the hearts that have killed their own conscience for wealth, status, or
convenience or even 'survival' and 'self defense'.
Some people are vigilant against the abuser impulse inside themselves,
because they know how much it hurts to be subjected to abuse. They
choose to hold onto their compassion and empathy and their other "higher
qualities." But this can turn into a handicap, or evolve into the
enabling of abuse, if it forgets how to call upon the positive use of
power. And that positive power can be bloody but NOT bloodthirsty.
Others learn to love power and domination more than their own humanity. They turn the ideals of the compassionate against the good-hearted people
who don't want to dominate, decent people who can handle things like
pluralism and complexity, differences, weakness and losing sometimes --
because they see themselves as equal to others instead of better
than them. They need for compassionate people to lose. They need kind people to
submit, communal people to be isolated. That is how they want us, so they can
feel in control.
There are two principals inside us all that are struggling in the world.
One principal is the winner/dominator the "strife is life," the fascist, the "might makes right" mentality that is basically anthrocidal and abusive
And the other principal is cooperation. People who seek cooperation choose to
fight the evil inside themselves, and give it no expression without
forethought. They seek fairness, equality, and peace in the world of
differences ... and in their own states of mind.
Some people have both principals and are ignorant of it, until they
learn how to develop their own inner character, to trust their own inner locus of control and develop a sense of right
relationships. These people grow to be self-responsible enough to police the evil
inside their own hearts, and come to understand why they need to deny
it a place of domination in their own motives.
Sometimes, in order to be just enough to change things, justice cannot be kind to the betrayers of trust, to the corrupt, to the abusers of
power.
But injustice on the other hand is capricious. It is always unkind to
those of goodwill, abusing those who are against abuses, especially those who may
eventually find their heart to say enough is enough, and stand up for the
wounded, and talk or act upon the deeper truths about the human
condition, the dark and ugly truth hidden in the heart of humanity
about the abusers of power and their cultural enablers.
Peaceful protest, sadly, is just toothless justice to some bullies.
The entire world, for example, protested the Iraq war before it started. This was a
unique historic event, and of course, the Bullies in the White House arrogantly brushed
the world aside as "a focus group", because they thought the world would
not dare stand in their way to power and acquisition and do the actions
necessary to restrain them by force if necessary.
Still they continue
to push our boundaries on what right and wrong is. If we do not assert
ourselves and our rights, our morality and what it means will become
warped until it is inverted. The bullies twist the meanings of human
rights, morality, and democracy, until words like liberal (which once meant
a kind-hearted, generous person, says Webster's dictionary) now means something
wicked and shameful. To be "liberal" is so shameful that John Kerry was afraid to be called
one.
Why is it now shameful to be tolerant, egalitarian,
broad-minded, generous -- now that the abusers of power dominate the
system of power in America?
To the abusers of humanity, all good-hearted people, all creative
peaceful people, are terrorists because they might say NO. They might stand
against the abusers' disgusting will to dominate the beaten, they might stand up for the
scapegoated, the weak, the traumatized, the poor, and the disenfranchised.
To some people, still in the grips of abusers -- those who embrace the
interpersonal social illnesses of narcissism sociopathy -- a culture of
perpetual war, strife and fascism is a paradise. The arrogant wannabe
kings and war hawks who seek to top the world into submission and
service -- they seek to harness it for their own glory as if it is their 'right' to
do this -- they seek fascist states. They pretend as if it is their
manifest destiny to be gods among humans, to determine by force who
lives and dies, who fails and whom succeeds. These bullies are sick. This is the only
way they feel alive, by destroying, tormenting, depriving, and harming
others, including those who are less likely to rise up and fight
them.
Abusers make sure that the kind-hearted and
courageous, the creative and gentle, the truly noble and humble, the
givers, the lovers, the bleeding hearts, the wise and the just never find a
place of peace and happiness, never find a state of comfort in this existence.
I am scared for we who still feel. I dread what atrocity we may have to
endure or fight.
I am not joyful. I am vigilant and sad. I'm scared that
too much of America is in a trance still. Too many have not chosen to say no to
an abuser of our collective trust and higher ideals. Yet because they do
not recognize what's happening, they are being enchanted ... while they are being used
up.
They have opted to stay with an abuser -- the man who beats them up with his tax
cuts for the rich, and the lack of health care for the poor, with corporate outsourcing and
endless wars.
How long will Americans let this "father figure" dominate
our lives and loves, and tyrannize us in our own homes? When will
America find it has suffered enough abuse and leave this
administration behind, leave behind the politics of "might makes right" and elitism
and move into a new wiser cultural understanding of what it means to be
a human being? How much pain must we face until the spell of popular
numbness and callousness, deception and delusion will be broken upon the
shards of reality? When will we recognize that our nation has been stolen by deluded, confused,
sick people?
My heart is bleeding ... and the pain of it all seizes me. I shake
and I feel cold and nauseated. I shudder with the thoughts in my mind
haunted by potential horrors. It makes me want to die to escape the
visions of tomorrow and the vigilance and mourning.
I know this
future never had to happen. There are other, better potentials, if we as a nation could let
ourselves feel the blows of injustice upon us, and admit the abusers are
deliberately shaking down the very foundations of the Constitution and
Bill of Rights -- because we let them. We throw away a once great and sure
shield we had against tyrants, and they beat us for hoping for a better
life, they enslave us by our fears, needs, and dreams.
What will we use to
stop abuses of power when our Constitution is gone? What will happen if
we forget what happiness is? What if we lose our grip on our sense of
equality, compassion, justice, fairness, decency, morality, and ethics and
give control to that evil within us?
What will we do when the great experiment of democratic self-rule is
called a failure by fascist aristocrats and bullies? Does their might
make them right ... or not?
What about the hopes and dreams of generations in the future? Our great-grandkids might be living and dying in contrived poverty, war, ignorance, superstition and serfdom. They might be denied expression, legitimacy, rights, dignity, and opportunity, existing in ignorance of
what freedom and justice is, raised to be obedient and unquestioning to
the will of self-made rich theocrats and kings. And this future springs from what we do or
don't do right now.
Abuser elitists exist, now. Raised up on a
pedestal they do not deserve, they fancy themselves our betters. They take for themselves freedom, entitlements, and birthrights that should belong to all people.
Remember, justice real comes, when tyrants define what is morality for
society. Nor does love and peace co-exist in a culture when justice is
subverted into a game of Lex Talionis, and the winners are allowed to
take all.
© 2004, by the author.
What do you think?
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What about the hopes and dreams of generations in the future?
Our great-grandkids might be living and dying in contrived poverty, war, ignorance, superstition and serfdom. They might be denied expression, legitimacy, rights, dignity, and opportunity, existing in ignorance of
what freedom and justice is, raised to be obedient and unquestioning to
the will of self-made rich theocrats and kings.
And this future springs from what we do or
don't do right now.
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Recent articles by this author:
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Jan. 7, 2003, 2003:
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by Underground Panther in the Sky
Jan. 1, 2003:
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Dec. 17, 2002:
the unseen hate epidemic
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Nov. 18, 2002:
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Oct. 11, 2002:
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The roots of war
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Oct. 9, 2002:
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Aug. 23, 2002:
The trouble with al Qaeda ...
by Underground Panther in the Sky
July 26, 2002:
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by Underground Panther in the Sky
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What will we use to stop abuses of power when our Constitution is gone?
What will happen if we forget what happiness is?
What if we lose our grip on our sense of equality, compassion, justice, fairness, decency, morality, and ethics and give control to that evil within us?
What will we do when the great experiment of democratic self-rule is called a failure by fascist aristocrats and bullies?
Does their might make them right ... or not?
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