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Habits of successful modern cannibals
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
Sept. 8, 2005
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One of the predictable and disgusting aspects of working in the child abuse arena is the recurrent (sometimes it almost seems uniform) denial by the families of known perpetrators who get caught molesting children.
After many years of watching this phenomena, I have come to the conclusion that these families are not just deluded, not just blinded by denial, not just delusional, but rather, they are passive collaborators who are avoiding guilt.
In fact, on examination of the full story, these people generally are found to have private, personal motivations for not seeing the crimes that are going on under their noses. Husbands with jobs are harder to come by than children for some. Alliances within families are threatened. Family "honor," which underpins the financial success and class status of the family in very real ways, is placed above the needs of the victims.
Family members who report these crimes against the conspiracy of silence are generally treated badly, called names like "traitor," have their motivations questioned for "lying" about the perpetrator, and so forth.
This dynamic is part of a characteristic response of people that scales up all the way to the national level. Passive perpetrators have many reasons for participating in heinous crimes, and even more reasons for denying their complicity.
The most significant enabling force for this kind of behavior is the natural tendency of the rest of us to want to be fair, to give the benefit of the doubt, and finally, of just not be able to imagine that ordinary people, that we identify with, may have denied, but depraved motivations. This blindness growing out of kindness creates the opportunity for these people to get away with their hidden crimes, and thus, virtually all of us, at one time or another, to one degree or another, are passive coconspirators to heinous crimes.
This tendency toward denial lies at the root of all our historic massive crimes: Wars of aggression, dispossessions, eugenics, exploitation of workers, persecution of belief, racism, and the whole spectrum of crimes that depend on a silent public, willing to go along to get along, are all underpinned by the character defect of denial.
This kind of crime, the crime of participating in conspiracies of silence about the abuse of the weak, is deeply embedded in our national character here in the US. The fact is that, currently, the leadership in this country is on a massive crime spree that dwarfs anything in history.
Attilla the Hun did not spread radioactive waste across the battlefield.
The Romans did not systematically and deliberately destroy the ability of the provinces to support themselves (Carthage being the exception).
Hitler did not keep the world in the grip of nuclear terror, though it is probable that he would have if he had had the chance.
Stalin did not systematically destroy the resources and environment of Russia for the sole benefit of his friends.
Even Caligula did not trap people in the midst of floods by preventing their escape.
But our leadership, in today's USA, have done all these heinous crimes, and many, many more.
Another sentinel aspect of the crimes of the depraved is the tendency to blame their victims with the expectation that the general public will go along with the ruse. The poor who could not escape Fallujah, the poor that could not escape New Orleans, the Vietnamese who had their towns destroyed "to save them" all represent victims of a pattern of depraved criminal violence against the defenseless.
The depraved criminal is not like the rest of us, so we have a hard time understanding how they think. For the depraved all suffering of the weak is an opportunity, something positive, something to be wished for, and if possible, engineered. We are told that "intelligence failures" led to 9/11, we are told that "intelligence failures" led to the Iraq war, we are told that "intelligence failures" led to the tragedy in New Orleans. It is an "intelligence failure" for us to continue believing these lame excuses.
Many people have studied the psychological aspects of the German people that allowed the Fascists to ignite World War II. A consistent theme in these accounts by Arendt, Reich and others, is in their calling attention to the amazing degree of gullibility on the part of a German population that was eager to absorb and digest, with equanimity, the outrageous propaganda of the Nazi party.
The conclusion of decades of scholarship is summed up in the title of Goldhaggen's book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners. In light of this analysis of history, it can be seen that gross crimes, such as are now being perpetrated by the US ruling elite that control our "democracy," can only be perpetrated with the passive cooperation of significant proportion of our society.
In dealing with child abuse cases in court, one is often asked by the defense counsel if the evidence under consideration by the jury couldn't have been generated by some outlandish and contrived alternative explanation. For instance (from an actual case) the defense might ask something like, "Couldn't this child have fallen on a shampoo bottle in the shower and that is the reason for the torn anus?"
My response was usually of the form that anything is possible, even the improbable, but that experience and reason dictate that the injuries were not plausibly sustained in that way.
Sure, it is possible that the highest reaches of the US Government are so completely inept that they get everything wrong, seemingly all the time, but it is not probable that these mistakes somehow consistently support their stated goal of dominating the world militarily.
Sure, it is possible that mistakes were made that led to the disaster in New Orleans, but it is not probable that the these mistakes would have spared only the wealthy.
Sure, it is possible that the developers, sure to include friends of this administration, are only going to "accidentally" make windfall profits from the "urban renewal" projects sure to come to New Orleans, but it is not probable that a whole series of "mistakes," closely linked, would see the destruction of only the poorest, and predominantly black areas of the city and the expulsion of the poor population to widely scattered places.
It is not plausible that victims of the flood were "accidentally" denied access to the dry, wealthy, east bank of the city where ample space and supplies were, and still are lying unmolested. It is not plausible that the wealthy sections of the city, across the river from the poor sections, were accidentally overlooked as a possible refuge while thousands were allowed to die the most horrible deaths just miles or mere blocks away.
When one has the chance, as I have had, to speak compassionately with the families of perpetrators of child abuse who have, often vehemently, and publicly defended the criminals in their midst, one gains an understanding of how this passive enablement of depravity works.
The enablers of these criminals are themselves victims of fear and terror. Fear of the potential for being the target of a perpetrator's revenge, fear of destitution after the incarceration of the bread winning perpetrator, fear that they are too weak, too defenseless, to take a principled stand to protect their children.
Basically, one comes to the realization that these silent co-conspirators, these enablers, these protectors of criminals, these people who claim a decency for themselves that is nowhere in evidence, these weavers of self-protective delusions, are themselves just emotionally underdeveloped victims of abuse themselves. They may appear to be adults. They may exercise the rights of adults in a permissive society. They may even speak articulately, and with apparent rational authority. But they are functionally just frightened children who do not trust that they can make it on their own, that they even count for very much in other people's eyes.
They are the victims of the terror of unrelenting fear of inadequacy and domination. They do not experience agency, the feeling that they can act on their own in opposition to those who dominate them. They are restrained by acceptance of an artificial reality, authored by their oppressors, that sees them suffering, with certainty, for any independent action that opposes the aims of the criminals that they choose to protect.
One might say that these silent co-conspirators are without a soul. But I see them merely as weak frightened children in adult bodies harnessed to the whims of other frightened children in adult bodies who act out their fears through acts of domination and depravity.
On the level of individual families, it is possible to save and rehabilitate at least some of the child victims of the cycle of abuse by midwifing a commitment to honesty about the facts of the crimes involved and restoring a belief in the power of justice. On the national level it remains totally unclear to me as to how to go about reaching these silent coconspirators, who, along with the depraved dominator half of this tragic duo, are leading our world into destruction.
How can we induce people to shed the scales of denial from their eyes? How can we convince people that their imagined "need" to protect their personal property, their class status, their "lifestyles," their illusions, their false pride, and their ideological conceits is driving the whole world off a cliff into an abyss?
I see no point in being defeatist about this goal. If we can not accomplish it we are lost, so why even consider that alternative? We are in great need of creative approaches to reach the silent co-conspirators.
Any ideas?
© by the author.
What do you think?
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This tendency toward denial lies at the root of all our historic massive crimes:
Wars of aggression, dispossessions, eugenics, exploitation of workers, persecution of belief, racism, and the whole spectrum of crimes that depend on a silent public, willing to go along to get along, are all underpinned by the character defect of denial.
This kind of crime, the crime of participating in conspiracies of silence about the abuse of the weak, is deeply embedded in our national character here in the US.
The fact is that, currently, the leadership in this country is on a massive crime spree that dwarfs anything in history.
Attilla the Hun did not spread radioactive waste across the battlefield.
The Romans did not systematically and deliberately destroy the ability of the provinces to support themselves (Carthage being the exception).
Hitler did not keep the world in the grip of nuclear terror, though it is probable that he would have if he had had the chance.
Stalin did not systematically destroy the resources and environment of Russia for the sole benefit of his friends.
Even Caligula did not trap people in the midst of floods by preventing their escape.
But our leadership, in today's USA, have done all these heinous crimes, and many, many more.
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|
|
Sure, it is possible that the highest reaches of the US Government are so completely inept that they get everything wrong, seemingly all the time, but it is not probable that these mistakes somehow consistently support their stated goal of dominating the world militarily.
Sure, it is possible that mistakes were made that led to the disaster in New Orleans, but it is not probable that the these mistakes would have spared only the wealthy.
Sure, it is possible that the developers, sure to include friends of this administration, are only going to "accidentally" make windfall profits from the "urban renewal" projects sure to come to New Orleans, but it is not probable that a whole series of "mistakes," closely linked, would see the destruction of only the poorest, and predominantly black areas of the city and the expulsion of the poor population to widely scattered places.
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Previous articles by this author:
Yet another, higher dose of pain
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
Yet another, higher dose of pain
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
The war of one against all:
The roots of our enslavement
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Class warfare, anyone?
Why class war is not a fiction but a fixture of our lives
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Why "Free Speech" does not matter
by Herb Ruhs, MD
When all else fails, try the truth
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Murder by medical device
by Herb Ruhs, MD
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Say it with a bumper sticker:
$3 each, or two for $5
How can we induce people to shed the scales of denial from their eyes?
How can we convince people that their imagined "need" to protect their personal property, their class status, their "lifestyles," their illusions, their false pride, and their ideological conceits is driving the whole world off a cliff into an abyss?
I see no point in being defeatist about this goal.
If we can not accomplish it we are lost, so why even consider that alternative?
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