Manifesto: Republicans are the bleeding hearts: The latest child massacre

Is it the Republican in the person who is afraid to live without a gun at his side or in his home? Or is it the person in the Republican who is afraid? Is it the Democrat in the person who feels . . . a certain way that doesn't require him to be armed with an ultimately lethal weapon, or is it the person in the Democrat who feels . . . that way?

My phrasing – "a certain way" – isn't obscure to be cute. It's incomplete because the feeling that isn't scared shitless or angry shitless to be without a gun may be more the absence of a feeling. The absence of paranoia, or of alienation, or of sociopathy. Or the absence of the lack of identity that is remedied by the false identity of gun toughness.

The answer to my question is: It's the person not the brand, the individual beneath the belief who has fear, anger and a diffuse identity. It's the individual beneath the belief who can live in a fundamentally positive sense of life. Liberals have been called "bleeding hearts." But I believe it's the Republicans of the bleeding hearts, who stanch the flow with defenses of offense: guns, more money, antisocial laws.

They cannot join a community to protect the community because as individuals they are incomplete, unformed. They are always trying to hold themselves together. The radically needy child – the "man-child" of Trump and the rest of them – is not integrated enough to be there for others.

The Libertarian and New Conservative flaw

When I was 17 and 18 – 1968 and 1969 – I was a Libertarian. Libertarians value individualism and freedom intrinsically and extrinsically, alpha and omega. There is a long, illustrious history of political freedom-fighting and intransigent, principled men and women that anchors the Libertarian movement. Many books and papers on the morality and practicality of liberty and its embodiment in capitalism were written or endorsed by Libertarians. In those days, there was a fundamental, if discreetly expressed, bifurcation in the thinking, which could be described in this extreme: Should there be a government over us, whose only purpose would be protection from force and fraud, or should individuals acquire (buy) their own services, such as private post offices, streets, police forces.

In that early Libertarian ideology (I've been away from it for fifty years), individualism, liberty and capitalism were a unity, and that unity was both an intellectual edifice and a feeling. It was a feeling that built the edifice. It was not a kind one. Many people would say it was an immoral one.

I remember owning that feeling. And now, as a studier of psychology, I can discern the various chemical elements that constitute not one feeling, but a complex of different emotionalized sensations.

There is the noble element, what might be called the Ayn Rand element. The heroic, hard-working, self-made person who has a passion for a personal goal from which he will not be deflected: Roark and his architecture; Galt and a free society. There is the self-esteem element: I care about myself, I have every right to keep what I earn and produce. There is the narcissistic element that wants to put aside, whenever one's felt needs importune, the fact that we live in a society: I am ok to destroy all of my competition by any strategy. I may pollute the air.

And then there is the element of contempt, which is also the Ayn Rand element. There may be pure nobility somewhere in the human soul, but it is not here. We high school and college Libertarians didn't care about the poor people who wanted to take our charity by force. We had no different, kinder feeling about the handicapped, the children, or other oppressed people. All were worthy of being ignored and yes, looked down upon.

It is this molecule of contempt, the ignoble part of Libertarian pride, that has spread on carrier waves of politics and religion throughout the land, turning the mind subtly like a kaleidoscope to hateful and coercive feelings, enabling millions of people to admire – admire – a narcissist and sociopath, Trump. This contempt is born in pain and loss in childhood, injustice and alienation, all morphing to a philosophy of individualism: the alone, unhelped person. Libertarians and New Conservatives feel the ghosts of their injustice and alienation that become false nobility and wounded disdain. Soaring on the wings of political victory, they are sanctified, happy. In defeat, they are angry, hurt children.

Death rhapsody

Following up on an airier discussion in the previous hour's session, a client texted: "I have heard 'live like it's your last day' etc. etc. probably 10 thousand times before. It never got through to me, in anything other than a terrifying moment or two, until a few weeks ago. Heck, it's a cliché."

Liking to keep things heavy, I texted back: "I'm 70 and I have no idea if my last day will be serene and loving and accepting or depressed, desperate and disappointed. What I do know is that I won't be trying to push my thinking and feeling in one direction or another. It will be what it is."

Later in the evening, I realized that in my response I was thinking of my status on my deathbed, not my full last day: waking up in the morning, knowing I'd pass away at some point in the night, and picturing what I might do to make the day nine-months'-pregnant with meaning.

That day would be problematic: I'd have a few people to apologize to (again); a family member or a few to quietly condemn, with melancholy; some roses and fulsome things to smell and a black starry sky to look at; no blog post (silence would be the real me at that point); and no one to kiss, unless my wife outlives me, which I profoundly hope.

More interesting to me, in a very dreadful way, would be the deathbed hour. Because I honestly don't know in which direction my spirit would go. Picturing my life's failures, including birth and childhood. Or feeling love and a life lived pretty well. Or some unknowable mystery of feeling. I suspect I will think as little of thinking, or "thoughting,"* as I do now. I believe our thoughts are always a poor representation or a conceitful hiding from our true oceanic mess of a Self. Yes, we want to paint this ocean, and on that painted surface we want to paint names of our lives. But I am certain that's never true.

We are as uncomprehending at death as we are at birth.

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* See – https://pessimisticshrink.blogspot.com/2013/09/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none_1274.html, https://pessimisticshrink.blogspot.com/2015/03/curmudgeon-1-thoughting.html and other "Thoughting" posts.

Gems of generalization #1: Baby mama and baby grandma

 

A woman wrote to slate.com’s advice columnist, “Dear Prudence,” a grievance about her mother. In part and in segments: 

“My problem is my mother. My brothers’ wives are both expecting, and she is over the moon about being a grandma. Except neither of my sisters-in-law are particularly close to my mother. . . . My mother will stalk their social media in order to get the latest news. She has set her phone to ping when they post. And now, all our conversa­tions revolve around the pregnancies and speculation about the babies. I honestly don’t care if the nursery has a zoo theme or not. I especially don’t want to discuss it 15 different times. I have tried redirecting the conversations or bringing up new topics, but my mother just bulldozes back to babies.

“For example, recently, while figure skating, the rink owner came up to me and asked me if I wanted to earn some extra money as a part time coach since it was obvious I had the right experience. I agreed. I met my mother later for dinner. When I entered the house, I told her I had exciting news. She stopped cooking and exploded into a smile: You are having a baby! I told her no – I got offered a job because of my figure skating. All my mother’s enthusiasm leaked away. . . . I was hurt and my mother kept pushing and pushing more baby talk at me. I snapped and told her I was sick of the subject. Could we talk about something else? My mother told me not to be ‘jealous.’ . . .

“I have always been close to my mom, since my brothers are much older and dad died when I was young. I understand she is excited, but it is like I don’t exist anymore. My only use in life is to be a road to grandbabies, and if I don’t (and I am leaning towards don’t), well, what do I matter? . . . My mother has her priorities set and interest in me is in the negatives. I am hurt. I am lonely. I miss my mom. . . . My life, my goals, and my passions are worthless to my mother, all because she is going to be a grandma. . . . What should I do?”

I disliked Prudence’s response and posted this comment:

"What a sweet and useless answer to the non-child daughter from Prudie. My take is that the daughter was 'close' to her mother, growing up, not because of a healthy bond but because the daughter was always needy of and clinging to a mother who had other priorities. There is a phenomenon where faulty mothers become golden (-seeming) grandmothers. It is not easy to understand, but it may be similar to those Borderline Personality-disordered mothers* who disrespect their own teenage daughters but fawn over their daughters’ friends. The mother is immature, still a child, and can’t 'relate' as a source of nurturant authority to her daughter. But as a child herself, she seeks attention and approval from outsiders – her daughters’ friends. And then, her daughter’s child. It’s a logical set of dynamics."

I’ve written about toxic grandmothers (https://pessimisticshrink.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-warning-to-grandmothers.html), those who degraded and abused their own daughters then swooped in like pink knights in shining armor to fete the grandchild, sometimes went the attorney route to win “grand­parent’s rights,” sometimes tried to wrest custody of the child. Here I just wanted to ask affected daughters and sons (and their therapists) to see the mystery of a parent who loves the grandchild and not them. It will not be because you are unworthy. It will be because your parent is a child needing a parent, a friend.

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* There could be other dysfunctions of immaturity, not necessarily a personality disorder, and fathers are not excluded from this dynamic.