Posted on 07/16/2009 5:27:11 AM PDT by DB9
Sarah Palin vs. the Marquis de Sade By Robin of Berkeley
I grew up with a mean older brother who was ten when I came on the scene. Family lore is that Tom ran away when my mother left to deliver me. When she returned he responded with disgust, "At least you could have brought me home a brother."
Tom's main passion in life was tormenting me. He delighted in mocking me, scaring me, making me cry. He'd laugh and make this strange, guttural sound when he saw my terror. As I got older, he enjoyed more menacing methods of torture, like holding me down and pretending to suffocate me.
It was easy to have access to me since my parents were usually galavanting around town with their pack of carousing adults, all of whom were in arrested development. When my folks were around, they'd yell at him but he'd just start up again when they were gone.
After I grew up and became a psychotherapist, I learned that there was a name for Tom's behavior, sadism. Sadists get a thrill out of being cruel and watching others suffer. While most abusive parents are motivated by a misguided effort to socialize and control, sadistic siblings just want to have fun by inflicting pain.
I rarely think of Tom, who disowned my family years ago. But when I reflect on what was done to Sarah Palin, I remember him and his sadism. And I look around and see more and more Tom's, all grown up; but they haven't grown up, actually; they refuse to grow up and use self control and restraint. And, alarmingly, many of them are in positions of power.
Let's call them by their true name. When an actress calls for gang raping Palin, she's a sadist. When people torch Palin's church with children inside, they are sadists. When bloggers call her a c___t and scorn her disabled son, they are being sadists.
Each day I wake up and the world looks more and more like my childhood: Tom's and Terry's who get a thrill out of terrorizing others; aging Peter Pans who won't grow up and enforce rules; parents too busy partying or saving the world to stay home, guide their kids, and teach them that all important word "no."
Television shows that humiliate people by publicly rejecting and demeaning them; movies where audiences are kept pumped up on sex and violence; an Internet where you can post the vilest things anonymously, unfiltered.
A secular society where anything goes, where self fulfillment reigns, where morals and values are as disposable as yesterday's underwear, to be thrown in the trash when you're tired of them.
A society gone mad, a "return to the primitive," as Ayn Rand described it forty years ago when she witnessed the growing power of the Left. Adults who have the impulse control of two year olds marching around, unhinged and uncontrolled, like Lord of the Flies. Teens beating up each other and teachers and uploading the video on YouTube.
Good people like Palin and Carrie Prejean being victimized in a manner so malicious that the intent is nothing short of destroying them. And the Powers that Be which could stop the growing brutality at any time by calling off the dogs, calling for order, won't do so because it serves their needs. After all, it's what Saul Alinsky preached: control the masses by keeping them agitated and paranoid.
Maybe what's happening today goes beyond Left and Right and speaks instead to the ancient struggle between good and evil. We live in a nation that has banished evil, that denies it even exists. But this is naive and foolhardy; good and evil exist hand in hand in the fiber of all human beings. We each have in us the seeds of Gandhi and the seeds of Pol Pot. It all depends on which ones we feed and nurture.
Evil, unacknowledged and unrecognized, takes root and becomes a virus so virulent, it threatens everyone whom it touches. Because evil changes people; it wipes out what makes them uniquely human; it turns them into something completely different, unrecognizable, alien.
And goodness is not just some old fashioned concept, some relic of days gone by. It's a privilege bestowed on us from the universe and we must cradle it and protect it as we would a newborn babe. We must never take it for granted, mock it or abandon it because it's the only thing that stands in the way of us and total anarchy.
Philosopher Jacob Needleman tells a story of walking on a bustling San Francisco street with a religious scholar from Tibet. Needleman asks his friend, "If it is so rare to be born a human being, how come there are so many people in the world?" His friend ponders the question silently for several seconds. Then he looks at Needleman and responds quietly, "How many human beings do you see?"
I look around each day and ask myself the same question, "Where are the human beings?" I see fewer and fewer each day. But there's a shining example in Alaska of a woman who maintained her integrity in the midst of cruelty that would have crushed many of us; who never descended to the level of the thugs; and who exits the scene with something that the sadists will never have, not even in their dreams -- her humanity.
A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and psychotherapist in Berkeley.
Democrats?
Good article. Thanks for posting. :)
Great piece. Thanks for posting!
A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and psychotherapist in Berkeley.
North Carolina recently passed the Anti-Bullying Law mostly for our schools. I see court cases, lots of them. An economic stimulus for our judicial industry...
When an actress calls for gang raping Palin, she's a sadist. When people torch Palin's church with children inside, they are sadists. When bloggers call her a c___t and scorn her disabled son, they are being sadists.
ping
This type of analysis reminds more of two things from literature, one more classical:
"the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist!" - BaudelaireAnd, from a more current view, the Raymond Feist fantasy novels, where the protagonists muse about the nature of evil, and wonder why anyone would willingly serve such a destructive force. Their only conclusion is that evil is insane, and those following it do not comprehend the destructiveness of their own choices because they themselves are no longer capable of understanding them.
A friend from Russia noticed the degradation of American society. She explained that Russia needed so many harsh laws because the people had become worse. And that it was starting to happen here. If there are too many "peter pans - who won't grow up" and an abundance of people stirring the pot for sadistic control - there won't be enough laws to make our world safe from each other.
Palin has to get off this victim stuff. It’s weakness not strength. Many in this country say similar personal things about Obama and his wife too. Let’s move on, we have Health Care, cap and Trade and the Supreme Court to worry about, Talking about how hateful the libs are may be republican base fundraising candy but it does nothing for me. (Democrats use Cheney and Rush) especially with THEM in charge.
I am inspired by Senator Demint articulating knowledgeble positions on those issues.
Thanks for the ping. I enjoy reading Robin of Berkeley. She is good. She solved many internal contradictions by going conservative. But how many liberals are still trapped that way: live ostensibly conservative lives and practicing Utopian wishful thinking politically.
You're right - and when they do - on a personal level - it's wrong. And sadistic. And the MSM catches it - and Jim Rob "catches it" and we have mods working full time to throw the stuff out.
BUT WHEN LIBERALS do it, it's time to "move on"?
NO Sickoflibs, this type of evil is a tactic dems use. It's not an accident - it's not a mistake - and it's not being done by the uneducated in the dem party - it's being done by their leaders. They have paid professionals whose job is to destroy our (conservatives) ability to communicate with each other.
The people who went after Palin weren't unemployed lowlifes spewing hatred from computers in their homeless shelters or prison rec rooms... They were the "cream of the Party" - dem professionals and the paid brown-shirts.
Their tactics ARE the issue of a civilized society.
Interesting article
This whole scene reminds me of Stephen King’s book “The Stand”- a battle between good and evil, where good people were hated and feared because they saw through the evil and refused to back down or succumb
It is amazing how they keep on doing these ethics complaints, and they keep getting tossed.
I loved this last part of her article-
I look around each day and ask myself the same question, "Where are the human beings?" I see fewer and fewer each day. But there's a shining example in Alaska of a woman who maintained her integrity in the midst of cruelty that would have crushed many of us; who never descended to the level of the thugs; and who exits the scene with something that the sadists will never have, not even in their dreams -- her humanity.
I have never felt as heavy in my heart and mind, as I do today, reflecting upon the deep and truly horrific wounds uhbama and his cabal are inflicting upon our nation.
I can not hide my head in the sand and pretend our nation can withstand this for three + more years.
And I resent the 'saul alinsky' described agitation and vexation, whatever, that I feel as result of that creepy half black man in our White House and the genuine filth that he has chosen to advise and direct our nation.
I do not want uhbama's vision to destroy our nation.
What can we do?
Evil and vile.
Sadism, much like sexual immorality (a redunancy?), is seeking the pleasure reward out from punishing oneself and others, and it is done in the act of inflicting pain or such punishment - around and within.
These liberals are not normal people yet they are “empowered” now to make legal and health decisions for us - good grief.
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