MusePaper January 26th, 2004
Howard Dean's "Primal Scream"
Part Two: The Scapegoating of Feeling, 2004 Culture Clash, Real Versus Sham News, and "Let's Not Get Fooled Again!"
by Mickel Adzema, M.A.
"I Feel Your Pain."
In Part 1, We talked about the way the most repressed people are seen as the most stable people and therefore as the best leaders. Could it be different? Well, it was different. Not long ago we had a President whose demeanor and attitude were exactly the opposite of the "What-me-worry?" indifference of the current one. And, as might be foreseen from the analysis of Part One of this MusePaper, he spent the entirety of his eight years as President -- as well as before and after it -- being attacked for it. For what? For his humanness.
Those of us in the human potential movement were probably united in our dismay at seeing the way a President who felt and expressed "I feel your Pain" would be so roundly attacked, denigrated, smeared, ridiculed, and mocked for it. Those who do not have such feelings cannot understand others who do; they immediately distrust the authenticity of such a remark, because they themselves are incapable of it. These people have hidden, self-serving agendas, so naturally they assume everyone else does as well. So when the President of the United States would "dare" to express such feelingness, they could not see it as other than a huge screwup, as a phony attempt to be compassionate -- which for themselves it would have been -- rather than as a genuine human response in an appropriate context.
Those without feelings themselves, who live in their worlds of analysis, intrigue, stratagem, and connivance -- in their heads, basically -- have no idea of what it is to "have a heart," to experience the world with a feeling sense, to have genuine compassion, caring, gratitude, grief, joy, and all the rest. So they could not fathom a man such as Clinton -- a man whose beginnings in childhood were fraught with the Pain of watching his mother hurt, his father suffering in the throes of addiction, and him in the middle, caring deeply for them both, without the power to really change the tragedies of their lives. They cannot imagine how such a background would instill a powerful motivation, wrought of simple caring, to try to make a country and a world with less tragedy, less suffering in it. They could not comprehend that when he shed a tear, or more than one, upon hearing another's tragic plight, that his heart, in truth, was breaking at the unfairness of the world that could manage, over and over again, and so often -- so unnecessarily; so often -- only for the lack of just a small change in something or other, the benefit of just a tiny amount of help, from somewhere, from the government, if nowhere else.
Destroying People As Sport
It is tragic as well that these people live such shallow, empty lives that they would seek to bury anyone who would dare to claim to have a depth of feeling that they are convinced cannot exist or, as Vince Foster said in his suicide note, "Washington is a place where destroying people is considered sport." For if one does not feel, then one's purposes take on that of a game, or sport. And it is simply irrelevant in that context that people's feelings, their lives, their livelihoods, are and will be affected by their positioning themselves in their careers with cynical putdowns, false exposes, made-up "leaks," and, as always the ever present mocking tone which says basically "See, everyone, I am soooo smart that I can see through all the phony emotionalism and machinations. I am a no-nonsense, real, person who is not taken in -- like other saps, bleeding-heart liberals, or the like. No, I am a real, tough, only-the-facts-maam kind of reporter, pundit, talk-show comedian, radio-show host, or politician that is therefore superior. I am It. I am the Greatest. How can you not be oh-so-fucking impressed by me?" So says the Ann Coulters, Robert Novaks, Mary Madelines, Rush Limbaughs, Martin Savages, Bill O'Reillys, and Joe Scarboroughs of the world.
Sorry -- Not Impressed
Well, yea, we're real fucking impressed all right. Though you have those of your ilk applauding your mean-spirited diatribes and raising you up into the spotlight, you still were not elected to two terms as President of the United States and, unlike the politician you ridiculed -- Bill Clinton -- you will make the history books, if at all, as a footnote. In the case of Rush Limbaugh, you will mostly make it as an example of a hypocrite, as you are found out to be an addict after saying that all drug addicts should be thrown in prison and your response to the beloved Jerry Garcia was "oh, he's just another dead doper." You will be seen as pitiful and envious, in the pronouncements you make about others today. For you make no real contribution. Your efforts are negative and serve only to bring people and the rest of us down, by appealing to the lowest in us. Whereas, for example, the person you piled on, in loving to hate for his humanness -- Bill Clinton -- well, he remains beloved, forgiven for his personal shortcomings, but actually loved, for the way he reached out and brought people together during his term. He is beloved for the fact that his reaching out, again and again, demonstrated his authentic caring -- something which you folks do not, can not, understand.
We Do to Others What Was Done To Us
But let's focus on what the attacks on Clinton's "I feel your pain," the attacks on his feelingness, demonstrate. In a world with more real people in it, there would never have been a reaction to such remarks by him; they would have been understood; they would have been deemed appropriate, as any of us in his shoes would have felt the same way. But, as discussed in Part One, "The Republican Media, Repression, and the Appeal of Stony-Hearted Presidents," we simply don't live in a world with very many real people in it. To the contrary, our child-rearing modes have created a "normalcy" which is characterized by denial and repression.
With that in mind, let's go the next step: What follows when people are in denial and are repressed -- shutting out of consciousness their basic human feelingness? Simple. We do to others who represent feelings what we were forced to do to our own feelingness. Therefore, we attack and mock Clinton's compassion because we've been mocked or made fun of, when we showed sympathy or compassion -- growing up, particularly as males, and especially in the Fifties . . . and the Eighties. For to show compassion or sympathy was labeled by the stony-hearted, "realistic," majority as revealing weakness, softness, and, yes, for males, even femininity. Thus it was in particular the male Pundits -- and the "butch" female Pundits -- who mocked and ridiculed Clinton.
Boys Don't Cry
There were easy psychodynamic reasons why this would be so: For males, Clinton's "feelingness" was threatening because it unconsciously touched on their own fears of being ridiculed, left out, made fun of, for being "like a girl," or "horror of horrors," a "homo"! A "faggot"! Yes, folks, there was a day when "homo" was one of the worst, and most hurtful, epithets that could be hurled at a young boy or man. Saying, "sissy," "homo," "faggot," was akin to throwing down the glove -- as in the ritual of "the duel" in times past -- and one either defended one's honor by fighting -- and thus "proved" oneself a "man"; or else one risked being alienated from all the rest of one's male -- and often female as well -- peers. Because by not fighting you thus "proved" that you were what they called you. And in that gender-divided world, that made you not one of them; worse, it made you perhaps even a sick-o, or even some kind of "perv." You were not "one of the guys." Indeed -- since all ("normal," neurotic) groups "need" scapegoats, and if there weren't enough ethnics to scapegoat, or they had their own separate group -- then "sissy" or "homo" was the way to weed out the one(s) who would have to carry all the pent-up rage that youth were feeling in response, actually, to the way they were being humiliated by their parents and teachers (to whom they could not talk back).
My understanding is that times among youth have changed, somewhat, in some parts of the country. Yet, especially in rural areas -- where "traditional family values" still are in play and boys are taught to be "manly men" in order to get the approval of their gun-toting animal-hunting (kitty-drowner and butterfly-masher) dads -- we still hear of homosexual boys, or even those deemed just less manly, being tied to barb-wired fences in inclement weather, and/or being painted with the word "faggot" or "homo." The movie, based on an actual incident, titled "Boys Don't Cry," with Hillary Swank, depicts the kind of peer dynamics I'm talking about.
"Feeling" People -- Lightning Rods for Abuse, aaaand . . . Michael Jackson
Still, this pattern of beating back, hating, and persecuting those who represent feeling or softness -- rendering them as "pervs" -- all in order to prop up one's own sense of manliness, especially among other men, is played out even in the social dramas of the day: Witness the jocular Santa Barbara prosecutor in the Michael Jackson case -- buoyed up by his own sense of being a "manly man among men" at his press conference -- going after a man who more than anyone in the world represents a soft-spoken, gentle, effeminate or childlike or at least not grown-up enough, man -- espousing love -- "Love you more!" -- and standing up for causes of compassion toward others and other such "not-manly" endeavors, rather than what men are supposed to do: that is, be gruff-speaking, serf-serving, egocentric, butterfly mashers.
Now, I don't know if Michael Jackson is guilty. I only know that the gentlest souls among us -- Christ the perfect example -- are lightning rods for abuse: because we have been taught to hate in ourselves that which is gentle (lest we not be "loved" by Dad, or accepted into the male peer group) and so we are driven (not consciously, but totally without our realizing our motivations, surely by the time we are adults -- at least unless we go through Primal Therapy) to hate and abuse that same thing we've learned to hate, beat back, and abuse in ourselves when we see it represented by some person or other. Simply put, we do to people who come across as being "feeling" and "soft" exactly what we've been forced, or chosen, to do to the feeling and softness inside ourselves. We do this because in doing so, the world is made "right"; one's outer world coincides with one's inner world. Our inner feelingness and compassion repressed, punished, ridiculed, and beaten back into our unconscious, the world too must repress, beat back, ridicule, and punish those who represent feelingness and compassion. We simply cannot have gentle, soft-speaking, compassionate people mucking about (let alone being popular and loved -- Michael Jackson; or being powerful -- Bill Clinton), when we have not been allowed to have those things. ("How dare they be like that, when I wasn't allowed to? . . . and wanted to!" says our unconscious self.)
And so the Pundits and Talk-Show Comedians pile it on, getting ratings galore from similar, cynical, repressed, compassion-deprived, love-deprived, pathetically shriveled up souls who need to express their hate, lest they feel how they've been screwed over -- which is too painful for them to want to look at.
2004 Election -- Another Culture Clash
But, now, this election, since every one since the Sixties, has been about the people like I've been describing as needing to have scapegoats for the deprivations they've suffered versus those of us who have taken a look inside at our pain and the pain of those important to us in our lives and felt compassion, like Clinton. Like every other election since the Sixties, it is about the culture clash in America between the one's who care and the one's who hate -- the ones who just love to punish, as Carol O'Connor once put it. There is the one America that cares more about dirty words and sex in the media or in the schools and wants people put in jail and put to death and above all punished, but cares little about real issues like death, torture, guns, killing, jobs, the environment and the economy we leave our children and grandchildren.
But things may be changing, folks, and it may be going our way this time. Despite all the hay that the media made about Dean's exuberance, a focus group, two days after Dean's post-caucus enthusiastic speech, showed that 24 out of 30 people interpreted Dean's demeanor as "exuberance" and did not think there was anything wrong with it. Again we see that the people are ahead of the Pundits.
Apparently the "vast right-wing conspiracy" sets the agenda for the Pundits (see " Pundits Versus People") and determines what issues are issues, what will be talked about, what the rest of us -- the people -- will have to respond to, will have to react to.
Real News Versus Sham News
You know, it could be different. We hear on the nightly news that the polar ice cap has shrunk over the last decade by as much as forty percent -- and we see the satellite photograph showing this startling change -- but it is mentioned, almost as a footnote, by Dan Rather, at the end of his broadcast. And his final, and only, remark about it is that "the scientists don't have an explanation for this." Whaaat??? This is what the Republican propaganda that the case for global warming has not been made yet has caused.
Ridiculing What's Important
You don't believe that there is such a propaganda campaign? Explain to me, then, how the Republicans could have thought they were making fun of Al Gore when, on the floor of Congress and while he was running for President, they thought they could make political hay by reading passages from his book, Earth in the Balance -- a book on the environmental crisis and the real, and dire, consequences we face. They actually thought that by reading paragraphs where Al Gore talked about the need to eliminate the internal combustion engine they could show him up to be a nincompoop. Simply forget about the melting ice caps, mind you, not to mention the scientist's warning about rising ocean levels that will creep into major cities throughout the Earth. And as for the depletion of the ozone layer: well, so what if we have rapidly spreading holes in it and an epidemic of skin cancer in Australia (and now spreading throughout the globe), and on, and on. Despite all this, they thought it great fun to laugh at these passages in his book, thinking that putting it into the public record would not only hurt him in the election but render him, for history's sake, as a flake.
Still not convinced. Well, the Republicans did manage to get the Presidency, despite the will of the majority of Americans. Sure enough, Bush took us out of the Kyoto treaty on global warming. His reason: the scientific evidence for it was inconclusive. Never mind that the rest of the world -- and the majority of Americans and scientists -- disagreed!
Corporate "Whores"
And as expected, to continue this example, the Republican propaganda machine continues to disseminate misinformation that "scientists disagree about the reality of global warming." The vast majority of scientists who study global warming don't disagree that it is occurring. We all know that for any issue there will always be some lame-o, paid-off scientist -- on some corporate or government payroll -- who will put out some pseudo-scientific analysis to the contrary of ANY finding of the majority of scientists. So to say that it is an issue upon which scientists disagree is to say nothing at all. Take any issue. Take an issue like the pollution of a water supply -- like the one depicted in the Erin Brochovich movie -- and there will always be some scientist paid off by a corporation to say that the pollution is not occurring. In that instance, for example, the utility responsible was putting out flyers saying the cadmium in the water and ground were "good" for you. Yea, cadmium is good for you; it is one of the essential nutrients of the body. But the cadmium at issue was not of the type that is a nutrient but is a poison. Yet the corporations and insurance companies and the government (when it is in their interest) can always find some corporate "whore" who will state the obvious -- "cadmium is good for you" -- but not address the fact that the cadmium in question is not of that variety. It is a matter of leaving out what is relevant.
"Dirty" Words Versus Living In Our Own Filth
The list goes on: How about the issue of the dying of our oceans. We see on the nightly news that vast amounts of plastic wastes -- which do not biodegrade for thousands of years -- are piling up in the middle of the Pacific. We see jellyfish that have grown "around" this plastic waste -- deformed, pathetic creatures. Sad looking things that appear to be doing anything to survive in the sewer that we have made their environment. Apt metaphors for ourselves as we struggle to survive -- with ionic breeze machines and water filters and supplements and pharmaceuticals galore -- surrounded ourselves by our own filth of waste matter.
And we are told that, indeed, the actual DNA of these jellyfish and of other aquatic creatures are beginning to incorporate this plastic! We are creating creatures with plastic incorporated into their DNA! I can only wonder, in horror, at what our own DNA will become -- and what humans of the future will be like -- as we continue to breathe, eat, and live in our own filth. Nonetheless, the media find some corporate sell-out, some lackey for the plastics industry, to tell us, in that same broadcast, that the fact that plastic is piling up in our oceans is a tribute to the impressive benefit that plastic has made to our lives. Sooooo? The logical conclusion, then, is that our lives are so benefited by this substance that it is OK to destroy our oceans -- for ourselves, all other species, and all generations of humans and other creatures that will ever come after us for eons (if, in fact, it is possible for life to continue to exist here after what we are doing).
What it comes down to is that it is OK to destroy the good Earth, which God has given us, in our lifetimes if our lives are made easier and better while we are on it. Just forget the fact that there are generations who will come after us whose lives will be diminished, or nonexistent, because of the ease that we have allowed ourselves in our brief span on this sphere.
Yet, again, this is not the issue that the media focuses on. They would rather talk about dirty words or exuberance on the part of a political figure. It's not just Howard Dean's "yeaah," you see, but even the fact that John Kerry used the word, fuck, in an interview in Rolling Stone.
The implication is that we are supposed to choose our leaders based on the use of dirty words or being an actual human with emotions rather than on their stand on the real issues that threaten our very survival.
The list is endless: They focused on Clinton's sexuality but say hardly enough about the fact that the Bush administration was willing to "out" a CIA operative, put her life in danger, and indirectly, by undermining our intelligence community, put us all in danger in the War Against Terrorism, which relies on intelligence gathering above all! Again and again we see the deep divide between the real issues that threaten our lives and the corporate-Republican's agenda to set up "straw men" -- i.e., false issues -- which the lackey media go along with, to fill up the TV screens and airwaves of America. In this way they -- like the society depicted in Orwell's 1984 -- seek to keep our society's consciousness deep in the sand and oblivious to the real threats looming. Why? Because there are profits to be made while we are otherwise engaged, while our backs are turned and we are not looking.
Wake Up!
Indeed, the very fact that I am writing on this issue is evidence of how they have taken over the agenda. Why am I even writing in response to Dean's exuberance? I wouldn't even bother if it were not for the fact that I can bring up these other issues and do my part to say, "Wake up!" "This is nonsense!" "Don't get sucked into this insanity!" "Remember what's really going on!" And because by doing so I might do what anyone of conscience should do at a time like this: Take a stand in front of the train that is in the direction of hurtling off the cliff, in the hands of the Bush administration, the Republicans, and the corporations. Because we do have a chance to turn this country around and set it back in the direction that Clinton, Carter, JFK, Truman, and even LBJ strove to put it on.
We do have a chance because, this year, we will be picking a President, again. We have this chance to choose among ANY of the Democrats running, for any one of them is dedicated to addressing these larger threats. Each of them is in it to serve the higher good of this country, and this globe, as opposed to ANY Republican, especially the Bush administration, whose goals are self-serving for themselves, their own political gain, and the profit of their peers, their special interests, and the corporations who stand behind them, supporting them.
"Let's Not Get Fooled Again!"
So, give Dean a break for being human. As is pointed out, in article after article on this website, it is human to have emotion; it is inhuman to be repressed, unresponsive, and unemotional. And let's return to the real issues of this campaign -- the environment, peace, the protection of human lives, the protection of the species we are exterminating, jobs, health care. And let us not allow ourselves to be distracted by the phony issues -- someone's exuberance, or the tear that might fall from someone's eye, or whether or not they had an affair or uttered a "dirty" word. For God's sake, and our own, and the species that share this planet with us, and the good Earth itself, and most of all for that of our children and grandchildren and even for those after them, and let us not allow them to do this to us . . . again.
Return to: Howard Dean's "Primal Scream" Part One: The Republican Media, Repression, and the Appeal of Stony-Hearted Presidents by Michael D. Adzema.
Copyright © 2004 by Michael Derzak Adzema
Related MusePaper: Go to The Michael Jackson Fiasco . . . "It's the Attack on Uniqueness, Stupid!" by Mickel Adzema.
Related Book: Go to Falls From Grace: Spiritual and Philosophical Perspectives of Prenatal and Primal Experience by Michael D. Adzema.
Related Book: Go to Primal Renaissance: The Emerging Millennial Return by Michael D. Adzema.
Related Article: Go to "The History of Childhood As the History of Child Abuse" by Lloyd deMause.
Related Article: Go to "The Scenery of Healing: Commentary on deMause's 'Restaging Prenatal and Birth Trauma in War and Social Violence" by Mickel Adzema.
Related MusePaper: Go to "Pundits Versus People, Or, The Real Sources For Voter Apathy and Cynicism" by Mickel Adzema.
Related MusePaper: Go to "Are Some 'Sick' People More Healthy Than Normals?'" by Mickel Adzema.
Related MusePaper: Go to "Move Over, World War Two Generation, The Sixties Generation Has Arrived! An Essay Review of the Movie, 'Pleasantville'" by Mickel Adzema.
Related MusePaper: Go to "Drugs, Consciousnesses, and Generational Cultures" by Mickel Adzema.
Related Article: Go to " Planetary Survival and Consciousness Evolution: Psychological Roots of Human Violence and Greed " by Stanislav Grof, M.D.
Comments? E-mail me by clicking on: mickel@primalspirit.com Mickel Adzema
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