I think it’s something like the situation when a battered spouse (usually a woman) stays with their abusive partner, defending him and insisting he still loves her and takes good care of her. Or when an abused child still loves their parent. Or, for that matter, when a beaten dog still hangs around the abusive owner. Something to do with feeling you have to be with this Other Person who seems strong – even if it’s a mockery of strength – because they represent to the weak and fearful person/creature some kind of foundation and stability. They seem convinced (although the word “convinced” suggests a cognitive process, and this state seems more visceral than that) that this person would not/could not hurt them even while he IS hurting them!
Are these people weak and fearful? I don’t know what to label them besides the obvious “stupid.” Think about a woman who meets a new guy who moves into and takes over her life. But he doesn’t want kids and she has a child. So she gives the child away, or abandons him/her, or I suppose, even kills the child. How do you characterize the mental state or values of someone who would do that?
Maybe I’m going overboard here… or maybe not. Must stop thinking about this stuff for a while. I need to go sit with my cats…
Nah, I seriously think it’s more fundamental than that. It’s not just the ones whose faces have already been eaten.
There’s a cognitive dissonance there that seems to be fundamentally human - if we can’t conceive something, we often don’t perceive it, even when it is staring us in the face.
For some, the very concept the Leopards are eating faces cannot exist, so their brains cannot even perceive it when it is happening. Sometimes even when it’s happening to them.
Welll it’s a big leap from “trapped in abusive relationship” to “murders own child.”
And I wouldn’t call domestic violence survivors weak. What they are is trapped. The trapping typically comes on very gradually over a longer period of time. And the abuser systematically and intentionally removes all supports from the victim so that they cannot leave. They take over the finances. They insist on being the breadwinner - probably in a really nice way, at first. They restrict use of the car. They take over identification documents, they withhold medication, they drive wedges between the victim and their loved ones, ensuring they are socially isolated. They surveil the victim electronically, perhaps without the victim’s knowledge. No work, no car. By now they’ve not only removed all the supports from the victim, they’ve emotionally abused and gaslighted the victim into believing they are the only one who loves the victim, and that the victim would never survive without them, and in many cases the abuser persuades the victim that the abuser is the victim. And then they escalate.
Being trapped and traumatized is not the same as being weak, and it’s certainly not a character flaw.
I feel totally differently about Trump supporters. They may be exploitable but they bear moral culpability for attaching themselves to this monster.
It’s the difference between being stupid, and being a fool. A fool can be highly intelligent; that won’t keep them from walking into disaster over and over because they refuse actually use that intelligence.
I absolutely would never call someone stuck in a violent relationship “weak.” I want to make that very clear.
I’m casting about trying to find any resemblance among people in various situations where they are abused by someone in authority, refuse to see it, make excuses for the abuser, possibly still love the abuser, and stick around for more.
It really is. I keep think of religious groups whose deadlines for prophesies come and go without them coming to pass. William Miller said the 2nd coming of Jesus was going to happen sometime between 1831 and 1844. Spoiler alert! In what’s now known as the Great Disappointment, Jesus never showed up. Instead of leaving the religion, many of Miller’s followers simple changed what was prophesized. Jesus wasn’t set to return, what happened was the start of the final atonement which would eventually lead to his return. It was just a big mix up.
You find similar behavior with those who believe in the efficacy of magic. If the magic doesn’t work, it’s not magic that’s the problem you just didn’t use the proper words or messed up the ritual somehow.
Chris Landry, 46, is a Canadian national who has lived in New Hampshire since he was a toddler. He said he has visited his home country annually without issue for decades, but things changed for the worse on Sunday.
That’s when Landry was informed at a Maine border crossing—on his way home from a family vacation with three of his 5 children—that his green card had been revoked and that he would be arrested if he tried to return home without permission.
“I was definitely all for ‘Make America Great Again’ and having a strong, unified country and a bright future for my five American children, but now I feel a little differently,” he told NBC Boston.
Landry was convicted of marijuana possession and driving with a suspended license during our century’s first decade. I’m wondering how his green card got revoked without his apparent knowledge. Mr. Landry also isn’t happy about being treated like he was a criminal.
Well, it’s a cult. I know a lot of people refer kind of glibly to “the Trump cult,” but it really is exactly that, in the full and formal sense of the word.
Heh. On the right-wing board that I look in on from time to time, somebody (not a right-winger, as will become obvious) spoke, and not in a complimentary way, about the right-wingers as a cult with Trump as the leader.
Came the next post: “Cult? What cult?”
I guess the Moonies and the Hare Krishnas didn’t think they were in a cult too.
I don’t believe it was. I suspect that what he was told is that, based on his criminal history, he is being considered an applicant for admission all over again, and that his criminal history makes him inadmissible. He is being informed that if he wants to reenter the US despite that, rather than turn around and go back to Canada, he will be taken into CBP custody and then referred to an immigration judge (and then it’s a question of whether he should be in exclusion proceedings as an arriving alien, or removal proceedings as a deportable alien).
If one really wanted to pour salt on the pile of red mush that used to be his face, one might adopt, as a rhetorical device, the toxic masculinity he likely has internalized and accuse him of being a coward for abandoning his wife and children and not manning up to face the judge and plead his case.
It’s amazing to me how many people on the right apply the label “law-abiding” to themselves and others when in fact they are total scofflaws who just happen to not be muggers too.
When they ignore some inconvenient law they’re exercising good judgment or exercising their rights to freedom. When somebody else does the same, that’s a crime; lock 'em up!
It makes a twisted sort of sense when you realize that what they mean by “law abiding” is “obedient to my will”. So they are always by definition “law abiding”.
They don’t believe in the rule of law, they believe in privilege, with themselves on top. “One rule for me, another for thee”.
That there may be an actual law involved or that it should be applied uniformly as written is an alien concept. Does Not Compute. Bad People are ones who violate the law. I am not a bad person, therefore I am law-abiding.
Yeah, like I said they don’t believe in the rule of law. Because if they did, they’d have to obey the law and that’s just unacceptable.
Plus, the very idea of a law that applies equally to everyone goes against the fundamental nature of the Right as a movement advocating for hierarchy and privilege. It’s always been about that, all the way back to when “right wing” meant support for the French aristocracy; unequal treatment under the law has been a feature of the Right since literally the beginning, longer than the US itself has existed.
It’s not that they don’t “believe” in the rule of law. That implies they reject it for themselves.
It’s that they have very little concept of it. They simply assume they already ARE obeying it, no matter what they have done, because they are incapable of comprehending they may be violating it.
ETA: Note, when they are faced with the facts they have done something that is not legal, their reaction is “I’m not a bad person”. Conceptually, ‘law-abiding’ and ‘good person’ are equivalent. That laws aren’t a moral judgment or that a person can be good and still run afoul of the law is conceptually beyond most of them. Kind of like quantum dynamics or relativity is beyond most normal people. They reject any reality they can’t comprehend (just as some posters here just don’t accept relativity actually describes reality, despite all scientific evidence).
Still a problem, as it means that even while the Leopards are chomping away, most of them can’t comprehend having made a mistake.