America's Battered Wife Syndrome

[Generic Other]

America's Battered Wife Syndrome
by Gail Thomas

Dear America,

As a friend of the family I can’t sit back and watch you do this to yourself without saying something. Consider this a long distance intervention.

Your man is no good. He treats you like crap, lies to you, abuses you, bullies you, exploits you, takes your money. As a friend I want to tell you that you deserve better. You deserve a person that treats you with respect, cares about your welfare, and your children’s welfare, but that’s not George and it never will be.

Do you tell yourself that he’ll stop, or that it won’t get worse? He won’t ever stop, every insult, injury and death he has caused are a line that once crossed will never be uncrossed. Forget the dream. You will never have the American dream with George. You have to forget about what might have been, what George might have been, and realise that at the end of the day you are what you do, and look at George’s track record.

Notice how he’s alienated all your friends? Who can blame them, they can’t understand why you stay with him when he treats you like shit and embarrasses you in front of everybody. The more his public behaviour overshadows yours, The more doubt creeps over them, they wonder if they knew you as well as they thought they did. You seem to have changed - if you condone his behaviour- and your silence can create the impression that you do. People are more inclined to take things at face value when they feel alienated. Your friends remember the good times you had together, the heroic battles you fought together, all of the intricate interweavings between their families and yours through time and space. Do you even recognise yourself anymore America? He is a drunken, coke-addled loser and he always will be, you should kick him out of your house today before he can destroy any more members of your family, your history, your culture, before he decimates your bank account so irretrievably that China and Saudi Arabia repossess all your stuff.

YOU CAN DO BETTER! You are an amazing country, beautiful, interesting, funny, positively glamorous, you wouldn’t stay single for five minutes, you know that suitors would be competing for your affections and any one of them would be ten times better than George. And how can you stand his god-awful Stepford’s answer to Marie-Antoinette mother, piping up with another casual atrocity every time she opens her mouth.

MORE

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0911-28.htm

[Be Brave]

1. Exactly! n/t

[Radio_Lady]

3. Wow! Give this a greatest vote, please!

[Be Brave]

11. I did vote for it! n/t

[Whoa_Nelly]

2. Been there

Left that :)

[Generic Other]

4. You have lots of company

This one hit home.

[Radio_Lady]

7. This should be sent to the media, women mostly, don't you think?

Other writers? (Who will be jealous initially that they didn't think this "slant" up?) Media folk? Who would read this in total (besides me, on a small PBS Internet hookup, at best?) Paula Zahn? Jeanne Meserve? Amy Goodman?

I don't know Gail Thomas but she's got a terrific way with words.

Thanks again for posting this. It's just the greatest...

[Generic Other]

10. randi rhodes?

she'd read it.

[Radio_Lady]

12. I went to Randi's web site and she is in repeats -- at least she was

Monday and Tuesday.

I don't know how to send her anything -- they re-did her web site and it doesn't recognize me.

If you know any more than I do, please send it to her... whenever she gets back to work.

[Whoa_Nelly]

9. Hear ! Hear!

:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

[MazeRat7]

5. Nice. Very Nice. *kick

[anarchy1999]

6. Thank you. You said it all so well.

Peace.

[Radio_Lady]

8. Who has an "in" with Randi Rhodes? This might be right up her alley.

[Radio_Lady]

13. How about Democratic female senators? Gawd, it's too late to do this

but I will recheck you night folks in the morning.

Then it's on to my medical appointments -- tra-la-la!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Radio Lady

[bliss_eternal]

14. Way cool, nominated and kicked...

...thanks for posting! :thumbsup:

[DarkTirade]

15. Not the first time I've heard that metaphor used...

Unfortunately, america is made up of seperate people, not just seperate parts of one brain. We need to make more than half the country realize that this metaphor is right on the mark, and most of them are in denial about it unfortunately.

[Divernan]

16. Excellent insight, but I'd call it the Battered Republican Syndrome

nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. Excellent for Jolting Republican Cult Members awake!

[O.M.B.inOhio]

18. One can hope. Assuming they disapprove of spousal abuse.

[no_hypocrisy]

19. Mike Malloy read this on the air last week.

From Australia, no less

[Paradise]

20. kick. n/t

[PurgedVoter]

21. But he's so strong and decisive!

He means to do well,

Oh, Oh, Look what you made him do.

[bloom]

22. kick

:kick:

[cynatnite]

23. Bullshit!

This analogy is stupid and pointless. The US isn't some battered woman who made a CHOICE to marry the son of a bitch!

In 2000 the SC installed bush. In 2004, they fucking hijacked another election.

We didn't choose this asshole and I wish people would stop nodding their heads and agreeing with this crap.

The US isn't a woman who gets the shit beat out of her and says, 'Thank you, oh great leader'. The US isn't forgiving him for his insane behavior or horrific decisions. His fucking poll numbers are through the floor.

Come on, people.

[Iowa]

24. Good catch cynatnite...

I agree, and would add two more points:

1. The US is made up of roughly 300 million individuals. People can display the emotional characteristics described in the OP; countries can't. A country is more like a corporation in the sense that it has "no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked".

2. I don't buy the basic premise of the OP. Bush isn't like a husband - he's more like a hired hand - and a damned poor one at that. We'd fire him today if we had a good mechanism to do so.

I've seen "America's Battered Wife Syndrome" before. It left me cold the first time.

[Generic Other]

25. I thought it only applied to the ones who Voted FOR Bush?

They are the ones who love the asshole, not us.

:shrug:

We're the stepchildren.

[Iowa]

28. Right!

Most of us never wanted this asshole to start with.

[TahitiNut]

33. Shotgun marriage or not, the analogy still holds.

:shrug:

[cynatnite]

37. This is not a shotgun marriage analogy and it does NOT hold...

but I can see the argument being made for those who voted and still support bush.

[mzmolly]

35. It was an "arranged" marriage.

;)

[rurallib]

26. I was using that analogy back in 2004.

One day I was giving blood at the U-hospital. All the nurses are cool and anti-Bush. I was talking with the nurse drawing on me and used the battered wife syndrome as to why I thought Bush would be tough to beat. She started crying. She was a battered wife and it had taken her 10 years and 2 children before she finally left her husband. Still gets threats from him. She said that analogy was right on the money!

[rniel]

27. That sure struck a nerve

with me the first time I read it I forwarded it to all my family and friends. It's so spot on. It pinpoints the thing that's going on with these people who refuse to wake up and see the truth because they want to believe in something so badly.

[jazzjunkysue]

29. It's more like an Edith Bunker syndrome: He's dumb, so we get used to it.

We get dumber, and lower our expectations.

[Vox_Reason]

30. From another piece:

"Even now, with bedraggled rescuers pulling decomposed bodies from the muck of New Orleans, Bill Frist, the moral cretin who runs the U.S. Senate, wanted its first order of business this week to be the permanent repeal of the estate tax, until the public outcry persuaded him to change course. The Republicans profess belief in trickle-down, but what they've given us is The Flood."

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0914-31.htm

CommonDreams is such a breath of fresh air!

[liberalla]

31. "saw the victims being treated like some sudden new insurgency"

RE: Katrina

"All of our TV crews were rescuing survivors as they filmed the devastation because there was nobody else there to help them, all of us saw the victims being treated like some sudden new insurgency. with suspicion and hostility. Those poor people, the heart & soul of New Orleans, the very people whose culture and history made New Orleans beloved around the world, He just left your brothers and sisters to die. Can you really continue in your relationship with George after this? There is a degree at which cognitive dissonance becomes outright delusion. He is a maniac, he is destroying your life, please, please leave him, just leave him, only you have the power to make it stop."

...saw the victims being treated like some sudden new insurgency,
or treated like refugees.

[rman]

32. The victim is in denial, asking abuser "please stop abusing me".

To most people it doesn't yet seem to occur that the abuser won't stop untill he is *made* to stop.

That's why we hear so often in one variation or another (incompetence, stupid, moron), "he's not evil, he just doesn't know what he's doing."

[1democracy]

34. Maybe this applies to the Dems...

who continually seemed shocked at the abuse, lies, deceit,etc. heaped upon them. They're tempted to walk away when what they need to do is SPEAK THE TRUTH and blast him out of the water!

[mzmolly]

36. America is suffering from collective "stockholm syndrome"

at least those who voted for * are.

Love this!

Thanks for posting. Recommended.

[JVS]

38. Hey we have an 8 year marriage limit and we'll just pick another turd

We are living our bad relationship destiny