Are Americans a Broken People? Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression

[Karmadillo]

This article raises some good points about our passivity in the face more than ample provocation. Worth reading all the way through.

http://www.alternet.org/story/144529/are_americans_a_broken_people_why_we've_stopped_fighting_back_against_the_forces_of_oppression?page=entire

A psychologist asks: Have consumerism, suburbanization and a malevolent corporate-government partnership so beaten us down that we no longer have the will to save ourselves? Tools

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States?

Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?

What forces have created a demoralized, passive, dis-couraged U.S. population?

Can anything be done to turn this around?

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them?

Yes. It is called the "abuse syndrome." How do abusive pimps, spouses, bosses, corporations, and governments stay in control? They shove lies, emotional and physical abuses, and injustices in their victims' faces, and when victims are afraid to exit from these relationships, they get weaker. So the abuser then makes their victims eat even more lies, abuses, and injustices, resulting in victims even weaker as they remain in these relationships.

Does knowing the truth of their abuse set people free when they are deep in these abuse syndromes?

No. For victims of the abuse syndrome, the truth of their passive submission to humiliating oppression is more than embarrassing; it can feel shameful -- and there is nothing more painful than shame. When one already feels beaten down and demoralized, the likely response to the pain of shame is not constructive action, but more attempts to shut down or divert oneself from this pain. It is not likely that the truth of one's humiliating oppression is going to energize one to constructive actions.

Has such a demoralization happened in the U.S.?

In the United States, 47 million people are without health insurance, and many millions more are underinsured or a job layoff away from losing their coverage. But despite the current sellout by their elected officials to the insurance industry, there is no outpouring of millions of U.S. citizens on the streets of Washington, D.C., protesting this betrayal.

Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry, yet only a handful of U.S. citizens have protested these circumstances.

Remember the 2000 U.S. presidential election? That's the one in which Al Gore received 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. That's also the one that the Florida Supreme Court's order for a recount of the disputed Florida vote was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in a politicized 5-4 decision, of which dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens remarked: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." Yet, even this provoked few demonstrators.

more...

[fasttense]

1. I read this article on another post but it is worth reposting.

The one thing he leaves out is fear and anger.

Sure you feel shame when you realize what a helpless little wimp you have become. But it is fear of more painful abuse that keeps you in line until....Until shame and fear have worn you out and you get angry. Angry at the idiots who have made your life hell, angry at the idiots who point at you behind your back and make you feel ashamed. Angry at how all your dreams of a happy contented life have gone down the drain.

Then you get red hot burning angry and don't care if you suffer more, don't care if people laugh at you, don't care about anything but fighting back. And you stand up for yourself and fight the abuser and realize you had the power to fight back all the time.

We need that red hot burning anger to mobilize us into action.

[lonestarnot]

2. 9 years of it now.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Suburbanization is a large part of it

Read this article from 2001, written by an online friend who lives car-free in Los Angeles. The political references are dated, but the situation still holds true:

"I think I've discovered one of the most devious institutions of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton spoke of half-jocularly not so long ago, and it is this: the national corporate machine has been endeavoring, with great success over the last seventy years, to eliminate any facility whereby you and I might engage in community. Plain and simple, they don't want us in each other's company unsupervised.

Now, community is one of the great pleasures of life, and we do it better than any other creatures on this planet. No other animal, for example, can use symbolic language to communicate with its fellows; no other arrays itself in an ever-changing second skin of emblems as do we when we don our clothes; no other has developed so rich a variety of social poetry as we have. We are the kind of critter that likes to chill wi' da homies; we are the back-fence gossip, the park bench raconteur, the streetcorner poet; we are the village idiot and the absent-minded professor feeding pigeons together in the public square; we're the handshake at a busy corner or the hand that helps an old lady onto the bus. But, ever more so lately, we are…alone.

(snip)
We've forgotten how to live, how to talk with each other, even how to have fun without someone selling us a ticket for the experience. We've been taught to stay away from each other, and our world has been built so that we can't really get close to each other except where our corporate masters can see us, and that makes us perfect uncomplaining drones for the cubicle farms and the malls; we become restless consumers of the imitation lives the bastards want to sell to us, things that would bore us if we dared to entertain each other face to face in the squares, on the sidewalks, by the storefronts, in the spaces outside the walls we've put around ourselves…."

http://www.newcolonist.com/rr11.html

[jwirr]

5. The extended family has all but disappeared. This happened when

we started "moving to California" for that great job. I am old enough that I watched my parents families disintegrate. Once upon a time we had a backup system right in our own family. Now they are miles away. That was the beginning.

[Deja Q]

21. How many people even WANT to make a family?

I did, but got lambasted by others of "the community"... even called "devolved" by one (roughly 1999~2001, it was some time ago...).

And yet I'm supposed to fight for them at the drop of the hat? Uh, no...

[snagglepuss]

4. .

[conscious evolution]

6. Partly broken

But also drugged and hypnotized into a state of complacency by the media,educational,religous and medical industries and institutions.

[divideandconquer]

7. Divide and conquer, works throughout history

Americans don't stick together, won't give up their employer healthcare so everyone can have healthcare, won't give up their toyota to help unions, won't drive a little further to keep from feeding the Walmart monster, won't send their kid to the public school, etc.

[blues90]

22. That's true and the sick part about it is

The people are divided by a two party system which in and of itself is in fact one party who divide the people through lies.

All they need to do is put on a show , pocket the corporate money , and convince people to consume and buy cheap goods. They win through the peoples own ignorance.

[amborin]

14. Marcuse spoke to this

[Loge23]

8. Legal drugs also play a part

There's a drug for everything now. A business associate of mine relayed an anecdote recently that she jokingly yelled for a valium while reacting to an event in her office. She said she had a half-dozen offers from the people in earshot!
We've become a docile people, conditioned for disappointment.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. This is an important article, and you should read it all at Alternet.

It also drew its share of very thoughtful commentary on that site. The whole thing is worth reading. I think the author overstates his case, but the commentary he evoked was excellent, and the entirety comes out to a very balanced whole.

[DailyGrind51]

10. People have been "bought off" with toys, tax cuts, and a volunteer military.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. I think that our depression is not only economic but mental

Back when I was being treated for depression, one of the therapists told me about the notion of "learned helplessness."

We know things are bad, but we also know that massive protests didn't prevent the Iraq invasion. We know that electing first a Democratic majority in the House and then Barack Obama as president didn't stop the wars or change the government's basic corporatist preferential option for the wealthy. We know that doing well on the job will not save us from losing our job. We know that buying health insurance will not save us from bankruptcy due to medical bills. We know that many people over 50 who lose their jobs may never regain their former income levels. We know that buying a house and investing in the stock market, as all the financial gurus told us to, will not save us from financial ruin. We know that it is highly unlikely that the world's governments will do anything meaningful to head off global climate change. We're mourning the loss of the hopes and dreams that we grew up with.

One of the signs of depression is being unable to help yourself. You know that you should clean the house, but you just can't. You know that you should write that job application, but you just can't. You know that you should take a walk after dinner instead of having dessert, but you just can't.

I think we're at this stage on a national level. We know that things are in a bad state, and we know what might work, but we have no emotional energy to organize anything. In fact, we have no idea what might be effective.

[laughingliberal]

16. That sums it up well nt

[blues90]

23. that's true . no argument from me.

[BeFree]

25. Leadership

A failure thereof.

I was gearing up to raise some political hell this year. Democrats in office, finally. I was gonna spend time and money helping them do what needed to be done. But they have failed.

The wars are still going on. The teabaggers have the momentum and the president is making excuses like I never heard before.

Climate crisis approaches, ecological collapse nears, the economy is good only for the richest and not a damn thing has changed. Cheney is still free.

We have a failure of leadership and it is allowing the country to slide ever further.

[FiveGoodMen]

26. "In fact, we have no idea what might be effective"

The Obama presidency has, for me, created the ultimate state of learned helplessness.

Much of the nation knew that we were headed the wrong way.

In reality, the Dem party gave us two choices at the outset: Hillary and Barack.

Hillary ran around campaigning about obliterating Iran and forcing people to buy health insurance and about a dozen other things that made her unacceptable.

Obama made it through the primaries, won the election ...

And continued Bush's legacy on just about every front.

We really are helpless.

We have no representation.

[MisterP]

12. not to mention that the middle class has been treading water since 1973

neoliberalism is constantly undermining it--and making it scared to protest, for fear of losing and being blackballed from any well-paying job

Ford, Carter (somewhat), Reagan, Poppy, Clinton's welfare reform, *, and ObamaGeithnerSchumer are making sure that Americans get no breathing room

[amborin]

13. also called "economism" and discussed in "The Affluent Worker," and many

other books and articles

it's not a new issue, actually

labor activists have confronted this problem for decades!

why do workers---even unionized workers----take the side of management (aka capital) and act against their own economic self-interests so many times

Marx discussed this issue to some extent, also, and the term, 'false consciousness', to some extent
captures this behavioral pattern

but now, many, many people are simply tired, struggling to make ends meet, and just may not have enough time to get the truth concerning the issues affecting their lives

and the media works against progressives

[amborin]

15. ps: Marcuse spoke of passive totalitarianism and commodification of all aspects of social life

due to mass consumerism

he was a neo-Marxist of the Frankfurt school

[cali]

17. most people are just living their lives and not concerned

with politics or the state of the culture.

[Political Heretic]

18. Yes.

[WT Fuheck]

19. we've been bought off

and drugged into a compliant stupor

and divided and conquered

[varelse]

20. This is a very good op ed

thank you for linking to it here.

[undergroundpanther]

24. A shot of morale

and to get the psychopaths,authoritarians and narcissists out of thier lives.To shut the bullies down, To beat back against all the abusers around them,to encourage each other to stand up,and to resist and fight until the assholes among us know they will never get away with it again.

We need to encourage each other to take back our own power.

LeVine is a great shrink.He wrote a book Commonsense Rebellion.
I highly reccomend people read it.It's message saved my ass when I lived under oppression.

http://www.brucelevine.net/