Broken hearted

Quote of the day

I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling ashamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed. James Gilligan, Psychiatrist and author, NPR. April, 2015.

For awhile now I decided I would not talk about our political situation neither through this blog nor through social media. Our President behaves in a way that I cannot abide. I do not identify with him in anyway, and am deeply ashamed that he represents me as "my" leader.  

However, now with this deplorable policy of terrorizing and separating innocent families from their children, my heart is breaking. This country that I came to thirty years ago seems alien to me. At the time I had been so curious, proud, and joyful to become a citizen of the so-called "great" United States of America. But now the administration is ugly, mean-spirited, and immoral in every possible way, and its Republican members of their party support cruelty in a way that is horrifying to me. Indeed, the country feels torn apart, and broken hearted.

How can people be so cruel? How many times during the course of history are we forced to ask this question? I believe it begins in our earliest childhoods. When children are humiliated, wounded or hurt they learn to humiliate, wound and hurt others. We learn our humanity from those we love and who love us. But love is a complex emotion, for as young children we learn that love is very often accompanied by pain, beatings and insults. 

So, our President, his Republican party leaders and members, the border guards - the people, who believe in, nay even seem to enjoy, being cruel to innocent young children and their families by terrorizing and separating them - they have surely had devastating emotional trauma in their own childhoods. Harsh discipline is not discipline at all - it is punishment: mean and often cruel - causing emotional degradation and physical pain.

Discipline is kind and guiding, firm and comforting. Will we forever sift our ideas about discipline through the emotional memories of punishment that we have repressed or stored away in our brains? When will we, as responsible adults teaching, guiding, directing, or even ruling a people, stop and reflect on all this, and choose a different path to the one we endured as we grew up? 

I am feeling helpless and broken hearted in the face of our leaders' collective cruelty and deplorable behaviors to anyone who is in need or "other." I can join other activists and donate to organizations that are working hard to counter all this depravity.

And I can write, write, write ... if only someone - anyone - will hear me and make the change we need in this nation's terrible, awful, excruciating struggle to become "a more perfect union."

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Reflections on self-regulation