Learning from one’s experience is critical to successful survival.
As I watched the History Channel’s show, "1968,’ by Tom Brokaw, it really hit me how much the Republicans learned from their mistakes during the 60’s and 70’s.
Like the draft, access to graphic footage of bad stuff, and how to steal elections.
And how little the Democrats-Liberals-Progressives have been able to learn from our experiences over the last 40 years.
The core of the issue lies in understanding childhood trauma. see The Courage to Heal
Sure, I see the confused look on your face.
Childhood trauma, what the heck is this guy talking about?
Victims of childhood trauma, especially physical and sexual abuse, have a variety of common experiences and ways of coping. Blocking out the trauma is one major way kids survive and continue on. It’s effective. It’s good. But it comes at a price. One cost is that their ability to integrate new information gets short circuited. Stunted. Diminished. For the rest of their lives, whenever something associated with the trauma gets triggered, other things get triggered. Naturally, HOW this manifests itself varies widely.
This is exactly what has happened to those us who were kids during the 60’s. I was 7 years when JFK was murdered. My oldest sibling, he was 17. So we pretty much are at the front and back of the major portion of the Boomers. (He in 1946, me in 1956).
The murder of JKF alone constitutes a really big F ‘n trauma.
And we never got the chance to catch our collect breath.
During the next 4 years (’63 to ’67) you’ve got the escalation of the Vietnam War, violence around the struggle for Civil Rights. Really, really Bad stuff.
Then 1968. Students killed on campus. Cumulating with the trauma and shock of 2 more leaders murdered within a 2 month period of time.
It’s vital for us to reflect on how this tramautization has affected us. We’re stupid if we don’t.
Before we can do this intelligently, we gotta know some of the basics about childhood trauma.
First. Childhood trauma is a lot more common than you may think. Like upwards of 15 % of boys and girls will be physically or sexually abused by the time they are 16. Add to that the people who did the abusing, and family and friends, and you’ve got a boat load of the population directly impacted by abuse and trauma.
Second.
It’s quite common for the awareness of the trauma to be hidden for decades. That’s why you hear of people in their 30’s, 40’s and older coming out about being molested by priests and such. The reasons for this aren’t vital to us right now.
Ok, back to the issue at hand.
Righties like to rant that the 60’s was all about the excesses of spoiled middle class kids. This is complete bull-poop.
Hippies, sex, drugs and rock’n roll didn’t create McCarthy-ism, Vietnam, Mia Li, lynching’s, the KKK, the Military Industrial Complex, George Wallace, Atomic bomb air raid drills, Three Mile Island, air plane hijackings and the Cold War.
The Right wasn’t traumatized by all these assignations. The terrorist killers of John, Bobby and Martin had to have been politically Right of Center. Because there’s no way in hell that the murders could have possibly been Left of Center. It’s a true Either/Or situation.
"Don’t Trust Anybody Over 30" was the phrase of the day. Why? Maybe because suddenly all of the leaders over 30 were murdered. Good leaders are rare in any period of time. People with difficult blend of Vision, Reality, Ethics and Courage. (see Peter Koestenbaum's books)
Many of us were trying very genuinely to fix things. As a nation, as a world, we were all simply trying to cope with devastation. To make sense of the insane.
The Republican Party that emerged from the 60’s, it wasn’t in response to the anti-war movement, sex, drugs, rock’n roll . Hells bells, lots of ‘em loved all that. Look at ol’ George Bush. He partied until he was frick’n 40 years old.
The new Righty wack job base was in response to the surge of blacks gaining power. Lots of the so-called Reagan Democrats defected because of the likes of Muhammad Ali, Black Power, Jesse Jackson, and black women who bought ice cream with food stamps, then drove away in a Cadillac. They were N’g-er hating, George Wallace-er, Neo-Nazi white Supreme-ists. Think a real live nasty Archie Bunker.
I know. I grew up with lots of those SOB’s in the south suburbs of Chicago. In 5th grade I heard people call our parish priest called a "N’g-er Lover." Years later I found out he’d marched with Martin Luther King in the town next to ours. And this is just one of dozens of my personal stories.
So here we are, some 40 years after we were traumatized. What do we do?
We need to continue to discover insight, understanding and solutions.
Insight into the nature of trauma.
Understanding of how it impacted our Then. And still is coloring our Now.
Solutions to crisis we face. Because our children are getting wacked by the anxiety of our times. We need Clarity if we are to help them.
We’ve got to find ways to stop the N’ger haters and the home grown terrorists who are destroying people and the planet. We’ve got to take Power away from the globalized corporations and the Military Industrial Complex.
Sure, I know what some of you bleeding hearts are saying – "lets’ show compassion towards our enemies. " Compassion can wait. Because you can’t be forgiving to somebody who is still hurting you. Jesus could. Maybe Gandhi, Mohammed, Mandela, or Buddha could. But I sure as hell can’t. I ain’t Enlightened like them.
Be very clear about this. Because the Righties are totally, laser-beam focused on Power. Getting back what the election "Took" from them. Keeping the Power they still have. And getting more and more and more. The evil people pulling the strings of the Tea-baggers don’t care about nothing else.
Our collective trauma from the ‘60’s is a really big topic.
I’ve just touched on a few things here.
It’s sorta like the ol joke:
"What do you call a thousand dead lawyers in the bottom of Lake Michigan?"
"A start."