Of course, intimate partner violence is HUGE in terms of its pervasive, big time. Making the allusion (comparison) to the collective citizen battered syndrome is of course just a thought experiment not to take anything away from the epidemic of mostly women being torn mentally, spiritual, physically by their partners or spouses: Psychologist Lenore Walker, EdD, coined the term in her groundbreaking 1979 book, The Battered Woman.
“Battered woman’s syndrome is the psychological effects of living with intimate partner violence,” Walker says. She notes that battered woman’s syndrome is not a mental illness, but the result of what happens when you live day in and day out with trauma. However, PTSD, which people with battered woman syndrome often also have, is considered to be a mental illness.
The physical, sexual, and psychological abuse happens in cycles, Walker says. The tension builds, then there is an outburst of violence, followed by the abuser apologizing and promising to do better. And then the cycle starts all over again.
Battered woman syndrome also involves “coercive control,” in which the partner needs to know where she is at all times, cuts her off from friends and family, and retains financial control so she doesn’t have the money to leave. Partners may not only threaten to kill the woman and her children, other relatives, or pets if she leaves, but also threaten to kill themselves.
We are collectively — that is, at least 50 percent of USA population — are their victims. The Abusers — Gates, Bezos, Biden and Company, Trump LLC, DeSantis, all of them. Come on, look at USA society — infrastructure grade from American Civil Engineers Association — a D-(minus). Health care turned into Insurance Rip-off Exploitation. The violence, man, the violence in our neighborhoods. The violence, man, which this country represents around the world, and what it does to other children, mothers, grandmothers, grandpas, adults. This definitely has to be one angle of the USA’s patriarchal and poisonous battered body public, as the body public here has to be sheared off spiritually and psychologically after all the inflammatory diseases caused by predatory-parasetic-penury capitalism. Think about how WE are responsible for so many mass murders: SANCTIONS are war. We the Americanos, dirty taxpayers, the lot of us.
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This is one of dozens of headlines and countries we have screwed. Abused. Afghanistan sinks deeper into crisis as sanctions take heavy toll on civilians
Sanctions cannot be posed as an alternative to war. They are in fact the most brutal form of warfare, deliberately targeting the most defenseless civilians — the young, the elderly, sick and disabled people. Most sanctions are intentionally hidden; they don’t generate even a line of news. Some sanctions are quickly brought into law after a sudden news article about an alleged atrocity. The civilians who suffer have nothing to do with whatever crime the corporate media use as an excuse. Never mentioned are the economic or political concessions the U.S. government or corporations are demanding. In a period of human history when hunger and disease are scientifically solvable, depriving hundreds of millions from getting basic necessities is a crime against humanity.
This is collective punishment — battering en mass — to those hundreds of millions of people native to those 39 countries. You can’t live in this shit hole with a conscience, and still not see how we feed the monsters, the abusers. Out abusers become the world’s abusers.
The U.S. employs broad economic sanctions with increasing frequency despite their poor record of success and the growing body of evidence that they cause significant harm to the populations of the countries where they are imposed.
The direct costs of sanctions to the U.S. are often negligible, but their effect on the well-being and health of the nations that suffer under them can be quite severe and ultimately deadly for the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. Some of the most recent uses of broad U.S. sanctions in Iran, Venezuela, and Syria show how policies of economic warfare have predictably worsened economic conditions and intensified humanitarian crises without achieving any stated policy goals.
Bottom line: broad sanctions add more needless suffering to the world, and our government must break its addiction to their use.
The peoples of these targeted countries are being subjected to collective punishment for the actions of their authoritarian governments, and perversely the economic war tightens the grip of these governments and further entrenches the leadership in power. The limited efficacy of sanctions has been understood for a long time, but policymakers need to have a deeper appreciation for the perverse and destructive effects that economic warfare has. (source)
[Photo: Venezuelan Refugee family asking for money in an Ecuadorian city, February 2, 2019.(Glenn R. Specht-grs photo/Shutterstock)]
Note that Walker states: “. . . battered woman’s syndrome is not a mental illness, but the result of what happens when you live day in and day out with trauma.” Daily, the repossessions, the daily loss of jobs, the housing triple crisis, the unending hatred of the poor, the anti-collective bargaining zeal, all of the consumer and throw-away society, it is the battering, and the result is generation after generation trapped by collective long-term complex Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder!
This dirty uni-party society, one where hundreds of millions are spent on Congressmen having a two-year gig over and over; billions spent on the four-year cycle of senators and the president. Over and over, this country is so shallow, so unprepared for disaster, so uninspiring, so dysfunctional, so tied to electrioneering, media spin, lies, complex propaganda, that empy-headedness in leaders and policy makers and so-called captains of industry, etc., that the collective pain — the cycle of battering, then placating, all the goofy infantilization, all the entertaining ourselves into corners, both psychological and physiological — is EXACTLY what happens in a BWS/BCS situation. Battered Citizens Syndrome.
Here, from Walker, but think of these symptoms for us, the body politic:
Intrusive memories: Women with BWS often re-experience past traumatic events in their mind, feeling as if they are happening over and over again, Walker says.
Anxiety: Women with BWS have high levels of anxiety and hypervigilance when something doesn’t seem right, Walker says. This leads to the fight-or-flight response.
Avoidance: When a person can’t physically get out of a situation, they might psychologically become distanced from what is going on by going into denial, or minimizing what is happening to them and numbing their emotions, Walker says.
Cognitive changes: “When you feel that you have to protect yourself at all times, you can experience confusion and a lack of attention,” Walker says.
Disruptions in other relationships
Health and body image problems
Dissociation
Think of all those on the left and right of the center death red-blue political line (manure pile) saying we are deplorables, super predators, mouches, takers, loafs, useless breeders and useless eaters. Think about the background noise, and the quickening of our battering — being replaced by computers, machines, AI-ChatGPT, all of it, we are replaceable, expendable, and more than just accidental collateral damage.
Think about the dirty Human Resources departments, the credit checks, the background checks, the eviction checks, all the records checks, grades and checks checks checks. Think of all the fines, the tolls, the taxes, the tickets, the demerits, the costs and fees.
This is the collective hell of the Capitalists and the dog-eat-dog mentality pushed through the collective DNA, via hate TV, hate radio, hate Facebook, hate school, hate politics, hate bosses, hate hate hate, against us, or them, the disenfranchised, the un-Beautiful People. Think of dirt in our veins and plastics in our shit. Think of all the toxins, all the hormone disrupters, all these pesticides and fungicides, and all the off-gassing, all the VOCs, all the soot and particulates, all of it, and the synergistic effects of it all in combination, and how that plays on the epigenics and long-term pain and suffering. You want to see the mRNA jab injuries, death, all of that, and the sickness that is inflammatory disease, i.e. capitalism, and then, imagine how battered and beat down and buggered we are by our abusers, the patriarch, the boss man and boss woman? The unborn are hobbled by developmental and intellectual spectrum diseases from the womb to the cradle to the kindergarten. Allergies, ticks, nervous breakdowns, anxiety, hyper-vigilence.
And we are the abused, not the salt of the earth, but the victims for the victimizers, the abusers, as we journey deeper into this morass of hell, thank you very much, that the overlords and the bosses and the billionaires and their henchmen have unleashed on us.
And, for me, it has been a slow torture by 10,000 cuts, and I am not on life support, haven’t bled out yet, but the drip drip drip, the rejections as a prospective employee, and all the literary-publisher rejections, well, weathering for me is nothing compared to Blacks in this society or women after rapes or the Nickle and Dimed!
Case in point for me: This is fucked up, now, applying for a face to face job, a job that entails working with poor folk, helping them get on a Section 8 housing voucher list, and navigate the systems of oppression, suppression, tyranny. On fucking Indeed.
Thank you for applying for the Section 8 Voucher Administrator position at Housing Authority of Lincoln County.
We carefully reviewed your skills and qualifications and have decided to move forward with another candidate for the position.
We appreciate the time you invested to apply for this position at Housing Authority of Lincoln County, and we encourage you to pursue future openings.
Best wishes for a successful job search. Thank you, again, for your interest in our company.
I tried contacting the actual manager of this outfit, but alas, nothing, zilch, and another of the above rejection letter sent to me right after contacting “her” at her official email.
So, just pick your poison, your favorite monster, your favorite fascist, your favorite Big Pharma Head, Big Ag, Big Chemical, Big Oil, Big Private Prison Head, Big Finance-Banking-Insurance-Real Estate mogul. Pick the abuser, and then stand back, and realize how all-controlling these abusers are, and how we still go to them for loans, junk, culture, fun, entertainment, homes and every piece of shit retailers and throw-away society lovers drum up.
Imagine that, this human stain (so not atypical of them all) back in the saddle, again and again, with the Blinken-Nuland-Garland-Yellen-Kagan Administration:
Elliot Abrams oversaw death squads in Central America and was convicted of lying to Congress. So why did President Joe Biden appoint this evil war criminal to the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy?
Abrams tried to cover up the 1981 El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. It was the small, even tiny, skulls found there that proved he lied about this atrocity.
Of the 143 skulls identified by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Unit in El Mozote, all but a dozen belonged to children less than 12 years old.
Yet Abrams insisted to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the massacre was a myth. The Reagan administration claimed the bodies found in the village were those of guerrilla soldiers killed in battle.
The U.S.-trained Atlácatl Battalion murdered as many as a thousand people in El Mozote on Dec. 11-12, 1981. Many young girls were raped before being executed.
Ahh, back to the root cause — Elliott Abrams is chairman of the Tikvah Fund and a board member of the Jewish People Policy Institute and the Israeli Democracy Institute. And that is that, and the Blinken-Nuland-Garland-Yellen-Kagan administration is all about Israel First, at any cost. Abrams is their racist man:
While a majority of Israeli Jews are committed to maintaining Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state, if forced to choose between them, most would almost certainly opt for its Jewish identity—because, more than its democratic identity, the survival of Israel depends on maintaining its Jewishness….An Israel stripped of its Jewishness would lose its reason for being, its internal cohesion and the vitality that has enabled it to survive against the odds. Many of those who voted for Netanyahu did so not to support the wholesale dismantling of Israeli institutions but to save Israel as a Jewish state.
So with leeches, err, leaders like War Criminal Kissinger or Abrams, the state of the mind, all the abused suckers’ minds, have gotten so dramatically bad that we are in the global Stockholm Syndrome, collectively, or at least a good 50 percent of us are t-boned into chaotic thinking, just like that woman in the corner, eyes beat to a puffy blue, scratches and bruises all over, hoping her abuser comes to his senses and flip-flops back to that charming prince.
It’s no wonder that domestic violence survivors like myself stay so long in relationships that are toxic. The entire culture we are surrounded by and what we have to do to merely survive is both pervasive and normalized. And I’m not talking about patriarchy or white supremacy, though of course, these aspects of our culture fit the bill as well.
I’m talking about capitalism.
The more I process my own history of abusive relationships and walk the path of healing, the less I have allowed anyone to control my life or treat me as subhuman. This shift in my own thinking has made me realize that this mindset is incompatible with being a willing participant in capitalism.
If a partner told you that you can’t eat lunch today, how to spend your free time when you’re not with them, which doctor you’re allowed to see (if you even have that luxury), if you’re allowed to attend a funeral, or if you can visit family, everyone would be on the “leave them” train. It’s preposterous that one person could have so much control over another and we instinctually know this. Yet no one thinks twice when this is people’s lived experiences with their employers. In fact, some employers get to dictate what you do AFTER you leave them via entirely legal non-compete contracts. Look at what when a hospital sued to keep their radiology team from leaving. It’s ludicrous, but we’ve been conditioned to accept it without considering how it would be illegal and immoral in any other application.
It’s much more insidious than you expect. Abusive relationships change our psychology, self-image, and perceptions of reality. “Studies show emotional abuse may be the most damaging form of maltreatment causing adverse developmental consequences equivalent to, or more severe than, those of other forms of abuse.” You can believe in your own worth but when partners cut you down a thousand times over: calling you stupid, lazy, selfish, the list goes on. Eventually you begin to believe this or at least wonder if it might be true. I know this was true for me in my experiences.
Gaslighting has become part of our popular consciousness, but part of healing from emotional abuse is how initially after the relationship, we don’t trust our reality. We can’t trust our own judgment because for years we’ve been made to question it. The process to come back to your body and feel safe again is arduous, but because of our culture, this healing is disrupted by the very culture we live in.
Capitalism does this in a way that’s socially acceptable. When we’re exploited, our culture normalizes this and even sees it as a badge of honor. Working late is a virtue. You begin to question your worth and what is considered acceptable treatment. As a nurse, I was paired to work with a physician who had a history of screaming at her nurses and in one occasion, even throwing something at them. I told them that as a survivor with PTSD, being screamed at is a trigger and if I were to have a flashback, the consequences could be dire. I was still paired with this person though thankfully no incidents happened. But the management had no way of knowing that.
Partners don’t come out of the gate being verbally and psychologically abusive. They sell you on an illusion, a person that doesn’t exist. But all of your perceptions validate this illusion. The fake person in front of you is your reality. Even when there’s a red flag, they have a reasonable explanation and you can minimize it when they show all of their other good qualities.
Once you’ve bought the convincing illusion, the abuser has just begun. They continue the charade and ensure you’re invested enough emotionally and financially before they push on your boundaries. At first, it’s subtle. When you push back, they back off or shift the blame. They do nice things and be that false person again long enough that you drop your guard. The pattern continues until you’ve normalized their unacceptable behavior to yourself.
In healthcare, my very first day on orientation as a nursing assistant I answered a call bell and fetched a cup of water for a patient. When I came back, his pants were down and he was masturbating. The whole thing was fabricated so he could assault me. After I ran out of the room, I was told that this was “Just something he did.” Not only was I not warned, but their very tone was of nonchalance. Nonconsensual sexual contact should never be considered part of a job. The facility normalized what was unacceptable behavior and in many ways it groomed me in other parts of my life.
To further their agenda, abusers work on destroying your self-worth piece-by-painstaking-piece. Think of the fake award of perfect attendance in school, where we’re expected to sacrifice our physical and mental health for a system to reward. In school, bullies are not held accountable. I was bullied through 5th-8th grades and often was suspended when I fought back. Asserting your own worth, even when young, upsets the status quo. Advertising is predicated on trying to tell you what you lack and all of the things you should aspire to. Just like on an interpersonal level, capitalism’s breaking down our self worth is often subtle that it does our damage without our conscious awareness.
People who are in abusive relationships are not weak. They’re strong, empathetic, and resilient because in their journeys that’s what they needed to do to survive. But in this process, folks in this situation no longer have the same perceptions of reality that folks on the “outside” do. This is by the abuser’s design. And often, you don’t know how bad it really was until you’re out of it and can see how much you tolerated and rationalized.
Before we ever start a job, the toxic culture of capitalism has already made most of us internalize the belief that our worth is determined by our output and external accomplishments.This happens in school and by our parents, either directly or by observing their own experiences with capitalism and poverty. Homework normalizes that “your job” is allowed to claim your free time. Dress codes enforce a patriarchal double standard and police femme bodies.
Even in high school, if you experience burnout or struggle with all of the things you’re told you need to do, the explanation given is that’s just how it is and you have to push through it. This is the response to overwork throughout our lives, and we’re set up for it early. Our schools, families, and the overarching culture do all of the heavy lifting before we enter the world of work.
Job interviews are another example. I think we all know how much bullshit they are. They’re not good at figuring out who’s right for the job or for preparing the applicant for what their actual job will be like. No one’s getting what they want out of the situation, and yet we still continue the practice. You’re being told what you want to hear, like a first date, when the reality is far different. As applicants, we do it too, but even potential employers are already displaying the uneven power dynamic that we accept for the means to eke out a living in this system.
Companies have denied people from positions they’re qualified for due to classist reasons like their credit, and, of course, any amount of enforcing your own boundaries around work is an instant disqualifier. You often need to demonstrate a willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of a company you don’t even work for yet. (See this Catcall article on how femme-coded career fields foster a culture of self-sacrifice and burnout.) There’s no room for self-expression, individuality, or your own fresh ideas in my former industry of nursing, everyone is invested so heavily in the status quo that it bullies and demoralizes anyone who would challenge it. You learn very early that you’re a cog in a dispassionate machine that thrives on chaos, and coworkers vent their frustrations on each other instead of the system that creates friction and burnout in the first place.
None of these demands of our time and energy even contribute to productivity or revenue for the organizations that espouse these policies. Working at home, which includes having more control over our working hours and environment improves performance, fewer working hours made us more productive, and even benefits such as on-site childcare impact the bottom line by reducing turnover and absences. But, it’s never about that. Your employment is about your control and about demanding all of your mental energy. Abusive partners require control over all else, and any time you lodge a complaint, they wear you down until you give in. If you’re exhausted all of the time, you can’t resist. And in the case of capitalism, you’ve been given no other alternatives other than pushing through exhaustion and burnout.
In each of my toxic relationships, walking away from a fight was the trigger for violence. They have to control the argument and it ends when they say so. The worst thing (for them) is for you to disengage. They can’t keep up the elaborate lies, and the last thing they want is for you to come to the realization that you deserve better. They don’t want you to find the end of your tolerance for mistreatment.
So, what is this new form of fascism, uh?
I want to emphasize that I view my main construction, “inverted totalitarianims,” as tentative, hypothetical, although I am convinced that certain tendencies in our society point in a direction away from selfgovernment, the rule of law, egalitarianism, and thoughtful public discussion, and toward what I have called “managed democracy,” the smiley face of inverted totalitarianism.
For the moment Superpower is in retreat and inverted totalitarianism exists as a set of strong tendencies rather than as a fully realized actuality. The direction of these tendencies urges that we ask ourselves— and only democracy justifies using “we”—what inverted totalitarianism exacts from democracy and whether we want to exchange our birthrights for its mess of pottage. (source — full text, PDF: Democracy Incorporated. Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Sheldon S. Wolin. Princeton University Press.)
Note: the PDF above is from Aaron’s work — https://cryptome.org/2013/01/aaron-swartz/Democracy-Inc.pdf
Capitalism, our abuser, and Aaron’s: driven to suicide.
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