Johan Nieuhof:
Chinese men seeking alms by threatening to kill themselves by self-mutilation
(1768)

"We must believe our oppressor will ultimately fail and decency will prevail …"

What if we are collectively exhibiting symptoms of what one psychologist labeled Battered Nation Syndrome? Like members of a family oppressed by an overbearing, punishing parent, citizens in a society might catch themselves policing their own words and actions, lest their angry leader retaliate against them for exercising their God-given "Freedom of Mind." Last night, while attending a local gathering of citizens promoting immigrant justice, I caught myself noticing how our very gathering seemed somehow illicit, as if we really should keep our deliberations secret. Yet, there was our police chief and some prominent Republicans agreeing with our premise and our process. I told the story of The Muse and I boarding a plane recently, where the woman seated next to The Muse reported that her husband had just been “taken” in the terminal, and so she was flying on without him. When she asked who had taken him, she didn’t know. Nor did she have a clue about where.

I have noticed that since our incumbent was first elected a decade ago, my public speech has become more squelched. I felt genuinely guarded, not knowing whether my next-door neighbor might be a supporter of this encroaching evil I couldn’t help but sense surrounding me. I wasn’t exactly cowardly in the face of these suspicions, but I was suddenly, noticeably suspicious, and that hadn’t been very much like me since the end of the Nixon Administration. What did the two times have in common? Both featured a wannabe authoritarian in that most influential public office, subtly shaping the national psychology. I felt twinges again during the Reagan administration, but by then I’d almost grown accustomed to performing the role of second-class citizen, one of the minority who predictably saw the world differently and who usually ended up on the raw side of almost every election. As I said, I had been in training to become a second-class citizen.

The Obama Administration gave me a welcome wake-up call. Maybe I wasn’t in the minority, after all! Maybe reason could hold a place in the national discourse, unless, of course, we were talking about the Senate. The authoritarians apparently hated Obama’s easy leadership. He didn’t seem to need to spend most of every damned day screaming at sheep and gathering wool. He even seemed agreeable, thankful, and even competent. My self-esteem bloomed, as did our nation’s, except, I guess, for the very wealthy. Why does it seem the extremely wealthy need continual reassurance that only an iron fist can provide? Why do they seem to need to subjugate to feel successful? I suspect that theirs might be the greater, more terrible syndrome. We might suffer Battered-Nation Syndrome, but they seem obsessed with needing to witness some reassuring battering, which just seems sick by comparison.

I grew up in a family that treated each other decently. I knew kids in other families that had iron-fisted fathers. I never really understood how much they suffered, but then, they never really offered to share their whole story. The stories I’ve heard since, from the grown-ups those kids eventually became, enrage my gentle soul. There was never any reason beyond the pathological to engage in such damaging parenting, using your daughter as a punching bag, and then to have the police return you to their custody, promising that he’d promised never to let anything like that happen again, when she knew full well that promise wouldn’t last beyond the police car making it to the end of the block. There were reasons she was so shy in school, reasons far beyond her native preferences. She was a battered child, and she learned how not to say what would only get her battered again. Oh, and her father insisted that he loved her.

Our incumbent has always been an abuser. He abused his wives. He abused his kids. He abused his employees, his customers, and his suppliers. He has an unbroken record of essentially unconditional abuse of anyone he could use. He was convicted of rape and has been believably accused of serial abuse of juveniles. No one doubts it, except those under the thrall of Battered Nation Syndrome. The psychiatrist Brandy X. Lee, who publicly proclaimed our incumbent a danger to the world, was dismissed from her professional position; the institution cited the Goldwater Rule, a rule the American Psychological Association enforces that prevents psychiatrists from making pronouncements about patients they haven’t personally examined. Lee insists that there’s a superior rule, the “Declaration of Geneva, established by the World Medical Association, which mandates physicians to speak up if there are humanitarian reasons to do so. This Declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism.” Wikipedia Lee insists that she has a duty to report what she sees through her professional lens.

Now that I mention this, consider your situation. Have you noticed yourself squelching your own speech? I had a brief, sharp dream this morning as I dozed while thinking about creating this post. In this dream, a looming presence leaned over my chair and pointed a finger in my face. I couldn’t for the life of me understand what this presence was mumbling; his face was half-concealed by a black veil. His eyes burned, though, a clear threat. I lost my voice, too, as I failed to explain that I couldn’t understand what he was so emphatically trying to tell me. I finally recognized our incumbent hovering over me, angry and insistent. In that second, face-to-face with the actual beast, I felt a flood of power. I told him that he no longer held any authority over me. He evaporated in that instant, and I woke up feeling shocky but refreshed. We, children of this terrible father, had better figure out how to stick together. He was never not a monster. Those still in thrall will never understand. We must believe our oppressor will ultimately fail and decency will prevail, or we could lose everything.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz