The Kimberly Sullivan Case. A Stepmother and Father Lock Away a Boy When He Is 12, Underfeeding Him, and Home Schooling Him, and at 32 He Takes a Chance of Being Rescued by Lighting the House on Fire

I still plan on posting the "Hoovering" article, but in the meantime the Kimberly Sullivan case caught my attention. 

Occasionally I make note of articles having to do with child abuse. Many of these cases are egregious, but even in milder child abuse cases, there seem to be some similarities such as not hearing a child out or not caring what they have to say (i.e. what they are going through), not caring about the child's feelings or their physical, mental and emotional health (neglect), "home-schooling" (also common, especially for controlling caretakers or caretakers who are trying to present a different image to the world than who they are at home), rageful caretaking where continual and escalating "punishments" put a child's welfare at risk, not feeding the child an adequate amount of food, or the wrong kind of food, or force feeding, or in general food and weight are a constant issue (super common), absurdly long "time outs", separating a child from the rest of the family or false imprisonment (common), reckless endangerment and other kinds of offenses which are talked about in forums for many, many adults of child abuse. Most just don't go as far as this story portrays.

But I think it is important to report on how far child abuse can go especially since abuse, in general, always escalates. It is obvious it did in this case. It is also why children cannot make up with parents who are abusive (it is ineffective) and why it is wrong to expect them to do so. 

So far, at the time of this writing, some other stories that I decided to write briefly about include The Kornegay case (mentioned in this post), the Turpin case, the Jeffrey Epstein case, and the Brian Coulter - Gloria Williams case. 

As for this news-worthy report, here are the headlines from The New York Times:

He Was Held Captive in His Room for Decades. Then He Set It on Fire.
Firefighters found a 32-year-old man who weighed 68 pounds. The police say his stepmother locked him away when he was 12. - written by Sarah Maslin Nir

In this case, the 12 year old child is locked in a room in a house belonging to his father and stepmother, and at 36 years old, decides he will take a chance with a lighter he found in a jacket leant to him by his stepmother and start a house fire in hopes that he will be rescued by authorities. 

However, before then, a principal had found the boy coming to school with a dirty lunch pail, devouring his lunch in a restroom, and drinking the water in a urinal. He came to school looking hungry and disheveled. 

The principal made calls to the Department of Children and Families to no avail. The authorities kept reporting back that the child was fine. 

So one has to wonder what happened. Did the family quickly clean up their act or put on an act before the authorities arrived (common), or vacuum the house and get rid of things that were filthy or might make them "look bad" before they arrived, or were the authorities themselves blind as to what was going on, or lazy about investigating, or overlooking things they shouldn't have overlooked, or took the parents word for what was happening (can be too common, and of detriment to the child), or forgot to look in on the case after the boy went into home schooling?

What are the excuses here, and is there going to be an investigation into them? 

Right now this is just the bare bones of the story (it just came out). I hope I can find out more information as reporters delve into this horrific case. 

The story somewhat concludes with these paragraphs:

     ... Since the fire, the man has been ensconced in a hospital rehabilitation center, according to Amanda Nardozzi, the executive director of Safe Haven of Greater Waterbury, a nonprofit organization that has been helping coordinate his care.
     According to Ms. Nardozzi, he will need extensive physical rehabilitation — court documents state he has deformed knees and muscle wasting — and a carefully managed diet to avoid re-feeding syndrome, where a sudden flood of nutrients can kill a person near starvation. He is also receiving mental health counseling, Ms. Nardozzi said, funded in part by an official GoFundMe that has already raised over $200,000. ...

I hope he can find healthy relationships, physical health, mental health that begins to erase so many years of trauma, and emotional health (being with people with empathy so that it becomes his new reality and world view). Right now there is a "Go Fund Me" for the victim's care which has already raised $20,000. The article did not provide a link to that fund-raising campaign, but eventually maybe it will be publicly posted so that others may contribute.

An Update: New Studies in the Field of Trauma Recovery and Reactions, 500 Peeps Latest Blog, and Some Other Thoughts on Sycophants in Today's Politics

 
From NICABM (features Pat Ogden, PhD, Stephen Porges, PhD, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Janina Fisher, PhD, Kathy Steele, MN, CS, Deb Dana, LCSW, Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD   and Thema Bryant, PhD):

Treating trauma is some of the most demanding, complex work we do.

Eye contact can feel unsafe. Relationships can trigger survival responses. Clients can become overwhelmed and dissociate before they even begin processing their trauma.

That’s why we’ve gathered 18 of the world’s top trauma experts to share the latest insights on working with trauma in this Advanced Master Program.

When trauma takes hold, the nervous system goes into survival mode — trapping clients in patterns of fear, dissociation, and shame.

But new research is revealing groundbreaking strategies to help clients rewire their trauma response and break free from these cycles.

Join 18 leading trauma experts, including Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Janina Fisher, PhD, and Stephen Porges, PhD, in this advanced training.

One of the things these experts found out is that trauma survivors, and especially people with PTSD, don't do well in "talk therapy". There is a tendency to feel "flooded" in a talk therapy session - where you can hear the advice of the therapist for awhile, but then cognition starts to fall off, and then you can dissociate. This is especially true for people who feel the freeze response (fawn, fight, flee, and freeze being the main trauma responses). 

The freeze response is actually the most unhealthy of the trauma responses and that is where people (or clients) can dissociate or begin to have dissociative experiences. It starts out with minor dissociative experiences and then as traumatic experiences multiply, the dissociative experiences multiply too and also become deeper (i.e. where cognition of current events goes off-line in more extreme ways). 

The freeze response is particularly notable for child abuse victims because the fight and flee responses are more or less impossible for smaller children - and child abusers punish a child for having these responses anyway. I would also argue that the fawn response is not possible for children given the scapegoat role either as the caretaker rejects the fawning, or insinuates that the child doesn't mean it. So the only response that is left is the freeze response. 

However, this group of mental health experts also came up with other trauma responses, notably the Collapse and Submit Response, the Please and Appease Response, and the Attach and Cry for Help Response. 

I'd bet the Collapse and Submit Response as well as the Attach and Cry for Help Response have a lot in common with the Freeze Response in that they can lead to dissociation and an inability to be present at all times in conversations, and especially when lectured at, verbally abused, or told to do something that is wrong, or unethical, or repeatedly told to do things that you don't want to do (over years). 

The freeze response isn't just thoughts running through your head like "I don't know what to do" or "Nothing I do works", but it also has many, many physical ramifications where your ability to respond at all goes off-line. What responses you do have left feel frozen too: frozen screams, freezing up when you are touched, freezing up on choices you have to make (for the "mortal fear" of making the wrong choice), missing opportunities because you freeze up on responding, even thoughts freezing up (like becoming obsessive, or not being able to let a thought, or experience, or feeling die off). 

The freeze response is definitely one of the worst trauma responses in terms of what it does to the body and brain, especially for children exhibiting these responses. 

Because a child cannot express outwardly what he or she is feeling and because they are often silenced by the abuser too, the feelings have to be stuffed, to stay within the body, and this is where we find that it wreaks havoc on the head, heart, stomach, immune system, and muscles primarily, and probably other parts of the body too. 

It is one reason why scapegoats often prefer other trauma responses when they are finally able to do so (like in teen years or adulthood) such as running away, or fighting it out with lots of defenses, arguments, analysis and explanations, or being rebellious, or taking substances to get out of obsessive depressive thinking styles, feelings of utter exhaustion and retreating (often misunderstood as laziness), or feeling disgust for their torturers. 

Scapegoats also have a lot more ability to seek out real love than a golden child because narcissists most often neglect or discard their scapegoat children and those children often use those times to explore, and most often don't return, or return in a way where they are shoved back into their old role. But let's face it: most family scapegoats are expected to be scapegoats for life, thus most of them find their own way in the world.

Fawning isn't very effective for scapegoats because people who torture know that the amount of torture they inflict doesn't deserve a fawning response, so they suspect that it is "fake fawning". Fakeness  enrages narcissists, of course, even though they are a lot more fake and inauthentic than most everyone else on the planet. They figure you are them when you fawn. 

Freezing is the response of last resort (except for golden children who can find themselves suddenly on the wrong side of a narcissist where fawning isn't producing good results). Freezing is often an anxiety response, where the cortisol levels go up and cause stress to the body. Sometimes golden children will keep trying all kinds of fawning and flattering responses to get their systems and the narcissist to become more stable, as they were before. 

One of the leading trauma experts, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, found that trauma effects the entire brain, not just the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and amygdala as has been touted for decades. Granted those areas of the brain are effected the most, but some parts of the brain become over-active, and other parts simply go off-line or don't function like they should, or used to. 

I always thought that had to be the case, but I was otherwise told it wasn't. It was great to finally be confirmed about what I knew from my own body and no longer be living in a state of denial about it. 

When I was around "bad people" (as I used to call them in childhood), I always got "whole head headaches" afterwards. Not that this proved then or later, that the whole brain was effected, but the physical ramifications were hard to miss.

The headaches could be very mild or severe and I always thought it gave me a gauge as to how dangerous or toxic a person was (although I didn't know the word "toxic" when I was a kid - I referred to it more as "too many nerves in my head that are making my head hurt"). I had plenty of other symptoms too including stomach aches, and a profound lack of sleep. And the lack of sleep also played a role in keeping the headaches going. 

And even when I had breaks from trauma-inducing experiences, there began to be a kind of feedback loop where the headaches produced a lack of sleep and the lack of sleep produced the headaches, and all of it made me uncomfortable living in my own body for a time until the symptoms could subside.

Anyway, when the whole brain is effected, I'd bet the entire body is effected too as another break-through study and course from NIACBM includes How to Work with the Limbic System to Reverse the Physiological Imprint of Trauma. 

Another hurdle that many victims of child abuse can relate to are feelings of "I'm not good enough" often transferred from a parent who does not love his or her child, or expects perfectionism in deeds, thoughts, facial expressions and looks, and especially if the child is rejected by a parent over these kinds of things. Parental "coldness" (not caring how you feel) is another way you can experience feelings of worthlessness. 

There is a new course for that too (mainly for therapists to get further education, but there is no harm in studying what is going on with beliefs like this). 

The course is called Practical Strategies for Working with a Client's Feelings of Worthlessness, also by NIACBM. 

What I have found most interesting is that feelings of worthlessness can effect the neuroplasticity of the brain. 

So much is happening in trauma research, types of trauma reactions and trauma therapies, and this is where I'd eventually like to take this blog, although I've started to discuss it in many of my most recent posts. It is a whole other research subject, and more interesting to me personally, but also tied to how to deal with abuse and the long term effects of it. 

500 HUNDRED POUND PEEP'S BLOG POST
ON SCAPEGOATS AND POVERTY
AND HOW SO MANY SCAPEGOATS ARE NOT TAUGHT LIFE SKILLS INSIDE THEIR FAMILY
AND ARE INSTEAD LAUGHED AT AND BLAMED FOR THE POVERTY THEY FACE INSTEAD

I had planned on writing a blog post myself on this subject, but Peeps, as I call her in public anyway, decided to publish hers before I could get mine done. That is what happened for another post on Do Scapegoats Rebel (one that I planned on publishing with her but still haven't totally finished).  

Yes, there are a lot of things distracting me at this time, so I understood her need to publish before I could get mine done. 

Anyway, I think her post on poverty is a really brilliant and much needed article and it is a subject that hasn't really been explored much, in research groups or through interviews, or even in terms of talking about individual experiences except in forums for survivors of child abuse survivors and minorly in therapy groups. And why not, since most scapegoats experience it at least once in their lives? 

We know that narcissistic parents want to hurt their scapegoat children (most scapegoat children are abused and conspired against throughout their entire childhood unless the golden child screws up in some way that drives the parent to be angry enough to pit the golden child against the scapegoat child in a contest for Mommy or Daddy's love and attention). And what better way to hurt the scapegoat child than to thrust him or her into a black abyss of poverty, especially right when they turn 18 and can legally be thrown away like so much trash (until, again, the golden child does something that the narcissistic parent does not like). In other words, if you are discarded in the early part of adulthood, or at age 18, as so many scapegoat adult children are, they may very well intend to groom you to live in poverty and to tolerate poverty, intentionally, especially if you grew up with parents who had enough money to feed you, but you were being underfed, if they had enough money to dress you, but you were either given rags or dirty clothes, ill-fitting clothes, or hopelessly out-of-date hand-me-downs so that you were bullied and teased at school over them, if you were isolated from the rest of your family members so that they could not hear your side of the story and automatically assumed you were at fault for the absurd amount of punishments you received, and if you were treated like a second class citizen to your sibling(s). 

In addition, you were not taught how to traverse the world of adulthood, so you had no idea how to survive in it. 

I personally had to read her post in two parts as it starts out like a Russian novel and builds to most of  what scapegoats live through. 

Some of the passages I found to be particularly relevant and stood out for me are these:

* She talks about how ACONs (Adult Children of Narcissists) aren't taught how to live independently so they don't end up in poverty, about how they are mocked when they are a child ("You'll never live in a beautiful place like that!") instead of encouraged to do well "So that you'll end up with a beautiful house like that."
   "Slamming an ACON's self esteem makes it hard to learn important life lessons like this. Instead you are either laughed at for thinking living in a nice home is out of your reach, or taught to please and flatter your narcissistic parent as the most important lesson of your life."

* She talks about being an art teacher and director of art at a summer camp and why she chose it over other careers. I found this fascinating because that was largely my life too as well as selling in galleries and art centers.  

* I found this passage right out of the playbook of many ACONs:
     I saw it with Aunt Scapegoat, they seemed to derive joy listing off her horrific medical problems while clucking their tongues. Her poverty too often was the stuff of legends..."she hoarded food you know!", "Grandma had to buy all her clothes!'' "Her trailer was full of trash!" As a child, I lived in terror of ending up as poor as her, as she was put down constantly in front of me.  It would only occur to me later, that my mother had the means to make her life a lot better instead of letting her sink into such extreme poverty. I would end up as poor, though unlike her, we got some better working class years and her level of poverty was definitely worse.

*   I found this passage to be true to my own experience of talking to scapegoats with disabilities:
     I got into a discussion, talking about this issue. Family wealth for the scapegoat is not protection from poverty. One guy told me online on reddit that they should study what happens to the financial security of the disabled who come from better off families?
     He wrote: Do children of wealthy families with disabilities or visible abnormalities have a measurable difference in financial security relative to siblings, similarly-aged people from middle/upper class families, and comparable peers from poor families?
     He said that someone should do a graduate thesis on this, it would be an interesting sociological topic. I was in a disabled group, and a group for autistic adults [on Zoom] and a group for those with serious pain disorders and chronic disabilities [on Zoom]. I  did note that family support for the people I met, was far far higher. Many of the autistic adults lived at home with parents including 2 men at my level of autism, who were well into their 50s. There was a few married women like me, they encountered career problems and some were physically disabled, but they had supportive families. No one related to my level of poverty. It surprised me. One woman did live in subsidized housing but had a loving family which probably bolstered her feelings of independence.  In the pain disorder group, one lady who had lupus related problems but was still employed, lived with her mother and it seemed to be a positive situation. In the disability group, I met a man who lived with his brother, and another man who lived with his mother, who were locals and had about the same level of autism as me [what was referred to as Aspergers for decades] The latter man was very overweight at my size but he didn't have the same health problems and could still walk, function, drive and work.
     Many of these people had challenges, and in the case of the autistics, career troubles, were common, some did work very hard, and one man did volunteer work during his unemployed periods. Their families seemed to help them. The fellow fat man admitted to me he did face some judgment from his family but others seemed cared about and looked after. Their challenges were not used to reject them as people, like what happens with someone with narcissistic parents. My disabilities were seen as "my fault". All of them. The weight issues complicated that but they had no mercy for anything else including deafness and breathing problems. ...
     ... Some of the disabled people in my groups got really sick, and their families looked out for them. Sometimes it was hard for me to hear about because my situation was so opposite. I have a husband who has looked out for me so am not saying my glass is empty because he's definitely stepped up for decades. There's a lot of disabled people with serious health problems on their own. I get scared for them. It was just interesting to see the different attitudes of more loving families towards disabled members. It's pretty sick that narcissistic families will get out the hammer on people with serious health problems.
     But outside of illness, how many scapegoats find themselves in the streets? No home to go to? I dare say there's probably a lot of abuse victims who end up homeless who end up as "orphans" out in a harsh world. Social workers, churches and the world assume everyone has a family. This simply isn't true. For those of us without one, there's no one to turn to. No one has our backs. I learned the hard way, going no contact many years ago, no one in the family cared that I was gone. During my most extreme poverty in my 20s, no one cared about me. I missed meals [yeah I know that's ironic as fat as I am] and went without needed possessions, there were times I had literally nothing but ripped up clothes to wear.  ...
     

* This passage, I think, is super relevant to whether you can "make it" as an adult (trauma symptoms impacting your health and life):
      ... First and foremost due to ACE scores, stress, scapegoats can have health problems.You are on high alert, never can relax, your parents never let you sleep or even physically toss you on the floor from your bed. This wrecks children's health adding hormonal and obesity problems especially. As a child I never could relax or sleep. I was always on my parents schedule, for years I had severe insomnia, I never felt safe enough to fall asleep I always had to be on my guard.
     As your physical health is decimated, your mental health is at risk. Severe stress, and trauma all take their toll. Some people will get DID, disassocation, PTSD/CPTSD, anxiety disorders, depression and more. I have talked about this very much just here and there, but my anxiety disorders were very severe. They included almost daily panic attacks, and a feeling of "unease" and fear at all times. I have been diagnosed with PTSD/CPTSD by three different therapists, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and OCD issues during my life. My anxiety disorders were not career enhancers. I had to learn to hide my worries and anxiety because I realized my "neuroticism" made people angry. There were years, I was checking things for hours and having to hide this from roommates and others. My anxiety is in a far better place now, I still struggle but it's nowhere as severe as it was.
     Sometimes at work, I could barely keep it together. No one during my student teaching when I had to move back home knew I was going from working with kids all day to having people scream at and threaten me and I could barely get any food either, which oddly made me fatter. I saw some old pictures from myself from the 1980s, and I'm always cringing, I always look like I'm ready to dodge an incoming hit. Well I had to be ready to duck at any time.  ... 

* Super relate-able:
     ... Mean Parents Don't Teach Their Children Anything
     One thing many ACONs attest to is the lack of life skills, one does not acquire much knowledge from narcissists, they chase their kids out of the kitchen or garage and slap at kids who don't become instant experts. Dad's good at the stockmarket? He'll never tell you it's secrets. Dad's good at fixing cars? While he's screaming at you about being lazy and to hand the tools over quicker, he'll never give you the chance to try and fix it yourself. Mom's good at cooking? She certain doesn't want anyone to outshine her, so you don't learn one cooking trick. You are given low knowledge tasks like whipping the mashed potatoes or wiping the counter. The only way I found out what my mother actually put in recipes was by finding her old handwritten cookbook in a notebook.  Paying bills? That remains a mystery. Narcissistic parents won't tell you things like what the monthly budget is. You won't learn how to write checks, or buy a car or rent an apartment unless you are one of those lucky kids who gets a life skills class. At the same time you remain hopelessly ignorant, they get angry at you for not knowing things but then still don't tell you anything!
     They want you to keep you helpless so you are dependent on them and don't want you able to stand on your own two feet. They desire your failure so you are easily controlled. They don't want you financially independent. Some narcissistic parents will even sometimes give a scapegoat a little money or help, it's random, and for control to keep you in the game but you'll never see them give help, like with a job even if they have the means to do so. You aren't taught how to function and often your attempts to gain more independent and financial independence are thwarted. They tell you to pay high rent as you desperately try and save money to get out on your own. They ignore your health problems while telling you to work hours, they  would never dream of doing, such as when I had a 7am-11pm schedule every day during student teaching.
     This is a common way scapegoats are sabotaged. Many of us grow up and then realize with horror the depth of life lessons and practical know-how that were denied us. We don't know how to do anything. My struggle with life skills continues, some of this can be autism, but right now I am doing calculus in my head, to even figure out how to pay 5-6 different medical bills, the electric bill and how we are going to afford food next week. I keep an entire notebook dedicated to survival. It has housing lists in there, everything turned out be HUD programs we don't qualify for except for the one I am on the list of or they were in very bad areas or ones off the bus lines. Lists of where all the food pantries are, and what day of the month they are open, the number and address of the car repair charity place, and where one can get free furniture and clothing. When I was young I didn't even know where to go to get charity or how to utilize a food pantry.
     Yes. My parents were upper middle class. We lived in a neighborhood of million dollar homes where people hired live in nanny's housekeepers and or at least a cleaning lady on the regular.  Our house was more humble but at 5-6 bedrooms it was very large and there were other large homes around us and the million-dollar homes were just down the street. The country club was right around the corner from the house I went to in high school. Many ACONS are people who descended the ladder. The life I grew up in was not the life I got later. I was unprepared for what awaited me. I was prepared for a culture I never would live in as an adult. 

There is so much more to her article that will ring true to any scapegoat who had to live through a period of poverty. I think the very personal experience she writes about is decidedly better than what I have to say on this subject, although I do have some more statistics to add to the discussion. 

I only lived through a little less than two years of poverty myself from age 19 - 21 or so, and it was super challenging. The lack of food was one major issue (my meals were mainly "unpopular vegetables" with a little butter on them because they were cheaper than anything else: eggplant, turnips, rutabagas, those sorts of vegetables ... and only one meal a day so that I wouldn't run out). I also had trouble with the bureaucracy at the food stamps office where they required me to get a refrigerator - I think you can understand why it was impossible for me to retain one. So I went without help or food. And I was working and going to college at this time. 

As for my career in art and art teaching, I did have that in common with Peep. Was it a good career to choose for someone like me who was trying to rise out of poverty? 

Maybe not, but I thought it was at the time because when I was 18, I lived in a seaside tourist town where I met a potter who was not only able to live on the money he made from his sales, but support a wife and send two children to college. I don't think that is possible to do today unless you have a good trust fund from rich parents or grandparents, or are teaching in addition to making pottery, or you are a "star potter" with a huge following. 

Also at age 20, I learned about Camille Claudel and wondered if that was a warning sign for me. Beatrice Wood served as another warning for me in later years. Over the decades, having met many, many female artists, I have learned that most of the successful ones in my field are either hated or resented by their families (birth family, that is). Many have found solace and contentment in their marriages and in their children, but so many of them feel like outcasts of their family of origin.

Many of these artists complain that they feel they have to "turn off their talent", or "turn off their authentic selves" or "turn off the beauty in their work and focus on what's ugly in their pieces, or what's not working" or "turn off that they are artists at all" or pretend not to be as successful as they are in their art career around their family at least. Very odd, and something I'd like to explore a little deeper. 

Granted there is something cultural about critiquing art and artists as compared to most other professions, so that definitely holds some sway in terms of how visual artists are treated, but I find that the rate of alienation between female artists and their birth families to be alarming and severe, especially among fantasy artists, surreal-art artists and statement-oriented expressionist artists.

Female artists who practice abstract art, landscape art, art for textiles, artists who paint "cute animals", or flowers, or pretty young women in gardens mostly seem "safe" from alienation comparatively. I am trying to figure out why. 

At any rate, as in early childhood and early adulthood when I was a scrapper (looked hard for the minimum to survive very adverse childhood experiences), I was also a scrapper as an artist. My catapult into the art world was in Neo-expressionism or what I call "statement art", but I couldn't make it in that alone, and "something had to give". In other words, Neo-expressionism requires a nest egg, or fantastic luck, or a trust fund to start a career in it, to get into the museums that show this kind of work, so since I realized that, I "scrapped" together an art career with art teaching, being a curator, a studio manager, art director at a summer camp, display chair-person, entered local shows where "statement art" is not accepted and where landscapes, "pretty pictures" and abstract art is accepted instead, a greeting card business, a graphic arts business doing advertisements, creating Etsy and Zibbet banners for other artists, and later website design with my husband where we made and maintained websites for authors, artists, a museum, and others. I also performed music on the weekends, and practiced music in the evenings for upcoming gigs. 

It's probably not an exaggeration that I worked 70 hours a week at the very, very least. 

I think most artists and art teachers have to work these kinds of hours. 

From talking with Peeps, her life went largely in the same direction, but being disabled with many challenging medical issues stopped her from insane schedules. It also put her into poverty. 

I can't help but think that her life would have been even more like mine had she not been so ill. 

Anyway, a post on poverty and scapegoats will appear one of these days (and also another proper link to her post besides the one above), but it won't reveal much more of my own personal details than I have written here. 

SOME THOUGHTS SINCE THE INAUGURATION
OF A NEW PRESIDENT IN THE UNITED STATES
AND TRUMP'S DISMANTLING OF SO MANY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

What a time it has been since the second inauguration of Mr. Trump! Like so many Americans, we are trying to navigate our way through chaotic policies, the whiplashes of high tariffs followed by taking them off, a stock market and government employees gone crazy with deep losses and sometimes gains, the higher-than-usual prices at the grocery store, waiting to see if Trump invades Greenland, or Panama, or Canada, and wondering what will happen with Ukraine, Syria and Gaza. 

It's been hard to follow the flood of headlines since the inauguration, and even harder to understand why they are being done. Let's face it: the Democratic and Republican answers to much of what is going on is rooted in speculations as to what it will achieve, one party having a more dire interpretation to all of it, and the other party a more Pollyannish view. 

I tend not to have Pollyannish views when it comes to politicians as I believe many are there to have lifetime memberships in their appointed positions and will do anything, sway any way that is convenient to do so. Not that they are all like that, but I speculate that a majority are. 

I have talked about how disturbing the war in Ukraine has been for me personally. There isn't a day I don't worry about what's happening there since the war started and whether or not it will end up to be about Ukraine caving into and being swallowed up by Russia, or discussions between the United States and Russia about carving up the world into "empire building" where Trump might say, "You can have Ukraine, the Baltic States and Syria if I can have Canada, Panama and Greenland without interference from you", not that this is happening, but I wasn't the first person to think about that possibility.

These are the worst case scenarios, of course.

Then which child abuse survivor didn't feel triggered, or at least have a Deja Vu by watching President Trump and Vice President Vance shout down Zelenskyy at the Oval Office? 
* conspiracy theories (check): such as Zelenskyy wasn't really elected ("a dictator without elections" was what was said to him) as well as "gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III. You’re gambling with World War III. And what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country ... " 
* Victim blaming: trying to convince Zelenskyy and the world that he and Ukraine are at fault for the war (check)
* Zelenskyy being silenced (check)
* Zelenskyy being talked or shouted over so that he couldn't respond (check)
* Zelenskyy told that he's "said enough" as though he's a little boy. (check - and by the way, wasn't this meeting supposed to be about negotiating? How can you negotiate with this going on?).
* Zelenskyy being told he's not expressing enough gratitude (check).
* Zelenskyy told he needs to apologize (check).
* Zelenskyy was asked why he doesn't wear a suit (check. As though everyone should dress in the same uniform - to reveal the sycophant side of themselves?).  

Certainly Zelenskyy is not making a mindless fix easy with unwavering won't-give-up-any-gains-Putin. Putin has violated ceasefires 25 times, and that is making it even harder for Ukraine to cave into Russian aggression, including Russians' gains of "dead cities" and land-grabs. So ending the war in a day isn't working out so well for Trump and it was a grandiose statement to make regardless, not a thoughtful one of taking into considerations how opposed Russia and Ukraine are in terms of what would make peace or a compromise possible. 

Maybe Trump needs the adulation of ending the war quickly so he can keep his word, and when it isn't given to him as quickly as he wants, the punishments come? Or he hands "a win" over to one of them? And what's in it for him? That he can end the war in a day, adulation, attention, blaming and blame-shifting, or something that's a bit more thoughtful than many of us have seen so far?

Is the message here you must make peace? You must compromise? You both must take some losses? "Russia, you must give Ukraine back its territory"? or "Ukraine, you must cede some territory to Russia"? 

Or is it going to be: "You must give something to bullies and invaders, and give into bullies and be grateful for what they give you, and for what you have left."

Is it any different than what child abuse survivors deal with in their abusive families? "Negotiate with bullies"? Is that the way this always goes no matter if it's in the family, in the community or on the world stage? 

And must bullies always win something to keep them from attacking you further? I think we know the answer to that. 

This is where my curiosity is at the moment: what will Ukraine have to compromise on, if anything? And how will they be treated going forward? 

At the time I write this, no more weapons are being given to Ukraine from the U.S.A. to defend itself, but what other punishments must it endure I wonder other than more missile attacks from Russia?  

So that issue being played out on the world wide stage is also bothering me, as well as the continual disappointment that human beings are so violent, still so unempathetic to other people's plight (at least for my tastes), that human beings display way too much sycophancy when they feel over-powered (and that has kept my attention more than any other subject in recent current events), so inept at fair negotiations, so inept about assessing their own abilities, and more ego driven than seems reasonable, sane or possible. 

But most of all, there is the sycophancy of senators, congressman, justices, cabinet members, voters, newspaper owners, media companies, law firms, churches, and world leaders. That is so stunning to me.

But I shouldn't be so stunned from all of the research I do on this subject, but somehow or other I was not prepared or aware enough of the numbers (!) of sycophants. I also wasn't prepared to see how much people were willing to give up for a leader, and give into a leader, and to repeat crazy-making statements of a leader, and prostate themselves to a leader no matter what they did, what they said, how they acted and whether there are ulterior motives for all of these things. 

Who knew that being led without any reservations was so popular, especially with the whiplash policies enacted and detracted by this administration. 

What happened to: "I agree with this policy, but not that policy", "I think this step is too unethical; I'd rather go in this direction", "Why don't we try ----", "What would you think if we had a 3% tariff instead of a 25% one, and saw how a lower rate played out before raising it? With the advent of serious trade wars, is it really wise to slap a 25% tariff on so many things Americans now rely on?" - Where are these kinds of discussions among Republicans? 

Then there is what Martin Luther King described as "the appalling silence of the good people." 

I wonder to what lengths and depths the sycophancy goes before they stop being sycophants? Or is there a bottomless pit of it to the point where they appear to have absolutely no convictions, no thoughts or minds of their own, no actions of their own, like one of those wind-up robot storm troopers who fall all over one another in Darth Vader's regime?

Or will they simply be lobotomized in a final act of taking every shred of a will if they dare anything other than mere puppet strings attached to their mind and soul? 

People who have literally lost their own minds in exchange for being dictated to can't really serve a country, let alone constituents, can they? 

So maybe I'll write an article on the sycophants themselves after a number of years have gone by just to see how much they will sell their soul, to see how much they give up on morals and truth-telling, to see how much criminal behavior they have let become normalized and "every-day", to see how much hypocrisy they allow in policies and laws, to see just how much the sycophants mirror their leader even in terms of speech, types of words, types of expressions, and types of dress and hair (as the "favored" children in abusive households often do), to see if they all get voted out or disfavored when and if Trump ever vacates the Oval Office. He has said that "you'll never have to vote again" ... another link from Reuters via You Tube, another from ABC 7 in Chicago via You Tube, another from SP ESPN (full clip of Trump's part of that speech via You Tube) so I doubt he's planning on leaving willingly.

And how will that play out? 

Trump may have to go to The Supreme Court, or ignore The Supreme Court for a ruling on that!

So why won't we be able to vote again? Because each and every loyal sycophant and their storm troopers will guard all of the voting booths throughout the land from being used? Will there be Marshall Law because America has invaded Canada or Greenland, or because the country is too broken to function?

And then there's the Department of Government Efficiency run by a guy on daily doses of Ketamine, Elon Musk, a non-native from South Africa, who said that "empathy is destroying American life" (and here's another link where he remarks that "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.") What could possibly go wrong with that? - said facetiously, of course! 

The dismantling of government agencies is startling, with many mistakes requiring re-hiring, which tells me that impulsivity and speediness are top agendas in these matters. "Destroy and build back if we need to"? But what if those workers find other jobs in the meantime?

In terms of the empathy deficit issue, the problem with having empathy (trying to mind-read Musk here) is that you can't just blindly and without reservation go fire thousands upon thousands of workers without feeling something about their plight, or about the beneficial jobs they did for the American people, or about the people who were reliant upon these agencies, or about any reactions to it at all? "We don't care about any reactions at all to the dismantling"? Is that it?

Without empathy, I'd bet you can destroy just about anything you want without thinking about repercussions fanning out into all aspects of society, culturally, personally (health, disability and education, transportation), and even ecologically, financially and internationally. 

Or is it a ticket to a couple of individuals feeling powerful and invincible 24/7? 

I heard from someone recently who lives in the northeast that their local Wildlife Reserve's building for its workers was without heat and lights, and that the government had taken them off of their website. So this is how they keep from firing workers directly, just make sure the heat and lights for the buildings aren't paid? Hmm, I suspect there will be other stories like this about government agencies or reserves, yes?

And then there are the tariffs (or at least the threat of very high tariffs). I agree with economics Professor Emeritus Richard Wolff on that. It's not about lowering taxes, the usual broad policy that American Republicans usually vote on. It's adding huge taxes of 25 % on imported goods when most of what we buy from food, to petroleum, to clothes, to construction supplies and everything in-between are mostly exported into this country. So it won't make the average Republican voter's life better; it will make their lives considerably worse. And it will cause inflation. 

As for Democrats who are willing to pay more taxes to get more services and safety nets, they've been let down too economically. The amount of taxes doesn't seem to add up to many services any more, at least not the kind of services you'd expect for the amount of money you pay, and not the kind of efficiency you'd expect. So they are disenchanted with the economic picture too, and probably even more angry than Republicans are that the tax money they pay are going to tax breaks for the billionaires. 

And the reason why the services are falling apart and getting dismantled more and more is because their taxes are being used to pay on the debt, at least partly. And who owns most U.S. debt? China and Japan. China has used the money to build their own big empire and to align with Russia, Iran and other dictatorships. 

Where do all of these facts I write about come from? Economists, and researchers and professors of economics (like Richard Wolff). Look them up yourself. 

Knowing all of this, I decided to take some time to reassess my own life and challenges in the present time, which is why I haven't been publishing posts for this blog. 

In the meantime, my general questions about humans who are granted power, attention or rewards run along these lines (talking about the sycophants among us mainly): 

* How often do humans give up their own convictions and moral codes to get more rewards, attention and power?

* What is the rate of abandoning convictions in terms of getting more rewards, attention and power?

* And are they more likely to give up convictions and moral codes of conduct when they feel threatened by a dictatorial person? 

* Are they willing to give up more convictions and moral codes of conduct to the more brutal dictators than the less brutal ones? 

* Are there any studies on whether sycophancy makes a person less intelligent, less able to make good decisions? Does it decrease cognition, shut off parts of the brain similar to PTSD, decreases the ability to decipher effective outcomes for problems that take a lot of detailed thought? Since all a person has to do is parrot, I wonder how much any kind of thinking goes off-line?

* Are sycophants more lazy than the rest of us? 

* Do sycophants primarily do what they are told to do to get the issues off of their back?

* Do sycophants fawn much more than they need to if they are yelled at or over-powered verbally (such as Trump did in the Oval Office when Zelenskyy tried to speak)? 

* Why do so many sycophants stay quiet when a leader is yelling at another person? Do they want to speak up? Or do they shrivel from speaking because they are frightened? 

* Which is more prevalent for sycophants: the freeze response or the fawn response, and in what contexts?

* What parts of the brain go off-line and which parts light up when they see their "dictatorial person" walk in the room looking angry? Looking calm? In a rage, even if they are just the bystander? In a blinding rage, even if the rage isn't making sense to them? Looking smug? Rolling their eyes? And so on ... (I'm sure these answers aren't available and haven't even been studied ... I haven't been able to find much of anything).

* Is the human race, in general, becoming more boot-licking or less? Are we evolving to become more fawning or less fawning? 

* And why do scapegoats of societies fight back against being expected to fawn? Are they really different in that way compared to most people? Is there something different about their brains even? And if fawning and sycophancy is "the normal way", do they feel outcast because they aren't like that? 

* How much do people respect sycophancy when it goes to more and more extremes such as normalizing constant raging, sins, ethics, crimes, and murders? Is there really no end to ever-deepening sycophancy once someone goes more and more in that direction? Do they even know what they think, believe, know any more? Or can it all change in an instant?

* Do they believe the dictator, or do they self-check? And if they do self-check, how much, and is it dependent on how ruthless the dictator is?

* And if "their great leader" falters and falls from disgrace, do they minimize the fall, or the unethical behavior and say things like, "He had his good points", "He's human. Like everyone, he made mistakes", "It really wasn't that bad", and so on. And do they tell others who were hurt by his actions to "forgive and forget", to "move on already!", to "think about the future", to "think about the good things rather than the bad things he did", to "be thankful for what you got rather than unthankful for what you didn't get", to "see him the way we did", and so on. 

* Do most sycophants have splintered personalities where they don't know who they are except as an arm and a brown-noser of a dictator? 

* Do sycophants like being similar to a dictator, or are their actions primarily fear-driven? 

* Do sycophants like being sycophants until their leader is disgraced? 

* Do they think that not being a sycophant isn't a normal human quality, that rebels are abnormal or sub-human? Do they have arrogance as a sycophant as compared to rebels? 

* Do they think that when they are a sycophant that they are showing gratitude, even if that leader has very few altruistic motives and very criminal ones? 

* Do all sycophants think in terms of loyalty and gratitude no matter what unethical policies are being enacted, or how many crimes are being committed (in other words, how common is this way of thinking for sycophants)?

* Are there more rewards for sycophancy, more acceptance, than speaking your own mind and having convictions? Or does it just look like more rewards with terrible down-sides towards the end of a reign? 

* How often do sycophants serve as flying monkeys to a dictator in the end (flying monkeys referring not to just enabling, but doing the dictator's bidding, dirty deeds, and crimes, and also taking the rap for those actions instead of making the dictator responsible and accountable)?

* How often do lawyers, prosecutors and judges become sycophants or enabling? What are the statistics on that? Does sycophancy in these professions lead to corruption? It would seem yes, right?

I'd really like to know the answers to these questions, but undoubtedly they have to be researched by bona-fide researchers at universities and colleges to make the research scientific, and I doubt there's anything but a handful of articles, if even that, written about this phenomenon. 

In the meantime, I'll watch congressmen, senators, judges, cabinet members, et al, to see how far they'll go into more sycophancy, to see if it is the popular personality type of the moment or of the years. I bet it gets tested to the max! And I'd bet this is what Trump means in terms of loyalty: "How much of a sycophant can you really be for me? And by the way, do you believe the 2020 election was stolen from me?"

FUTURE POST

Before I publish my posts on "Poverty and Scapegoats" and "Are Scapegoats Really Rebellious?", I finished another post on hoovering, a subject that is important in the study of narcissism and why survivors often go back to their abusers. Hoovering is also a precursor to stalking, and stalking is against the law.

Hoovering is something that I mention enough in my own posts, but there is either no link, or a link to other writers on the subject. Because it has been written about extensively I thought it would be a bit redundant or boring. 

No. It was actually pretty interesting and vital to the discussions and includes how narcissists use head games and manipulations to get you "back into your place" on their power and control hierarchy, where they take the lead, and you take the rear, of course. If you refuse to get back in place, I discuss the repercussions of that. And with narcissists there are always repercussions even with the ultimate in what they want: total and blind sycophancy.