Psychoanalysts tend to be naive and cynical in equal measures. We are naive in the sense that we always must greet each new patient and enter each new session without expectations. We follow our patient's associations without attempting to confine them with theory or history. At the same time we are cynical, in that we know that a person's conscious thoughts and motivations rarely are congruent with their unconscious desires. Much of our work is helping our patients see how their conscious thoughts and actions, reflect often contradictory unconscious desires.
Nowhere is this more significant than in our understanding of aggression. People typically fear their primitive aggression and defend against their awareness of the intensity and depth of their aggression as well as against the expression of their aggression. Yet it is a truism that unconscious impulses always seek ways to find discharge. It is not uncommon to see parents who are committed pacifists, who commit themselves to having homes which display no evidence of aggressive toys, raise children who are themselves aggressive and problematic; via the magic of unconscious processes which include identification and projective identifications, fantasy formation, primitive parent-child introjection and incorporation, among many others, the child becomes the agent for expressing the parent's disowned and disavowed unconscious aggression.
When our oldest was ~5, he often played with a neighboring child whose parents were ideological liberals and aggressively anti-aggression. This child owned no guns and wasn't allowed to play with toy soldiers, watch violent cartoons, etc; there were many other rules governing his play too numerous to enumerate. His parents were what one might refer to as "controlling" people (which is why we did not maintain a long term friendship.) We would carefully place our son's militaristic weapons/toys out of sight when this child came to visit. On one of his last visits, in his mother's presence, he quite cleverly took bites out of his grilled cheese sandwich in just such a fashion as to create a gun which fit quite nicely in his tiny hand; he proceeded to shoot everyone and everything in sight. His mother was quite apologetic, though I suspect managed in her own mind to blame us for her son's behavior. You will not be surprised to find that he was having some "issues" in kindergarten with aggression.
I have wondered for quite some time if this kind of projective identification is an aspect of the Left's fascination with, and (denied) support for, anti-civilization violence.
[Note that this is not necessarily confined to the left but is today much more prevalent on the left.]
Western civilization tore itself apart through the 20th century. The free expression of the most primitive murderous aggression led to a powerful renunciation of all overt expressions of aggression. Violence never solves anything became a mantra of the left despite its manifest falsity; in fact, there are problems that can only be solved by violence and/or the threat of violence.
Robert Avrech documents the difficulties of a young pacifist coming to terms with this unhappy reality in Stalked; yet her awakening to the dangerous reality she had always denied does not seem to be shared by those western elites who fail to imagine that our civilizational survival is not guaranteed.
Kurt, in the middle of a very long and passionate disquisition on the meshing of past and present threats to our society, points out that History is not inevitable. Despite those who cling to the idea that liberal democracy is inevitable, a rationalization that empowers too many to imagine that opposing aggressive support for our system when under threat is cost free, Kurt points out that historical inevitability is an artifact:
There is a crucial and critical flaw in the view of Left and Right about the 'inevitability' of history and a shift towards democracy. Azar Gat points out this flaw by pointing out that the wars of the 20th century were neither foreordained to turn out the way they did nor can the maxims of democracies promoting stability be put forth as a viable conception of governmental attitudes. A glaring fault of 20th century economic theory to respond to Marxist theories, was to put forth that capitalism, due to efficiencies of marketplace, would serve as a basis for democracy. This is AFTER two world wars had pointed out just the opposite.
Please set aside some time and read it all.
I would add to the discussion that the erosion of our liberties and the threat from aggressors that we are having so much difficulty confronting includes an unconscious, vicarious, voyeuristic frisson of excitement at the most primitive expressions of sadistic violence.
Michael Totten, in The Nut Job Media Circus, wonders why the Media take tight close-ups of raging Islamists while leaving out the perspective (literal and figurative) that would diminish their power:
If there is any more absurd a group of “activists” in the world than Rage Boy and his Islamist pals throwing tantrums over Salman Rushdie’s novels and knighthood, Korans allegedly flushed down the can, and pencil drawings in Danish and other newspapers, I don’t know about them. I have deliberately avoided writing or even posting about such people because they really ought to be starved of media oxygen.
...
I can think of no better evidence of journalism malpractice than the fact that the popularity, strength, and sheer malevolence of the region’s bad actors are both exaggerated and downplayed by the same media organizations.
There is no shortage of lunatics in the Middle East who blow up civilians with car bombs, kidnap journalists, hurl political opponents off skyscrapers, shoot rockets at foreign cities, and do everything in their power to exterminate racial and religious minorities. These people are very often portrayed as less extreme and dangerous than they really are.
The glorification and fascination with primitive, unconflicted violence, along with the guilt and anxiety over that very fascination, leads to journalists doing exactly what Totten describes, exaggerating and downplaying these enemies at the same time.
Solomon links to a highly disturbing video, Stoning to Death in Iraq. Yaacov Ben Moshe calls the video a "most obscene film clip" and explicitly, with images, connects the evil of WWII with the current evil blighting our world. He wonders about those who recorded the images and video; he worries about our loss of confidence and the outcome:
The girl in that film clip died, as this man did, under a blind and merciless sky, in the savage hands of atavistic murderers, without a hope of any redemption. It is only by freakish accident that you and I, dear reader, have had the opportunity to feel as though we were with them in their last instants of life. The blind enthusiasm and fatuous immorality of their tormentors have preserved those moments for us. We owe it to them to carry their images in our hearts and to make sure that we do our best to prevent such things in the future.
If we allow Western Civilization to loose heart and give in to the bloody advance of the Caliphate, every sky will be blind and merciless for millennia to come.
Western Civilization is not losing heart; we are ceding our souls and our very existence to our enemies out of a need to deny our own aggressive nature. By denying ourselves the ability to appropriately express our primitive rage, that without which survival is brought into question, by attempting to suppress any aggression as being too aggressive, we are vastly inflating the power and aggression of our enemies. It will not stop with Iraq. Once the weak willed and opportunistic on the left and right combine to hand over Iraq to the beast, Afghanistan will be next. John Hinderaker documents the steps by which Afghanistan will be delegitimized in the service of freeing and feeding the beast.
The truth is that most Democrats have no intention of using military force to promote U.S. security under any circumstances. They prefer to live in a fantasy world in which "diplomatic initiatives" and "multi-national peacekeeping forces" can keep us safe.
My only disagreement with John is that our need to empower our enemies by offering them the gift of our disavowed aggression, which can then come back to us in an exponential manner (remember 9/11), requires the complicity of both Democrats and Republicans.
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