It is a sad but all too common story: an abusive man, after months and years of escalating abuse, verbal, then physical, finally kills his wife. Occasionally, compounding the tragedy, he kills the children as well, often followed by his own suicide. This is often seen in men who fit the diagnostic picture best described as Malignant Narcissism, which I have written about in the past.
However, the other side of the tragedy also needs to be understood. How could a woman continue in such threatening environment, putting herself and her children at risk? Why doesn't she see the danger? How is it that she can ignore all the warning signs?
Often the woman involved has her own psychological issues that cause her to minimize the danger. Typically, the Malignant Narcissist, who needs the "other" to support his sense of himself, finds a Dependent woman who will tolerate his abuse in the service of her own dependency needs. It is a very unfortunate combination and particularly resistant to intervention. The man does not recognize any problems. His abuse is barely conceded and always imagined as the outcome of his wife's (or girlfriend's) provocation. (I have actually heard one such man say he hit his wife because "she wouldn't shut the f*ck up.") She has such a strong need to be loved and attached that she is willing to accept a great deal of the responsibility. (It was my fault, I didn't have the beer he likes; I should have known better.) For both parties, their self esteem and self concept depends on maintaining the relationship.
In such settings, warnings from others tend to be discounted until something happens which breaks through the victim's denial. In the not so distant past, this was compounded by the tendency of authorities to not take such problems seriously. Even now, when domestic violence is recognized as a serious problem, the legal response, obtaining "orders of protection", are only as good as the paper they are written on in protecting the victims. Only if, and when, victims of such abuse reach a "tipping point" can they begin to extricate themselves; those who never reach such a point are forever at the mercy of the abuser.
I have been wondering if we are reaching just such a tipping point in the Middle East.
Since 9/11 (which was a tipping point for many former liberals, now neocons) those of us who supported an aggressive stance with the Islamic fascists and their apologists, in all their many manifestations (Palestinian, Iranian Shia, Saudi Sunni) were often marginalized and attacked by friends and family for our apostasy. The liberal position was that the Palestinians, and Muslims more generally, were victims of oppressive Israeli and/or Western policies of colonialism, occupation, and oppression. This was the motivating idea behind much of American diplomacy for the last 30 years (significantly, post Vietnam, a war which was successfully cast by the ascendant liberalism as an aggressive, even colonial, war of oppression against the freedom loving Vietnamese.)
Repeated Palestinian terror atrocities were discounted as understandable responses to oppression by people who had no other way to fight their oppressors. The bullying, abusive terrorist was always seen as the victim of the misbehavior of their battered victim. Israel, though an increasingly powerful state, was never allowed to fully bring its power to bear against its enemies because a succession of American and Israeli Administrations believed that if the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians were granted, the reasons for the unrest would be resolved and peace would prevail. Israeli Administrations that were more convinced of the perfidy of their opponents were nonetheless constrained by their dependency on American, and to a lesser extent, European, good will and support. Many people gave up the idea of "peace-loving" Palestinians after Arafat rejected Barak's offer of almost everything he claimed to want. At that point many realized Arafat did not want a peaceful two state solution but wanted a single state.
Even after the breakdown of Camp David, various liberal icons, led by the New York Times, the voice of American liberalism, continued to present the case for resolution based on the model of Israeli occupation and oppression as the course of understandable Arab anger.
One year ago, Israel abandoned their settlements in Gaza. This was a highly traumatic event in the life of the country but for the cause of peace the country showed their willingness to make sacrifices.
The current war between Israel and Hezbollah (with Lebanon in the balance, and Syria and Iran behind the curtain) has been clearly seen by most fair minded observers as provoked by Hezbollah's acts of war. The Israeli public has clearly reached a tipping point and is as close to unanimous as they would ever be. America is firmly in Israel's corner and the criticism remains muted from the usual suspects.
Two brief items to suggest we have reached a tipping point:
1) My old friend just sent me an e0-mail in which he said:
I am beginning to think you are right about the bias of the New York Times. Everything they write about Israel is totally slanted.
2) Another e-mail, sent to a member of a news group I belong to:
I saw something similar tonight at a party. I was talking to a group of people, mostly Jews. They got on the subject of how much they hate John Bolton. One woman said she wanted to pull the hairs out his moustache one by one. You know the drill.But then she said, "I have to admit, though, I liked what he said today about the fighting in Lebanon". And everyone agreed. I was stunned, but happy.
John Bolton has been the epitome of the "Bushitler cowboy" mentality so decried in the liberal mindset. This always had only the most tenuous relation to the reality of his actual words, but in politics, appearances and theater are often more important than reality. Senator Voinovich has come around on Bolton as well.
John Bolton has not changed; what has changed is people's sense of reality. Their world view has shifted, often without any conscious awareness on their part. To see in such unmistakable terms that the Arabs do not want to end occupation but want to end Israel, which dovetails with the growing perception that they also want to end us, has been percolating through the denser stratas of society. People are tired of the war in Iraq, and tired of terrorism. Americans just want it all to go away. By giving them what the liberal imagined they wanted and receiving only more violence and hatred, the Arabs have finally convinced the majority that Peace will only come when they are defeated.
The legacy media will do what they can to reassert the memes. If Israel accidentally kills a bus load of civilians this will be used to discredit the entire enterprise, which will only compound the tragedy in the long run. Unfortunately, many brave young Israeli soldiers will die in an effort to destroy Hezbollah and we will only truly know we have passed the tipping point if they are fully allowed to do their job, but at the moment it does look like the majority have "gotten" what this war is about, and are no longer content to ignore the danger or resort to UN supplied "orders of protection."
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