Monica Lewinsky Speaks Out
The sensationalism and dumbed-down coverage of mindless drivel by the mainstream media in this nation is beyond disgusting. What does it say about our nation that the national news headlines are about a dirty old man, Donald Sterling, and a gold-digging prostitute who betrayed him? Illegally, might I add. He gets his karma but I suspect she’s going to get hers too. This when our nation faces unprecedented crises including poverty, homelessness, mental illness, epidemic nonliving wages, etc.
I’m going to broach a topic that, in my regards, some people believe is part of the same venue. Ugh. It’s not. Not even close. Predators using positions of authority and power to exploit people is a fundamental issue of our time. In a kyriarchy, which is clearly what state violence is comprised of, (a class-based social system of domination, oppression and submission that encompasses sexism, racism, homophobia and economic injustices) we see a predatory class of many disparate actors and venues exploit society through countless methods for many intents. Not just in the U.S. but globally. And, for lack of a better explanation, in the past our society in particular has suffered from some type of Stockholm-ish Syndrome by having positive feelings for our abusive oppressors. ie, Wall Street, corporate capitalists, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the predatory legal establishment, the liberal intelligentsia, religious fanatics, fanatical Ayn Randians, etc. (Identifying with the aggressor is one way that the ego defends itself. When a victim believes the same values as the aggressor, they cease to be a threat.) Umm, our society has certainly adopted many of the values as our pathological aggressors. We love war, violence, greed, mammon, exploitation, competition, gambling, amusing ourselves to death, hating those who are different, watching our fellow man suffer in misery, etc.
Predators often have a unique ability to understand people’s weaknesses and how to exploit them for their own personal gain. That involves often convincing others to seemingly participate of their own free will in gross misconduct. I say seemingly because it is anything but. What it is is the predator’s calculated and willful manipulation of its victim. Whether that is the calculated and willful manipulation of the American people for purposes of corporate capitalist overconsumption (hyper-consumerism), or glorifying military-industrial complex violence, or the most powerful man in the world taking advantage of a young, naïve intern, or congressional leaders emailing pictures of their private parts or having intimate relationships with pages, or pig parents abusing their children, or Catholic priests molesting young children or grieving adults. They all share the same predatory, exploitative, victimizing pathology.
These remorseless, unempathetic beings prey upon the emotions of shame and guilt that the rest of us experience. So, it’s easy for them to make their victims feel as though they did something wrong. Or, it’s their fault. Or, to create such trauma that they semi-permanently or permanently alter the vivacious life force that exists in their victims. This manipulation, predation, exploitation and abuse allows them often to go undetected for years and years or even an entire life time. How many people want to publicly acknowledge the shame and guilt surrounding their abuse by authority figures or people who hold some emotional power over them? And then, if they come forward, be told they are lying or crazy and then be publicly ridiculed, criticized, chastised and possibly be turned into a social leper or economic outcast? The Vatican has perfected this form of emotional violence to protect what has literally been documented as 1700 years of sexual abuse and molestation by untold thousands and thousands of priests. And, so the cycle of predation and abuse continues in silence.
I have a special place in my heart for people like this. And, there is no forgiveness. I have no empathy for those who are incapable of empathy themselves. This is not mental illness. This is evil. And, while some may claim this type of behavior may be caused by childhood trauma, in actuality much of it is something we just don’t understand. But it is clearly some manifestation of evil. Maybe even evil in a religious context. Who really knows? But blaming everything on mental illness absolves pathology of responsibility for its behavior and its crimes. They can simply check themselves into therapy and claim some form victimization as a cover for their crimes. Or worse, if it’s Wall Street as an example, they simply convince society that their behavior is to be exalted. So, in many regards, modern medicine and its dubious claims that everyone is a victim has allowed pathology to remain a constant threat to anyone near it. And, that means the list of future victims could involve countless more innocent people including children.
I feel a great empathy for Monica Lewinsky. I can certainly appreciate how Bill Clinton came close to destroying her. This while he now lives large. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars not by curing cancer but by using the crony contacts and power he was granted as a public servant to enrich himself at the expense of others. This appears to possibly be a repeated pattern time and again. Lewinsky was victimized by someone who used their position of authority. And, then that person literally tried to publicly destroy her. She leads a life of shame and guilt. Her abuser, and let’s be honest, that is what the sum total of her experience is, that is, abuse, leads a life of wealth and public adoration by many in the “Big L” liberal establishment and those who outsource their thinking to it.
Something is very, very wrong with this world and from what I know, which certainly isn’t everything, Monica Lewinsky, for all of her flaws of being human that we all share, isn’t part of that wrongness. She is another victim of those being wronged by those who do wrong. Those committing often petty crimes are imprisoned in our nation while the truly criminal class run roughshod over humanity.
Shame and Survival – Monica writes for Vanity Fair
Bill Clinton took advantage of me
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