Hello. If you are a regular reader of this blog then you know that I am openly and proudly Liberal Progressive. Most of the time the things I write are both influenced by politics and intended to advocate for a particular way of thinking on current events. However today although I easily could, I’m not going to do that. The reason being is that the issue I’m going to present is in my opinion much, much too important to play politics with.

The other day Senate majority leader Harry Reid, in attempting to make an emotional appeal on behalf of a bill to extend unemployment benefits said the following,

“Men when they’re out of work tend to become abusive. I met with some people while I was home dealing with domestic abuse. It has gotten out of hand. Why? Men don’t have jobs. Women don’t have jobs either, but women aren’t abusive, most of the time. Men, when they’re out of work, tend to become abusive. Our domestic crisis shelters in Nevada are jammed.”

His concerns are valid and justifiable. But in just one sentence he downplayed, in truth dismissed the experiences of a number of men who are believed to be in the millions. These are men who are survivors of partner abuse.

I am one of them.

When I was in my early twenties I was room mates with a woman who was around ten years older than myself. I’ll call her Grace here, which is not her real name. I had met Grace as a co-worker, and was friends with her fiancee. They needed a third to share rent and it seemed like a great situation. It was my first time being on my own and I thought it would give me independence but at the same time people to share space with so it wouldn’t be quite such a jarring transition. At first things were great. But because of circumstances I knew nothing about Grace’s fiancee left her. What went from a three way split became a two way split. But we both had decent jobs and so it worked out alright. We became friends and in time we became more. Unfortunately there was an aspect to Grace that I really didn’t understand how important it would be to me. Grace was an alcoholic.

Grace had been sober for some time, but as her life grew more stressful she turned back to an old comfort, namely alcohol. At first it was a time or two, then every weekend. Then almost nightly. I was young and fairly naive, and if I wasn’t in love with her, I certainly did care about her. I wanted to be someone good in her life. Someone she could depend on. When she started to grow abusive I did my best to ignore it. It’s just the stress, or the alcohol, or any of a host of excuses I’d tell myself. At first it was just verbal abuse, cutting remarks, belittling etc. But over time it grew beyond the verbal. Sometimes she would hit or scratch. The stress grew increasingly hard to bear. I tried to leave on more than one occasion. Each time she would apologize and promise that she would not do it any more. And I’d feel for her, not want to abandon her, so I’d stay. There’d be a few weeks of peace and harmony, and gradually things would go back to the way they were.

One of the ways that Grace kept control of me and our relationship was by constantly reminding me that if I talked to anyone, or tried to leave she’d tell people I hit her, or tell them that I had raped her. Sometimes she would promise to kill her two dogs knowing that I was emotionally attached to them. I felt trapped and powerless. I desperately wanted to talk to somebody about what I was going through, but I was ashamed. I believed that if I talked to my friends (most of whom were women) that they would at best think I was over reacting, and at worst they would think I was lying. After all abuse is something men do to women, not something they experience at the hands of women. So I tried harder to be a good person. To not let it bother me. But my self esteem kept getting worse and worse. Finally in the midst of some very messed up thinking I wrote a set of “rules” that I would look at to remind myself how to keep what Grace said and did from hurting quite so badly. I honestly don’t remember them all, but the first one I created is burned into my memory.

1: Nobody cares about you.

I honestly had convinced myself that if I could just stop feeling anything, just stop caring, then when she ridiculed me, or when she hit me trying to get a reaction out of me that it wouldn’t hurt so much deep inside.

Finally it got to be more than I could stand. I was close to my breaking point. Finally in desperation I reached out to someone who had been Grace’s classmate at a local college, with whom I had become friends. I told her everything, and when I was done she had tears in her eyes. Very softly she said, “Do you realize that most men would have probably beaten the shit out of her if she’d treated them the way she’s treated you?” I don’t know to this day if it’s true or not. But just having someone after hearing my story not only say they believed me but that they understood felt like the biggest weight off my shoulders. My reply to her was that I had not retaliated because I did not want to become a bad person. I also confided in her that I felt like my ability to deal with the situation was exhausted. She said very simply, “You have to leave, and leave now.”

I resisted, I came up with excuse after excuse. But a few days later I packed up what I could with the aid of an acquaintances truck and moved into a motel room until I could find an apartment. Then I began a healing process that is ongoing.

I’m much stronger now. I have a wonderful partner who loves me with all her heart and is very good to me. We’ve had challenges but what couple doesn’t. But there are still moments where something will spark a memory. And it’s usually not predictable. Just all of the sudden with no real warning I’ll have emotional reactions that are just like the ones I had when I was back in the worst of that situation. Sometimes, not very often these days, I will hear like a bell in my head a voice that sounds like mine repeating, “Rule number one: Nobody cares about you.” It does not happen very often and I look forward to a day when it doesn’t happen at all.

If you are a man, and you have or are being abused by your partner there are some things I’d like you to keep in mind.

1: You are not alone.

There are men all over the country who have been and are being abused by women they share their lives with.

2: There is no less bad abuse.

Some people will tell themselves that it’s not so bad because it’s only verbal abuse, or that since it’s not physical they are being wimps for feeling as hurt as they do. But abuse is abuse.

3: Women, can and do sexually abuse, physically abuse, and even kill men.

Even men that are bigger and stronger than them. If you are in an abusive relationship and the abuse hasn’t turned physical don’t make the mistake of assuming it won’t. If it has turned physical, don’t make the mistake of assuming that it won’t get so bad that you end up dead.

4: It is not your fault.

The abuser has sole responsibility for their actions. Telling you that it’s because you are out of work, or they’re out of work, or because they had a bad day, or because you didn’t say the right thing at the right time, or anything like that is them rationalizing behavior that is just plain wrong.

5: Most people are more understanding than you might think.

One of the things that surprised and touched me over and over again was talking with my friends who were women and them sharing their stories of abusive relationships they had survived. Not a single one of them judged me. Instead they all believed that abuse is abuse and that a man can be victimized by it just as much as a woman.

6: It is not going to get better on it’s own.

Things got so bad between Grace and I that I did not feel emotionally safe reconnecting with her. Perhaps if I had taken action when things first got bad it might have been different. I kept waiting, thinking that I was being noble. I wasn’t. I am lucky in that I did not end up dead, in an institution or in jail. The next man who chooses nobility over action may not be so lucky.

If you are friends with a man who admits to you that he is a victim of partner abuse, listen to him without judging him. Help him find the resources he needs. If he needs counseling, or if he needs somewhere else to go to get out of the situation. Please, whatever you do, do not dismiss what he says, do not assume that it is just the normal friction that can happen in even the healthiest of relationships. Do not assume that it will get better in time. Do not assume that just because the persons female partner is physically smaller or weaker that there’s no way she could not be abusive physically.

The facts are simply this. Women are human beings no different than men. Women get stressed and overwhelmed. Women sometimes act out towards those they are closest to, saying and doing hurtful things. Women can be abusers. Gender does not keep one from being physically, mentally, emotionally or sexually abusive, nor does it keep one from being abused.

I want to thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope maybe it will do someone, somewhere, some good.

Keep The Faith My Brothers And Sisters!

(This article originally appeared at The One About….)

Related articles by Zemanta

• The One About According To Harry Reid I Don’t Really Exist. (the-one-about.blogspot.com)
• Right-wing media mock Reid for linking unemployment to rise in domestic abuse (mediamatters.org)

Hello again my Brothers And Sisters. Today I’ve been musing on the hypocrisy that we so often see from the Right Wing of American politics. Now one of the best hypocrisy busters out there is Rachel Maddow. She along with Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, and Stephen Colbert, are routinely pointing out the number of things said by specific Republicans out of one side of their mouth, only to later be contradicted by what they say out of the other side.

However there are on occasion examples of hypocrisy that are not necessarily attributable to any one specific individual, but rather to Republicans as a whole. Today I want to discuss two recent examples.

The One About The World Republicans Want To Hand To Our Grand Children.

Recently a lot of Republicans have claimed that their objections to things like offering health care to millions of Americans, or extending unemployment benefits to those that in this incredibly harsh job market still have not been able to find work, is based on principle. They worry about what kind of a country will we be handing to our children and grand children if we increase the deficit to enact these programs. The most recent person to proclaim this concern was Senator Jim Bunning. He stated it was his reason for blocking the bill that would have extended both unemployment benefits, and COBRA, which allows people to keep the health care plan they had at their previous employment if they quit or are fired. Another notable who has used the future of our kids and grand kids as their reason for objecting to pretty much any even remotely Progressive legislation is Senator John McCain.

Now if I were the kind of person who enjoyed shooting fish in a barrel I’d go for the easy hypocrisy and stop there. You know things like the fact that Republicans didn’t seemed to terribly worried about the deficit and it’s impact on the future when they were passing everything on Jr.’s wish list with absolutely no attempt what so ever to pay for it up front. With no concern at all for how they were growing the deficit. Or there’s the hypocrisy of their part in growing military spending with nary a concern for the domestic situation. But no I’m not one to shoot fish in a barrel (It shreds the fish and you keep having to pick bird shot out of your filet) rather I’m going to talk about an even larger hypocrisy.

Republicans are wringing their hands now worrying about the state of the countries future finances, but the state of the livability of the planet, not so much.

That’s right I’m talking about that old bugaboo “Climate Change.”

I know that this is a hotly debated topic, even amongst many on the Left. And I certainly am open to debate about how much effects humans have, and what has the worst effects etc. And I do not doubt that some of the things we are seeing are at their core natural, and cyclical in nature. Having said that however, human beings in the last hundred and fifty years, have been doing an awful lot of polluting. And it’s really only been in the last fifty years that we started to make any efforts at all to clean up our act. And that’s just in the industrialized “First World” nations like the US and Europe. There are places like China and India that are starting to catch up to us, and there are many so called “Third World” nations that are beginning to head toward being part of the problem, usually not of their own accord but because a corporation has set up a factory or ten there, because there are few if any standards of any kind that can’t be gotten around with money. Given all those facts to proclaim that there is no climate change, and to further proclaim that even if there is humans have nothing what so ever to do with it, is frankly ludicrous. I’m no ecobiologist, but as I understand it the earth is a sealed system. That means that nothing comes in or goes out except for radiation. So all that pollution? It’s not going to magically disappear. Pollution from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution might conceivably still be having some kind of an impact. So even if things aren’t as dire as some predict, why wait until they are that dire to do something about it? Here, let me offer you a little joke to basically sum up my feelings on the situation.

“Charlie decided to go and have a night out with the boys which he hadn’t done in a long time. So he went out with four other friends and they well and truly tied one on. Having drunk up most of their money they had pooled to share a cab to his house as it was the most centrally located figuring they’d sleep it off and worry about getting to their respective homes when they woke up. Finally sloshing home at four in the morning Charlie cautioned everyone to be very quiet as they walked in the door. After being shushed for the fifth time one of Charlie’s friends said in exasperation, ‘Jesus Charlie what do you keep shushing us for?’ Blearily Charlie replied, ‘My wife hates it when I drink and if she catches me coming home at four in the morning drunk as a skunk she’ll never let me hear the end of it.’ The friend looked at him quizzically, ‘But Charlie your wife has been dead for three years now, we all went to her funeral.’ Without missing a beat Charlie said, ‘I know. But I’m not taking any chances.’”

Well that pretty much sums up my feelings on Climate Change. Why take chances? Why not enact policies now, that start to get the problem under control? If things aren’t at the total catastrophe level why wait until they are?

But the Republicans don’t seem interested in doing anything at all. Primarily because some of the solutions of necessity would have to involve more closely regulating corporations and their many processes especially manufacturing. It would also mean accepting that we are one part of a greater whole and adopting some policies that would benefit the whole world not just us. Republicans are categorically unwilling to do that.

So while they fret and worry about the financial state of the country, they apparently are not the least bit worried about whether or not that country will exist on a planet that is capable of making human life bearable or sustaining it at all.

I can just picture little Pizza Delivery Boy Jr. choking out his last as the two hundred degree summer temperature gives him his final fatal heatstroke. And as he dies he thinks to himself, “Thank God that my grandparents generation didn’t burden us with national health care.”

Keep Reading My Brothers And Sisters!

The One About In The World In Their Head That The Republicans Live In Breaking The Senate Finance Rules Or Calling Someone A Bad Name Is A Far Greater Wrong Than Torture (Which Isn’t Wrong At All.)

Apparently Charles Rangel of New York has been a naughty Legislator. It seems that he went on trips, paid for by corporations without disclosing where the funding for the trips came from. Amongst a great many other things. The Right is of course having a field day with this. They dearly love it when a Democrat is proven to be as corrupt as many Republicans have been proven to be. I suppose it makes them feel less alone.

Then of course there was the recent flap around Rahm Emanual showing his incredible lack of class, or sense by referring to Progressives who disagreed with Obama as “Fucking Retards”. Well Sarah Palin who is raising a child with Downs Syndrome was outraged. She proclaimed that anyone who used that term should be summarily dismissed from their position.

Now I could point out the free pass she just a day later gave to Rush Limbaugh. But that’s already common knowledge.

What I don’t understand, is how do the Republicans think that they have any authority, any high ground from which to expound about matters of morality when members, not just members but leaders of their own party, namely George W. Bush and Dick Cheney committed crimes of the highest order? From the theft of the 2000 Presidential election, to involving this country in a war in Iraq, based on lies, to approving the torture of suspected terrorists, the things that were done under Bushco. were not just ethically questionable, they were flat out criminal.

Now I’m not saying that what Rangel and Rahm did wasn’t wrong. And in Rangel’s case certainly deserving of some kind of punishment. But to get so het up about things that have not even a fraction of the moral debt that Bushco. accrued? Further more to have gone to incredible lengths to make certain that there is not any kind of investigation, that no responsibility or culpability is assigned, let alone actual litigation, and then to carry on about acts that did not involve us in a war, did not result in people being tortured, did not result in people being killed?

Perhaps you Right Wingers should pause briefly from thumping your bibles and actually open them and read. Because there’s this whole thing about motes and beams and getting the latter out of your own eye before worrying about the former in everyone else’s that you might do well to pay attention to.

Keep The Faith My Brothers And Sisters!

(This article originally appeared at The One About…)

Related articles by Zemanta

• The One About The Right Wing Hypocrisy Watch! Legacy And Justice Edition! (the-one-about.blogspot.com)
• Charles Warner: A TV News Truth Scroll (huffingtonpost.com)
• Congressman Calls ‘Fox & Friends’ Liars, O’Donnell Thanks Him (newsbusters.org)

Many people mistakenly believe that the Eastern Martial Arts like Karate, and Jiujitsu They are really not. Rather they are about the application, direction, and management of force. Whether it is physical, mental, or in some cases political.

One of the best and easiest to learn lessons of martial arts is that if you are being attacked, it is often for the best to not meet force with force. In fact what is best is if you can just move out of the way of the enemies attack, and let their excessive force cause them to over balance, leaving them vulnerable to your attack. What is even better is if they have put so much energy into attacking that they end up damaging themselves without you having to lift a finger.

Now I hear you asking, “How does this apply to politics?” Well consider this exchange between President Obama and Arizona Senator (and Not The President) John McCain,

“MCCAIN: I would just make one comment. Why in the world, then, would we carve out 800,000 people in Florida that would not be — have their Medicare Advantage cut? Now, I proposed an amendment on the floor to say everybody would be treated the same. Mr. President, why should we carve out 800,000 people because they live in Florida to keep the Medicare Advantage program, and then want to do away with it?

OBAMA: I think you make a legitimate point.

MCCAIN: Well, maybe….

OBAMA: I think you do.

MCCAIN: Thank you very much.”

And there you have it my Brothers and Sisters. Right there in that brief exchange is the symbol and symptom of everything that is wrong with the Republican party.

They are so consumed with being obstructionist and resisting even the least little common sense idea from Democrats, that McCain quite literally does not know how to respond when Obama, not agrees with him mind, but when he does not resist him. When Obama does not meet rhetorical force with force of his own McCain quite simply does not know what to do next and so he just stops.

Sometimes this can be our best tactic when engaging with Republicans. Don’t meet force with force, but rather be fluid like water and let them simply speed past you into the brick wall their own obstinate obstructionism has built for them.

Keep The Faith My Brothers And Sisters!

(This article originally appeared at The One About…)

Related articles by Zemanta

• The One About Verbal Jiujitsu Stops Right Wing Attacks! (the-one-about.blogspot.com)
• I Told You So, America (thedailybeast.com)
• Rahm Emanuel: Saboteur Of Hope And Change (huffingtonpost.com)

Alright my Brothers And Sisters, the word has come down, and I doubt if many, if any of us are surprised. Once again the public option has been sacrificed, in the hopes of getting enough votes to pass Some kind of health care reform bill. And I can hear the sounds of outrage and betrayal from the ones out there who have more hope than sense. And I’m sure that there will be renewed calls to kill the bill etc. Well you know what? It’s time to look to a new source for inspiration about how Progressives should proceed.

Athletes.

Yep you heard me right. Athletes

I mean let’s face it, athletes are kind of by the very nature of what they do, not real bright. They play in the rain, the snow, the blistering heat. They play their hearts out even when they are down by such a vast margin that they have seemingly no hope of winning. Hell they play hurt. And I don’t just mean stitch in your side, stubbed your toe hurt. These dumb mother fuckers play with concussions, and broken bones. But they do not quit. They do not wait until conditions are just perfect to play. They do not stop playing when Everything seems against them. They Just Don’t Stop!

And that’s what Progressives need to start doing. We need to reserve talk of bill killing for those times that there is absolutely nothing to be gained from a bill passing. Most of the time we are going to have to accept that pretty much every bill that is created is not going to go far enough, be Progressive enough to suit us. And that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. But what we need to do is support the most Progressive bills we can find, even if it is only one percent Progressive. And then when it’s passed we keep the pressure on to make it better.

Believe me, I understand how awful the final bill is likely to be. And I’m not dismissing the possibility that in the end we will still need to mobilize to get it killed depending on what other concessions Democrats make to the Regressives. But if we advocate for the final bill to die, we need to understand that means that we start all the way back at the beginning. It’s not going to be easier next time. In fact it will be harder next time, because nothing fails like failure. And frankly as awful as the final bill might be, right now there is one powerful reason to support it.

THE REPUBLICANTS WANT IT DEAD!

I mean seriously, think about it for a moment. Now everyone with eyes to see knows that Democrats are largely in the hip pocket of the corporations. The much hated individual mandate proves that. But if Democrats are in the hip pocket well Republicants are deep in the crotch, working the shaft and cradling the balls.

Democrats for all their sins and failings do want to see exclusions for pre existing conditions ended, they do want ceilings on fees, they do want an end to coverage caps and gaps. But because they are in bed with corporations they want to entice the insurance companies into going along by offering them up a juicy gift. Us. Well it sucks, to be sure. But consider the alternative.

The Republicants Don’t Give A FLYING FUCK about us. You see they don’t want an individual mandate, not because they care about the people not being burdened but because they don’t care, Period! Because they don’t want there to be Any Reform At All! Limits on rates? They don’t want them! An end to the use of preexisting conditions to deny coverage? They don’t want it! An end to annual or yearly caps on coverage? They don’t want it! Plus they’d be more than thrilled to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid. And if they get their way, we will be left with nothing. Understand that. We won’t be left with a crappy and imperfect bill. We won’t be left with weak reforms that we have to bust our asses to improve. No, we will be left with JACK SHIT! If the Republicants have their way.

There’s a great moment in Star Trek Three: The Search For Spock that is apropos. Captain Kirk has rigged the Enterprise to self destruct and transported down to a top secret experimental planet known as Genesis. The Klingon Commander Kruge has discovered this and has been taunted by Kirk into beaming him up. Kirk tries to get Kruge to beam up Spock who has been freshly re-incarnated without his essence. Kruge says no, and Kirk asks why, and Kruge responds simply. “Because you wish it.”

Well when asked why you still support Health Care Reform simply say, “because The Republicans Want To Kill It.”

Keep The Faith My Brothers And Sisters!

(This article originally appeared at The One About…)

Related articles by Zemanta

• The One About Turn To ESPN To Learn How To Handle The Re-Death Of The Public Option. (the-one-about.blogspot.com)
• Robert Kuttner: The Cure That Dares Not Speak Its Name (huffingtonpost.com)
• Youth Radio — Youth Media International: Does My Insurance Leave Me Naked (huffingtonpost.com)
• Richard Kirsch: Enough Hand Wringing. Get the Job Done! (huffingtonpost.com)
• Lamar Alexander: Health Care Bill A ‘Political Kamikaze Mission’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• Confused, Conflicted, Clueless and Cranky (thehealthcareblog.com)
• Report Concludes President Obama’s Health Proposal Would Lead to Public Option (gloucestercitynews.net)
• Like your health care as it is? Vote for reform (trueslant.com)
• Pre-existing conditions (marginalrevolution.com)
• 10 reviews of A Public Option (rateitall.com)