Psychologists tell us of the return of the repressed "whereby what has been repressed -- though never abolished by repression -- tends to reappear, and succeeds in doing so in a distorted fashion in the form of a compromise between the defense and the wish."
With the Republicans attempting to stifle public debate, either by diversion or threat, on our disastrous Iraq War, one has to wonder how their repression with ultimately mutate their very features, or when they might simply explode and be lost.
Or maybe it's all starting to come out now. Here's three crybabies, three GOP leaders (past and present) who have, within the past two months, let the tears loose in public:
- House Minority Leader, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) is a multiple crybaby, with two recent breakdowns to cite, both times during debates on his beloved War, or maybe it's the toilet-bowl circling of his beloved President and Party as they cling to their failures like an ant on a swirling turd. They're going down the drain anyway, maybe they think it's a boat.
In one instance Boehler wept while making his first statement as -- finally! -- debate began in the House. That open debate on the most serious issue facing our nation would make him cry -- well, I'd understand if they were tears of relief after four years of lies and stonewalling. But they weren't; maybe they were tears for virginity lost.
He second recent breakdown came today, reading a letter from the husband of a former Congressional aide who was killed in Fallujah. Was he crying over the possibility that open and democratic House debate might compound this woman's grief; or was it somehow, in a way Boehner will need much therapy to acknowledge, over his own responsibility for sending this soldier into Bush/Cheney's lethal folly, his guilt for his role in making her a widow?
The question is already being asked -- is Boehner mentally unstable?
- The father of our current Presidente got lots of ink for his breakdown on December 5th, some grand transference of his horror over having unleashed his hellspawn seed to run our country into the ground and ruin the much guarded family reputation once and for all.
Ex-President George Herbert Walker Bush claimed it was over preferred son Jeb's earlier electoral defeat in a Florida governor race (the same night he should have been celebrating his firstborn's gubernatorial victory in Texas), but who's zooming who? Just the repressed repressing himself, and now look what comes out, and in public, how humiliating.
- Then there's El Presidente himself. Was it a rehearsed grab for authenticity or the return of his very own deeply, oh so perversely deeply, repressed thoughts and emotions? His repressed decency?
Back in mid-January he's photographed with the Georgie-Porgie tear-streaked face, schoolboy in disgrace, at a medal ceremony for a deceased marine he put in harm's way with his arrogance, falsifications and altogether rancid judgement.
Unnervingly enough, our allies ask, Do you think less of George W. Bush for crying in public?"
Now I know what some of you are thinking. You think maybe I'm a jerk for belittling the emotions overflowing from these men. Sure, I tear up, at the end of a moving novel or even reality t.v. show. Aren't I one of those post-80's, not-quite-metro, sensitive men who can show something other than anger when my feelings rush in?
I guess for me it all goes back to a vicious Republican smear from my childhood.
In 1972, Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-ME) was running in the Democratic primary and was polling as the strongest possible candidate to unseat GOP President Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (called by its acronym -- I kid you not -- "CREEP") forged a letter claiming that Muskie had referred to Canadian-related citizens living in his state by the repugnant epithet, "Canucks."
On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Nixon's team planted this fake letter in the influential conservative newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader, and the accompanying article includes an impugning comment smearing Muskie's wife, Jane.
Muskie responded with an open-air press appearance, in which he claims his voice cracked with anger over the hit at his wife, while reporters on the scene described it as crying. Muskie subsequently won the primary but by a much smaller margin than predicted, lost his great momentum, and eventually the GOP got to run against the candidate they had hoped to from day one, Sen. George McGovern (D-WI). McGovern lost to Nixon in a landslide.
Muskie was perceived as unmanly for his tears. Maybe that was a different time, when men really weren't expected to ever cry their entire lives, but what's the justice in letting W. or Boehner carry on the pretense of machismo when they're crying in public?
One can only hope that if the GOP with their past lies is responsible for ruining a good man's career, gets hit with the karma kickback that their biggest lie parade of all might lead to a total breakdown in the eyes of the electorate.
To which I could only respond, "Boo-to-the-hoo-hoo-hoo."
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