Going Nowhere
By Dr. Trudy Bond
17 August, 2005
Countercurrents.orgQuestion: What happens to a young woman, elected to the House of Representatives in an outstanding upset, during 23 years in the beltway?
Answer: Nothing.
We hadn’t talked face to face for 23 years. We came together recently when a small number of our local peace group scheduled a meeting with Ms. Kaptur, representative from the state of Ohio, to discuss among other issues, impeachment. Kaptur was presented with extensive materials on justification for impeachment of the current president, materials that outlined the numerous laws and treaties that have been broken by the current administration. (1) After this presentation, seated to her left, I asked Ms. Kaptur for her thoughts on impeachment. In perhaps the one direct, spontaneously honest comment by her that day, she stated, “I haven’t really thought about it.” The date was June 3, 2005, one month after the release of the Downing Street Memo.
Though she had voted against the war, Ms. Kaptur proceeded to explain that in light of her close connection to the National Guard units in her district and her marine background, she must be careful that she not negate their service by actions or words. Without stopping to think, I responded: “If you collude in the lies of this war, if you pretend to the military that this is an honorable mission when you know otherwise, you are complicit in the crimes.” Only by her response did I realize the extent to which I had offended Kaptur, or perhaps shocked her, as she gratuitously gave me the right to express my opinion and referred to me as brave or courageous, I can’t remember which, and stated she disagreed.
Less than two weeks later, I watched the hearing called by Representative John Conyers on June 16, 2005, on the Downing Street Memo. As I listened to Kaptur toward the end of the hearing, I heard an echo of our small meeting two weeks earlier. Kaptur’s comments were related to her strong desire to maintain the “integrity of our military forces and respect for their honor and their service,” as well as her concerns about the number of independent contractors in Iraq. Kaptur’s brief speech about contractors and honor in the military was almost word for word the same speech given to eight members of our local peace group two weeks earlier. On this day, however, she was speaking at a historic event, a hearing called in Congress to examine the evidence that her commander-in-chief had lied to her and the rest of Congress regarding the need to go to war, lied about the need to put American lives at risk, indeed to take the lives of over 1800 Americans with no end of deaths in sight. This hearing deserved more than a canned speech. Not ONCE did she mention the Downing Street Memo. Not ONCE did she acknowledge Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey who was killed April 4, 2004, sitting close enough for Ms. Kaptur to touch.
Aside from the need to get elected, how does one denounce reality so readily, to the point that he or she can watch 1800 Americans and over 125,000 civilians be killed and not take action? Dr. Justin A. Frank, a well-known psychiatrist, made the case for analyzing public figures, much as Freud did, in his well-written Bush on the Couch. Briefly, a general definition for Freud’s term “neurosis” in the inability of a person to alter their perspective of themselves and the world as he or she moves from childhood to adulthood. Rather than confront the need to alter one’s perspective, the person develops defense mechanisms to control the anxiety experienced when the world doesn’t fit their child-like belief system. Kaptur continues to function within the realm of her childhood beliefs: obedience to a patriarchal religion (she recently voted against stem cell research on this basis), belief in the integrity of the American government, and the honor of the military.
A small website borrowed Jean-Paul Sartre’s term “false ignorance” for its domain name: "If we refuse to investigate the … truth ourselves, it is because we are afraid. Afraid of seeing our true faces naked. That is where the lie is — and the excuse for the lie: yes, we lack evidence, so we cannot believe anything; but we do not seek this evidence because, in spite of ourselves, we know." (2) Kaptur and many others are relying on “false ignorance,” pretending not to know when the truth is known.As I wrote personally to Ms. Kaptur on December 1, 2004, six months before she told our group that she as an elected official had not thought about impeachment: “In regard to the continuing war crimes, perpetrated on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and in Guantanamo by the United States, the entire country is your constituency. As long as the House of Representatives allows the current military crimes to continue, each of you is as guilty as those who have determined to ignore the Geneva Convention.” In “A Lie of Historic Proportions,” Cindy Sheehan spoke of the need to “rid our country of the stench of greed, hypocrisy, and unnecessary suffering that permeates our White House and our halls of Congress. It is time to hold someone accountable for the carnage and devastation that has been caused.” (3) “Writing your congress” may be of little value when writing to a Congress the majority of whom is unwilling to speak the truth.
At their first meeting, Dr. Trudy Bond was a psychologist at the University of Toledo and active in feminist political groups. She continues as a psychologist in private practice and can be contacted at [email protected].Notes
(1) http://www.veteransforpeace.org/impeachment/
(3) http://www.falseignorance.com
(4) Cindy Sheehan, A Lie of Historic Proportions, Common Dreams.org,
June 6, 2005.Dr. Trudy Bond
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