On Screaming, Children, and Politics

Allison Hrabar, a DOJ paralegal and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America was among the group that accosted the Secretary of Homeland Security earlier this week and screamed at her while she attempted to eat dinner in a restaurant.  Hraber stated, “It feels really good to confront people who are actually responsible, which is what we have a unique opportunity to do in D.C.”  Sadly, this statement reveals much about the approach of many towards the responsibilities and problems of adult life.

“It feels good.”  Look at that statement.  It is not about constructively discussing an issue with others holding varying positions and viewpoints.  It is a self-centered statement.  It is not about productively presenting one’s views to another or about working productively to change a policy or law with which one doesn’t agree.  It is about confrontation and how that makes the confronter feel good.

Since Trump was elected many who favored another candidate or just didn’t want to see him as president have engaged in a perpetual temper tantrum.  In part, this is ginned up by opposition and establishment leaders who need soldiers in their fight against Trump and his threat to their power.  But it also reflects the sad state of the mind and maturity of many in this country, not to mention a lack of education about how our country works.

Throwing a temper tantrum makes a child feel better.  Tantrums and screaming are how children, who (appropriately developmentally) are self-centered,  show they are upset or frustrated, often because they cannot get something or do something that they want.  “Tantrums are common during the second year of life, a time when language skills are starting to develop. Because toddlers can't yet say what they want, feel, or need, a frustrating experience may cause a tantrum.” (https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/tantrums.html)

With only developing language and reasoning skills, a tantrum is the only way young children know to deal with a frustrating situation.   “As language skills improve, tantrums tend to decrease.”  The part of the brain that regulates emotion and controls social behavior should begin to mature about age four.  Additionally, the often irrational outbursts result from the fact that toddlers and preschoolers think magically, not logically.  This results in confusion and fear of events that are understandable to adult minds but not to children. The heightened arousal that this anxiety creates results in the child screaming or throwing a tantrum  (https://www.parenting.com/article/toddler-temper-tantrums). 

Tantrums are developmentally appropriate for young children.  They are not, however, appropriate in adults.   By the time they are 8 or 9, most children have learned to otherwise deal with the strong tantrum causing emotions.  When tantrums continue past the appropriate developmental age, it is either because the behavior is being rewarded or because there is a problem with the child’s development of the skills of impulse control as well as negotiation, problem solving and communication skills  (https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/executive-functioning-issues/why-does-my-child-still-have-temper-tantrums).

I think there is a clear correlation between the behavior exhibited by many anti-Trump folks and a child’s temper tantrum.  These protestors are so overwhelmed by emotion that they can’t think. They seem self-centered, making everything about them. They are unable to have a rational adult dialog in which they discuss facts and issues.  So, they scream.  They shout down opposing views rather than respond and hold a dialog with those who disagree with them.  They end conversations by name-calling.  They simply cannot handle those who do not hold their views – like a child throwing a tantrum when mom says “no” they scream at anyone who disagrees.  Just like the toddler who is incapable of having a rational discussion with mom, these political screamers seem incapable of having a rational conversation about any issue with more than one viewpoint.

I don’t know why this is, but I have a few guesses.  First, I think we have a number of people who are used to always getting what they want.  In that sense, they are like spoiled children and when told no, they scream.  But, why not instead respond by opening a dialog to understand the viewpoint that is contrary to theirs?  I think because the education in critical thinking and problem solving is sadly lacking.  A number of people in this country seem incapable of understanding and evaluating facts; and, they seem incapable of separating fact from opinion.  When rational and logical thinking skills are under-developed, one will operate by emotion.   Add to all this the fact that many in this country have very little understanding of our country’s history or its government and how and why that government works. 

All of this can be used to the advantage of one who wants to create turmoil.  With little understanding of our government, with little capacity to critically think about issues, and with hearty emotions without a mature impulse control, it is easy to use emotional propaganda to incite what essentially amounts to a tantrum. 

I understand why those who are focused primarily on their own power find it useful to encourage these tantrums.  But I am so very troubled that this has become a predominant form of expression in this country.  Even those who should be our leaders have fallen to this unproductive and often destructive form of expression. 

In the past week we have seen many examples of childish behavior.  For example, the leader of the House Hispanic Caucus, Michelle Lujan Grisham, led her group to scream until blue in the face outside a meeting in which the president was attempting to resolve the border crisis.   She said this was the most important issue in her history as a legislator.  Yet, instead of attempting to address the problem productively with dialog and through legislation, she chose to simply scream.   Name calling (another childish coping behavior) has become almost the norm as leaders, entertainers, and just common folk hurl obscenities at the president, his family, and members of his administration.  The famous who launch obscenities are cheered by their peers as well as their followers.  Threats made to kidnap the president’s son and leave him with pedophiles, to rape the Secretary of Homeland Security, to kill and rip out the hearts of ICE agents are among just a few of the very troubling assaults that this week alone seem to have gone unnoticed or excused. 

When a 2 year old throws a tantrum I can ignore it knowing she will grow out of it.  I cannot ignore such behavior when it comes from alleged adults.  It will not stop unless we all refuse to encourage and accept it.  We must find a way to teach these screamers that: 1. They are likely being used by those who actually care very little about the screamers’ emotional issue, but are instead using the emotions in their own campaigns to retain or return to their own power; and, 2. That the screamers’ emotional position may indeed be valid and have a place in a discussion on an issue, but that discussion must take place in an adult and rational manner in which people with varying positions listen to one another and rationally problem solve toward a solution.

Please, screamers, stop screaming.  Use the ability that exists within your mind and think.  Listen to others, take time to research and evaluate facts before forming an opinion and then actually have a mature and rational dialog with someone holding a differing viewpoint.  Listen to their opinions and the rationales for them and try to understand that issues can have many possible and reasonable solutions, that those holding views alternate to yours are not the enemy, and that mature adults can discuss these things without name calling and can problem-solve with one another to reach good compromises.  This is what we used to do in this country and I pray that we begin doing it again.

Stop Letting Them Use Your Emotions to Control You!

The issue of the day is immigration.  We see photos of a crying little girl.  We are told babies are being torn from their mothers’ breasts.  We are told children are being placed in “concentration camps.” Of course, these are selective assertions, some of which are blatantly false.   All of this is used to motivate anti-Trump sentiment while making people so emotional that they can’t, don’t want to, or refuse to objectively look at all the facts and, more importantly, to THINK for themselves. 

Regarding emotional facts and their use as propaganda, Psychology Today states:

Propaganda traffics mostly in emotions, and not just negative ones. Propagandists appeal to our fears but also to our courage, our hatred and our love. The fact that propaganda is at heart an emotional manipulation also does not mean that our emotions and "emotionality" are bad. It means that our emotional system can be manipulated to destructive ends.

The antidote to the process of propaganda is the process of finding factual truth. The best way we have for doing that is through scientific inquiry, which referees competing claims systematically based on evidence. The propagandist process subordinates the facts to an agenda, even at the price of distorting or ignoring the facts altogether.

(The Con of Propaganda by Noam Shpancer Ph.D., https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201702/the-con-propaganda )

The current propaganda attack about immigration plays to your compassion.  That human compassion that so many are feeling about the children at the border is a noble emotion.  But, sadly, it is being used to manipulate and exploit that emotion in a very un-noble and political agenda.

In the current emotional propaganda on immigration and children, you are not shown the actual housing for the children or the many services that are provided for them there.  You are not given the facts and statistics of the immigration laws, the numbers of those attempting to cross our borders illegally without any attempt to follow our very generous legal immigration laws and procedures, you are not told the numbers of criminals attempting to cross our borders, the child trafficking that occurs across the border, the number of “catch and release” families that have been allowed into the U. S. and then never followed through with appropriate paper work to become legal and indeed disappeared without returning for court hearings.  You are not told that there has been an enormous increase in the numbers of adults trying to cross with children that they fraudulently claim as family members.  And, you are certainly not reminded that those who are separated from their children are those who have broken our laws and committed an illegal act.   These are all facts that are relevant to this issue, as is the simple fact that we are a country of laws, not men (see earlier blog post On Law and Freedom, http://ps.pinkspolitics.com/2018/06/on-law-and-freedom.html ). 

I encourage everyone who is being swayed by the propaganda offensive  to listen to today’s briefing by the Secretary of Homeland Security which gives a much fuller picture of the problems at the southern border as well as actual facts about separations of children from parents:  https://www.c-span.org/video/?447252-1/homeland-security-secretary-nielsen-calls-congress-fix-immigration-policy&vod

We have laws and we cannot let emotion alone negate those laws.   We cannot let our sound and good emotions be manipulated for political gain.   If we become a country of emotion, not law, then we are certainly well on our way to anarchy.  Children on a playground let emotions rule their behavior.  Adults may be guided by their underlying emotions and values, but they create rules and then follow them while demanding that they be enforced.   At least, that is what adults in this country used to do.

Our government, as it should, is simply enforcing the law.  Congress makes the laws.  People who, upon examination of all relevant facts, would like to see the laws changed, should contact their Congress people.  I think that most everyone would agree that we need to resolve and update our immigration laws.  But we have a process for doing that, and it is not done by manipulating emotions and demanding that laws simply not be enforced.

Do not let emotional photos and misleading or incomplete facts keep you from using your mind.  Yes, consider the heart-wrenching facts and your emotional responses, but also consider other emotional facts that are more likely to cause feelings of fear or anger than compassion (such as the number of criminals illegally crossing and then lost in our country or the parents who separate themselves from their children and send them across the border alone or with criminals.) 

Objectively consider these things along with the existing law and what is the role of law in our society.  Those reciting the emotional anti-administration narrative also demand that the President and the executive branch “pause” enforcement of the law out of compassion.  Consider what a slippery slope this would create:  if whenever we have compassion that in some way conflicts with the enforcement of a law we just suspend the law, we eventually could have very few laws being enforced and those that are being enforced would be enforced subjectively and unevenly.  Moreover, by allowing this emotional control one sets the stage for even more manipulative propaganda.  And, propaganda is rarely used for the benefit of others, but rather for the benefit and power of the propagandist.

Perhaps you want to be a part of the fight for open borders or simply to unseat President Trump.  You have every right to make the decision to take that stand.  I only hope that it is indeed your decision to do so based upon all the relevant facts and not simply a result of emotional propaganda.

Ask yourself whether this is the direction you truly choose, or if your compassionate heart and legitimate emotion about children is instead being used by those whose agenda has little to do with children or immigration and more to do with amassing foot-soldiers in a far more calculated political agenda?  An agenda which is ultimately intended to create and maintain the power of those who are tampering with your kind heart.