BDS: A Case Study
there in WaPo for all to see
SHERMAN OAKS, Calif.—In the angry life of Maryscott O’Connor, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her president is still George W. Bush. The sun has yet to rise and her family is asleep, but no matter; as soon as the realization kicks in, O’Connor, 37, is out of bed and heading toward her computer.
"One long, sustained scream” is how she describes the writing she does… She smokes a cigarette. Should it be about Bush, whom she considers “malevolent,” a “sociopath” and “the Antichrist”? She smokes another cigarette. Should it be about Vice President Cheney, whom she thinks of as “Satan,” or about Karl Rove, “the devil”? Should it be about the “evil” Republican Party, or the “weaselly, capitulating, self-aggrandizing, self-serving” Democrats, or the Catholic Church, for which she says “I have a special place in my heart . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned”?
...typing harder and harder on a keyboard that is surrounded by a pack of cigarettes, a dirty ashtray, a can of nonalcoholic beer, an album with photos of her dead father and a taped-up note—staring at her—on which she has scrawled “Why am I/you here?"
"I just want to see these [expletive] swinging from their heels in the public square,” reads a recent comment from ...Eschaton…
“I feel like I’m being molested everytime I hear [Bush’s] voice,” ... on the Daily Kos
“Powerlessness" is O’Connor’s explanation. “This is born of powerlessness."
That and a lack of ideas supported by a pathological disconnect between Self and Other.
"If I can’t rant, I don’t want to be part of your revolution” is how she signs her comments, in the place other people might write “Sincerely."
Who said you can’t rant? You do rant, daily; and no one stops you. No one even tries. And just whose ‘revolution’ are you threatening not to be a part of? And why would you think they care?
"I was not like this before,” she says. “I was riddled with empathy for everyone suffering in the world. Classic bleeding-heart liberal."
Crying for others in hope they would cry for her.
Interesting term, ‘riddled with empathy.’ Like others might use the phrase, ‘riddled with cancer.’ ...or ‘riddled with guilt.’
Before:
She signed petitions. She boycotted veal. She canvassed for Greenpeace. She donated to Planned Parenthood. She read the Nation, the New Yorker, the Utne Reader and Mother Jones. She agonized over low wages for overseas workers every time she bought a $40 leather purse.
She ‘signed, boycotted, canvassed, donated, read, and agonized.’ But she still bought the purse. ‘Every time.’
Then… [insert litany of usual Moonbat BDS charges here]
“It has come to the point where the worst people on Earth are running the Earth.” And now, “I have become one of those people with all the bumper stickers on their car,"
Stickers made by underpaid workers in turd world countries.... Another choice of ineffective beahvior.
...she says. “I am this close to being one of those muttering people pushing a cart.
I’m insane with rage and grief.
But I also feel more connected than I ever have."
Interesting dichotomy.... But it comes with a pay off—the sense of being not so alone, not so out of step.
The people she’s connected to include Shanikka, who [posted] on O’Connor’s Web site a 737-word “open letter to President George W. Bush” that says in part: “You can’t hide from the truth, Dubbya. You also can’t hide from yourself. And it is YOU, Mr. President, that you need to run from. Because you are the problem. You destroy everything you touch professionally when you’re left to do what you want. Everything."
Projection? Smells like it.
Commenters pour forth with the usual diatribe, including accusations about the President’s ADD and ending in this piece of PC self-satire.
"It was rather thoughless [sic] of me to compare the most asinine, brutal, criminal, disgusting, enraging, felonious, gross, horrendous, incompetent, jaundiced, kleptocratic, lazy, malicious, nefarious, objectional, psychopathic, quarrelsome, repulsive, sanctimonious, treasonous, unfit, vindictive, wasteful, xenophobic, yahooish, zealotic piece of [shit] inhabiting the White House and the planet to persons suffering with a neurobiological disorder."
Even in their ‘insane grief and rage’ they have time to be cute. Consider all the work to gather that alphabetized list—contrasted with the careless typo.
And on it goes, every day, around the clock, on Web site after Web site. Since its debut last July, My Left Wing has had some 450,000 visits and is now averaging about 3,000 visits and 14,000 page views a day...
I guess frothing at the mouth ‘continuous scream’-ing is more side-show attractive than occasionally humorous, sometimes well-reasoned thought pieces...
The cigarettes are because of a personality that she describes as compulsive. The nonalcoholic beer is because for several years she drank to excess.
And in the photo? Guess it’s Welches…
The note that says “Why am I/you here?” is because she is in constant search of an answer.
And the photo album is because of a 25-year-old Marine who died fighting in Vietnam three months before she was born, which she thinks helps explain the note, the alcohol, the cigarettes and the very first piece of writing she ever published online, a rant against the war in Iraq that began, “Every single millisecond of my life was directly affected by the nightmare that was Vietnam."
Now we’re sneakin’ up on the real issue. Issues.
As for the keyboard, it is where O’Connor finished her evolution from lost soul to angry soul, beginning with that very first rant, which concluded with a wish that Bush, “after contracting incurable cancer and suffering for protracted periods of time without benefit of medication,” go to hell. ...[other pieces included] “Go [Fuck] Yourself, Mrs. Cheney” and “Bush Must Be HIV Positive By Now (you can’t [fuck] 500 million people and not get infected)."
So we have this poor soul, suffering from her unresolved grief, and likely carrying her mother’s grief and helplessness as well—externalizing those overwhelming feelings into powerless raging against unchangeable circumstances and suffering from the self-destructive behaviors that follow. She discovers Koz, and lashes out in an effort to hurt those whom she wants to take responsibility for her pain. Maybe if she can hurt them enough, they will notice her and help, somehow.
[She] watched as people responded to it—and learned something about the effect of being both heartfelt and vicious. “It’s impactful,” she says. “It gets attention."
And it resolves nothing while being corrosively destructive to both those who write it and those who read it.
In this case, BDS is a displacement syndrome; one poor soul transforming her pain into anger and searching in vane to find someone, anyone, responsible for her suffering and beg them to relieve it. Seeking to decrease her own pain by creating pain in others. I suspect Maryscott is not unique.
One thing’s for sure—BDS is truly not about politics.
Unfortunately, like all addictive disease, it is passed from one generation to the next.
The front door opens and in comes her 6-year-old son, Terry, home from school, who starts batting around a blue balloon at the other end of the living room, batting it closer to her, closer, closer. She searches through her iTunes library until she finds one of her favorite downloads—not music, but a speech by a character named Howard Beale in the movie Network. She presses “play” and turns up the volume. “I want you to get mad!” Beale shouts at one point. “I want you to get mad!” she shouts along, startling Terry. “What?” he says, backing away with his balloon.
LLoyd
The thing about her son scared me Claire. My first thought was he is going to have some serious mental issues, unfortunately. That is unless she gets some serious help.
Posted by on 04/16/06 at 05:15 PMAnd the tough part, LLoyd is that she isn’t lookin’ for help. Doesn’t even realize she nees it. She’s just flailing around.
I wonder—if the Dhimmocraps got into office and all the window dressing was changed like they screech they want it to be, what would these poor BDS fulk© do then?
Posted by Claire on 04/16/06 at 07:30 PMThis woman is so sick there may not be any help.She definately not have a child because no matter what she does the child is exposed to the hate and anger and cannot help but internalize it and will suffer from it. You know what you do with a rabid dog.
Posted by on 04/18/06 at 05:43 AM
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