thebulwark--2020-12-04--This Is Your Brain on Newsmax

This Is Your Brain on Newsmax

Since the glorious defeat of Donald Trump , I had been ensconced in my cozy coastal elite Twitter bubble , only privy to the bursts of Sidney Powell and Lin Wood crazy when it inserted itself in my feed .
So when Ben Smith fed the blue-check tigers this juicy morsel about the rise of Chris Ruddy and Newsmax , I was shook .
That ’ s a boost of 20x over the network ’ s pre-election ratings .
To put it another way , Newsmax , which Nielsen only started tracking this past summer , went overnight from having @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the size of Fox ’ s biggest show ( Tucker Carlson Tonight ) to about 20 percent its size .
The demand side of the conservative media curve was speaking .
They want Coup Theatre News and they want it now .
I wanted to find out what these folks were being told , so I committed myself to hours upon hours of viewing .
You may think you have a sense for what is happening on The Max , but I promise you it is much weirder , more alarming , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Here ’ s some of what I saw : • The president ’ s campaign lawyer saying that a former Trump official should be executed .
• A host saying that Biden ’ s election would bring a war between the races and that Barack Hussein Obama is a “ reprobate ” who is “ pimping ” a book .
• Hosts and guests suggesting several times an hour that Republican state legislatures should overturn the will of the people to keep Trump in power .
• Fantastical stories of millions of votes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dead of night after nationwide blackouts .
And that was just one day in the life of Uncut Kraken .
The cast of characters who appear on Newsmax is so random that you might be tempted to describe it as a Political Star Wars Bar but that would be unfair to the Mos Eisley cantina .
I saw Dinesh D ’ Souza .
Dick Morris ’ s shiny dentures .
The Gorka .
Random kids from Twitter .
Rudy , Rudy , and more Rudy .
Blago .
John Gizzi .
Lots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A few personal disclosures before we journey into this heart of darkness : • Chris Ruddy , who owns and runs Newsmax , is a South Florida spinner of yarns who bought me a few fancy lunches during the Jeb !
campaign , when he thought I might have Sean Spicer ’ s job at the White House podium one day .
• Sean Spicer was my boss at the RNC and has been to my home .
• John Bachman had me on his show a time or three back in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high level of confidence that all of these gentlemen know that Donald Trump lost .
Spicer said as much on November 5 before Newsmax realized just how much juice they could get out of the scam .
Ruddy openly told the New Yorker ’ s Isaac Chotiner that he saw a business opportunity in providing wall-to-wall election fraud fanfic .
What these characters are doing is exploiting Trump Nation ’ s need to believe that their great , nectarine idol is unbreakable and that the only way he could “ lose ” is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Big Tech , Antifa , the media , black people—are conspiring against him .
So here is the dangerous story they are being told—minute by agonizing minute .
For reference , I am working from bed and live streaming Newsmax via the YouTube TV app .
I am armed only with my computer and a pour over coffee in an Ellen Show mug .
I ’ m bracing for pain .
First up it ’ s Trump campaign lawyers , Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing , together in what appears to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Drain the Swamp ! )
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They are praising Jared Kushner ’ s Middle East genius .
The first commercial I see is a Newsmax promo that has Donald Trump saying “ Newsmax , you like Newsmax , I like it too ” twice in 10 seconds .
The next ad is Pat Boone pushing silver .
I did not know that Pat Boone was still alive .
11:31 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. — Live at Rudy Giuliani ’ s “ hearing ” in Arizona Yes : 19 straight minutes of Rudy in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing we hear from Rudy is “ We have an illegitimate election.
” • He says 100,000 mail-in ballots should be “ null and void.
” ( Joe Biden ’ s lead in the state stands at about 10,000 votes . )
• Rudy repeats the conspiracy theory that vote-counting “ stopped ” at midnight or 1 a.m. everywhere—something that anyone who watched election night in real time knows is untrue .
• He claims to have “ witnesses ” to “ hundreds of thousands of ballots ” being brought into Detroit at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not a city in Arizona , it ’ s the one up north with shady black people . )
• He calls for the Arizona state legislature to overturn the governor ’ s anticipated certification of the election results .
( Gov .
Ducey would go on to certify the results that afternoon . )
11:50 a.m. — Back to the Newsmax anchors We ’ re told that what we just saw was “ a concise , a clear Rudy Giuliani at the hearing in Arizona ” and a “ stellar performance by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ re grading on the Rudy curve , this is probably right .
There were no fart noises , for starters !
11:51 a.m. — More diGenova/Toensing and @ GregOnTheRight , then back to Rudy We pop back for another quick hit with the husband-and-wife lawyers in their D.C. mansion which is absolutely cool with the populists .
DiGenova says Arizona ’ s legislature should send a separate slate of electors—or no electors—to the Electoral College .
Toensing notes that it would take just “ any three ” of the “ six @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certified result for the election to be thrown to the House of Representatives .
DiGenova and Toensing are briefly joined by a young man introduced as “ social influencer @ GregOnTheRight , ” who is beaming in via what looks like a poorly lit Twitch stream .
Greg mentions his confidence in Sidney Powell ’ s lawsuits , and says he knows that his viral videos of “ fraud ” have been viewed by the Trump team .
Unlike everything else so far , this claim actually seems plausible .
Then we ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minutes of in-depth conversation about a dispute that must be taking place on the dark web over whether or not Dominion voting machines were connected to “ the internet.
” Rudy brings in an “ expert witness ” claiming that Dominion servers were connected to the internet based on some spider graphs .
After a brief introduction to the next block of programming , we are treated to another 11 minutes of Rudy .
He calls a “ witness ” who brings the Pepe Silvia : “ I personally debriefed the son of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two Chávez family members .
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[ they ] said don ’ t worry it ’ s guaranteed their father invested the money to build the SGO system.
” We then get a segment where host John Bachman talks with Republican lawyer Brett Tolman , who served as a U.S. attorney a decade ago .
Bachman notes that “ Elections have been changed in foreign countries ; that could happen in this country ” —suggesting to Newsmax viewers that U.S. elections are indistinguishable from Cuba ’ s .
Bachman and Tolman agree @ @ @ @ @ @ @ floats the idea of Congress overturning the Electoral College results , claiming that Rudy has “ barely scratched the surface ” of the fraud .
Tricky Dick starts with the ritual incantation praising Sidney Powell and saying he wants Dominion voting machines inspected .
Morris then says he is “ pretty optimistic ” that Republican legislatures will overturn results .
( This wish is casting some doubt on former President Obama ’ s famous line that in America , “ there has never been anything false about hope.
” ) Morris says that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and encouraged him to bring state legislators to the White House to push the plan for legislatures to reject their states ’ popular votes .
You read that right : Toe-sucking Clinton adviser Dick Morris has the president ’ s phone number and admitted on live TV to plotting a coup with him .
After 66 minutes of fake fraud news we get a house ad—Newsmax has “ real news for real people ” —and then turn to a conversation with Dan O ’ Donnell , who has been hosting a conservative talk-radio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ Donnell wants to talk about how terrible Barack Hussein Obama is .
For instance , did you know that he once filled out an NCAA bracket and wore a tan suit ?
Dan wants to remind you if didn ’ t recall that .
At this point I want to mention that the big story out in the real world—a pandemic that is ravaging the country with skyrocketing cases and deaths—has not yet been covered on Newsmax today .
Instead , we return to Rudy , who is no longer concise and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about why the Department of Homeland Security hasn ’ t gotten involved in stopping the fraud he loses the thread to such a degree that Bachman has to cut back in .
Bachman gives his viewers their dopamine hit by again floating the notion of state legislatures overturning the election .
This is the fifth time this idea has been raised in just over an hour .
Someone finally mentions COVID !
This segment , with guest Robbie Soave of Reason magazine—and wtf is Reason doing letting their people do Newsmax ?
—is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use this hint of normalcy as an opportunity to get in the shower and eat something .
I ’ m back and Emerald Robinson is on !
I had thought she was OANN but it turns out she moved up to the bigs in February .
Good on her .
It ’ s nice to see that a nice Christian gal with moxie and a razor-sharp analytical mind can make it in this business .
Emerald is very excited to report that a judge in Georgia blocked the servers on three of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expects that a forensic examination of these servers will crack the case wide open .
Her only concern is that since Dominion employees have now had weeks to tamper with the machines they might have covered their tracks .
Damn you , Ghost of Hugo Chávez !
Although D ’ Souza is intimately familiar with campaign-finance law , I wouldn ’ t think he ’ s got much expertise in election law .
Yet he speaks with authority for many minutes about how Chris Krebs is a con man and how the Georgia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same rigged result .
D ’ Souza apparently doesn ’ t understand that Georgia has paper ballots that were printed from the Dominion machines—paper ballots that voters were reminded to double check before submitting—and that the recount of those paper ballots revealed the same result as the machine .
If you weren ’ t watching Newsmax , you could even see how this system works .
Apparently having canvassed the whole of the elite GOP , D ’ Souza says the view is unanimous among Republican elected officials that the election was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up because they are limited by the “ cultural timidity ” of the establishment .
He says the only thing stopping Trump from winning is Republican elected officials going “ invertebrate.
” He proposes a revote .
Next he describes the “ intellectual Antifa ” in the mainstream media that he says has terrorized Republican officials .
The IA is what ’ s stopping them from couping , he concludes .
( Bachman : “ ‘ Intellectual Antifa , ’ that ’ s an interesting juxtaposition I hadn ’ t considered.
” ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ d like to reward you with a little gossip .
“ We have an editorial policy of being supportive of the President.
” Our host tells us that there ’ s a poll showing that 20 percent of Americans are watching Newsmax .
It ’ s almost like he ’ s daring his audience to call bullshit on him .
Sandwiched between ads ( Mitch McConnell asking for money for the Georgia recount , and a Newsmax promo with Larry Kudlow claiming he goes to Newsmax first thing in the morning , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get 12 more minutes of the Rudy hearing uninterrupted .
And then he ’ s back again at the top of the hour for a few more minutes at the start of the two-hour block called American Agenda .
For the first time all day a host , Bob Sellers , gently pushes back on a conspiracy theory by mentioning the Georgia hand recount .
Lin Wood , the lawyer who has been freelancing with Sidney Powell on Trump ’ s behalf and was a star of The Max until he was unpersoned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Perdue and Loeffler , is supposed to be the expert on this , but he ’ s unsure how the hand recount took place .
He thinks it was on the same machines .
( Narrator : Wrong . )
“ We had interference by foreign countries , ” Wood says , ” Germany , Serbia , Iran , Venezuela , China and others.
” I just want to pause here for a second to diagram the supposed Georgia conspiracy again : The perpetrators now include the governments of at least five foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elected officials in multiple counties , the people driving the trucks and the vans with the fake ballots , hackers , Governor Brian Kemp , and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger .
2:36 p.m. — Live look at a “ Stop the Steal ” rally in Arizona The rally features several Confederate flags—because the Confederate flag is all about Arizona ’ s Southern heritage and absolutely not anything else—and a few dozen people screaming and spitting all over each other with no masks .
Holocaust denier Vincent James is there with a bullhorn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ special interests ) ) ) .
Sebastian Gorka is doing an ad read for “ Balance of Nature ” pills , talking about how they are a key part of living a healthy life .
Howie Carr , who has been a fixture of Boston conservative talk radio since the 1980s , does one hour of his four-hour radio show as a simulcast on Newsmax every weekday afternoon .
Carr shares the results of a listener poll that asked “ Do you believe Joe Biden was really injured playing with his dog ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ are buying this “ official ” story .
Carr then goes on to discuss how susceptible Democrats are to being fed conspiracies by their party leaders .
After an exchange with a caller about John F. Kennedy , Carr says that today ’ s Democrats are Communists and are “ closer to Lee Harvey Oswald than to JFK.
” JFK , according to Carr , was killed by the “ deep state/CIA.
” And then he pivots to discussing how the Democrats stole the 1960 election , too , just like they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t “ really work out for them ” in 1960 , he says , so they should be careful this time .
I ’ m not sure how to take that except as a not-so-subtle suggestion that Joe Biden might get assassinated .
I know , I know : It ’ s crazy to think that someone on Newsmax would be hinting at violent death for his political opponents .
4:34 p.m. — A political opponent ’ s execution is called for by Joe diGenova Carr opens his segment with diGenova saying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on to talk about “ Obamagate , ” but that this week they ’ re going to change things up and talk about the coup .
DiGenova dishes out more of the same : the Dominion systems had “ incredible hackability ” ; there was a four-circuit-breaker shutdown in all the main states ( huh ? )
; millions of votes miraculously showed up in “ dump trucks and tow trucks and vans.
” He then gets into a lengthy discussion about which state legislatures are most likely to have the stones to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ praises Reince Priebus ’ work in Wisconsin on this count .
Carr asks diGenova about the rumored military raids in Germany he ’ s been hearing about online .
Here we have an absurd fabrication , made up in its every particular and easily disprovable , being discussed as though it were a normal news item meriting speculation as a possibility .
DiGenova plays coy and retreats to familiar territory , saying the Durham report should come out to help give the state legislators more incentive to stop Biden since he was involved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the execution of Chris Krebs .
No big .
Just a normal day on The Max .
I tune back in to see Rod Blagojevich—the former Democratic governor of Illinois who was disgraced , impeached , convicted , imprisoned , and eventually pardoned by President Trump—talking about how Trump will prevail at the Supreme Court .
Salcedo is another talk-radio guy .
And I ’ m not going to lie to you .
His show is some weird shit .
Some highlights : • States need to stop certifying the election for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hussein Obama ” —whom Salcedo calls a “ reprobate ” —has been “ pimping a book ” that ’ s used to advance a Marxist agenda .
( Have any of these guys read Marx ? )
• Salcedo suggests that Biden taking office would lead to a race war .
Just so you understand , I ’ m not paraphrasing : At this point I stop watching for a bit to go on MSNBC and get made fun of by Leslie Jones .
Ric Grenell has been invited on to make fun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of odd that a former national security advisor and former ambassador is doing a poor man ’ s Howie Kurtz imitation rather than discussing national security .
Actually , it ’ s not odd so much as telling .
After what feels like a fortnight of Kurtz cosplay , Grenell moves on to briefly mention that he ’ s going to depose Clark County officials to expose their fraud later this week and that Nevada is the tip of the spear in Mr. Trump ’ s fight to “ win ” the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s the guy who managed the Trump 2016 campaign with Paul Manafort , copped a plea during the Mueller investigation , and was sentenced to prison and probation .
Gates tells Spicer that “ the only thing diverse about Biden ’ s cabinet is the number of favors they have doled out.
” Here I want to note that Gates was indicted for conspiracy against the United States in part for doing favors for foreign clients .
Gates then adds that he would be grateful for a pardon like the one Mike @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Spicer ’ s show : Something like 90 percent of the Newsmax programming I ’ ve seen today was about the “ rigged ” election .
But 90 percent of Spicer ’ s show was complaining about how the Fake News Media is nice to Biden with scant Hot Coup Talk .
Memo to Chris Ruddy : I know that Spicer is the biggest star in your stable , but his reticence to go full-coup makes me wonder if he isn ’ t just a cuck in a sheep ’ s baggy suit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the kind of reliable guy you want to build your Fox Killer Deathstar around .
Maybe give Emerald his time slot ?
Spicer must have a sense that the suits are going to be ringing him about this though .
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his tease for tomorrow ’ s show is Fraud City with special guest Matt Gaetz .
“ If you aren ’ t making a concerted effort to watch Newsmax , ” says Kelly , a former local New York TV host , “ you are going to think that Joe Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on : “ They want you to think that Donald Trump is crazy and this is all a coup and this is all unconstitutional.
” I ’ m only a few minutes into the Greg Kelly experience , but already , he ’ s telling more truths than everyone else on The Max combined .
But then things take a turn .
Around ten minutes into his show , Kelly plays the new intro to NBC ’ s Meet the Press , which apparently no longer features a picture of Donald Trump and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Kamala Harris .
And—I ’ m not shitting you—Kelly compares this to how in Communist Russia and North Korea the rulers would “ disappear ” people from pictures .
There are “ eerie similarities , ” Kelly says , comparing Joe Biden ’ s America to totalitarian states .
Really makes you think .
I can ’ t believe this , but I ’ m back on the pipe , lured in by Sean Spicer booking Matt Gaetz because honestly , whenever you get two superstars like this on channel 1072 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some magic .
Gaetz has been brought on to float the next step in the Dumb & Dumber “ So You ’ re Telling Me There ’ s a Chance ” Coup should the state legislature cucks not have the testicular fortitude to steal the election like Dinesh D ’ Souza commands : the idea that Congress might decide not to certify the Electoral College result when they gavel into session in January .
“ Just today , Gaetz says , “ I ’ ve talked to Republicans in the House and Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into these irregularities to force a debate in Congress about whether to certify these states ’ electors.
” Which Republicans did he talk to ?
That ’ s close-hold information , obviously .
But this last ditch effort to keep the Orange God King in power is a real possibility .
Trust Matt on this .
He then floats the idea that some “ trucks that have gone missing with ballots and then may have appeared in Pennsylvania.
” This could be the lead that breaks the case wide open !
Spicer then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counting votes on election night at 9:00 p.m. and unveils this chart—which President Trump would show during his wheels-off Facetime speech the next day : What could possibly explain that line , Spicer asks ?
I don ’ t know , Sean , maybe Milwaukee releasing its vote count at the end of the night just like they do every freaking election year .
Which you would know .
BECAUSE WE WORKED FOR A WISCONSIN REPUBLICAN TOGETHER YOU HACK .
Sorry .
It ’ s been a long 24 hours .
That wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Max talking .
Anyway , this prompts Gaetz to fire off three minutes of election fraud gibberish : Ballot laundering scheme !
“ Urban core !
” Ballots “ willed into existence.
” “ Bad ballots ” were “ commingled with ballots that were lawfully cast.
” There is a pool of “ polluted ballots.
” Having done his duty , Gaetz departs and Spicer brings on Jordan Sekulow , a member of Trump ’ s legal team and the son of longtime Republican lawyer Jay Sekulow , who was one of Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says he thinks there ’ s a “ very good chance the outcome changes ” thanks to their case that would disenfranchise every single person who voted absentee in the state of Wisconsin because something something signature matching .
“ Very good ” is doing a lot of work there , obviously , but I couldn ’ t help but thinking that a person could make a lot of money betting with these people .
That ’ s a thing , by the way .
One of the footnotes to this election is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the outcome of the election even after the polls closed and there was an entire universe of suckers out there betting that Trump would win even days after the election .
When I saw those betting lines unfolding in real time , I couldn ’ t understand them .
How could someone watching the election returns think that it was smart to bet cash-money on Trump , even as he lost state after state .
And how could tens of thousands of Americans be pilfered to the tune of $ 170 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already over ?
But my time with The Max has given me a pretty clear explanation .
There ’ s a sucker born every minute .
Maybe even a couple million of them .
That ’ s Newsmax ’ s business model .
And it ’ s working out pretty well for them .

Since the glorious defeat of Donald Trump, I had been ensconced in my cozy coastal elite Twitter bubble, only privy to the bursts of Sidney Powell and Lin Wood crazy when it inserted itself in my feed. So when Ben Smith fed the blue-check tigers this juicy morsel about the rise of Chris Ruddy and Newsmax, I was shook.
Newsmax’s prime-time ratings, which averaged 58,000 before Election Day, soared to 1.1 million afterward for its top shows.
Wait, seriously? A million people?
That’s a boost of 20x over the network’s pre-election ratings. To put it another way, Newsmax, which Nielsen only started tracking this past summer, went overnight from having programming that topped out at 1 percent the size of Fox’s biggest show (Tucker Carlson Tonight) to about 20 percent its size.
The demand side of the conservative media curve was speaking. They want Coup Theatre News and they want it now.
I wanted to find out what these folks were being told, so I committed myself to hours upon hours of viewing. You may think you have a sense for what is happening on The Max, but I promise you it is much weirder, more alarming, and more debased than you can imagine. Here’s some of what I saw:
The president’s campaign lawyer saying that a former Trump official should be executed.
A host saying that Biden’s election would bring a war between the races and that Barack Hussein Obama is a “reprobate” who is “pimping” a book.
Hosts and guests suggesting several times an hour that Republican state legislatures should overturn the will of the people to keep Trump in power.
Fantastical stories of millions of votes being dropped off by tow trucks in the dead of night after nationwide blackouts.
The term “ballot harvesting” bandied about indiscriminately.
An endless stream of Lionel Hutz-level legal analysis.
And that was just one day in the life of Uncut Kraken.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The cast of characters who appear on Newsmax is so random that you might be tempted to describe it as a Political Star Wars Bar but that would be unfair to the Mos Eisley cantina. I saw Dinesh D’Souza. Dick Morris’s shiny dentures. The Gorka. Random kids from Twitter. Rudy, Rudy, and more Rudy. Blago. John Gizzi. Lots of blonde ladies. Broadway Joe.
Struggglingg
Watch this video on YouTube
A few personal disclosures before we journey into this heart of darkness:
Chris Ruddy, who owns and runs Newsmax, is a South Florida spinner of yarns who bought me a few fancy lunches during the Jeb! campaign, when he thought I might have Sean Spicer’s job at the White House podium one day.
Sean Spicer was my boss at the RNC and has been to my home.
John Bachman had me on his show a time or three back in the day.
I would guess with a high level of confidence that all of these gentlemen know that Donald Trump lost. Spicer said as much on November 5 before Newsmax realized just how much juice they could get out of the scam. Ruddy openly told the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner that he saw a business opportunity in providing wall-to-wall election fraud fanfic.
What these characters are doing is exploiting Trump Nation’s need to believe that their great, nectarine idol is unbreakable and that the only way he could “lose” is if people whom they hate—the Deep State, Big Tech, Antifa, the media, black people—are conspiring against him.
So here is the dangerous story they are being told—minute by agonizing minute.
Monday, November 30, 11:20 a.m. — National Report
For reference, I am working from bed and live streaming Newsmax via the YouTube TV app. I am armed only with my computer and a pour over coffee in an Ellen Show mug. I’m bracing for pain.
First up it’s Trump campaign lawyers, Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, together in what appears to be their fancy Washington, D.C. home (Drain the Swamp!). They are praising Jared Kushner’s Middle East genius.
The first commercial I see is a Newsmax promo that has Donald Trump saying “Newsmax, you like Newsmax, I like it too” twice in 10 seconds.
The next ad is Pat Boone pushing silver. I did not know that Pat Boone was still alive.
11:31 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. — Live at Rudy Giuliani’s “hearing” in Arizona
Yes: 19 straight minutes of Rudy in a sad ballroom.
The first thing we hear from Rudy is “We have an illegitimate election.”
He says 100,000 mail-in ballots should be “null and void.” (Joe Biden’s lead in the state stands at about 10,000 votes.)
Rudy repeats the conspiracy theory that vote-counting “stopped” at midnight or 1 a.m. everywhere—something that anyone who watched election night in real time knows is untrue.
He claims to have “witnesses” to “hundreds of thousands of ballots” being brought into Detroit at 4 a.m. (No, Detroit is not a city in Arizona, it’s the one up north with shady black people.)
He calls for the Arizona state legislature to overturn the governor’s anticipated certification of the election results. (Gov. Ducey would go on to certify the results that afternoon.)
11:50 a.m. — Back to the Newsmax anchors
We’re told that what we just saw was “a concise, a clear Rudy Giuliani at the hearing in Arizona” and a “stellar performance by Rudy.”
To be fair, if you’re grading on the Rudy curve, this is probably right. There were no fart noises, for starters!
11:51 a.m. — More diGenova/Toensing and @GregOnTheRight, then back to Rudy
We pop back for another quick hit with the husband-and-wife lawyers in their D.C. mansion which is absolutely cool with the populists.
DiGenova says Arizona’s legislature should send a separate slate of electors—or no electors—to the Electoral College. Toensing notes that it would take just “any three” of the “six states at issue” to overturn their certified result for the election to be thrown to the House of Representatives.
DiGenova and Toensing are briefly joined by a young man introduced as “social influencer @GregOnTheRight,” who is beaming in via what looks like a poorly lit Twitch stream.
Greg mentions his confidence in Sidney Powell’s lawsuits, and says he knows that his viral videos of “fraud” have been viewed by the Trump team. Unlike everything else so far, this claim actually seems plausible.
Here’s Greg:
Then we’re back to Rudy, for six minutes of in-depth conversation about a dispute that must be taking place on the dark web over whether or not Dominion voting machines were connected to “the internet.” Rudy brings in an “expert witness” claiming that Dominion servers were connected to the internet based on some spider graphs.
12:00 p.m. — John Bachman Now
After a brief introduction to the next block of programming, we are treated to another 11 minutes of Rudy. He calls a “witness” who brings the Pepe Silvia: “I personally debriefed the son of a Cuban intelligence officer who spoke to two Chávez family members . . . [they] said don’t worry it’s guaranteed their father invested the money to build the SGO system.”
Let’s diagram that out:
witness>>son of a Cuban>>Cuban>>family members of Chavez>>Long dead Hugo Chávez
Seems airtight.
We then get a segment where host John Bachman talks with Republican lawyer Brett Tolman, who served as a U.S. attorney a decade ago. Bachman notes that “Elections have been changed in foreign countries; that could happen in this country”—suggesting to Newsmax viewers that U.S. elections are indistinguishable from Cuba’s.
Bachman and Tolman agree that state legislatures should step in—and Tolman floats the idea of Congress overturning the Electoral College results, claiming that Rudy has “barely scratched the surface” of the fraud.
12:22 p.m. — Dick Morris
Tricky Dick starts with the ritual incantation praising Sidney Powell and saying he wants Dominion voting machines inspected.
Morris then says he is “pretty optimistic” that Republican legislatures will overturn results. (This wish is casting some doubt on former President Obama’s famous line that in America, “there has never been anything false about hope.”)
Morris says that he personally talked to the Dear Leader and encouraged him to bring state legislators to the White House to push the plan for legislatures to reject their states’ popular votes.
You read that right: Toe-sucking Clinton adviser Dick Morris has the president’s phone number and admitted on live TV to plotting a coup with him.
12:35 p.m. — Interview with Wisconsin talk radio host Dan O’Donnell about media bias
After 66 minutes of fake fraud news we get a house ad—Newsmax has “real news for real people”—and then turn to a conversation with Dan O’Donnell, who has been hosting a conservative talk-radio program in Milwaukee since 2013.
O’Donnell wants to talk about how terrible Barack Hussein Obama is. For instance, did you know that he once filled out an NCAA bracket and wore a tan suit? Dan wants to remind you if didn’t recall that.
12:40 p.m. — More Rudy, more rigging
At this point I want to mention that the big story out in the real world—a pandemic that is ravaging the country with skyrocketing cases and deaths—has not yet been covered on Newsmax today.
Instead, we return to Rudy, who is no longer concise and clear. As he rambles on incoherently about why the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t gotten involved in stopping the fraud he loses the thread to such a degree that Bachman has to cut back in.
Bachman gives his viewers their dopamine hit by again floating the notion of state legislatures overturning the election. This is the fifth time this idea has been raised in just over an hour.
12:52 p.m. — A normal news segment about school closures
Someone finally mentions COVID! This segment, with guest Robbie Soave of Reason magazine—and wtf is Reason doing letting their people do Newsmax?—is almost like replacement-level cable news.
I use this hint of normalcy as an opportunity to get in the shower and eat something.
1:07 p.m. — Emerald Robinson
I’m back and Emerald Robinson is on!
I had thought she was OANN but it turns out she moved up to the bigs in February. Good on her. It’s nice to see that a nice Christian gal with moxie and a razor-sharp analytical mind can make it in this business.
If masks work, why do we need social distancing? If social distancing works, why do we need masks? If either one works, why do we need lockdowns? If ANY of them work, why do we need new vaccines? Think about it. — Emerald Robinson ✝ (@EmeraldRobinson) December 3, 2020
Emerald is very excited to report that a judge in Georgia blocked the servers on three of the voting machines from being wiped. She expects that a forensic examination of these servers will crack the case wide open.
Her only concern is that since Dominion employees have now had weeks to tamper with the machines they might have covered their tracks. Damn you, Ghost of Hugo Chávez!
1:10 p.m. — It’s Dinesh D’Souza O’Clock
Although D’Souza is intimately familiar with campaign-finance law, I wouldn’t think he’s got much expertise in election law. Yet he speaks with authority for many minutes about how Chris Krebs is a con man and how the Georgia recount was just a machine recount of the same rigged result.
D’Souza apparently doesn’t understand that Georgia has paper ballots that were printed from the Dominion machines—paper ballots that voters were reminded to double check before submitting—and that the recount of those paper ballots revealed the same result as the machine. If you weren’t watching Newsmax, you could even see how this system works.
Apparently having canvassed the whole of the elite GOP, D’Souza says the view is unanimous among Republican elected officials that the election was corrupt but they aren’t speaking up because they are limited by the “cultural timidity” of the establishment.
He says the only thing stopping Trump from winning is Republican elected officials going “invertebrate.” He proposes a revote.
Next he describes the “intellectual Antifa” in the mainstream media that he says has terrorized Republican officials. The IA is what’s stopping them from couping, he concludes. (Bachman: “‘Intellectual Antifa,’ that’s an interesting juxtaposition I hadn’t considered.”)
For making it this far I’d like to reward you with a little gossip.
1:16 p.m. — Newsmax promo: “President Trump is right.”
“We have an editorial policy of being supportive of the President.”
—Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy, November 24, 2020
1:34 p.m. — Back to Bachman
Our host tells us that there’s a poll showing that 20 percent of Americans are watching Newsmax.
It’s almost like he’s daring his audience to call bullshit on him.
1:37 p.m. to 2:07 p.m. — More Rudy
Sandwiched between ads (Mitch McConnell asking for money for the Georgia recount, and a Newsmax promo with Larry Kudlow claiming he goes to Newsmax first thing in the morning, which actually would explain a lot) we get 12 more minutes of the Rudy hearing uninterrupted.
And then he’s back again at the top of the hour for a few more minutes at the start of the two-hour block called American Agenda.
2:08 p.m. — Lin Wood Appears!
For the first time all day a host, Bob Sellers, gently pushes back on a conspiracy theory by mentioning the Georgia hand recount.
Lin Wood, the lawyer who has been freelancing with Sidney Powell on Trump’s behalf and was a star of The Max until he was unpersoned a few days later for not supporting Perdue and Loeffler, is supposed to be the expert on this, but he’s unsure how the hand recount took place. He thinks it was on the same machines. (Narrator: Wrong.)
“We had interference by foreign countries,” Wood says, ”Germany, Serbia, Iran, Venezuela, China and others.”
I just want to pause here for a second to diagram the supposed Georgia conspiracy again:
The perpetrators now include the governments of at least five foreign countries, Dominion Voting Systems, local elected officials in multiple counties, the people driving the trucks and the vans with the fake ballots, hackers, Governor Brian Kemp, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Seems plausible.
2:11 p.m. — Rudy again
I need a drink.
2:36 p.m. — Live look at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Arizona
The rally features several Confederate flags—because the Confederate flag is all about Arizona’s Southern heritage and absolutely not anything else—and a few dozen people screaming and spitting all over each other with no masks.
Holocaust denier Vincent James is there with a bullhorn screaming about the (((global special interests))).
2:39 p.m. — Commercial
Sebastian Gorka is doing an ad read for “Balance of Nature” pills, talking about how they are a key part of living a healthy life.
I mean. . .
3:05 p.m. — Dick Morris, again
He’s repeating the state legislature coup slash fic. I’m grabbing some lunch.
4:00 p.m. — The Howie Carr Show
Howie Carr, who has been a fixture of Boston conservative talk radio since the 1980s, does one hour of his four-hour radio show as a simulcast on Newsmax every weekday afternoon.
Carr shares the results of a listener poll that asked “Do you believe Joe Biden was really injured playing with his dog?” Only 13 percent of his respondents are buying this “official” story.
Carr then goes on to discuss how susceptible Democrats are to being fed conspiracies by their party leaders.
After an exchange with a caller about John F. Kennedy, Carr says that today’s Democrats are Communists and are “closer to Lee Harvey Oswald than to JFK.”
JFK, according to Carr, was killed by the “deep state/CIA.” And then he pivots to discussing how the Democrats stole the 1960 election, too, just like they are stealing the 2020 election.
It didn’t “really work out for them” in 1960, he says, so they should be careful this time. I’m not sure how to take that except as a not-so-subtle suggestion that Joe Biden might get assassinated.
I know, I know: It’s crazy to think that someone on Newsmax would be hinting at violent death for his political opponents.
4:34 p.m. — A political opponent’s execution is called for by Joe diGenova
Carr opens his segment with diGenova saying that he normally has the legal eagle on to talk about “Obamagate,” but that this week they’re going to change things up and talk about the coup.
DiGenova dishes out more of the same: the Dominion systems had “incredible hackability”; there was a four-circuit-breaker shutdown in all the main states (huh?); millions of votes miraculously showed up in “dump trucks and tow trucks and vans.”
He then gets into a lengthy discussion about which state legislatures are most likely to have the stones to steal the election from Biden. He praises Reince Priebus’ work in Wisconsin on this count.
Carr asks diGenova about the rumored military raids in Germany he’s been hearing about online. Here we have an absurd fabrication, made up in its every particular and easily disprovable, being discussed as though it were a normal news item meriting speculation as a possibility. DiGenova plays coy and retreats to familiar territory, saying the Durham report should come out to help give the state legislators more incentive to stop Biden since he was involved in Obamagate.
Joe diGenova then calls for the execution of Chris Krebs.
No big. Just a normal day on The Max.
4:56 p.m. — Blago Time
I tune back in to see Rod Blagojevich—the former Democratic governor of Illinois who was disgraced, impeached, convicted, imprisoned, and eventually pardoned by President Trump—talking about how Trump will prevail at the Supreme Court.
Sounds plausible!
5:00 p.m. — The Chris Salcedo Show
Salcedo is another talk-radio guy. And I’m not going to lie to you. His show is some weird shit. Some highlights:
There’s a “Marxist” crackdown on Thanksgiving, apparently.
States need to stop certifying the election for “Beijing Biden.”
“Barack Hussein Obama”—whom Salcedo calls a “reprobate”—has been “pimping a book” that’s used to advance a Marxist agenda. (Have any of these guys read Marx?)
Salcedo suggests that Biden taking office would lead to a race war.
Just so you understand, I’m not paraphrasing:
At this point I stop watching for a bit to go on MSNBC and get made fun of by Leslie Jones.
6:00 p.m. — Spicer & Co.
Ric Grenell has been invited on to make fun of the media. It’s kind of odd that a former national security advisor and former ambassador is doing a poor man’s Howie Kurtz imitation rather than discussing national security. Actually, it’s not odd so much as telling.
After what feels like a fortnight of Kurtz cosplay, Grenell moves on to briefly mention that he’s going to depose Clark County officials to expose their fraud later this week and that Nevada is the tip of the spear in Mr. Trump’s fight to “win” the election.
6:35 p.m. — We have a Rick Gates sighting!
Remember Rick Gates? He’s the guy who managed the Trump 2016 campaign with Paul Manafort, copped a plea during the Mueller investigation, and was sentenced to prison and probation. Gates tells Spicer that “the only thing diverse about Biden’s cabinet is the number of favors they have doled out.”
Here I want to note that Gates was indicted for conspiracy against the United States in part for doing favors for foreign clients.
Gates then adds that he would be grateful for a pardon like the one Mike Flynn got.
Fingers crossed, Ricky!
One final note about Spicer’s show: Something like 90 percent of the Newsmax programming I’ve seen today was about the “rigged” election.
But 90 percent of Spicer’s show was complaining about how the Fake News Media is nice to Biden with scant Hot Coup Talk.
Memo to Chris Ruddy: I know that Spicer is the biggest star in your stable, but his reticence to go full-coup makes me wonder if he isn’t just a cuck in a sheep’s baggy suit. Not sure he’s really the kind of reliable guy you want to build your Fox Killer Deathstar around. Maybe give Emerald his time slot?
Spicer must have a sense that the suits are going to be ringing him about this though . . . his tease for tomorrow’s show is Fraud City with special guest Matt Gaetz.
7:00 p.m. — Greg Kelly Reports
“If you aren’t making a concerted effort to watch Newsmax,” says Kelly, a former local New York TV host, “you are going to think that Joe Biden has clinched this thing.”
That’s true!
He goes on: “They want you to think that Donald Trump is crazy and this is all a coup and this is all unconstitutional.”
Also true!
I’m only a few minutes into the Greg Kelly experience, but already, he’s telling more truths than everyone else on The Max combined.
But then things take a turn.
Around ten minutes into his show, Kelly plays the new intro to NBC’s Meet the Press, which apparently no longer features a picture of Donald Trump and instead features a picture of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And—I’m not shitting you—Kelly compares this to how in Communist Russia and North Korea the rulers would “disappear” people from pictures.
There are “eerie similarities,” Kelly says, comparing Joe Biden’s America to totalitarian states.
Really makes you think.
Spicer & Co. Tuesday Encore
Tuesday, December 1, 6:07 p.m. — Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Trumpworld)
I can’t believe this, but I’m back on the pipe, lured in by Sean Spicer booking Matt Gaetz because honestly, whenever you get two superstars like this on channel 1072, you have have a chance to see some magic.
Gaetz has been brought on to float the next step in the Dumb & Dumber “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance” Coup should the state legislature cucks not have the testicular fortitude to steal the election like Dinesh D’Souza commands: the idea that Congress might decide not to certify the Electoral College result when they gavel into session in January.
“Just today, Gaetz says, “I’ve talked to Republicans in the House and Senate and there is an interest in looking into these irregularities to force a debate in Congress about whether to certify these states’ electors.”
Which Republicans did he talk to? That’s close-hold information, obviously. But this last ditch effort to keep the Orange God King in power is a real possibility. Trust Matt on this.
He then floats the idea that some “trucks that have gone missing with ballots and then may have appeared in Pennsylvania.”
This could be the lead that breaks the case wide open!
Spicer then brings up the myth that Pennsylvania stopped counting votes on election night at 9:00 p.m. and unveils this chart—which President Trump would show during his wheels-off Facetime speech the next day:
What could possibly explain that line, Spicer asks?
I don’t know, Sean, maybe Milwaukee releasing its vote count at the end of the night just like they do every freaking election year.
Which you would know.
BECAUSE WE WORKED FOR A WISCONSIN REPUBLICAN TOGETHER YOU HACK.
Sorry. It’s been a long 24 hours. That wasn’t me. That was The Max talking.
Anyway, this prompts Gaetz to fire off three minutes of election fraud gibberish: Ballot laundering scheme! “Urban core!” Ballots “willed into existence.” “Bad ballots” were “commingled with ballots that were lawfully cast.” There is a pool of “polluted ballots.”
Having done his duty, Gaetz departs and Spicer brings on Jordan Sekulow, a member of Trump’s legal team and the son of longtime Republican lawyer Jay Sekulow, who was one of Trump’s impeachment lawyers.
Sekulow fils says he thinks there’s a “very good chance the outcome changes” thanks to their case that would disenfranchise every single person who voted absentee in the state of Wisconsin because something something signature matching.
“Very good” is doing a lot of work there, obviously, but I couldn’t help but thinking that a person could make a lot of money betting with these people.
That’s a thing, by the way. One of the footnotes to this election is that betting markets continued to take action on the outcome of the election even after the polls closed and there was an entire universe of suckers out there betting that Trump would win even days after the election.
When I saw those betting lines unfolding in real time, I couldn’t understand them. How could someone watching the election returns think that it was smart to bet cash-money on Trump, even as he lost state after state.
And how could tens of thousands of Americans be pilfered to the tune of $170 million dollars to fight an election that was already over?
But my time with The Max has given me a pretty clear explanation.
There’s a sucker born every minute. Maybe even a couple million of them.
That’s Newsmax’s business model. And it’s working out pretty well for them.


thebulwark--2020-12-05--The Abuser and the Terrorist

The Abuser and the Terrorist

I am running on East Eighty-Ninth Street in the dark .
Can not breathe , can not stop .
In the streets kids are playing stickball—I can hear them , but they are a blur of pink and brown , flesh and T-shirts , voices .
Keep running .
Behind me somewhere is the man who whispers to me in the night , but I can not look back , can only run .
Keep running .
Air and night close around me , darkness at my throat , hair in my eyes , boots on the sidewalk , breathe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Are you all right ?
” but I do not , can not stop to answer .
Keep running .
Legs heavy ; Eighty-Ninth Street going west is all uphill .
Some nights it is whispers and some nights it is curses and tonight it was hisses , hot and filled with spit as a switchblade flashes to the corner of my eye and does not move from there , spit from his mouth spraying against cold steel , distorting the reflection .
I am looking forward , only looking forward , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Until he drops the knife .
“ Too good for you , ” he mutters and turns to walk to where I know the gun is , and this is where I start to run , pull the lock open , the door , down the stairs and through two front doors .
Surely he could have caught me by then if he ’ d wanted to .
I am just five feet , and he is six foot one .
Run .
Heels hard against the pavement , a hot June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I turn left .
Left is the obvious direction : toward home , not away .
But I turn left , and he knows I will turn left and so he catches up to me , a hand on my shoulder , the lights stop , breath stops , footsteps stop , and I realize that deafening drumming in my ears has been the sound of my own footsteps because that , too , stops .
“ What are you running from ?
” Boris says .
“ Come back with me.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ are standing on Third Avenue in the dark in front of a deli between Eighty-Eighth and Eighty-Ninth Streets and he is wearing jeans and the pale brown hairs of his chest are visible beneath a denim work shirt that is two too many buttons unbuttoned , and I am seventeen years old and I am stuck .
If I go home to my parents I will have to explain why I am back before 9:30 on a Saturday night .
I will have to act as if everything is fine when it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There does not seem to be a gun .
“ Don ’ t be such a silly , ” he says and sweeps me into an embrace , the kind of embrace the good guy sweeps the frightened maiden in when he comes to save her from the evil king , the evil bandits .
My head is spinning again but I am too confused and still too dumb with fright to argue .
“ Silly , ” he says again .
“ Don ’ t you know how much I love @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later , and a glorious spring day .
Two young men push their way along the crowded streets , sidestepping the toddlers darting underfoot .
Around them people roar and cheer , but it is as if the two don ’ t hear them ; they converse privately and keep walking , the tall , muscular older one and the younger , smaller , handsome one .
They are used to being noticed in a crowd—the younger , a star student , immensely popular in school ; the older , a professional boxer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notices them now .
They carry backpacks and wear caps to shield their faces from the sun .
At the corner they part ways then melt into the crowd , half a million people strong .
There is a flash .
And then another .
When the smoke clears men and women lie scattered across the Boston Marathon finish line , legs blasted far away from the bodies they only seconds ago had given motion , helped to run , or walk , or stand ; arms shorn from shoulders , blood and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boy , lying lifeless at his father ’ s feet .
In 2017 over 26,000 people were killed ( and thousands more were injured ) in terror attacks around the world , most of them in the Middle East .
That same year over 10 million men , women , and children became the victims of domestic violence in America alone .
Over 2,000 of them died .
These two facts are not unrelated .
Neither are the stories of domestic abusers and terrorists , and the experiences of their victims .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; the laurel , power .
Fists , bombs , words , rape , airplanes , sarin—it ’ s all the same .
You know there will be something .
You don ’ t know when .
You don ’ t know quite where .
You don ’ t know if you are safe , or if you ever will be .
This is what the fear is .
This is what terrorism does—in our homes .
In our streets .
In our lives .
Indeed the complex interrelationships between domestic violence and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of our current sociopolitical life , from economic patterns and political debates in America and Europe to suicide bombings and massacres in Paris and in Boston and in Charleston , South Carolina ; to the atrocities taking place across the Middle East : the stoning of women in Saudi Arabia , sex slavery and beheadings in the Islamic State , the shooting of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan ’ s Swat Valley .
Numerous studies reveal that cultures where women are more oppressed and violence against women is tolerated tend to be more violent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engage in warfare .
Indeed , as Soraya Chemaly wrote in the Huffington Post , “ The greater the polarization of gender in a household , the higher tolerance there is for violence and oppression and the greater the violence experienced by women and girls in those households , the greater the likelihood of militarization and national violence.
” On September 11 , 2001 , I was visiting my family in New York .
I ’ d grown up there .
This was my city .
It was also the city where I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ affairs—one at age seventeen , the other twenty-one years later .
In 2001 I was still recovering , not only from the second affair but from the ghosts of the first that the second had released , that lurked now in the corners of my days .
I startled easily .
Sudden movements caused me to recoil .
Raised male voices made me shiver .
Few nights passed without nightmares .
Yet even so , I hadn ’ t released the more recent lover—call him Rick—completely from my life .
He demanded contact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
More , I didn ’ t want to face so fully what I already really knew : that this man , who had so long been my partner , my ally , was in truth my enemy ; that a wish to trust someone isn ’ t quite enough to make you safe ; that sometimes , even when you do not see the danger , it is there .
And that I couldn ’ t control any of it because it was not , in fact , my fault .
On @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my friends , my neighbors , my city , become like me .
A car door slammed .
We trembled .
A truck backfired : our muscles ignited , prepared to run .
Newspapers asked : Why do they hate us ?
On television , pundits enumerated America ’ s many sins .
We searched our souls for answers : What had we done to deserve this slaughtering of thousands ?
What would we need to do to keep it from happening again ?
What were the rules we had somehow failed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this ?
” I asked Boris once , not long after the evening with the knife .
Bruises colored my arms and legs .
Fear colored my days and nights .
“ Don ’ t be silly , ” he had laughed .
“ Everybody does it.
” Everybody does it .
For the abuser as for the terrorist , this is how life is .
Both Rick and Boris were battered in their childhood homes .
And “ in cultures and countries that produce terrorists , ” writes Susan Heitler , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
.
.
.
The belief that dominating others via violence is a legitimate way to act pervades homes , the religious arena , and the behaviors of governments toward both their citizens and toward neighboring countries.
” Everybody does it .
This is why , in the end , domestic abuse , be it physical or emotional , affects not just women but children : sons who grow up to shoot children playing on the island of Utoya , Norway ; who plant pressure-cooker bombs in Boston ; who behead off-duty soldiers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; or who travel to Syria and join the Islamic State , kidnapping Americans and Jordanians and Englishmen and burning them alive , or capturing women by the thousands and selling them as sex slaves to one another .
Or they become the fathers of such sons , or they become the fathers of young girls they kill for honor—in Pakistan , in Montreal , in Texas .
And it affects not just wives but daughters—daughters who become the mothers of such sons , or the mothers of the mothers of such sons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ become jihadi brides in Syria—and are often raped or killed there , too .
But it is not simply a matter of repeating learned behavior : Daddy hits , Baby hits .
Rather the child who grows up in an abusive home tends to develop a specific personality , marked by a sense of shame , a ( pathological ) concern for honor , and what psychiatrists call “ pathological narcissism , ” all bound to one another and to a patriarchal machismo , to visions—romantic , political , literary , and socioeconomic—of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white steeds , brave , all-protecting , and ever victorious .
All three of these traits—shame , pathological ( malignant ) narcissism , and an honor culture—have been linked by psychiatrists , sociologists , and others to violence , and specifically to terrorism .
The honor culture that characterizes Muslim societies is—not coincidentally—also often attributed to the American South , where domestic violence rates are the highest in the country and where right-wing terrorist and extremist groups such as the Odinists , the League of the South , and the Council of Conservative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof , find most of their membership .
Indeed studies have shown these traits in common among the cultures and homes that breed abusive behavior and terrorism , leading to what writer Anne Manne , author of The Life of I , a study of narcissism , calls the “ shame-rage spiral of the narcissist who reacts to failure with other-directed , humiliated fury.
” Little surprise , then , that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was charged with assault and battery in 2009 for beating up his then-girlfriend , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wife , Katherine Russell ; or that he was also known to have hit his sisters ; or that Mohammed Atta , one of the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks , was mollycoddled by his doting mother while his father , according to a Frontline report , “ was a domineering figure and a strict disciplinarian ” —a combination that , according to narcissism expert Otto Kernberg , often results in a malignant narcissistic disorder in the child , who is at once slammed with shame while at the same time made to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ special.
” Not all child victims of domestic violence become terrorists , of course , nor do they always become abusers .
Many become violent criminals .
A study of some 2,200 children published in 1998 by the Cuyahoga County Community Mental Health Research Institute found a strong correlation between recent exposure to domestic violence and violent behavior from the children .
A 2015 report summarizing the results of interviews with 44 members of violent white supremacist groups found that 45 percent of them reported having been physically abused as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the general population ) and 46 percent reported having been neglected as a child ( compared to 12 percent in the general population ) .
Some children raised in such circumstances go on to lead normal , healthy lives ; but too often a child ’ s mind is formed by a dangerous culture that resides either within or outside the family—and sometimes both : a culture based on principles of machismo , shame , and honor , and in which malignant narcissism breeds , infecting thought , tradition , and daily life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ does this happen ?
And when it does , who will go beyond interpersonal violence in the private sphere , as Tamerlan Tsarnaev did , and take vengeance to the streets ?
Who will emerge so scarred , as Mohammed Atta did , that he will plan and take part in a massacre of thousands ?
What motivates them , if anything , any differently than the man who beats his son , the wife who beats her daughter , the husband who slams his new bride ’ s head against the bathroom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough to say hello ?
Who will find a false salvation , a false heroism , in religion and martyrdom ?
Who will use that religion , too , to murder a wife or daughter ?
And what can we do , the rest of us , to stop it ?
More urgently—how in an age of increasing narcissism ( a phenomenon only partly explainable by Facebook and Instagram ) do we protect our sons , our daughters , and our communities from what counterterrorism experts term “ jihadi cool ” ?
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ understand , are not a question of what America and the West have “ done wrong , ” easily remedied by fixing our own behavior so they will no longer “ hate us.
” They come , instead , from the societies and families of the terrorists themselves—young men ( and often young women ) raised not only with specific worldviews but with specific self-views that lead them to become the Joel Steinbergs , the O.J .
Simpsons , the Tamerlan Tsarnaevs and Mohammed Attas and Anders Breiviks and Osama bin Ladens of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of shame and honor and abuse and violence and terror is not a simple task : the knots are intricate and tight , like the designs on a Turkish carpet , where the background and the pattern often are the same .
Rick comes home as he usually does , shortly after six .
I am still at my desk in a nook beside the living room .
“ Um .
.
.
because I like the sun ?
” I am suddenly searching for answers , for the right answer , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I can see that he is angry , even if I don ’ t know why .
“ The view ?
” “ Not really , ” I say , and hope I sound reassuring .
“ You really can ’ t see that far in—look how little we can see in the apartments across the street .
You can barely see beyond the windowsill.
” “ They can see , ” he says .
“ What do you do , stand in the window all day ?
Did you close them when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did they see that , too ?
” I tell him that I closed them anyway .
But I am now on guard .
The next day I draw the curtains shut before he returns home .
This time , he is glowering before the front door even shuts behind him .
“ What the fuck ?
” he says .
I look at him , and then at the curtained windows .
“ Did you spend the whole day like this ?
” He is screaming now , his face inches away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a drug den , like a crack house in here .
What the fuck is wrong with you ?
” I am without words .
Seeking peace , I go to open them again .
He stops me as my hand touches the raw cotton , the creamy cotton curtains we hung together when we first moved in , the first gesture of a home—our first home together .
When he pushes me , my back slams against the wall .
“ Just leave them , ” he says .
His face is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , just so slightly , in a passing breeze .
Another obvious nexus of domestic abuse and terrorism : guns .
Domestic abusers use guns to kill approximately five hundred women in America every year ; that means , as a 2018 Brady Center report put it , that a woman is shot and killed by a former or current partner every sixteen hours .
What ’ s more , mass shootings and terror attacks worldwide have made clear that a domestic abuser with a weapon is more likely than anyone else to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change , we need to sound the alarm , both domestically and abroad , on family abuse .
As Chemaly notes : “ It ’ s violence in homes , and tolerance , societal tolerance , for violence in homes , that is the necessary precursor to all of this public violence.
” Even more , we need to look more closely at families , communities , and cultures that oppress women , bearing in mind Valerie Hudson and colleagues ’ determination that “ the best predictor of a state ’ s peacefulness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or its level of democracy , or whether it is Islamic or not .
The very best predictor of a state ’ s peacefulness is its level of violence against women.
” Because of this , we—and by “ we ” I mean not just governments but civilians everywhere—must actively search out and support initiatives for women ’ s freedom and education worldwide , knowing that the emancipation of women is the key to freedom for us all : freedom from violence , freedom from warfare , and freedom , at last , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ measures Americans in particular have failed to enact , and it is impossible to take on the culture of violence without them .
In the United States , for instance , perpetrators of sexual assault—but not domestic violence—are placed on state or federal registries .
They face restrictions on where they are allowed to live .
They are required to inform neighborhood residents of their sex-offender status .
If convicted of felony sexual assault , they permanently forfeit their right to bear arms .
They are required to report regularly to local police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the authorities .
Some states have required them to provide law enforcement agencies with the names of their internet service providers , all online screen names , and email accounts .
But those convicted of domestic abuse don ’ t face such consequences .
True , people convicted of felony domestic violence or , under a law passed in 1996 , of misdemeanor domestic violence forfeit their Second Amendment rights , as do those with restraining orders against them .
But as Margaret Talbot noted in the New Yorker after the Pulse nightclub @ @ @ @ @ @ @ similar state laws are spottily enforced .
These regulations are only effective if states put in place a screening process for potential gun buyers , to see if they have restraining orders against them—and many states have not.
” In addition , she adds , “ Some states have laws that allow police to seize firearms when responding to domestic-violence incidents , but most do not.
” Further , “ Municipal nuisance ordinances across the country allow landlords to evict tenants who have frequently called 911—a punishment that falls particularly hard on victims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a domestic abuser ?
He might go to jail , and he might forfeit child custody rights , and he might have to pay a fine .
But if there are no visible bruises , no weapons in sight , chances are none of this will happen .
And as is well known , victims often retract their statements after an arrest , fearing repercussions once the abuser is released .
We lie : to protect ourselves , to protect our fantasies , to protect the mirage of a love that we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know , does not exist .
But here is what should happen , if any of this is going to change .
Domestic abusers must not only lose their right to bear arms but—like sexual abusers—be required to report in regularly to law enforcement agencies , and have their internet activities monitored .
Alarms should be raised whenever a domestic abuser turns up in Facebook groups about guns , violence , right-wing hate , Islamist ideology , and misogyny .
In such cases , in fact , Facebook , along with other social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intervene .
Above all , any laws that punish victims for seeking help must be struck down .
Still , this does not address the larger , cultural issues .
Yes , encouraging youth to find self-worth through pride and dignity—and not honor or shame based on their gender , religion , geography , or position—is key to inspiring cultural change , as are endeavors to foster and nurture empathy .
But even expertise in art appreciation and theater , for instance , was not enough to keep Charlie Sheen from repeatedly beating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ art dealer Joseph Nahmad from allegedly pounding his ex-girlfriend ’ s head against the wall of his multimillion-dollar home , or choking her from time to time .
Boris had attended the same elite private school I did ; in fact we became friends in English Lit .
Which is why even if countries across the globe increase arts education and access to museums and theater and literature , and so , inspire empathy ; even if philosophic discourse becomes part of every Western and even Middle Eastern school curriculum , inspiring reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ painting and music and dance and drama are offered as replacements to violence as outlets for expression ; even if domestic abuse and the oppression of women are demeaned , devalued , and condemned , so much more will still be needed to end the malignant narcissism , the need for attention , the victim chic , the longing for the romantic warrior hero , and so , the shame , the terror , the violence .
It is , for instance , well past time to do away with the “ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the West , and to discourage the coronation of young boys—along with the enslavement of young girls—in the Middle East and North Africa region and other honor cultures worldwide .
This includes putting pressure on governments abroad to end child marriage , and criminalizing child marriage here at home , where several states permit marriage at 15 with parental permission .
It is equally past time to call an end to victimhood culture , that cousin of pathological narcissism that seeks vengeance and control in the face of insult and that finds such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demonstrate sufficient piety and honor .
Or put another way : If we hope to end extremism in our communities , we must end the extremism in the ways we raise our children .
They are neither little gods nor tiny devils .
They need be neither worshipped nor destroyed .
Whatever their gender .
Wherever they are born .
Wherever they are raised .
At the same time , we in the West will have to take a harder look at the realities of how we live .
Is this really how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rick one night , trapped in a heated argument , I called 911 .
Two police officers , a man and a woman , soon arrived , leading us into separate rooms .
You need to think , the policewoman said to me , her voice low yet strong , assuring , if you really want to live like this .
In that moment , standing in my bedroom , the world as I had lived it broke open , shattered into pieces to the floor .
And then—I could almost even see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vivid and clear .
There was no more refusing to believe .
There was no more finding solace in the good times .
There was no more blaming humid summer afternoons , the possibility of his headache , the words I must have misspoken , the dress I should not have worn—or should have .
The only curtains that mattered were the ones I had drawn over my own eyes , merely to keep on living a romantic fantasy that had suddenly grown dark .
Now , they didn ’ t merely open @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down .
[ This article is adapted with permission from Rage : Narcissism , Patriarchy , and the Culture of Terrorism ( Potomac Books , 233 pp.
, $ 29.95 ) . ]

I am running on East Eighty-Ninth Street in the dark. Cannot breathe, cannot stop. In the streets kids are playing stickball—I can hear them, but they are a blur of pink and brown, flesh and T-shirts, voices. Keep running. Behind me somewhere is the man who whispers to me in the night, but I cannot look back, can only run. Keep running. Air and night close around me, darkness at my throat, hair in my eyes, boots on the sidewalk, breathe, choke, a man asks, “Are you all right?” but I do not, cannot stop to answer. Keep running. Legs heavy; Eighty-Ninth Street going west is all uphill. Some nights it is whispers and some nights it is curses and tonight it was hisses, hot and filled with spit as a switchblade flashes to the corner of my eye and does not move from there, spit from his mouth spraying against cold steel, distorting the reflection. I am looking forward, only looking forward, do not dare to move my eyes. Until he drops the knife. “Too good for you,” he mutters and turns to walk to where I know the gun is, and this is where I start to run, pull the lock open, the door, down the stairs and through two front doors. Surely he could have caught me by then if he’d wanted to. I am just five feet, and he is six foot one.
Run. Heels hard against the pavement, a hot June night, I still remember, run.
I turn left. Left is the obvious direction: toward home, not away. But I turn left, and he knows I will turn left and so he catches up to me, a hand on my shoulder, the lights stop, breath stops, footsteps stop, and I realize that deafening drumming in my ears has been the sound of my own footsteps because that, too, stops.
“What are you running from?” Boris says. “Come back with me.”
Years later I still remember we are standing on Third Avenue in the dark in front of a deli between Eighty-Eighth and Eighty-Ninth Streets and he is wearing jeans and the pale brown hairs of his chest are visible beneath a denim work shirt that is two too many buttons unbuttoned, and I am seventeen years old and I am stuck. If I go home to my parents I will have to explain why I am back before 9:30 on a Saturday night. I will have to act as if everything is fine when it is not. I turn to face him. There does not seem to be a gun. “Don’t be such a silly,” he says and sweeps me into an embrace, the kind of embrace the good guy sweeps the frightened maiden in when he comes to save her from the evil king, the evil bandits. My head is spinning again but I am too confused and still too dumb with fright to argue.
“Silly,” he says again. “Don’t you know how much I love you?”
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
It is thirty-five years later, and a glorious spring day. Two young men push their way along the crowded streets, sidestepping the toddlers darting underfoot. Around them people roar and cheer, but it is as if the two don’t hear them; they converse privately and keep walking, the tall, muscular older one and the younger, smaller, handsome one. They are used to being noticed in a crowd—the younger, a star student, immensely popular in school; the older, a professional boxer, accustomed to the stage—but no one notices them now. They carry backpacks and wear caps to shield their faces from the sun. At the corner they part ways then melt into the crowd, half a million people strong.
There is a flash. And then another.
When the smoke clears men and women lie scattered across the Boston Marathon finish line, legs blasted far away from the bodies they only seconds ago had given motion, helped to run, or walk, or stand; arms shorn from shoulders, blood and bone and horror, and a small boy, lying lifeless at his father’s feet.
In 2017 over 26,000 people were killed (and thousands more were injured) in terror attacks around the world, most of them in the Middle East.
That same year over 10 million men, women, and children became the victims of domestic violence in America alone. Over 2,000 of them died.
These two facts are not unrelated. Neither are the stories of domestic abusers and terrorists, and the experiences of their victims. In both cases, the weapon is fear; the laurel, power. Fists, bombs, words, rape, airplanes, sarin—it’s all the same. You know there will be something. You don’t know when. You don’t know quite where. You don’t know if you are safe, or if you ever will be.
This is what the fear is.
This is what terrorism does—in our homes. In our streets. In our lives.
Indeed the complex interrelationships between domestic violence and terrorism form a web that captures much of our current sociopolitical life, from economic patterns and political debates in America and Europe to suicide bombings and massacres in Paris and in Boston and in Charleston, South Carolina; to the atrocities taking place across the Middle East: the stoning of women in Saudi Arabia, sex slavery and beheadings in the Islamic State, the shooting of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Numerous studies reveal that cultures where women are more oppressed and violence against women is tolerated tend to be more violent in general, and more inclined to engage in warfare. Indeed, as Soraya Chemaly wrote in the Huffington Post, “The greater the polarization of gender in a household, the higher tolerance there is for violence and oppression and the greater the violence experienced by women and girls in those households, the greater the likelihood of militarization and national violence.”
On September 11, 2001, I was visiting my family in New York. I’d grown up there. This was my city.
It was also the city where I’d lived through two violent love affairs—one at age seventeen, the other twenty-one years later. In 2001 I was still recovering, not only from the second affair but from the ghosts of the first that the second had released, that lurked now in the corners of my days. I startled easily. Sudden movements caused me to recoil. Raised male voices made me shiver. Few nights passed without nightmares.
Yet even so, I hadn’t released the more recent lover—call him Rick—completely from my life. He demanded contact. I didn’t dare refuse. More, I didn’t want to face so fully what I already really knew: that this man, who had so long been my partner, my ally, was in truth my enemy; that a wish to trust someone isn’t quite enough to make you safe; that sometimes, even when you do not see the danger, it is there.
And that I couldn’t control any of it because it was not, in fact, my fault.
On September 12, 2001, I watched my friends, my neighbors, my city, become like me. A car door slammed. We trembled. A truck backfired: our muscles ignited, prepared to run. Newspapers asked: Why do they hate us? On television, pundits enumerated America’s many sins. We searched our souls for answers: What had we done to deserve this slaughtering of thousands? What would we need to do to keep it from happening again? What were the rules we had somehow failed to follow?
“Why are you doing this?” I asked Boris once, not long after the evening with the knife. Bruises colored my arms and legs. Fear colored my days and nights.
“Don’t be silly,” he had laughed. “Everybody does it.”
Everybody does it. For the abuser as for the terrorist, this is how life is. Both Rick and Boris were battered in their childhood homes. And “in cultures and countries that produce terrorists,” writes Susan Heitler, “rates of domestic abuse are very high. . . . The belief that dominating others via violence is a legitimate way to act pervades homes, the religious arena, and the behaviors of governments toward both their citizens and toward neighboring countries.”
Everybody does it.
This is why, in the end, domestic abuse, be it physical or emotional, affects not just women but children: sons who grow up to shoot children playing on the island of Utoya, Norway; who plant pressure-cooker bombs in Boston; who behead off-duty soldiers in London and shoot filmmakers in Amsterdam; or who travel to Syria and join the Islamic State, kidnapping Americans and Jordanians and Englishmen and burning them alive, or capturing women by the thousands and selling them as sex slaves to one another. Or they become the fathers of such sons, or they become the fathers of young girls they kill for honor—in Pakistan, in Montreal, in Texas. And it affects not just wives but daughters—daughters who become the mothers of such sons, or the mothers of the mothers of such sons, or daughters who run off to become jihadi brides in Syria—and are often raped or killed there, too.
But it is not simply a matter of repeating learned behavior: Daddy hits, Baby hits. Rather the child who grows up in an abusive home tends to develop a specific personality, marked by a sense of shame, a (pathological) concern for honor, and what psychiatrists call “pathological narcissism,” all bound to one another and to a patriarchal machismo, to visions—romantic, political, literary, and socioeconomic—of men as warrior-heroes, knights on powerful white steeds, brave, all-protecting, and ever victorious. All three of these traits—shame, pathological (malignant) narcissism, and an honor culture—have been linked by psychiatrists, sociologists, and others to violence, and specifically to terrorism. The honor culture that characterizes Muslim societies is—not coincidentally—also often attributed to the American South, where domestic violence rates are the highest in the country and where right-wing terrorist and extremist groups such as the Odinists, the League of the South, and the Council of Conservative Citizens, which has been linked to white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof, find most of their membership.
Indeed studies have shown these traits in common among the cultures and homes that breed abusive behavior and terrorism, leading to what writer Anne Manne, author of The Life of I, a study of narcissism, calls the “shame-rage spiral of the narcissist who reacts to failure with other-directed, humiliated fury.”
Little surprise, then, that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was charged with assault and battery in 2009 for beating up his then-girlfriend, and was later known to have abused his wife, Katherine Russell; or that he was also known to have hit his sisters; or that Mohammed Atta, one of the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks, was mollycoddled by his doting mother while his father, according to a Frontline report, “was a domineering figure and a strict disciplinarian”—a combination that, according to narcissism expert Otto Kernberg, often results in a malignant narcissistic disorder in the child, who is at once slammed with shame while at the same time made to feel, in one way or another, “special.”
Not all child victims of domestic violence become terrorists, of course, nor do they always become abusers. Many become violent criminals. A study of some 2,200 children published in 1998 by the Cuyahoga County Community Mental Health Research Institute found a strong correlation between recent exposure to domestic violence and violent behavior from the children. A 2015 report summarizing the results of interviews with 44 members of violent white supremacist groups found that 45 percent of them reported having been physically abused as a child (compared to 28 percent in the general population) and 46 percent reported having been neglected as a child (compared to 12 percent in the general population). Some children raised in such circumstances go on to lead normal, healthy lives; but too often a child’s mind is formed by a dangerous culture that resides either within or outside the family—and sometimes both: a culture based on principles of machismo, shame, and honor, and in which malignant narcissism breeds, infecting thought, tradition, and daily life.
And the terror starts. How does this happen?
And when it does, who will go beyond interpersonal violence in the private sphere, as Tamerlan Tsarnaev did, and take vengeance to the streets? Who will emerge so scarred, as Mohammed Atta did, that he will plan and take part in a massacre of thousands? What motivates them, if anything, any differently than the man who beats his son, the wife who beats her daughter, the husband who slams his new bride’s head against the bathroom sink because she wasn’t quick enough to say hello? Who will find a false salvation, a false heroism, in religion and martyrdom? Who will use that religion, too, to murder a wife or daughter? And what can we do, the rest of us, to stop it? More urgently—how in an age of increasing narcissism (a phenomenon only partly explainable by Facebook and Instagram) do we protect our sons, our daughters, and our communities from what counterterrorism experts term “jihadi cool”?
The forces that breed terrorists, we now understand, are not a question of what America and the West have “done wrong,” easily remedied by fixing our own behavior so they will no longer “hate us.” They come, instead, from the societies and families of the terrorists themselves—young men (and often young women) raised not only with specific worldviews but with specific self-views that lead them to become the Joel Steinbergs, the O.J. Simpsons, the Tamerlan Tsarnaevs and Mohammed Attas and Anders Breiviks and Osama bin Ladens of our age.
Yet untying the strands of shame and honor and abuse and violence and terror is not a simple task: the knots are intricate and tight, like the designs on a Turkish carpet, where the background and the pattern often are the same.
Rick comes home as he usually does, shortly after six. I am still at my desk in a nook beside the living room.
“Why are the curtains open?”
“Um . . . because I like the sun?” I am suddenly searching for answers, for the right answer, for him not to be angry. And I can see that he is angry, even if I don’t know why. “The view?”
“Neighbors can see in.”
“Not really,” I say, and hope I sound reassuring. “You really can’t see that far in—look how little we can see in the apartments across the street. You can barely see beyond the windowsill.”
“They can see,” he says. “What do you do, stand in the window all day? Did you close them when you got dressed this morning, or did they see that, too?”
The truth is, I don’t remember.
I tell him that I closed them anyway.
But I am now on guard. The next day I draw the curtains shut before he returns home.
This time, he is glowering before the front door even shuts behind him. “What the fuck?” he says.
“What?”
“The curtains.”
I look at him, and then at the curtained windows.
“Did you spend the whole day like this?” He is screaming now, his face inches away from mine. “It looks like a drug den, like a crack house in here. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I am without words. Seeking peace, I go to open them again. He stops me as my hand touches the raw cotton, the creamy cotton curtains we hung together when we first moved in, the first gesture of a home—our first home together. When he pushes me, my back slams against the wall. “Just leave them,” he says. His face is dark and furious. The curtains move, just so slightly, in a passing breeze.
Another obvious nexus of domestic abuse and terrorism: guns. Domestic abusers use guns to kill approximately five hundred women in America every year; that means, as a 2018 Brady Center report put it, that a woman is shot and killed by a former or current partner every sixteen hours. What’s more, mass shootings and terror attacks worldwide have made clear that a domestic abuser with a weapon is more likely than anyone else to commit mass murder.
For that to change, we need to sound the alarm, both domestically and abroad, on family abuse. As Chemaly notes: “It’s violence in homes, and tolerance, societal tolerance, for violence in homes, that is the necessary precursor to all of this public violence.” Even more, we need to look more closely at families, communities, and cultures that oppress women, bearing in mind Valerie Hudson and colleagues’ determination that “the best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is not its level of wealth, or its level of democracy, or whether it is Islamic or not. The very best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is its level of violence against women.”
Because of this, we—and by “we” I mean not just governments but civilians everywhere—must actively search out and support initiatives for women’s freedom and education worldwide, knowing that the emancipation of women is the key to freedom for us all: freedom from violence, freedom from warfare, and freedom, at last, from terror.
There are also practical measures Americans in particular have failed to enact, and it is impossible to take on the culture of violence without them. In the United States, for instance, perpetrators of sexual assault—but not domestic violence—are placed on state or federal registries. They face restrictions on where they are allowed to live. They are required to inform neighborhood residents of their sex-offender status. If convicted of felony sexual assault, they permanently forfeit their right to bear arms. They are required to report regularly to local police and report any change of address to the authorities. Some states have required them to provide law enforcement agencies with the names of their internet service providers, all online screen names, and email accounts.
But those convicted of domestic abuse don’t face such consequences. True, people convicted of felony domestic violence or, under a law passed in 1996, of misdemeanor domestic violence forfeit their Second Amendment rights, as do those with restraining orders against them. But as Margaret Talbot noted in the New Yorker after the Pulse nightclub massacre, “The federal law and similar state laws are spottily enforced. These regulations are only effective if states put in place a screening process for potential gun buyers, to see if they have restraining orders against them—and many states have not.” In addition, she adds, “Some states have laws that allow police to seize firearms when responding to domestic-violence incidents, but most do not.” Further, “Municipal nuisance ordinances across the country allow landlords to evict tenants who have frequently called 911—a punishment that falls particularly hard on victims of domestic violence.”
What does happen to a domestic abuser? He might go to jail, and he might forfeit child custody rights, and he might have to pay a fine. But if there are no visible bruises, no weapons in sight, chances are none of this will happen. And as is well known, victims often retract their statements after an arrest, fearing repercussions once the abuser is released. We lie: to protect ourselves, to protect our fantasies, to protect the mirage of a love that we know, but cannot bear to know, does not exist.
But here is what should happen, if any of this is going to change. Domestic abusers must not only lose their right to bear arms but—like sexual abusers—be required to report in regularly to law enforcement agencies, and have their internet activities monitored. Alarms should be raised whenever a domestic abuser turns up in Facebook groups about guns, violence, right-wing hate, Islamist ideology, and misogyny. In such cases, in fact, Facebook, along with other social media companies, should be compelled to intervene. Above all, any laws that punish victims for seeking help must be struck down.
Still, this does not address the larger, cultural issues. Yes, encouraging youth to find self-worth through pride and dignity—and not honor or shame based on their gender, religion, geography, or position—is key to inspiring cultural change, as are endeavors to foster and nurture empathy. But even expertise in art appreciation and theater, for instance, was not enough to keep Charlie Sheen from repeatedly beating his various wives, or celebrity London art dealer Joseph Nahmad from allegedly pounding his ex-girlfriend’s head against the wall of his multimillion-dollar home, or choking her from time to time. Boris had attended the same elite private school I did; in fact we became friends in English Lit.
Which is why even if countries across the globe increase arts education and access to museums and theater and literature, and so, inspire empathy; even if philosophic discourse becomes part of every Western and even Middle Eastern school curriculum, inspiring reason; even if classes in writing and painting and music and dance and drama are offered as replacements to violence as outlets for expression; even if domestic abuse and the oppression of women are demeaned, devalued, and condemned, so much more will still be needed to end the malignant narcissism, the need for attention, the victim chic, the longing for the romantic warrior hero, and so, the shame, the terror, the violence.
It is, for instance, well past time to do away with the “I am special” upbringing of children in the West, and to discourage the coronation of young boys—along with the enslavement of young girls—in the Middle East and North Africa region and other honor cultures worldwide. This includes putting pressure on governments abroad to end child marriage, and criminalizing child marriage here at home, where several states permit marriage at 15 with parental permission. It is equally past time to call an end to victimhood culture, that cousin of pathological narcissism that seeks vengeance and control in the face of insult and that finds such insult in any gesture that fails to demonstrate sufficient piety and honor.
Or put another way: If we hope to end extremism in our communities, we must end the extremism in the ways we raise our children. They are neither little gods nor tiny devils. They need be neither worshipped nor destroyed. Whatever their gender. Wherever they are born. Wherever they are raised.
At the same time, we in the West will have to take a harder look at the realities of how we live. Is this really how we want to live?
Alone with Rick one night, trapped in a heated argument, I called 911. Two police officers, a man and a woman, soon arrived, leading us into separate rooms. You need to think, the policewoman said to me, her voice low yet strong, assuring, if you really want to live like this.
In that moment, standing in my bedroom, the world as I had lived it broke open, shattered into pieces to the floor. And then—I could almost even see it—the shards rebuilt themselves around me, vivid and clear. There was no more refusing to believe. There was no more finding solace in the good times. There was no more blaming humid summer afternoons, the possibility of his headache, the words I must have misspoken, the dress I should not have worn—or should have. The only curtains that mattered were the ones I had drawn over my own eyes, merely to keep on living a romantic fantasy that had suddenly grown dark.
Now, they didn’t merely open. I reached up and pulled them down.
[This article is adapted with permission from Rage: Narcissism, Patriarchy, and the Culture of Terrorism (Potomac Books, 233 pp., $29.95).]