Home > America’s Battered Wife Syndrome

America’s Battered Wife Syndrome

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 14 September 2005
11 comments

Governments USA

Dear America,

As a friend of the family I can’t sit back and watch you do this to yourself without saying something. Consider this a long distance intervention.

Your man is no good. He treats you like crap, lies to you, abuses you, bullies you, exploits you, takes your money. As a friend I want to tell you that you deserve better. You deserve a person that treats you with respect, cares about your welfare, and your children’s welfare, but that’s not George and it never will be.

Do you tell yourself that he’ll stop, or that it won’t get worse? He won’t ever stop, every insult, injury and death he has caused are a line that once crossed will never be uncrossed. Forget the dream. You will never have the American dream with George. You have to forget about what might have been, what George might have been, and realise that at the end of the day you are what you do, and look at George’s track record.

Notice how he’s alienated all your friends? Who can blame them, they can’t understand why you stay with him when he treats you like shit and embarrasses you in front of everybody. The more his public behaviour overshadows yours, The more doubt creeps over them, they wonder if they knew you as well as they thought they did. You seem to have changed - if you condone his behaviour- and your silence can create the impression that you do. People are more inclined to take things at face value when they feel alienated. Your friends remember the good times you had together, the heroic battles you fought together, all of the intricate interweavings between their families and yours through time and space. Do you even recognise yourself anymore America? He is a drunken, coke-addled loser and he always will be, you should kick him out of your house today before he can destroy any more members of your family, your history, your culture, before he decimates your bank account so irretrievably that China and Saudi Arabia repossess all your stuff.

YOU CAN DO BETTER! You are an amazing country, beautiful, interesting, funny, positively glamorous, you wouldn’t stay single for five minutes, you know that suitors would be competing for your affections and any one of them would be ten times better than George. And how can you stand his god-awful Stepford’s answer to Marie-Antoinette mother, piping up with another casual atrocity every time she opens her mouth.

Because of George and his friends global warming is now upon us - I know what it has cost your family already, combined with George’s complete uselessness and indifference in a crisis. It would probably now be possible for a mathematician to calculate exactly how much of all of our futures we are losing for every minute you stay with that sick,twisted, idiot.

I see you doing what everyone in your position does - you end up looking to the perpetrator for comfort because theres no one else left, and look at how he reacts for Christ’s sake, look at what he did to New Orleans, and you should know that yet again he did it in front of all of your friends, all of us saw nothing happening whilst thousands died, all of us heard Ray Negen and the president of Jefferson Parish (I must heard him 30+ times now and I still cry every time) and all of us heard George’s bloody mother. We have been trying to help and he won’t let us. We are all appalled and aghast, it breaks our hearts to see him hurting you like this, and you not fighting back, you just take it and take it as it slowly spirals down into the pits of hell. What will it take America, will you let him kill you before you’ll kick him out? This is not rhetoric America, he is killing you every day you stay with him. If I had described your relationship with George to you back when you were still with Bill you never would have believed me. He degrades you in little increments, every day he erodes your assets as well as your dignity, your reputation, your legacy and your life America.

All of our TV crews were rescuing survivors as they filmed the devastation because there was nobody else there to help them, all of us saw the victims being treated like some sudden new insurgency. with suspicion and hostility. Those poor people, the heart & soul of New Orleans, the very people whose culture and history made New Orleans beloved around the world, He just left your brothers and sisters to die. Can you really continue in your relationship with George after this? There is a degree at which cognitive dissonance becomes outright delusion. He is a maniac, he is destroying your life, please, please leave him, just leave him, only you have the power to make it stop.

He is selling out your family business, if you let him continue like this how are you going to live? How are you going to feed your children, what happens if you get ill? Everything he has ever touched has turned to shit, he puts any idiot that’ll kiss his ass into positions of power and New Orleans is the result. Kick him out America! Do it today! I know it feels like you would be leaping into a void, but I promise you, you will be leaping out of one. Your friends will come back as soon as they see you are back to your old self, they really miss you. I know that less than 36% of your heart is still in it. Go with the 67% of you, that 36% is just that vestigial, primitive part of the brain that clings to the familiar no matter how badly the familiar sucks.

It all comes down to you, America. I know no-one likes other people passing comment on their relationships but this is an extreme situation. You are in very real danger, he is hurting you everyday and he is hurting us, your friends as well. But only you can make it stop. We are all rooting for you, although we don’t get to talk to you very often anymore, because he cuts us off from you. We are on your side, we will all be over the moon the day you finally kick him out. You know he really should be thrown in jail for the things he has done to you. Him and all of his gangster friends.

Please, please, do it America, you know I am right. If not for yourself then do it for your brothers and sisters and children. Do it before he kills any more of your family or anyone else’s. We are all really worried for your welfare.

Your friend,

Gail

Gail Thomas is am a British/ Australian dual national living in Sydney with her American partner. Her website is http:// www.12thharmonic.com .

Forum posts

  • In this day and age, with women’s lib, there is no need for a woman to take being battered. Women are not helpless as many want the world to think. If the woman does not have enough self esteem to get the hell out, then she should be seeing a shrink. I have be there and done that. My spouse would hit me, knock me down the stairs and so forth. Just take a stand and say I am not going to take it any more. Learn self defense and stand up to the bully.

    By the way there are men in this situtation also. Children should be taught in school how to handle bullies and this situtation would not be as big an issue as it is. Bullies are harmful in all walks of life, not just marriage. (courts, business, military, clubs, etc.)

    • Respectively speaking I think you’ve totally missed the point of this article.
      Could it be that you just read the headline.?
      Have another go and see if you can figure out what the author is saying.
      If not get back to me maybe I might be of some assistance.
      cheers, jt.

  • Thank you for pointing out my mistake. Sorry for the mistaken understanding. GW, Congress and the legal system have become bullies. The bullies need to be stopped. Thanks again for pointing out my mistake.

    • I am not an American citizen, as an observer of your countries history I wish I could offer some practical advice for the present awesome challenges you are facing.
      Many of us in the rest of the world are unfortunately caught up in more ways than we would wish. I surmise that the great unease, displeasure and downright fear of your country is in its policies and not with the majority of your people, which your elites like to portray us as simply anti- American .
      As GW says ’its hard work,’ and hopefully together we can send him out to pasture, before he destroys more of the worlds open range land, both within and outside the borders of your great country.
      cheers, jt

  • Reading the whole letter, while well intentioned, just tells me the level of ignorance and partishanship of this foreign observer.

    • Thanks for your compliments on my good intentions.
      Would you kindly direct me to the an area where you consider me ignorant, or ill advised.
      I readily admit to partisanship, but perhaps not the type you assume.
      I consider the Democrat and Republican Parties to be a duopoly with virtually insignificant differences.
      There are little skirmishes called ’the culture wars’ which monopolise and seem to mesmerize the media, and its audiences, in which various(trivial pursuit) shades of differences appear, but on major foreign policy objectives, I detect few if any significant divergence.
      I have resided briefly but travelled extensively in your country on a number of occasions over the past forty years, perhaps you can offer suggestions to help round out my experiences and observations. I am a voracious reader and welcome suggested literature which will add to my enlightenment.
      Thanks again, cheers, jt

  • Where should one start?

    You said the following based on what information?

    "He treats you like crap, lies to you, abuses you, bullies you, exploits you, takes your money. As a friend I want to tell you that you deserve better. You deserve a person that treats you with respect, cares about your welfare, and your children’s welfare, but that’s not George and it never will be."

    "He won’t ever stop, every insult, injury and death he has caused are a line that once crossed will never be uncrossed."

    What friends are you referring to in the paragraph below? There was anti-americanism from the very inception of the US.

    "Notice how he’s alienated all your friends? Who can blame them, they can’t understand why you stay with him when he treats you like shit and embarrasses you in front of everybody. The more his public behaviour overshadows yours, The more doubt creeps over them, they wonder if they knew you as well as they thought they did. You seem to have changed - if you condone his behaviour- and your silence can create the impression that you do. People are more inclined to take things at face value when they feel alienated. Your friends remember the good times you had together, the heroic battles you fought together, all of the intricate interweavings between their families and yours through time and space." Isn’t it also possible that friends can have different points of view and still not be vilified? Perhaps it just shows that these "friends" are drifting away from what the relationship used to be.

    The paragraph below is slander unless you have proof.

    "He is a drunken, coke-addled loser..."

    Bush didn’t tell companies to go make a deal with China as you state here "before he can destroy any more members of your family, your history, your culture, before he decimates your bank account so irretrievably that China and Saudi Arabia repossess all your stuff." and the US is produces 1/2 of its oil consumption and only exports a small part of its oil from Saudi Arabia.

    What unrefuted scientific proof that the majority of scientists agree with can you point to for this "Because of George and his friends global warming is now upon us ". If you look at the Kyoto agreement it excused China, India, Brazil and a whole host of countries that would have been allowed to contribute to the so called global warming effect. As for ratifying the treaty, Clinton himself, although he signed it, knew that our legislative bodies weren’t going to approve it.

    And I’m only a third of the way through. Frankly, you made a lot of assumptions, none of which you backed up.

    • I enjoyed your analogy. It matches reality in an uncanny fashion. Bush exhibits the dry-drunk reckless egomaniac subject to sudden fits of temper in which he lashes out at all concerned. He is doing to our country what battering husbands do to their wives. Unfortunately there is no policeman around when you really need one.

      Fred Petersib

    • I assume # 68/253 that you are responding to the author of this article and not me #23/24.
      I anticipate your enthusiasm, passion and knowledge when you have time.
      cheers, jt

    • They need to throw a net over George and give him a random drug test....I’m SURE it would prove he is on coke. Watch him as he speaks, his jaw grinds back and forth and this is classic behavior for a coke addict. Random drug tests are required for all low level government jobs. Yet the highest government official is allowed to snort coke and display erratic behavior and everyone is supposed to pretend they do not "know" he is a coke head. Let us hope that his "handlers" are not snorting it too.

  • Hello Gail,
    quite an article you wrote! I have to admit, I never looked at the current situation/administration from this point of view. However, after reading your article I can only say that your "analysis" is quite accurate and fitting. While I always have been (and continue to be) in disagreement with Bush and his administration, I have never been able to quite put it in those terms. Thank you for posting and I hope you won’t mind my forwarding your article to my family/friends and many other people I know. Who knows, perhaps if more people "wake up" we might even be able to free ourselves from this unhealthy relationship. Unfortunately, there will always be a certain number of people who will follow Bush blindly, no matter what. Scary indeed, but it I suppose people incapable of independent thought will do so, regardless of which country they may live in or who their "spouse" may be. Thanks again,

    Fatou