Live Your Life Anyway

Fascinating peice comparing the behavior of abusers in domestic relationships and the actions of the Bush administration toward most Americans:

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don’t even know they are being hit.

I think he goes a little heavy-handed here, but it's something to think about - particularly the part about not making concessions: about living your life anyway, even if you're getting beaten over the head for it. That's what strength and bravery is all about.

Some people call that arrogance and stupidity: until 56 million other people get up and stand next to you.

I am a good woman until somebody tries to lay a hand on me, until someone tries to push me away from the life I want to live so that I fit better into their conception of the way "things are supposed to be." That's when the gloves need to come off.

I'm not letting myself get pushed into the "way you're supposed to be" box ever again. That's the stuff miserable lives are made of.