Case studies: The first one

I know... I keep going back to those former friends.

Let me try and put some perspective to it.

I have thought about doing some blogging on predicting how different things will play out and what might be good things to do for various circumstances. I still might.

However -- in my obsession with people mattering -- I think it is most important that we hold on to our humanity. 

That gets tested in different ways.

All three of them started out differently, so the differences between them now make sense.

Since it looks like I am going to be spending some time here, I probably need to assign codes.

The one who is now in Texas will be A.

The one who seems to have gotten divorced will be B.

The one who mostly only talks about music now is C.

A was always conservative. He was not a mean-spirited person, but would easily believe that all of our problems come from immigrants and that they are all illegal and criminals, regardless of facts.

Let me put it this way: he sincerely believed that pregnant women who didn't have health care would deliberately get arrested so they would have health care through the birth. They could just arrange to have someone to care for their baby from birth until their release date, and that this happened regularly. 

He gave them credit for not getting abortions. 

I can't guarantee that this has never happened, but I doubt it. There have been so many horror stories about awful health conditions in prison, with needs being ignored, giving birth in showers or alone in a cell, where the slightly less awful stories are about giving birth in shackles. Then, if you are someone who does not have the resources to get health care, it is very possible that you do not have people with the means and willingness to take care of a newborn. The most likely result would be a very stressful pregnancy, a nightmarish childbirth, and then the child going into foster care and a real risk of never being reunited.

This makes me skeptical about it being a common plan, but there is a conservative mindset where other people are always abusing the system, and it is easy to do. Unless you are a white man; then everything you have was earned!

I would say that he is the one who is currently in the best frame of mind. I think there are two reasons for that. First of all, he has intact family relationships, which is huge. In addition, I don't think he gets challenged a lot, especially since moving to Texas. 

Remember, with all three relationships, the fractures happened because they were facing arguments that maybe their worldview was wrong. They were enraged by the stubborn refusal to acknowledge how right and smart they were. 

Right now I think he has it pretty easy. 

Mind you, I don't think that will last. This administration is trying so hard to kill so many of us that for all the pain now, there is more coming.

As it hits different people at different intensities, some will change their minds, but some will really hold on.

Denial is powerful.

I don't begrudge him the satisfaction he has now. 

I also don't envy it, and I don't know how long it will last. 

Uncontrollable rage?

There is a point that I want to make about those "former friends", but I think maybe to get to it I need to mention another memory first.

I was at Beaverton Transit Center waiting for the train. Over on the bus side, this man just started yelling at this woman.

She was ignoring him. It was not certain that he was yelling at her; he was not acting lucid so I can't rule out hallucination. He stayed pretty focused in her direction, though, so it seemed to be her.

There were lots of people around, and it was not long before she got on a bus. Even if he had followed her, there was a bus driver there, so in that context it did not seem dangerous, just unpleasant.

None of those details are really uncommon, but it stayed with me for two reasons. 

One was the intensity of the rage where it seemed to have a visible target. Often that kind of meltdown is directed at someone invisible. Also, while the visible person is very upset, there is often more fear or despair or something like that.

The other reason it stood out was that I had some suspicions about the origin. 

The man did not appear to be homeless, but most of the people I had seen exhibiting similar behavior were homeless. 

I had learned by then was that while it is certainly possible for someone mentally ill to become homeless, it is more common that homelessness -- with the stress and lack of security and dehumanization -- brings on mental illness.

I acknowledge that this was supposition, but it was a strong feeling. I felt that this was someone whose prolonged anger had taken away his balance and brought on delusion.

If you look for associations between anger and mental illness, initially you find those in the other order, like bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder might lead to rage outbursts. Well, maybe, but there are people who have those disorders and will not rage at you. 

We also look at children having tantrums and accept that a normal part of growing up is emotional regulation, where you get better at dealing with emotions in appropriate ways. 

(Or maybe some children learn mainly to repress their emotions; our society is not perfect.)

I suspect that you can also lose the ability to self-regulate, especially if you don't see the value in it. Now being loudly horrible is demonstrated by people at the highest levels of government. Previously, people in those positions would often be kind of corrupt and horrible, but they would maintain this veneer at least. 

Would it surprise anyone if I added that in that incident, it was a middle-aged (or so) white man yelling at a younger brown woman?