May 19, 2006

• What is Don Young feeling guilty about?

  Defensiveness is a telling behavior, a give-away, an indication that
  one feels threatened, or guilty, embattled, personally attacked or
  endangered.  If it is a consistent pattern in a person’s behavior,
  it indicates low self-esteem.  Often, I respond to the
  defensiveness of others without giving a thought to the fact that few
  people understand that little bit of psychological insight.  I may
  simply say something to the effect that I have noticed that someone is
  being defensive.  If it’s one of my friends, a family member, a
  client or a sponsee from a 12 step program, I might say, “You don’t
  need to be defensive about that.”

  There is never any personal animosity on my part when I point out
  defensiveness, but it often arouses animosity in others. 
  Sometimes they even become defensive about being defensive. 
  That’s something I can live with.  Getting defensive about being
  defensive is a sure sign that a person really needs to take a look at
  his or her own mind.   I know that it does no harm to nudge a
  person awake, to point out to them their own unconscious behavior and
  make them, even if only for a moment, conscious of what they are
  doing.  This, I have long ago accepted, is part of my dharma.

  But I digress.  That little psychological rap came about because
  I’d stopped to read my guestbook (impelled there when I noticed, on the
  Xanga “footprints” tracker beta test, that a couple of visitors had
  been to my guestbook today) before starting today’s entry on Alaska
  Congressman Don Young’s defensive behavior.  I am not impelled to
  send a letter to my congressman about his defensiveness.  It
  probably wouldn’t make it past the protective screen of his
  staff.  I’m sure they have been around him enough to have noticed
  his defensiveness already. 

  Don Young is Alaska’s only member in the House of
  Representatives.  I’d like to say that he doesn’t represent us,
  but that would probably sound defensive.   Honestly, I don’t
  know how he keeps getting re-elected.  Nobody I know will admit to
  having voted for him.  Years ago, some advertising person in his
  employ came up with the campaign slogan, “Don Young, the congressman
  for all Alaskans.” 

  About that time, he had been involved in a number of incidents that
  made many Alaskans want to disavow him, including his expressing a
  callous disregard for the plight of our moose during a severe winter
  when 95% of the adult population and virtually all the calves and
  yearlings in this huge valley died.  A columnist at the Anchorage
  Daily News amended the slogan to, “Don Young, the congressman for all
  Alaskans except for you and me and the moose.”

  For the last few days, we have been subjected to repeated replays in
  the local media of a defensive-sounding rant he made on the floor of
  the House in a debate on government controls on greenhouse gases. 
  He sounds childish, declaring over and over that global warming isn’t
  his fault. The ADN ran it, too:

  In Rep. Don Young’s famous pronouncement on global warming, delivered
  in reaction to the exhaustive scientific review known as the Arctic
  Climate Impact Assessment, he said, “I don’t believe it’s our fault.
  That’s an opinion. It’s as sound as any scientist’s.”

  One of his congressional colleagues was inspired to call him a member
  of the Flat Earth Society.  I’m just wondering what his personal
  stake is in this and why he is so vehemently denying
  responsibility.  It’s a tell.  I’m sure of it.  He’s
  guilty and he knows it, or he wouldn’t be so stridently denying it.

  
  P.S.
  Our orange tabby Nemo’s first kitten died.  She continued to have
  contractions and her belly has diminished in girth over the past few
  days, but other than one bit of afterbirth I found on the floor, we’ve
  found no sign of subsequent kittens.  I can feel at least one more
  kitten in her belly, but she’s not obviously contracting today as she
  had been yesterday.

  The first one lived long enough to nurse and for her to bond with
  it.  Yesterday and the day before, she kept trying to hijack
  Hilary’s half-grown kittens.  She’d try to drag them into her nest
  by the scruff of their necks.  I  have subsequently seen two
  of them suckling on Nemo, who has abandoned the nest and spends most of
  her time on the sofa, either in my lap or beside my legs.  This is
  entirely new behavior for her.  She has always been stand-offish,
  never a lap cat before.  My theory is that the same oxytocin load
  that bonded her to the kittens has bonded her to me, since I was
  present through it all.

  • 1:26 pm
  • 8 Comments