Bullying, Identity, and the "Escape from Freedom"

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am not a fan of Donald Trump. I think him a dangerous bully, a narcissist who models bad behavior. Thinking him a bully doesn’t change anything, even if it seemingly makes it easier to understand similar displays of bad behavior that are flaring up around the country—as, for example, conservative radio host Dick Burgess’ on-air shaming of his bisexual daughter.

My first response to the Burgess’ story was speechless outrage. Public humiliation of one’s children should be limited to bringing out embarrassing baby-pictures. What kind of person would degrade and demean the personal life of their child, on-air? Worse yet, how to call him to account for this behavior? What hasn’t already been said, and lamented, time and again?

In the past, the media—whether it be CNN, Fox, or Rachel Maddow, or our celebrity corps (from Hollywood’s A-list to bloggers and reality-show personalities)—might have taken on the incident, stepping in as active bystanders. Even if the 6 o'clock news failed to report on it, late-night pundits, SNL, or The Simpsons could be expected to satirize it, in this way calling the cruel, prejudicial behavior to account.

Celebs used their voices (and more recently, their Twitter accounts) to speak out, to chastise, to reinforce standards of respect, tolerance, and dignity.

Today, these voices are sputtering, finding there is no response to make when the guilty party, in effect, says “yeah—so what?"

So I shame my daughter on air—she deserves it.

So I grabbed pussy—took what I wanted—I’m a billionaire.

So I don’t trust ‘foreigners’—they either take American jobs or live on welfare. What of it?

Free country, right?

Freedom of speech, right?

This is who I am—and I’m proud.

I’m an American.

I work hard and have earned my right to prejudices, biases, and intolerance.

My views and values are my identity, something I publicly establish, and maintain, by judging others.

We need to take a moment, and understand the implications of this.

The dynamics involved are spelled out in a seminal book from the 1940’s—a book written while WWII still raged—Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom.

Booksellers cite the first sentence on the book’s original back cover to summarize its content: “If humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism.”

Although Fromm argues that freedom has a twofold meaning (freedom from and freedom to), his treatise concerns modern (wo)man’s difficulty negotiating the psychic costs of freedom from, and even her/his attempts to escape those costs—and freedom itself.

As Fromm understands it, freedom from released modern (wo)man from the limitations imposed by “traditional authorities,” providing her/him the opportunity for independence, and for individuation. But, “at the same time he (sic) has become isolated, powerless and an instrument of purposes outside of himself, alienated from himself and others; furthermore, this state undermines his self, weakens and frightens him, and makes him ready for submission to new kinds of bondage”.

Freedom from (or ‘negative freedom’) is primarily about non-interference in the pursuit of personal goals and objectives—by the state or federal government, or by tradition, including religion and the family. Bonds of community no longer circumscribe wants (rather, desire will be cultivated by advertisers), and only the most minimal of laws will restrict means.

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Such freedom, Fromm argues, will not lead to happiness, in no small part because the individual will remain isolated, unconnected, and insecure.

And, unfortunately, the structure of modern society is oriented around this condition.

In order to negotiate the loneliness, feelings of insignificance, and fear, we—Fromm’s modern (wo)man—must cobble together an identity, and on that basis, forge bonds, relationships, even community.

We do this by positioning ourselves in relation to others, defining ourselves by opinions we freely choose to adopt.

But in order for other isolated individuals to recognize who we are, we increasingly signify and demonstrate our identities, defining ourselves by actively passing judgments. (Freedom of speech, right?)

Enclaves of like-mindedness have emerged from such public positioning, creating shelters of inclusion that organize themselves around core principles. Allegiances freely chosen—conformity, and even submission to authority (and its intolerances)—are the means, if not the price, of security and belonging.

It might be argued that the liberal agenda of the Obama administration, which enfranchised a greater segment of the population by mandating an increase in freedoms from—from racism, sexism, and homophobia—stoked these insecurities, and heightened the fears. In promoting principles of equality and diversity that challenged the known, comfortable boundaries and social positionings of many members of society, Obama created the conditions for a backlash.

The incoming administration positions itself in response to the insecurities and fear that this agenda spawned. It circles its wagons around principles of what it sees as traditional ‘American-ness.’ It pays tribute to boundaries, (notably white, heterosexual, male privilege), and doubles down on rhetoric that differentiates the ‘in-group’ from the ‘out-group.’

And, not unlike the bullies in the schoolyards, these (new) Americans have begun to police their boundaries through rejection, exclusion, and shame. Trump did not woo an electorate trying to please most of the people most of the time. Rather, he positioned himself as a rebel looking to free his constituents from the fear of freedom (paradoxically perceived as the yoke of inclusiveness) and the moral requirements of respect, tolerance, and sharing.

On the eve of formally passing power to, and legitimizing, an escape from freedom, we need to understand that to many of the electorate Trump is merely re-establishing a National Identity, an in-group with borders and ‘freely chosen preferences.’ Liberal watchdogs might equate these preferences with prejudices, but all groups have boundaries. Who are the liberals to say that the way the GOP chooses to “secure” American identity is wrong? (Values, perceived as choices, wear the cloak of freedom and rationally weighed options. But cloaks are designed to cover, and in this instance what lies beneath are biases, privileges, and fears.)

In this climate, instances of intolerance, like Burgess’ on-air shaming of his daughter, are about much more than the triumph of bullying culture.

They are about a relief from freedom in(to) our i-Privileged panopticon society.