It’s an acronym; what it means is “Deny-Accuse-Reverse-Victim-Offender” – and describes a common response of the accused party to charges of domestic abuse, along the lines of “I never laid a hand on her/him-But she/he is crazy/violent! – It’s her/his fault for making me so darned angry – I’m the innocent person here!”
This is indeed what we are seeing now with regard to the Nashville Covenant school murders, murders committed by a deranged and angry transgender, although one might be forgiven for thinking ‘deranged’ and ‘transgender’ to be a duplication of terms. Alas, that was just the worst of recent violent or near-violent incidents involving transgenders and transgender activists, who seem to be exploring new horizons in a quest to be the most deranged, unreasonable, demanding and generally bat-crap crazy in what might seem to be a contest among activists lately. (Is there a substantial cash prize on offer, for whoever can generate the most outrageous headlines? Inquiring minds really want to know.) Shrieking at and terrorizing collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines for objecting to biological males competing against females in athletic contests, threatening a school in Colorado with the same treatment as the Covenant School – fortunately, that threat was neutralized, at least with that school and that potential mass-murderer.
The white hot-fury of transgender anger on display of late is extremely disconcerting. I will concede that there were and are transgender citizens who went into the process after careful consideration, appeared to live or have lived relatively contented lives, who wanted nothing more than to vanish into an ordinary existence, and to have called no great attention to themselves since transitioning. But they were always a minute number, and up until the last couple of years, seemed to relish the obscurity that their new physical form brought them. They didn’t call attention to it, howling like banshees every couple of hours and over every conceivable issue. Or invading a state legislature, with bullhorns and shouted threats. Or ganging up either physically or online on everyone perceived as breathing mild dissentions or criticism of the whole Tranzi crusade.
The curious thing is once one is alerted to the DARVO concept, one begins seeing it everywhere in the headlines of late; in the matter of crime committed by urban youths of color, everything from attacks on passing strangers, gang shootouts with a certain careless attitude regarding the fate of innocent bystanders, and mass lootings of commercial enterprises. No, no – the fault is that of that amorphous concept; structural racism, institutional whiteness or whatever they want to call it in the public release to the press, after the blood has finished soaking into the ground. We didn’t do anything but respond to the viciousness of white/MAGA/conservative/Red State animus – it’s their fault for pushing us, we’re the innocent victims here!
Comment as you wish. And add further examples of DARVO in action, especially in the establishment news media.
I will note for the record that I spent all of last weekend participating in a local folk-life celebration in a medium-sized city in Hill Country Texas – an event blissfully free of anything resembling contemporary wokeism. Small children, tame animals both farm-domestic and pet, patriotic flags, ethnic German folkways, and country music, a lot of demonstrations of ancient black-powder weaponry, and complete law-abidingness among the participants and guests. It was all so very reassuringly normal. Life goes on in the Shire, as it always has done, day to day.
The thirst for self-justification goes as far back as the taint in human nature, and we all have it to some extent.
Musical comedienne Anna Russell skewered this hideous desire in the final musical number of her “Backwards with the Folk Song” routine.
Much more foundational than self justification, Korora (8:23 pm 20Apr23)
The transgressor/mutilator/homosexal/lesbian (not gay, give it accurate labels), CRT, DIE (not, it’s not dei) activity/assertions have a religious root. These folks demand that you worship their god (which, coincidentally, is…themself), bow to that god, and allow that god to define reality.
We’re seeing a religious war. There exists no give and take, no compromise, only an insistence on unconditional surrender. No options for negotiation, precision of definition, disambiguation.
These people hate you.There are heterophobe. They despise reality because it confronts their god.
Respond by refusing to allow redefinitions. Use accurate, bold, clear labels and language. Tell them you will not worship them.Mock and ridicule their god.
Anything less than that sort of confrontation–and willingness to follow thru on its implications–will lead to incremental defeat.
I hate to keep using this, but my old TWANLOC formulation holds. We are multiple, separate peoples; politically, economically, ideologically, religiously, and in basic Weltanschauung. Historically with our species having too great a mixture of different peoples and cultures when one or more will not tolerate or coexist with the other(s) the result is violence ending in either forcible conquest or annihilation.
One wonders what the parameters are. We know that roughly 3-5% of any statistically significant population group is hopelessly sociopathic or psychopathic. That is your basic lunatic fringe, at least in terms of the dominant culture. And that is usually survivable even if it is not desirable. It is notable that the 3-5% is spread over the Bell Curve of abilities, with the left hand side usually institutionalized in one form or another, and sadly with the right hand side frequently running things. Which explains many politicians.
We also know historically that in our own country that during our Revolutionary War about 1/3 of Americans were Patriots, 1/3 were Tories, and about 1/3 just wanted to be left the freep alone. So we have an minimal upper limit where things break down to open warfare. I submit that we are much closer to the 1/3 than the 3-5% for the fraction of those who will not tolerate the existence of the others. It is aggravated by the fact that the Coercive Forces of State Power are on the side of the intolerant ones.
This is not something that is going to be easily settled. Between the two or more current sides, the differences are so basic and foundational that the first comparison that comes to mind is the European Wars of Religion in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Note the duration of the struggle and that it was also between groups who were opposed at the most fundamental levels of their minds and souls.
I suspect that we are not going to be able to talk our way out of this, because we are not speaking literally the same language or using the same thought processes. See DARVO as elucidated by Sgt. Mom above. Recognize that those opposed to us actually think that way and DARVO is normal to them. And in addition to the inability to talk our way out of this, we are not going to be voting our way out of this [TINVOWOOT] because we do not agree on what we are voting about, AND most critically if you have been watching the news for the last few years . . . election integrity is disappearing, there are multiple “rules of law” depending on who you are [q.v. Alec Baldwin today], and the Constitution is of variable applicability according to who is in power or a protected class; and who is not and note that the group in power crosses party lines such as those lines exist amongst the Nomenklatura.
We do not know what the triggering moment will be, or when it will be. Personally, I have grave doubts about the existence of a 2024 election, or if we have one that it will be real. And our public and social institutions do not seem to be bothered by the possibility of such.
bear in mind that duty is weightier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather.
I offer these thoughts for your consideration.
Subotai Bahadur
I agree about no easy solution. We have crazies running the country and most of Europe. England is gone. Hungary seems to be the only sane society in Europe. Naturally the “good people” all call them “Fascist.” What is coming, unless a miracle, is an economic collapse. The Biden regime seems to be repeating the mistakes of Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and the Democrat politicos who ran Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the ground. That might lead to normals getting control but is more likely to result in a dictatorship. Fortunately for me, I won’t be around but I have kids and grandkids. I will see them in 2 weeks when we visit CA. The climate insanity appears to be contagious so time is fleeting.
Our swamp betters really, really dislike grown ups, bourgeosie values, duty, productivity. I don’t see how a country that gives better loans to people with bad credit than good, subsidies to women who don’t plan their families (and consider the ideal as a family) than those who randomly procreate, subsidies to energy forms that destroy the land and are not consistent than ones that are and have been properly sanitized through the decades, etc. etc.
Being grown up, being responsible, not shoplifting but paying, not whining but doing your job – all those things I thought we were aiming at are being disincentivized. Some of the adult changes may have worked it out – I am not sure. But it seems that Deidre McCloskey’s argument about what improved all our lots in the changes of the 18th century are not wrong and they come from a woman who was a man and changed in his/her maturity. Still, unhappy family – it probably doesn’t ever work well and doing it after you’ve had children must give those children plenty of baggage.
Of course, everything you say is unfortunately accurate and perceptive, Sgt. Mom, but I do wonder how many of these maddened people are also on drugs that have been overgenerously prescribed and overgenerously taken (if they should, indeed be taken at all, since their purpose is to change healthy hormones to inappropriate ones). I’d like someone who knows what they are doing to be given blood samples from some of these murderers and the suicides who are blamed on any one who has been critical of trans people.
Those who argue that things cannot fall apart because these are modern times ignore what happened in Rwanda and Yugoslavia three decades ago.
Almost everyone wants to ignore the fact that what is happening now in eastern Ukraine is basically a race war. Almost everyone wans to pretend that there are no such things as tribes.
There are, and they fight. Always.
The trick is to get the tribes to fight constitutionally. We are quickly losing that.
well russians and ukrainians are both white, so its more like the english/irish conflict, rwanda was majority hutu over tutsi (the punchline the rebel leader who organized it, is president for life,) yugoslavia was serb minority who predominated over other states,
yes it is the return of the old god, ashtarte moloch baal, et al,
its a war at least as old the time of cromwell, over the control of the two banks of the dnieper,
the french and the belgians armed the hutus, somewhat like the chinese provided the khmer with the power, they were rather crude with the means,
I would echo what SB and Roy said above especially in regard to language. Language shapes and guides thought; also you ultimately defeat the Devil by mocking Him.
I’ll add my bit in here. The radical, violent element is, when you break it down only one part of the enemy. Anything on the societal level is too large to be a single enemy and the Left is no different. It composed not just of your blue-haired gender-fluid Millenials but also of neo-Malthusians, the coastal business and intellectual elites, Wokeists/neo-Marxists, Democrats, and a bunch of smaller groups. What are all those disparate groups united by? An upending of the status quo in favor of either a revolutionary and/or trans-humanist movement and in other cases simply for power and privilege. Your tech billionaire is united with the Chevy Chase civil servant because they would like to re-order society on a rational basis, they are both united with the campus-based radical because they all wish to over-turn the status quo, and the Democratic-functionary and Chevy Chaser go along because this is their way to power. Victor Davis Hanson had a good piece on this subject, at least as far as Democrat party politics goes. https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/19/the-useful-veneer-of-the-aging-democrat/ Think of it as an alliance of convenience
What also keeps this disparate coalition of radicals, grifters, and poor-man versions of SPECTRE together? Momentum. Think about Bin Laden’s depiction of the Strong Horse. People not only want to be on the winning side but they definitely don’t want to be on the losing one. This is the coalition that has waged a relentless information war that not only depicts them on the inevitable side of History but depicts opponents (MAGA, Trucker Convoy, anti-vaxxers…) as a bunch of isolated, reactionary losers. Who would want to be seen with them? Not anybody who wants to sit at the cool kids lunchroom table.
This is especially true for those in the squishy middle, your swing voters. These people might be worried about what’s happening to their kids at school, about the undermining of the economy, about the goofy trans-humanist ideas but they are being repelled from opposing it because they are told a story that makes the opposition look like radioactive losers. That’s what made Loudoun County and the 2021 Virginia elections so interesting because for a brief moment that middle revolted against the Left’s educational orthodoxy and produced a decisive 10+-point swing in all of places the wealthiest county in the Washington metropolitan area. Unfortunately Loudoun is the exception that proves the rule.
How does the Left’s coalition work? Your radical vanguard on the ground, those who are fired up by revolutionary zeal operate as the blockers on the offensive line creating openings for the more respectable parts in the backfield to exploit. The outlier 15-year old gender fluid girl who has to be who she wants to be or she’ll kill her becomes the basis for the Biden Administration’s effort to undermine women sports through Title IX. Your radical neo-Marxists expose the “problems”, amplified by a compliant media, that the Chevy Chasers and Democrats use as an excuse to rework society. Pick a topic and see how the parts work together. Joe Biden isn’t a radical, he’s a grifter, but pushing the radical line lets him into the White House. The Chevy Chase civil servant isn’t a radical but that line gives him greater power to push the Hegelian/Administrative state to “solve” the “problem” Apply it to the other parts of the movement.
Your radical element creates the revolutionary movement to be exploited, but while they are necessary they are not sufficient; they need the other parts of the coalition. Think pre-February Revolution Russia, the Bolsheviks could not topple the Czar on their own and so were in alliance with other, more moderate elements. However the other part of the analogy holds true, once the Czar was toppled the Bolsheviks turned on their former partners and launched the October Revolution.
So how does this coalition end? First understand the Left needs Trump/MAGA because it is the symbol that both unites them in opposition to and like a magnet with reversed polarity repels other non-coalition elements from joining it. MAGA is the bogey-man, 1984’s Emmanuel Goldstein. Second the coalition is united because it has momentum and is seen as winning not only because it is in actual policy terms but because keeping the middle and isolating the MAGA right allows the Left to portray itself as the moderates while pushing its radical agenda. It’s a nice trick. However if you stop the momentum, this alliance of convenience falls over like a stopped bicycle because these parts are only united by what they oppose in their quest for power
We talk about how this whole movement when it will hit reality whether it’s an economic or currency collapse, a foreign policy debacle like a lost war, and/or domestic upheaval. However that’s not good to plan on, and not only because I personally like to avoid living through disasters, but because there are elements in that leftist coalition who want those disasters to happen so they can rework society, Omelets, eggs, and all of that; you have to sweep it out the old before you can do the new. Yeah your average Democrat or Chevy Case technocrat might lose out but they’re just the expendable bag-man, the patsy at the table. I should also add that this is also when the end-battle between the radicals and the oligarchs/Hegelians begins (I’m betting on the latter)
No we should plan on ending the coalition ourselves and we can use their own playbook by using outliers to change the debate and create our own openings.
Don’t focus on the DARVO, since they are merely the shock troops, but rather on the interaction between them and the more “respectable” elements. Take two policies that “respectable” Washington D.C. elements are carrying water for the radicals, unrestricted abortion and “gender-affirming” care. Unrestricted abortion up to and beyond the moment and birth and the elimination of male/female distinction and mutilation of young people, are heinously radical and out of the mainstream of popular opinion. Yet they are insisted upon the radical post-modernists and their pink-haired shock troops; abortion has moved on from “safe, legal, and rare” because it is no longer a regrettable choice that has to be made but instead a positive affirmation. Mutilating gender dysphoric youth? Sure, why not if gender merely a social construct and choice is paramount. That’s a non-negotiable demand that unites the Left.
However the Right loses on these policies because they are sold to the public by the Left not on the results they produce, but because they are subsumed under the rubric of “choice” That’s a deliberate attempt by the Left to co-opt language that is favored in our society in order to push agenda items that are not favored. Polls which show “support” for unlimited access to abortion and youth-mutilation do so because they use the language of choice. That’s the hill the Left has decided to die on.
Somewhere in my distant past I remember a lecture about what happens when one side wants to defend a hill when the other side is willing to deploy the firepower to take it.
So we need our own radical wing to play the role of opening up holes on the offensive line for the backfield to exploit. Trump or DeSantis or really anyone aspiring to national leadership are poor choices for this because whoever steps up will be branded a radical for eternity. No what we need is a Forlorn Hope, somebody with some guts, some prominence willing to go out and change the terms of debate; somebody who is a longshot presidential candidate (that’s what they are there for) Somebody who isn’t willing to follow popular opinion, but rather who sees an oppportunity to shape it and understands that by doing so that they will become a polarizing figure
Let’s focus on abortion. The proposition is simple. Instead of accepting the abortion debate as between unrestricted abortion and complete abolition (polarization) which places the Right on the wrong side of the choice preference, move the debate to one between the unrestricted abortion and limited abortion restrictions – in other words move the radicalism needle to the Left. The Left wants unrestricted abortion up to birth and call it “reproductive health care.” Have our person in question go out and show what pictures of such aborted fetuses look like, actual and horrible pictures of recognizable humans because that’s what they are, and ask how this could be considered health care, Ask why is it considered radical to prevent abortions after 6-weeks (fetal heart beat) or 15-weeks (what it is in most of Europe) given what the carnage looks like. You are not appealing to the Left (they are gone), you are not appealing to the Right (they are convinced or view anything less than a complete ban treason), but rather to the middle. Don’t just talk about, show pictures of the aborted fetuses (this was the basis for an incomplete campaign targeting a DC late-term abortion center), be graphic, confront. Force them to come out; they’ll respond if only to tell you are a sick human being and then you have them, in other words follow the same game plan the Left does with its shock troops.
Whoever does this appeal to the middle will catch fire by both sides but it will create opening to exploit. The first is changing the terms of the abortion debate and stopping the electoral rout, The second (and biggest_ part is that it divides the Left because the moment Democrats in the left coalition respond to 6-15 week/unrestricted abortion human remains they will fracture their coalition, not just because the radicals demand unrestricted access but because the Left will have to address any moral arguments involved.
You can apply this methodology to “gender affirming” to the debt limit to 1st Amendment or whatever once we understand that the Left has been using them for years to divide us so they can gain power. The Left works to exploit division within the Right, to turn your evangelical Christian and 2nd Amendment advocates away from your family down the street who wants to be left alone to raise their family, by making the different parts repellent to one another and they have a compliant media to help.
We can have the same effect but we have to understand that you win by going on the offensive and making the other side, and not you, defend. That’s how the Left wins, by shamelessly using those radical shock troops to take over legislatures, claim that they have the duty to “save” children from their parents, and that any attempt to negotiate down their demands is a return to Jim Crow.
Yeah I’m re-reading my Lenin but I remember another instructor once telling me that every tactic, every strategy of your opponent carries the seeds of its own destruction. You just need to know where to look. See their radical wing not as a threat, but as an opportunity for them to destroy each other, because all of that energy and passion and nihilism doesn’t have an off switch.
the worst are the possums in the gop, we expect the left to be on the march, they serve to whitewash the vote fraud, the green new deal in embryo, and every other tactics, they demand a clean debt ceiling when they are in power and the reverse when they are out of power, they grant themselves the power to intimidate courts law enforcement et al,
If the Left (broadly defined) want to kill their own children, who they would otherwise raise as Leftists, I don’t see the problem.
Suicidal tribes lose. Let’s help.
like the borg or the blob, they are not willing to leave it at that
The left shrieks endless lies to whip its followers into a frenzy, the putative non-leftist party spends enormous efforts attempting to gets its supporters to sit down, shut up, and do as they’re told.
Hence the deranged tranzi mass shooter who murdered 9-year olds because of some fantasy threat from Trump supporters and/or Christians, while the GOP is busy demanding that people stop boycotting Bud Light.
This sort of thing has gone on for decades. I suppose it has moved that famous Overton window a long way leftwards, but it has also produced vast swarms of people who have given up on the political process and who have especially given up on the Gee Ohh Peeee.
This is not a stable situation, any more than American politics was stable after the Antebellum Democrats drove the Whig party into oblivion.
Thank you Sgt Mom. Keep up the great work.