This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation

[Dirk39]

I was just reading a webpage:

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3424.html

And found that quote from Rush Limbaugh:

"This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation," says Rush Limbaugh
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/06/opinion/meyer/main616021.shtml



" THE PRESIDENTIAL STYLE OF GEORGE BUSH
George Bush's childhood, though not as chaotic as Reagan's, was also full of fear and punishments. Psychohistorian Suzy Kane, interviewing George's brother, Prescott, Jr., discovered that Bush's father often beat him on the buttocks with a belt or a razor strap, the anticipation of which, Prescott, Jr. recalled, made them "quiver" with fear.5 "He took us over his knee and whopped us with his belt," Prescott said. "He had a strong arm, and boy, did we feel it."6 As he admitted to Kane, "We were all scared of him. We were scared to death of Dad when we were younger." Childhood classmates of George described his father as "aloof and distant...formidable and stern...very austere and not a warm person." "Dad was really scary," George himself once admitted.7 As a result, a desperate need to please was George's main trait as a child, and a depressive personality with an overwhelming need to placate became his trademarks as president."
http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln02_gulf.html



Theodor W. Adorno: Education after Ausschwitz (1966):

The educational value of "hardship" (back to top)

"According to Boger , using hardship to educate people to discipline is necessary in order to make people the way he thinks they should be. This notion that hardship is education, which many people thoughtlessly accept, is thoroughly perverse. The notion that manliness consists in enduring a maximum amount of pain long ago became the cover image for a masochism that-as psychology has shown-is all too easily a component of sadism. This praised being-hard-on-them, which is the goal of such education, means indifference to all pain. Thus the difference between one's own pain and that of others is not even clearly established. People who are hard toward themselves buy themselves the right to be hard toward others as well, and avenge themselves for the pain they were not permitted to show and had to repress. This mechanism is to be made conscious just as much as an education is to be promoted that no longer places premiums on pain and on the capacity to endure pain as was done before. In other words, education would have to put into practice a thought that is in no way foreign to philosophy, namely, that fear is not to be repressed. When fear is not repressed, when one admits actually having as much fear as the reality of the situation deserves, then precisely in this way much of the destructive effect of unconscious and displaced fear will probably disappear."
http://www.complit.ucsb.edu/faculty/derwin/courses/f00/colit186ee/adorno4.htm

I'm sure that the childhood of George W. Bush or his father can't explain their policies, not to mention the crimes commited by torturing American soldiers in Iraq - there's more to it - but I think to study things like this is more important today than it ever was.

The study of Adorno about education after Ausschwitz is still worth reading, not just the little paragraph, I've quoted.

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[ecoalex]

1. The shrub is responsible , but he was abused, so now we pay?

It is sad, the banner boy for the reps is a simpleton, and dysfunctional dimwit, and the entire world pays, for the installation of this puppet.How much more will we have to endure, the world is against the policies of this "faith based" fallacy of an administration. The preference for faith, and admonition based views to shape our policies, has reaped a storm of resentment unequaled. To be from privilege, insulated from the people that make country usable , is to be out of touch, combine with faith based stupor, and we have a dysfunctional president, living his life at our cost.