Catherine Greenleaf: Vote Trump out of office and regain your freedom, it's that simple

To The Daily Sun,

Psychological battering is mental and emotional violence that occurs on a regular, often daily, basis, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Typical ploys of the psychological batterer include controlling and tyrannical behavior, humiliation, false accusations and attacks on character. One damaging tactic is gaslighting, which is doing or saying something and then claiming it never happened or was never said. If carried on long enough, gaslighting can eventually make victims start to doubt their own sanity.

A psychological batterer’s constant mood swings and changes in decision-making keep a victim on edge; hence a victim spends a great deal of time “walking on eggshells” or placating to avoid setting off another assault. This is why psychological battering is so crazy making for the victim. At one moment the perpetrator is charming, warm and approachable, causing the victim to relax and even idealize the victimizer. The next moment the batterer is once again on the attack, shattering the victim’s sense of stability and peace of mind.

These are all tactics that are employed on prisoners of war, hostages, and cult members. Psychological battering is a very effective tool, rendering victims into a state of hopelessness and helplessness, and creating a form of battering fatigue that makes victims ultimately give up and cooperate with the constantly shifting demands and whims of the attacker.

Now imagine a leader who packages his psychological battering skills and weaponizes them to knock a democracy off course and derail the human dignities that Americans have long called their basic rights — all in an attempt to serve his own personal interests.

Each day when we turn on the TV to watch the news we, as a Republic, are subjected to ever-shifting diversionary tactics in which our sense of reality is challenged from one minute to the next.

We do our best to adapt, which may include taking the part of reality that suits us and ignoring the rest. It is called denial. But as times goes by, we find we are frequently mentally and emotionally fatigued and even devastated by the accumulation of the many onslaughts against our government — attacks that are amounting to huge losses in personal freedom for the average American citizen.

We don’t seem to have enough energy to do much more than react and recover, and that is exactly what a batterer needs and wants. The victimizer wants you so busy and exhausted from reacting that you don’t have time to question or plan ahead for what he might do next, leaving the batterer free to act without question or accountability.

We are a nation in denial and our lives will remain unmanageable as long as we go on pretending that only half the truth is real. It is time to come out of our emotional and mental fatigue as a nation and anchor ourselves in 100 percent reality. Show up. Pull that lever or check off that ballot. Vote Trump out of office. And regain your freedom.

Catherine Greenleaf

Center Harbor