“Why do people exhibit racism or commit hate crimes? These things occur when we are split off from our own shadow, our inner pain. When people and circumstances press our buttons, we can easily believe that life is against us. We adopt a life script of martyrdom, imagining that life “has in it for us” or is “cheating “ us in some way, even though life is neutral. We may begin to believe that life always deals us a cruel hand. The reality is that there is no enemy “out there.” We regard them as an enemy only because of our inability to understand and master our internal shadow, which we project onto them. The more helpful response to being triggered is to recognize your emotional charge as a signal that something is amiss within you. Once you realize there are no enemies, only guides to inner growth, all who play a part in your life become mirrors of your forgotten self.” —Shefali Tsabary, Ph.D., “The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children,” 2014.
Dr. Tsabary believes we all have our emotional inheritance. When our parents were raised not feeling their pain, they raise their children based on their decrees, a complete control over them.
When children choose to march to their own tunes, “parents resort to outrage in order to control the child. Children brought up this way learn fear, not respect. They believe that the only way to effect change is through overpowering others, which leads to raising their own children to one day become dictators themselves, hostile in their reaction to the world, and perhaps even violent,” she observed from patients in her clinical psychology practice.
We have an unprecedented first: a male presidential candidate whose mouth resembles a dirty trash can with putrid, decaying wastes.
In public forums, he spouts off racial slurs, dehumanizing to women, disabled individuals and ethnic communities: “bad hombres” and “rapists and drug criminals” to Mexicans; “nasty woman” to Hillary Clinton; “animals and terrorists“ to Filipinos; “fat pigs, dogs, slobs” to women; “terrorists” to Muslims; and “He’s not a war hero. He’s not a war hero because he was captured. I don’t like people who were captured” to Senator John McCain.
To take it further, he has said:
“face of a dog to a columnist he wrote to”
“you know it doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass”
“thugs for African-Americans”
“total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S”
“laziness is a trait in Blacks”
“who knows what the Japs will pay for Manhattan property these days”
“You have to treat them like shit, referring to women,” including comparing golf equipment as changing tastes in marriage.
“It’s weird. You see these great players with these really long putters, because they can’t sink three-footers anymore. And, I hate it. I am a traditionalist,” referring to his hatred towards gay marriage.
We also have a male presidential candidate who shows disdain towards his opponent, calling her a “nasty woman” and “liar.”
Imagine being the recipient of all these racist, bigoted and sexist slurs. How would you feel?
TIME Magazine reported that Donald Trump interrupted Hillary Clinton 48 times during the presidential debates.
We also have this male candidate whose vision is to build a border wall that costs $4 million to build per mile, to an estimated total of $10 to 12 billion, according to BBC News.
We also have this male candidate with razor-thin knowledge of foreign policies and confuses Aleppo with Mosul, forgetting that Aleppo is in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.
Yet 13.3 million Republicans voted for him during the primary, over Ted Cruz’s 7 million votes.
But why?
27% of Fil-Ams are for Trump?
As the Asian Journal reported, the National Asian American Survey (NAAS) found that 27 percent of Fil-Ams support Trump, while 57 percent of Fil-Ams support Hillary Clinton. Six percent are for a third party, while 10 percent do not know yet.
“I am voting for Trump as I hate gay marriage and abortion,” one Fil-Am supporter wrote in his Facebook post.
Where do those beliefs come from? Most would say from the Bible, but God’s good news is to love our neighbors, as ourselves. There is no distinction as to who to love. Even Pope Francis welcomes gays into the fold of the Catholic Church.
Fifty states in the United States now recognize the civil union of gays, and of equal footing to straight people’s marriages, given the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling last year.
Could hatred towards gays come from misinterpreting the Bible while mimicking Christian pastors, with unconscious hatred towards gays?
Some bigoted parents discriminate against gays, for they once experimented with being gay. From their past childhood loss, they are passing on their personal trauma, as if an emotional inheritance for their children, while giving it some veneer of acceptability, using the imperatives of biblical verses. Hatred is still unacceptable, even if wrapped up in something God did not teach us.
As to women who believe in pro-choice, no woman consciously conceives of her child wanting to be rid of it. In fact, a woman carried her fetus to 31 weeks as she wanted to be sure that she really cannot carry it to full term. But, fetuses sometimes develop abnormally in the fallopian tube. When it does, the fetus can cause a woman’s internal bleeding that only surgery can save her life from being at risk of blood poisoning. A woman is empowered with free will to choose her life, and tries for another pregnancy, as one friend I know and she now has a grandbaby as well as healthy children.
Yet, during the final debate on October 19, Trump talked about a child being ripped from the woman’s womb, and repeated forcefully his opposition. Wildly misinformed, he did not realize that is how a woman gives birth, using the caesarean method.
In callous disregard and to stir up more fears, he whipped up his ignorance about the reproductive birth process, as if equivalent to smart scientific knowledge. Unless folks take the time to verify with their medical doctors or by doing research, they would be misled, horrified, and remain afraid.
The procedure that Trump describes is not abortion at all. Even physicians took to Facebook to explain that this procedure is not done to remove a fetus, but to give birth to a baby.
Once, I questioned two Stanford-educated, Christian doctors on when does a fetus become a life? Is it when the egg is just meeting up with the sperm or after growing inside the womb with a full set of extremities and organs capable of viability on its own? They looked at me, perplexed.
Could these highly educated doctors also have relied on wrong beliefs propagated on Sunday, without critical thought?
When women in China were forced to have an abortion or when women in Romania were forced to have babies, Hillary Clinton believes that the government went too far in regulating the most personal decisions that a woman has to make with her family, medical doctor, and guided by her faith. She passionately defended the women’s right to choose during the last debate.
The real, caring, compassionate Hillary Clinton
When I attended the Democratic National Convention, I heard Chelsea Clinton speak of how she is deeply loved and valued by her mother, Hillary Clinton.
She recalled when she was growing up that she had a special drawer in their home, where her mom left her handwritten love notes for each day that her mom was gone for a work trip. She read them daily for each day she was gone and also received her mom’s phone calls.
Hillary must have realized that her child might feel abandoned while she was travelling for work, that she took the time to accompany Chelsea, even if in a letter form, to stay close to what she was feeling at that moment.
Hillary’s extra attention to detail may have nurtured Chelsea to become a caring, wise woman, with a compassionate heart towards those with the least.
Jason Tengco, the Clinton campaign’s Asian American and Pacific Islander outreach director had this to say to Filipino Americans: “Filipino Americans are standing with Hillary because they see themselves reflected in her vision for America. They know that she will make college more affordable, close the wage gap, help small businesses thrive, and fight to pass comprehensive immigration reform. While Donald Trump continues to espouse bigoted rhetoric and empty policy proposals, Hillary is doing everything she can to ensure our community continues to thrive. The choice for Filipino Americans in this election couldn’t be clearer.”
If we as voters have our own sense of worth and value, we will vote for leaders who mirror our inner selves and for a president who will respect us for our personal strengths, talents and knowledge and not inherit the emotional trauma of their childhood. Trump reportedly was kicked out of school at age 13 and had to be sent to a military academy.
Hopefully, we have enough self-esteem as to not vote for a leader who considers us “terrorists and animals.” Only a voter with low self-worth can blindly choose Trump’s brand of Jim Crow philosophy to overpower and subjugate citizens of different races to segregation circa the 1950s.
We are #nastywomen and #badhombres choosing a president aligned with our healthy family values and one who sees us as more than these hashtag labels.
We are certainly not animals and terrorists.
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Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D. writes a weekly column for Asian Journal, called “Rhizomes.” She has been writing for AJ Press for 9 years now. She contributes to Balikbayan Magazine. Her training and experiences are in science, food technology, law and community volunteerism for 4 decades. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of the Philippines, a law degree from Whittier College School of Law in California and a certificate on 21st Century Leadership from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been a participant in NVM Writing Workshops taught by Prof. Peter Bacho for 4 years and Prof. Russell Leong. She has travelled to France, Holland, Belgium, Japan, Mexico and 22 national parks in the US, in pursuit of her love for arts.