Conservatuives and their personal Hells

What is it about these conservatives and their personal Hells? Sen. Larry Craig has just exposed his form of Hell to the nation on Nationwide TV. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has similarly exposed his personal Hell and denial in his recent book "My Grandfather's Son : A Memoir."

Each obviously has a conflict between who they are inherently (Craig = 'Gay' and Thomas = 'Black.' I suspect that Thomas feels that being labeled 'Black' is being labeled 'inferior.') and who society wants them to be. Craig has entered deep denial, and Thomas has become a very angry person, but the cause for each is the conflict between who they are inherently and who or what society generally will permit them to be.

Each has also entered politics. Their form of politics in each case has consisted of a rejection of the loosening up of the very elements of society that they each previously found so much pain with. Craig rejects the way society has recently approved of openly Gay homosexuals and Thomas rejects the entire Civil Rights Movement. Both are practicing what Bill Buckley once stated to be his goal - to stand athwart the movement of history and yell "Stop!"

Each of those two live in their own personal form of Hell, and I guess they have learned to accept it as long as it is not disturbed or disrupted. Each represents the older ways of coping with social inequity.

So when society moves to accommodate their difference in a way that was not available to them as they were growing up, it must expose just how very painful it was to come to grips with their personal conflict with the earlier less liberal social prescriptions. They each achieved personal social acceptance before society moved to recognize the pain it was inflicting. Sen. Craig dealt with a total rejection of his homosexuality, and Justice Thomas dealt with the rejection of the Civil Rights Movement by the powerful and wealthy men he desperately wanted to be accepted by. Each made extensive, difficult and painful personal accommodations in order to be accepted socially. Each achieved their goal, which justified the cost they paid.

Now society is changing so that people who face the conflict between society and who they are personally no longer requires such massive cost in order to be socially accepted. Society gives the rewards they paid so much for at much lower personal cost now. Their personal success in coming to grips with the social inequity - clearly at great personal effort and cost - becomes something that is no longer recognized for the great achievement that it was. Their effort and the price they paid is robbed of value to them.

Assuming this is true, and the mechanism I describe if obviously speculation, it certainly would show why both men would want to be conservatives, standing athwart the movement of history and yelling "Stop!" That conservative reaction which each so clearly displays is also extremely self-centered, showing no empathy for others who are liberated from the need to fight the battles they previously fought. But the self-identity they each have built that allowed them to overcome the challenges they faced has its severe penalties built in, and can no longer be changed or abandoned without paying the price of total psychic collapse.

That psychic collapse would mean abandoning the very social acceptance and success that they have each fought all their life to achieve. The price of leaving their personal versions of Hell is abandoning everything they have won to date.

Neither is willing to pay that price, and both are angry. So both are conservatives who are using their personal power to try to return society to the world in which they succeeded at such great cost. They have each created their own personal Hell, and the want to force everyone else to enjoy it the way they do.

That's the conservative way.