Rage...that’s the only word for this
How do you reach someone like this?
I’m going to show you something in a second that will (1) amuse you, (2) bewilder you, (3) either frighten or enrage you. It’s a clip from a recent rally for “reproductive freedom,” that euphemism our culture uses whenever they want to talk about the act of dismembering a developing human being in the womb of her mother.
I do not know who this woman is although I think I’m supposed to. She mentions being some kind of celebrity with a late-night talk show but I’m not familiar enough with that world to tell you who this is. But it doesn’t really matter. There are plenty of people out there who think and act like this. Truthfully, even though I don’t know who this woman is, I do know who this woman is. I see her all the time. Sometimes she’s a younger adult woman like this, sometimes she’s a bitter older male, sometimes she’s an impassioned but severely immature teenager pressing the cause of the moment.
The truth is that we all know this woman in some capacity. So the question I think is valuable for us to ask ourselves isn’t, “how evil can one person be?!” Instead, I think we should be asking one another how we reach somebody like this.
(language warning)
Transcript
Here I was sitting in Los Angeles in my beautiful office where I have my own late night talk show. Soon I would be driving my hybrid car to my beautiful f---ing home to kiss my two beautiful and healthy children, and my husband who would take the year off to parent, so I could focus on my career.
I love this. I love it. Because, because, because I was allowed bodily autonomy at 15.
I will not be shamed into being quiet. We will not be shamed into being quiet ever again. I’ll never stop talking about my abortion, or my periods, my experiences in childbirth, my episiotomy, my yeast infections, or my ovulation that lines up with the moon.
Okay, let’s start with the obvious. Yikes. That’s a lot of anger. A lot of unhinged rage. A lot of acrimony, animosity, and antagonism. If I was asked to psychoanalyze that short clip, I would conclude this was the misdirected rage of a guilty conscience. There are other options, of course.
They’re only in their early teenage years, but I’ve seen this kind of emotional diatribe from my daughters on rare occasions (not about abortion, to be clear). Their rage in those moments is largely hormonal, and they often don’t know what they’re even saying. My oldest even told me after one recent meltdown, “I don’t even know why I said those things, I don’t even think them but they just came out!” I’ll be honest – after witnessing it, I cannot imagine being a teenage girl. Those of you who went through it, hats off to you for surviving. But anyway, some might be inclined to pass off this speaker’s fury as hormonal rage, but I don’t think that’s it. It’s clear these are prepared remarks, premeditated beliefs, and her mouth is speaking what is in her heart.
So then, back to the original question – the question that matters: how do we reach someone like that?