Tyranny Talk Threatens Our Spirituality and Our Democracy

By Janet C. Lindeman, PhD

Janet C. Lindeman, PhD, a psychologist with a spiritual background explores tyranny and how it affects people. A short and important look at tyranny and the problems brought on by those ideas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paper Gold Publishing OLD
• Release date: Jan 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201168629

Janet C. Lindeman, PhD

Janet C. Lindeman, PhD Dr. Lindeman worked as a psychologist in private practice in Anchorage, Alaska, for 35 years.  Before that she completed a BA in History at Oberlin College and graduate degrees in Education and Counseling Psychology at Harvard University, the University of Alaska and Washington State University.  She is married and lives in Oregon.  She has published two books: 365 Wise Ways to Happiness and A Divided Nation Can Recover from Shame and Blame. You can reach her at [e-mail].

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE:

DISTINGUISHING TYRANNY TALK FROM GENUINE SPIRITUALITY & DEMOCRACY

What is Tyranny Talk?

The simple answer is that Tyranny Talk is dishonest and unethical speech designed to erode and overthrow constitutional, democratic government and create authoritarian government. Unfortunately, it is so sneaky and duplicitous that it can suck in well-meaning people who believe its lies.

Tyranny Talkers are drawn into following authoritarian leaders by their desire for security and certainty. Authoritarian leaders provide easy answers: follow me, believe in what I say, and I will give you certainty and security. They misunderstand the work that maintaining true freedom requires. They think if their leader tells them they can do what they want to do, that leader is offering them freedom. That is a false promise, because when we turn our view of reality over to someone else who is motivated primarily by power, we are sacrificing our freedoms. But when an autocrat appears to be giving us what we want simply by following him, it is seductive. It becomes a sort of addiction. For religious people, it can also create false prophecies and dependency on a human being instead of one’s own understanding of God or a Higher Power. This can be very destructive to genuine spirituality.

Genuine spirituality is based not on trust in a human being, but trust in an energy much greater than that in any one human being. For a deist, it is a trust in divine, God energy. For an agnostic or atheist, it is trust in a Higher Power that isn’t defined in divine terms but is greater than human energy. This Power might be trust in the power of Nature or of Love.

One Twelve Step Program member defined God this way: L.O.V.E. = Loving, Open, Vital, Energy. Turning one’s will over to this kind of energy, when a person feels overwhelmed and insecure, is what is needed to avoid authoritarian government. This is energy beyond any one human’s capacity. Democratic government is necessary for this kind of loving energy to be largely sustainable in a society. Democratic government takes genuine, inclusive spiritual leadership. This leadership needs to come from a community of people who have learned how to live in honest, inclusive, kind, compassionate relationship with one another, not just people committed to one religious belief system. In modern society it takes teams of people committed to ethics, democratic institutions, and Constitutional principles. 

Some Tyranny Talk in the U.S. can be traced to the feelings of white supremacists who believe that the federal government is tyrannical when it imposes standards of equal rights for all Americans. In the past, they didn’t see African Americans as worthy of equal rights, even after their legal emancipation from slavery. Some weren’t even sure if women should have equal rights. Now white, mono-cultural advocates seem to be less concerned by the loss of democracy in the U.S. than concerned about minority groups and new immigrants taking away their power. They have not yet learned to feel comfortable in multi-cultural environments, and they are afraid they will lose some of their identity, power and position, if they allow their community to become multicultural. This is a false fear, because multi-culturalism in a democratic nation can actually strengthen our nation’s economy, its educational system and its national defense.

If we are Christians, we have been taught to turn our fears over to Jesus and to God and to love others as ourselves. If we are spiritual seekers of other faiths, we have been taught, as have Christians, to trust the Golden Rule to do unto others what we would have them to do unto us. Genuine spirituality bonds us all, no matter our political parties or our religious organizations. Yet, fearful, undemocratic people have taken over some of our political and religious groups with what this book calls Tyranny Talk.

Tyranny Talk includes:

1) Dishonesty and keeping secrets;   

2)  The absence of Spirit, Honesty and Ethics;

3)  The absence of Democracy and Constitutionality;

4)  The presence of Political Addiction, defined as:

Negative judgments of others based on their lack of similar beliefs;

Isolation from others with different beliefs;

Shaming and blaming others when certain political practices are not followed;

Engaging in political practices to the point of damaging physical, social or emotional health;

Rationalizing even the use of violence to win in a political fight;

5)  Promoting the unquestioning obedience to a political leader;

6)  Disallowing or distorting memories of history, and

7)  Repressing the free expression of others’ feelings and opinions.

Democratic (with a small d) and speech includes:

1) The presence of honesty, ethics and spirit;

2) The support of free and fair elections, a constitution which protects the equal

rights and protections of all its citizens, and leadership chosen by and for the

people;

3) The absence of political addiction and the checking out of facts

4) The lack of negative judgments of others based on their lack of similar beliefs;

5) Willingness to dialogue with others of different beliefs;

6) The lack of shaming and blaming others, and the disavowal of political violence;

7) Respecting, teaching, and validating history;

8) Respecting education based on honest facts;

9) Avoiding dishonesty and secrets;

10) Allowing the expression of differing feelings and opinions;

11) Non-violent communication and collaboration, and

12) Respecting change of leadership via free and fair elections.

There is a third kind of speech which might be called spiritual speech. Pema Chodron, in Welcoming the Unwelcome, describes this kind of speech as communicating respect for yourself and others, rather than disrespect, aggression, and polarization. It is speech that comes from the heart and communicates to the heart. This speech includes the qualities of democratic speech, but it goes even further into compassion and understanding for Tyranny Talkers. This is the kind of speech which this book invites readers to practice.To retain our democracy, we need to educate our children in how to speak democratically and spiritually. We need to vote in every election and peacefully demonstrate in the streets, if necessary, to protect everyone’s rights. We need to overcome corruption in our government, and protect ourselves from cyber warfare, disinformation, and baseless conspiracy theories. We need to find community support for practicing both democratic and spiritual speech. We need to learn ways to overcome our own personalized, polarized thinking patterns and to open our hearts to our own and others’ goodness. We need to let go of our desires to fight against enemies and accept the pain of our disappointments and work with all our country’s peoples as loved sisters and brothers. This learning will give us more national security than all our bombs and hatreds.

Tyranny Talk has resulted from recent decades of extreme political polarization in the U.S. Some voters have become so identified with their preferred political party that they see the other political party as the enemy. They have been taught to use simple labels for other people such as Socialist, or Right Wing, or Leftists, or Liberals, and they haven’t learned to get past the labels and see real people and real policies. These people use sports labels and behaviors, my team versus your team. They figure only one team can win and the other must lose, and they don’t want to be losers. They have learned to cheer for their team and boo the other team. They apply these behaviors to political candidates, only listening to their affiliated team or party. They base their opinions on others’ opinions, rather than their own fact-finding.

Tyranny Talkers haven’t learned to look at the candidates’ characters and abilities to work with other teams. They don’t realize that their competitive, sports-like behaviors alienate others and destroy national community and unity. They don’t realize that forgetting our common national interests can lead to the end of our free, democratic form of government. They look for sports-like heroes to worship and aren’t interested in learning anything about the other team’s players. They don’t realize even sports heroes need to follow agreed upon rules or the game can’t go on. They really don’t realize that politics isn’t a sport. It’s not a binary, either/or business. It’s a serious business about unifying the country enough to get real problems solved in a way that can further everyone’s securities.

We were unified during past world wars. Now we are making war against each other. This is a dangerous time. There are still enemy nations which would like our democracy to fail. They are trying to do this via cyber warfare distributing falsehoods, and clandestine money to certain national candidates. They are furthering our polarized political parties. When we engage in polarized politics at home, we are falling right into the hands of fascist, communist, undemocratic autocrats in other countries.

Russia, especially, has been influencing Donald Trump to move the nation toward autocratic leadership and away from sustaining democratic principles and institutions. If Trump was a believer in democratic principles and institutions, he wouldn’t have tried to overthrow the 2020 elections based on false claims of widespread fraud, to illegally maintain his power. He would have accepted the rulings of the U.S. court system and Congress in their findings that the 2020 election was fair and honest, especially after the legitimate, bipartisan audits done immediately after the election. He wouldn’t have undermined the authority and legitimacy of the other two branches of government which our Constitution established to balance the power of the presidency.

Extremists on both sides of the political spectrum have come to believe that politics is a spectator sport and only one team can be the ultimate victor. They really don’t understand how our Constitution is designed to help us establish two or more political parties which can honestly compete for leadership roles and then work together with all parties while in office to further national interests. Once chosen, these different party leaders are expected to cooperate with each other. But compromise in American politics has become a dirty word due to the polarization of the voters. Filibustering has become a way for minority extremes to try to overpower the majority. It has resulted in political gridlock. Nobody’s genuine needs are being met because of this chaos.

In my opinion, these two factors (fears of other cultures and binary/win/lose/sports-type attitudes toward politics) have led to where we are now in the U.S. with the battles between the Republican and Democratic Parties.  A mixture of cultures is nothing to fear, especially when the leadership of both parties are committed to mutual respect, the Golden Rule and our Constitution. It is only when different political parties are defined to be either good or bad that everyone suffers. Authoritarian government without the protection of all citizens’ equal rights is a bigger threat than any immigration group. Immigrants come here because of our democratic principles, not just to improve themselves economically. This has been true since the founding of our nation.

Tyranny in the American College Dictionary is defined as "the arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority; oppressive or severe government, a state ruled by a tyrant or absolute ruler." Tyrant is defined as a king or ruler who uses his power oppressively or unjustly, an absolute ruler.... Owing his office to usurpation. Usurpation is defined as "an act of seizing and holding of a place or power, without right, the wrongful seizure and occupation of a throne [of power]." Consider the facts. This is what Donald Trump is trying to do.

Tyranny Talk is used by authoritarian, totalitarian governments. Totalitarianism is defined as a centralized form of government in which those in control grant neither recognition nor tolerance to parties of different opinion. There are many such governments in existence now, such as in Russia, China, and North Korea. Donald Trump is not recognizing the legitimacy of the elected President. He is falsely claiming fraud, trying to justify his illegal and insurrectionist behaviors. He is fooling millions of people into believing him, despite all the contrary evidence.

This book chooses to call people in autocratic movements, Tyranny Talkers. This is because they ultimately will result in overthrowing our democracy and challenging our Constitution, if they continue to grow. The term Tyranny Talkers is not to shame these people, but rather to truthfully acknowledge the possible results of this autocratic movement, if it goes unrestrained. 

Hannah Arendt wrote a definitive book on totalitarianism, The Origins of Totalitarianism. It was republished five times, from 1948 to 1995.  She described totalitarianism as characterized by dishonest propaganda, nationalism, conspiracy theories, escapes from reality, a longing of the people for consistency, corrupt politicians, and a society whose members act and react according to the rules of a fictitious world.  This book calls people who follow totalitarian movements, Tyranny Talkers. This is not meant disrespectfully, but rather descriptively, because they challenge democratic principles and institutions, and the rules of our Constitution.

Fortunately, our current Biden Administration is not characterized in this way. We may not agree with all Biden’s decisions, but President Biden is not dishonest.  He doesn’t promote conspiracy theories. He doesn’t lie to the public. And he is committed to staying in reality. He doesn’t go along with Trump’s Big Lie that he in fact, won the 2020 election. Biden may not be perfect, but his intentions are good. Former President Trump is not anchored in democratic principles nor reality. His hopes became his reality. He is still presenting them to the public as facts, rather than as his hopes. He did this when president and talking about the Covid-19 epidemic. He did this after the 2020 election which he legitimately lost but hoped to win. He is still doing this. He claims to have been a constitutionally-based president, but this is blatantly not true.

The impact of Former President Trump’s Presidency

Democracy is based on respect for the rule of law and our Constitution. When a former president doesn’t respect the rule of law and convinces followers that they should overthrow the rule of law, we as a nation are in trouble.

Trump and many of his followers engaged in Tyranny Talk, spreading his Big Lie that the 2020 election was corrupt. Trump and his followers were so dishonest that they convinced many insurrectionist citizens, and now are continuing to try to convince 2022 and 2024 voters that the 2020 election was actually stolen from him.

Donald Trump’s plan to subvert the November 2020 election actually began before the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. He and attorney John Eastman hatched a six-point plan that was based on an attempt to use loopholes in the 1887 Electoral Count Act to throw aside the people’s vote in the 2020 election and to dishonestly declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election. This information came out in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s 2021 book, Peril, and it has also been covered by many news channels.

Fortunately. Pence refused to illegally throw the election to Trump on January 6th as requested by Trump, but Trump continues to make his false claims about winning the election.  Unfortunately, Pence is not now challenging him about this falsehood.

Looking at the loopholes in the old Electoral Count Act shows that an undemocratic politician could possibly stretch this old law to allow state legislatures to appoint electors on their own, regardless of how the state’s own citizens voted. This would be a new, undemocratic, unconstitutional interpretation of that law and certainly not one the Act’s writers intended. The old Act might also allow any objection to a state’s electoral votes to be filed with just one Senator’s and one House member’s signature. These undemocratic loopholes in the Act simply were not corrected in the past.

In late 2020, Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley cooperated with Trump to try to use the old 1887 law to disallow millions of voters’ honest votes. They suffered some backlash from a few honest Republicans for doing this, yet they  remain seated in the Senate.  Both ment objected to the legitimate certification of the Arizona and Pennsylvania electors on January 6, 2021, despite these votes being approved by all the