Evil Forces Hide Their Crimes by Cultivating the Shame of the Innocent

Help me spread the truths Republicans want to burn.A line of metal doors fastened with padlocks stretched down the hallway of my high school. They never warned us against unhooking the heavy chunks of metal and throwing them at each other. You could have killed somebody. Maybe they didn’t want to give us the idea.Hurled locks wasn’t something I worried about, but I feared death in other ways.The specter of unreasonable authority had become entrenched in the building. From the first day of school, we were told that authority could never be wrong. Therefore, if something bad happened, it must be our fault.We the innocent.When the winter came, we marched to school in ankle deep snow. Some kids wore boots. Some had grungy tennis shoes with holes in the toe.The teachers would scream at the kids with tennis shoes. “What is the matter with you? Why are you wearing that? Does that seem like a smart choice?”Then the class would laugh. The kid would absorb it with glistening eyes and a look of defiance. Anyone who brought it up on the playground would get a beating. The clever kids with soggy shoes were able to turn the narrative. They became cool and rebellious. Even the rich kids started leaving their boots at home.Nobody ever mentioned that maybe boots were something the family couldn’t afford. We didn’t think like that. We worshiped the prosperity gospel. We were indoctrinated to believe that poor people deserved their punishment and that the rich had earned the favor of God.God was not to be questioned.Neither were the teachers.My first days at public school were challenging. I couldn’t eat. I lost weight. I kept my head down and tried to hide.This was during the decade when fathers were expected to come home and scream. Whatever frustrations they’d endured that day, they took out on their wives and children. Then we were supposed to thank them afterwards.“Thanks for all that you do for us!”“Thank you for your sacrifice.”“Thank you for your service!”And if we didn’t say that, they’d pout.They were “tough” and “masculine” and our “protectors.” But they sat around like petulant children if we didn’t attend to their constant need for satisfaction. We had to pretend our needs didn’t exist.There were huge swaths of intellectual exploration that we were prohibited to mention. Still, I mentioned them anyway. Not out of defiance, but out of inevitability. I’m a curious soul. I ask questions. I notice when what I’m being told does not make sense.Unjust authority cannot survive if it is challenged. That’s why they demand that you accept their explanations without evidence. They don’t have evidence. The things they believe don’t hold up to examination.Unlike truth.Yet, we faced an expectation to learn everything they said. So I started asking questions not to dismantle their claims, but to understand them.“But what about…”“But what if…”“So that means…”Liars always stumble into a tangle of contradictions. They’re doomed to be undone by their own deceits.The figures of authority in my community became frustrated with me. Parents, adults, teachers, even strangers on the street. But I could walk a narrow path that looked like compliance which allowed me to explore what I would eventually believe.Abusive people rely on imposing shame as their primary defense. They shame you so you become disoriented and you’re so busy begging for forgiveness that you don’t stop to question whether you offered any offense.“Your generation is lazy. You’ll never amount to anything. You’re a bunch of slackers. You’re embarrassments to your parents. You’re stupid. You’re worthless. You’re sinful.”“Everybody sins,” they say.I brought a copy of The Call of the Wild to school, and my teacher laid into me. “Who do you think you’re fooling? You can’t understand this book. It’s above your reading level, you shouldn’t have this.”“I can read it,” I said, and I opened the cover to demonstrate. I had the strength to do this because I’d been told it was wrong to lie. I’d extrapolated that I couldn’t allow a lie to remain uncontested. I had a deeply rooted sense of justice.I read the words. What were they going to do, punish me for reading? Authority becomes afraid when they can’t cower you with the threat of consequences.“Take your seat.”Today, people talk about how children are “coddled.” They talk about the “old days” when they used to be able to beat respect and manners into children.That’s not how you learn those things.I always reply, “Somebody should beat some respect and manners into adults.”Rooms go quiet. “Come on you tough-talking cowards, throw down.”In fourth grade, a teacher screamed at the class because we all did poorly on an assignment. She went on and on berating us. I clenched my hands and tried to blink back tears. It wasn’t fair. I concluded that if we all made a mistake then the fault must lie with her.Finally, I erupted and screamed, “Well, maybe you should have explained it better!”Instantly I became the focal point of her rage, which I endured. I sat there numbly as wave after wave of anger crashed over me. The experience shook me, but I recognized her anger didn’t change the fact that I was right.In that moment, I learned an important lesson about power.When you shame the shamers, it’s something they intensely dislike.I became very good at shaming authority back. I learned you have to push through the initial explosion of outrage. Their eyes tighten up, their lips pucker into a sphincter, they express their disapproval.Eventually, they start screaming about respect.“You will respect me.”“Why? What have you done to deserve it? What standard do you uphold that we should all perceive as noble? Educate me because I don’t see it. Besides, isn’t that your job?”I spent my youth engaged in bizarre battles both in high school and at home. I lied openly both to my teachers and my father, because they’d demonstrated they couldn’t be trusted with the truth. I rejected their imposition of shame, because there was nothing I could see that suggested I was to blame.At my daughter’s school, there are no padlocks. The locks are built right into the door. You can’t unhook them and throw them and kill anyone anymore.I tried to raise my children without ever invoking shame. I’m not a perfect man, and I lost my patience with them every now and then. But in those instances, I always apologized, and I think that was important too.Growing up, I feigned toughness, but my sense of self always hung from a thread. I feared the cut that might send me spiraling into dread. I lived on the edge of tears. I placed my hope on tiny things to spare myself the humiliation of breaking down in front of my peers.I feel stress when something doesn’t go right for my kids. I hate to disappoint them. I don’t know how much of their will to carry on rests upon trivial events. But I’ve discovered this is one way I can’t relate to their life experience.Unlike me, they understand what “inconsequential” means. A minor setback isn’t enough to bring them to their knees. They carry on, laughing and skipping and happy as always.They are empoweredThey’ve been liberated from the cruel burden of shame.I’ve come to understand that they have a solid foundation to keep despair away. They aren’t hanging behind the meager protection of a thread. Together, we exposed the illusion of shame. They’ve never had it wielded against them as I did.When they laugh at the absurdity of authoritarians it’s with a sincerity I could never fake, though I tried. They’ve fused a certain fortitude with their identity that I was never able to claim deep down inside. Yet I dreamed it, and together we manifested it, and now this stronger path has come to life.Shame is created by the failures of people in positions of power. It must be countered with accountability, not by making scapegoats of our kids. As parents, we should strive to empower, not crush the innocent under the burden of our sins.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe