Letter that might be answered -- the election

I am a "childless cat lady", 60. White female. My father was a refugee from Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. My mother was from a small town in Louisiana and taught High School American History. I was raised with a classic secular humanistic background. My father grew up during WW2& the Holocaust. He didn't want us to be typical spoiled "American brats" and inculcated us with awareness of man's inhumanity to man. I studied the Holocaust on my own, almost compulsively, off and on for my entire life. My parents were alcoholic and narcissistic...I found I identified with the children of Holocaust survivors. Their accounts of how their parents manifested the symptoms of trauma were the closest thing I'd read to how my parents behaved.

I am a recovering alcoholic and now practice recovery in a 12 Step group called Adult Children of Alcoholics. I am deeply hostile to religion because of how friendly it is with authoritarianism. I took a lot of college & university courses and tried to finish a degree when I got sober but it didn't work out. I am mostly self-taught. If I had been functional I am sure I would have stayed in academia (and been an "academia nut"). I once took an "F" for a semester at UT Austin (when I first went to college after HS) because I had partied the whole time & was unprepared for exams. I went to each professor and asked them to fail me. I did it because I needed radical self-acceptance. I have never regretted that decision. My linguistics professor once asked me if I had cheated on a final for a class I was repeating. She thought I cheated because the instinctive answers I made on the final were so good she couldn't believe it. So I have areas of instinctive knowledge but never had the chance to develop them. I would have loved to study mathematics. As a result of childhood trauma, I could not have healthy relationships. After the last attempt, I gave up. I don't pity myself because I understand that I am a victim of my own defense mechanisms. I am revisiting David Foster Wallace, who I think is now in disfavor, not because of his brilliance (I find him difficult to read but the slivers of understanding I do get are rather rewarding), but because I am attracted to his suffering. And because he talked about the purpose of writing being to alleviate isolation. I am seeking him as a fellow traveler, through reading his books. The difference between that and the transference you experience in psychotherapy, is that in psychotherapy you are seeking your family. In books you are seeking purely other souls. I understood the universality of the human condition by reading world literature. We are all the same. My best and closest friends have always been writers. I am not lonely, I have connections to others. I am not depressed. But there isn't anything left for me here.

I really believed we could win. I think it's possible that American Hitler and Elon Musk could have cooked up a scheme to alter election results. On the other hand, this was a predictable result, because that's what America is. I apologize for replying to your invitation to tell you about myself. I am unworthy because I didn't take the time to understand your essay, I just lashed out. I saw it in my online news feed, Smart News. I am very sure you are an honorable and decent man and an academic of integrity. I think the most interesting question is, how were so many of us taken in by the misguided belief that Harris could have actually won?

Be well

p.s. if you are interested in totalitarian systems, I highly recommend Vasily Grossman. He was a war reporter for the Soviet Union present during the siege of Leningrad. He was maybe the first observer to state that Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were mirror images of each other. His unpublished novel was "arrested" by the Soviets and "sentenced" to over a hundred years I think, of suppression.

If you are interested in the dynamics of the times we are now living in, I recommend a novel by the author Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), entitled Almanac of the Dead. Published in the early 80's, this novel predicted many trends we are seeing now; I guess you could call it a portrait of the collapse of America. She was right about so many things.