10 Things I hate about you

Like many young Americans who are trying to enjoy History today, I am finding there is something stuck in my craw. And it is making odd scratching noises as I get all choked up and teary eyed, singing Wind Beneath My Wings while thinking about Barack Obama.

Ah, yes... it must be the fact that Hillary Clinton has already begun the 2012 campaign.

Now, there are times when it is important to leave well enough alone. But that time is not now. As an avid reader of advice columns, I recognize that now, more than ever, it is time to stage an intervention. In fact, the bunker relationship of Clinton and her supporters, bears all the signs of emotional abuse. Indeed, her supporters are clearly victims of narcissism.

In the advice columns, one finds the evidence of this particularly poisonous relationship in the Best Friend Conundrum or the In-Law Standoff. It generally goes something like:

I've been friends with Chuck and Blair since we all met in college a few years ago. Since that time, Chuck and Blair began going out together, but things recently deteriorated and they went through a messy breakup. I value my friendships with both of them, but in my recent meetings with Blair, she has told me some awful things about how Chuck treated her and specifically requested that, if I want to keep my friendship with her, I will cut off contact with Chuck. I want to be supportive of Blair, but I have also heard different versions of the break-up from some of Blair's other friends. What should I do?

Or:

I am very close to my family and live a few hours away. As a result, I usually devote about one weekend per month to visiting them. I have recently become engaged to a guy who is all that. The initial meet-and-greet with my parents went over well, however, following the previous two monthly visits at my parents house, my fiance spent the entire drive back talking about how disrespectful my parents behaved toward him. To be honest, this takes me by surprise, since I didn't notice anything off about how they treated him, but he insists that I am too close to them to notice the slights he has picked up on and then proceeds to review with me in detail. It is now a few days before our next planned visit, and he has become increasingly irritable as the date approaches and has asked if we can call the trip off. I have offered to make excuses for him and go by myself, but he protests that this would send the wrong message to my parents and has said that if I really loved him, I would stand up to them about the way they treat him. I'd like to defend him, but I really have no idea how to when I honestly cannot see what they have done wrong. What do I do?

For a while, I have wondered why the Clinton supporters were so angry and how they managed to maintain their furor despite the lack of empirical support for Clinton's claims of wrongdoing on the part of the Obama campaign and the media. Only last night's speech and its specific location -- sealed off from cell-phone, Internet, and televisual communication -- revealed to me the truth: Clinton is manipulating and abusing her supporters in order to keep them from leaving her for Barack Obama.

As most advice columnists will point out, whether the abuse or manipulation is conscious or not is irrelevant. A narcissist genuinely believes that he or she is constantly being persecuted either by a real or constructed rival for the constant attention and validation he or she seeks, or due to his or her grandiose status, of which the rest of humanity is intolerant or envious.

A narcissistic abuser, as advice columnists will point out, will try to cut off his or her victim from information, construct false narratives of victimization (e.g. "Your father told me that I wouldn't make enough money as a professional blogger to support your lifestyle"; "The media has kept me down because I'm a woman.") and apply rules arbitrarily such that they are to their advantage (e.g. "Blair made Chuck systematically go through his photo albums and e-mail account to delete any photo, message or reference involving his exes, but she still regularly meets with several of her ex-boyfriends"; or "You owe it to me to give me all the delegates from the primary we agreed not to contest in Michigan, but you shouldn't have any, because they didn't vote for you.").

As with any abusive relationship, the victims cannot leave, because the combination of control of narrative, arbitrary application of rules, and the control of information create a vicious cycle of misperception and anger, where anyone who seeks to criticize the relationship or the abuser only further justifies the abuser's false narrative of persecution: "See, the media and Obama supporters say that I cannot win the nomination because by all empirical measures I cannot: They must really hate me and love Obama!" This feeds the bunker mentality of an abusive relationship, where the victim cannot leave, because the abuser has convinced him or her that he or she cannot trust anybody external to the relationship as they are only motivated by hatred for the specialness of what they have together, and further, that the victim would have no life worth living without the abuser.

It is this detachment from reality, the spectacle of seeing a small fraction of those 17 million voters (since it is only a small fraction who have been emotionally fragilized by the process) continue to be ensnared in Clinton's abusive manipulations, that has angered Obama supporters and generated the inflammatory rhetoric and counter-accusations that comes across online. Wat can we do to solve this?

First, as any advice columnist will tell you, validating Clinton in any way shape or form would be the worst possible reaction. That will only further perpetuate the adherence of her troubled victims to the "Clinton-BocaRaton Co-dependency syndrome" by legitimizing her delusions of grandeur and providing another false narrative to her supporters. But, then, so will our continued anger and incomprehension of how someone can survive by fueling so much hatred.

No, as most advice columnists will suggest and as clinicians will agree, we need to engage Clinton's victims in a slow, methodic phase of questioning the different principles upon which their relationship is founded. Ask pertinent questions. Provide them small snippets of information when you think they are ready. Allow them to hope for positive outcomes that might not be dependent on their relationship with Clinton. More than anything else, though, you must give them time. Time to cope. Time to heal.

But, be patient. Even if we start today, it may take up to five months.