My conclusion from this experience of noticing the similarity of behavior between the projecting traumatized person and the entitled self-aggrandized… - Sarah Schulman

Once people are given the right of dominance, that is the right to punish or to threaten punishment by the state, they are no longer required to examine themselves. It has never been shown that punishment works. Punishment, denouncing, excluding, threatening, and shunning often create a worse society. It divides people, causes great pain, compromises individual integrity, and obscures truths in the name of falsely shoring up group reputation. Similarly, there is no correlation between having the ability to punish and being right. More often than not, the wrong people get punished. And the punishers use their power to keep from being accountable. So creating new classes of people who can threaten someone with the state, or who can call the police, does not produce more justice, and is more likely to produce more injustice.

Change requires awareness to propel a transformation of attitude. Once there is even a glimmer of awareness, it implies the ownership of an injustice, and a consequential responsibility for its solution, which must be expressed through behavior, not just feeling.

Anxiety is best addressed by support and love in trying to understand those reasons, not the false “loyalty” of aggression to escalate unjust actions. When we are in community with people who are escalating, we have to ask the right questions in order to understand what past experiences the instigator is responding to in the present. That is the responsibility of real friendship, the true definition of love.