A friend forwarded these following quotes from a well-respected book (Trauma and Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman, M.D.).
I agree with her that these concepts give crucial insight into Karl Rove's media strategy in the aftermath of the Katrina catastrophe: "blame the victims and move on." I thought you would find them interesting:
“The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.”
“The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.”
“People who have endured horrible events suffer predictable psychological harm…because traumatic syndromes have basic features in common, the recovery process also follows a common pathway. The fundamental stages of recovery are establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community.”
“When the events are natural disasters or “acts of God,” those who bear witness sympathize readily with the victim. But when the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator."
"All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.”
“In order to escape the accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrators first line of defense."
"If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization."
"After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon her [him] self; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”
“To hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and joins the victim and witness in a common alliance. For the individual victim the social context is created by relationships with friends, lovers, and family. For the larger society, the social context is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered.”
“In the absence of strong political movements for human rights, the active process of bearing witness inevitably gives way to the active process of forgetting.”
... Let's not forget. Or be neutral. Or be silent.