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Title : The Domestic Violence-Cruelty Model of Governing
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The Domestic Violence-Cruelty Model of Governing

“Do I regret the angst people have gone through, well, sure. But you could not get to this point, where folks are really talking to us about what really matters in Alaska, what folks really value, if we didn’t go through the process of reductions.”

That's what Governor Dunleavy said two days ago to excuse his veto of $444M from the State Operating Budget--an act that has proven both grossly unpopular, and catalyzed a recall movement grounded in concrete violations of the law and the constitution (as opposed to the disastrous, sadistic policy choices that many of these vetoes reflect).

But there was something even more sinister in the governor's self-serving back-pedaling, which was transparently driven by his own political panic rathe than an actual change of mind or heart. It was the tone he used to deliver this message. It was a tone that many women, at least, have become inured to and dread since Trump was elected. It's a tone in which abusive politics feeds private abuse, and private abuse--along with a culture that promotes and tolerates domestic violence--allows abusive men to assume positions of power. 

This was the language that Dunleavy was speaking--to all of the Alaskans who had suffered, brutally and needlessly--under the ink of his imperious "red pen."

As he stood in a Head Start classroom, smugly announcing the restoration of funds for early education just six weeks after he had vetoed them and six months after he had proposed the program be eliminated entirely, he told us that he HAD to do it. He HAD to threaten the loss of these funds first in order to reinstate them.

This is the stock and trade language of abusers: "I know I hurt you, but I had to make you understand. You can relax now. You should thank me for stopping. You deserved it."

This is cruelty, plain and simple. It's cruel to veto funds for early childhood education and senior citizens, causing services to lapse and elders to write their elected officials, quite literally begging for their lives, while experienced staff leave and look elsewhere for work. It's cruel to intentionally incentivize the decimation of education and research, causing professors to flee the state, critical science to go unstudied, and students to wonder if they will be able to get a college education at home.

It was in this context that the governor stridently assumed the podium to announce that, in his magnanimous generosity, he would not again veto these funds after the legislature had voted to restore them. But make no mistake: the only reason he was standing there at all was because of the strength and persistence of Alaskans and their legislators and the looming threat of a recall.

It's gaslighting, bullying, and psychological abuse for the governor to claim that we couldn't get to this point if we didn't go through the process of his red-pen reductions.

The governor, by executive fiat, hurt, scared, and bullied hundreds of thousands of the Alaskans he is supposed to be protecting. And then he returned to them their stolen morsels, seeking gratitude for his benevolence and foresight in "starting a conversation" that we simply had to have. 

“The idea is not to torture anyone or bother folks,” he said. “We know that that was part of the outcome, but that was not the intent. Again we were hoping this would be done in the springtime.”

This is a classic form of gaslighting: you cannot be offended, because that wasn't the intention, and intention is more important than outcome. Because he didn't "intend" the outcome, we are asked not to trust our own perceptions, feelings, and consequences of the abusive behavior. Also, it's our fault that the abuse has dragged on so long. 

This is not only blaming the victim, but it's stating a lie as though it were a fact: It was clearly and absolutely the governor's fault--and his fault alone--that this funding was vetoed in the first place. No one put the "red pen" in his hand. He BRAGGED about that red pen. 

Thousands of Alaskans, as well as experts, testified throughout the session that they needed and relied on these programs and benefits. The legislature restored them not once, but twice, in response to that testimony. Yet here is the governor, obfuscating and denying his role, causing us to doubt our perception of reality. And if it's one thing the Trumpite playbook counsels, a lie repeated enough times becomes the truth.

This small step back toward empathy was hard won and possible only through the grit, time, energy, and money of Alaskans fighting for their basic dignity and the social contract. It was a step that the governor, terrified of a recall, was forced to take not out of kindness or deliberation, but out of political expedience. And there he is telling us there was no other way. 

But there is another way.

We can control the public narrative by calling this out for the crisis PR stunt that it is. He doesn't get a medal for punching a kid in the face, stealing their lunch money, and then giving some of it back when they beg hard enough.

When men in power traffic in these abusive tactics, what emerges most clearly is our lack of safety. We see how thin the veil really is between the personal and the political; how familiar this is to so many Alaskan women, particularly indigenous women. I was reminded of my trip to D.C. to beg Senator Murkowski to vote no on appointing an abusive man to the United States Supreme Court. Knowing it was futile, we met with Senator Sullivan as well. He brought his Alaska Native wife into the room with him as some sort of protection or totem to his own goodness and "women's rights/indigenous rights" bona fides. He patted himself on the back for his role in the vacuous Choose Respect campaign, all while telling a room full of women that he didn't find Kavanaugh's accusers "credible."

We don't need denials. We need to listen to women. We need to listen to survivors. We need to listen and recognize these abusive tactics in our politicians. Survivors can sense them early on, and it behooves us to capitalize on their wisdom in choosing our elected officials. We need to stop empowering men who abuse their power in this way. And we need to recognize and name this behavior in whatever form it takes, wherever and whenever it arises.

The ideas expressed and many of the words used in this post are copied, culled, edited, and adapted from an amalgam of recent conversations on social media and elsewhere with numerous survivors of domestic violence and their advocates. None wished to put their name here.

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