Bats In The Belfry - Was It A Passionate Desire For Moral Justice Or Was She Just Nuts? The Tale Of A Trump Hater

Vicki Barker was a settled woman in most respects - a tenured white woman at a Historically Black University, a published author (Slave Journals From Georgia), a cute house in the suburbs, a dutiful husband, and two children - but there was always a raw nerve that irritated, a dissatisfaction with the very America that gave her academic prominence, financial security, and comfort. 

Ever since her college days Vicki was a member of the Left, an outspoken advocate for the black man, women, and peace; and in her later years the climate, the environment, and a more equitable allocation of wealth.  This political temper did not come from either her parents or her schooling.  Mr. and Mrs. Barker were quiet Republicans from Chicopee, and Vassar was a serious academic parallel to Harvard and Yale in the days before co-education. 

It was also the stepping-off point for finding a husband - the college had even rented a bus to take girls to and from New Haven on weekends.  There were no campus revolts, no Columbia student take-overs, no massive civil rights protests, just study in the rural setting of Poughkeepsie, and the chance to suss out prospective suitors from among the best and the brightest. 

It was at graduate school in Chicago that she began to see things differently.  Perhaps it was because of her choice of study - comparative literature, a discipline which had come under the influence of French deconstructionist philosophers Lacan and Derrida - or because of the growing unrest on campus among a small, but restive minority for whom the modest progressive policies of the time were nothing more than empty gestures; or because some inner chord had been struck, an innate sense of justice, righteousness, and rectitude. 

It was likely all three, the perfect storm to change Vicki from dutiful scholar, proper citizen, and suburban wife to political activist.  Yet many girls of her age and background paid little attention to the blandishments of campus radicals, sailed through the straits of good fortune and hard work, and ended up respected matrons of Greenwich, Shawnee Mission, or Lexington. 

Professor Langston Petrie of Princeton studied the nature and origins of political dissension in the young, and had described 'the nexus of revolt' - an innate psycho-biological empathy; post-adolescent identity 'neediness'; and demographics, the bulge of under 25s - as the perfect storm of 'irritable dissatisfaction'. 

The origins of the Dissatisfied Woman are in her medulla oblongata, a particular brain configuration common in those given to a stern moral rectitude and an uncommon, inflexible, and unarbitrary conviction about right and wrong. As girls, these women are often stubborn, defiant, and willfully opposed to their parents when they felt wronged; and as young women take the moral ills of the world at large upon their shoulders. 

Vicki was indeed a pissy little child, a pain in the ass, her father admitted with a smile.  Her temper tantrums were volcanic, her refusal to give in was heroic, and her will was Herculean.  All admirable in a way, but in a toddler, insufferable. 

 

She grew out of the Terrible Twos which in her case lasted for years but like Job who was wrestled by God and brought to his senses, Vassar did what parents, priests, and school teachers could not - it tamed the shrew.  There was something comforting and stable about the college - a kind of informal zeitgeist of privilege and brains that was settling.  

Yet, as Professor Petrie went on to say, 'the irritable gene' does not disappear and needs only random forces to stimulate and revive it. 

The Irritable Gene experiences periods of dormancy - a kind of sleep function that gives the troublesome dissatisfaction to retreat for a period before it reemerges even stronger and more pronounced. 

And so it was that after the rebellion of graduate school the gene receded and Vicki took associate professorships at minor colleges in the Midwest before a final landing at her university where her serious academic bent and her social justice ambitions were felicitously joined.  What could be more satisfying than promoting scholarship among black students?

Yet, the fires of reform were only banked, never put out; and the irritable gene kept niggling, bothering, and annoying.  At times she felt like tearing off her clothes, running naked through the campus, and angrily defying God for his indifference. Of course she never did a Lady Godiva-Mad Prophet ride but the sentiment was still there. 

 

'Mania is a sequela of this genetic configuration', Prof. Petrie wrote; 'and when conditions are right, it can be full-blown'; and so it was when Donald Trump came to town.  Suddenly, the lid to her emotions came off, the volcano erupted and spewed bile, hatred, and animus every waking hour.  

She hated the man with venomous, poisonous anger and vowed to do everything in her power to bring him down, to restore sense and sensibility to the Nation's Capital, and to move forward once again to a more verdant, peaceful, compassionate world. 

As Americans have seen, the phenomenon of viral Trump hatred is remarkable for its sense of absolute indignation and righteous anger - so virulent that it needs no logical exegesis of the President's policy, positions, or initiatives.  It has a life of its own. 

The Dissatisfied Woman and her irritable gene are not uncommon - the XX female chromosome link is significant and demonstrated conclusively (Baldwin, Epp, and Bristol, 2022; Phipps & Stone, 2023; and Arthur, Cambridge, and Lockley, 2024).  Women when they 'get their dander up' (Shecky Greene, Grossinger's 1979) and act in concert become a feral force. 

Vicki, in the social room at the Institute of Living, a private mental institution for the wealthy in Hartford, still deeply sedated but far from cured, begged her sister to have her released.  'The Evil is brooding', she said, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.  The attendant nurse, always present during visitor sessions stepped in. 

 

'Now, now, Mrs. Barker, we must behave when we have visitors, mustn't we?, and with that led Vicki back to her room. 

'Untreated women may be in the tens of thousands', wrote Prof. Petrie.  'Vicki Barker was one of the lucky ones'. 

What about the other tens of thousands of women without Dissatisfied Woman syndrome and irritable genes who are in the streets protesting like rabid hyenas? 

'Contact high', answered Professor Petrie, referring to the infectious quality of being stoned - even those who don't take a toke feel high. 'These women feel the burn, and before you know it you have a hysterical crowd'. 

Petrie was taken to task for this 'hysterical crowd' comment.  The idea of women's biological febrility had long been discredited and now was an expression of misogyny; but Petrie was unapologetic. 'Call it what you want', he said. 'Women in a state of complete emotional anarchy acting in wild concert without control are...'

Here Petrie stopped himself before stating the obvious but for which he would be excommunicated; so he just whispered in the ear of an associate, 'nuts'.