Dyslexia Is A Way of Thinking Differently
Gavin Newsom should be applauded for standing up to Trump
You know that Trump fears someone when he brings up that person’s name frequently.
According to an article in the March 18 print edition of the L.A. Times, the solipsist-in-chief has mentioned Gov. Gavin Newsom and his diagnosis of dyslexia, a diagnosis about which the California Governor is completely open, at least four times in the past week.
Newsom, a very brave man, has shown nothing but courage in being so open about his diagnosis, one that may afflict perhaps 20% of the population, as per the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.
Gavin J. Quinton and Taryn Luna of the L.A. Times cited the Yale Center on another occasion to indicate that, while those with dyslexia may be “slow readers, they often, paradoxically, are very fast and creative thinkers with strong reasoning abilities.”
It has long been known that there are many creative people, who were diagnosed with dyslexia, a list that includes reportedly the late Wendy Wasserstein and Tom Cruise, among others.
Some people with dyslexia can have trouble not so much with reading per se as they do with sounding out words and phonemes, the building blocks of sound.
I do not suffer from dyslexia, but I have great compassion for those who do.
While I was reading at a young age, I suffered a major trauma when I was in kindergarten, when I was abused by my teacher, a repercussion of which was that I stopped reading for five and one-half years.
Without belaboring details about which I have written and discussed for years, I will summarize by saying that Mrs. Crawley, my K teacher, an anti-Semite, dragged me to what she called the “dunce corner” because I missed school for the Jewish High Holy Days in 1970.
She smacked my left hand, my dominant side, and would not let me use it. And she forced me to hunch or crouch in the “dunce corner” for roughly an hour a day, for nearly every day, from October 12, 1970, the day, as I recall, that the abuse started, until around the end of the school year in June 1971.
She tried to commit against me what Leonard Shengold, the late psychiatrist, referred to as “soul murder.”
This abuse took place at Spring Glen School, a public school, in Hamden, Conn., a suburb of New Haven.
I did indeed stop reading for five and one-half years from October 1970, when I was in kindergarten, until April 1976, when I was in fifth grade, the formative years for most of us in so many ways, including our development as readers.
It was not that I could not read during that time.
I simply stopped reading for those five and one-half years due to PTSD and deep depression, as well as a form of anhedonia, in which I stopped getting pleasure from reading.
Perhaps, I was a bit like Gavin Newsom in that I found reading to be somewhat daunting from a spiritual perspective, where it had once been pleasurable.
When I picked up the sports section of the local newspaper, the New Haven Register, in April 1976 and started reading about baseball, I began the long process of healing from the trauma inflicted on me by Mrs. Crawley.
Like Gavin Newsom, who has tamed his dyslexia and who for years has stood up to bullies, such as Trump, I have subdued the evil of my K teacher, who singled me out for abuse not only because I was the only kid in my class, who was a practicing Jew, but also because when I was in kindergarten I was teaching the other kids how to read.
As I have noted before, my mother started to teach me how to read around the time I turned three in October 1968.
When I got to kindergarten two years later, I helped the kids in my class read, at the initial request of Mrs. Crawley, before she turned on me.
I embraced this role, and I particularly helped the boys, who sat in the back row of our class at Spring Glen School, which was being held that year, as it turned out, at Mishkan Israel, a local synagogue, while our public school was being reconstructed.
Some of the boys and girls, to this day, will remember that I taught them how to read, including one boy, whom I will call Dick.
Yes, I taught Dick and others how to read.
Many of the kids in my class will also remember that Mrs. Crawley abused me and that Dick, who claimed that I was his best friend that year, lied about me for decades. Like Mrs. Crawley, he turned on me because he has shown no character, as I have noted in several articles over the years, including “Standing up to Bullies,” a Substack post from last August.
Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who betray Hamlet, Dick “made love” to the evil of Mrs. Crawley, evil that he observed first-hand, when she stuck me in the “dunce corner,” smacked my left arm and mocked me.
She behaved not so unlike Trump or the adult in the Bobo the Doll experiments, which were conducted around the time that I was in kindergarten.
In those experiments, little children watched an adult beat a doll or clown; after witnessing this sadism, some of the kids joined in and beat the doll or clown.
But not all kids did that, just as not all adults abused a victim during the Milgram experiments, in which they were ordered to jolt or zap a person with apparent electric shocks.
Like the Bobo the Doll experiments, the Milgram experiments, which took place in the 1960s, not long before I entered kindergarten, revealed the degree to which some people are compliant when they witness sadism.
We can all be thankful that not everyone is compliant.
And people, who were compliant, can redeem themselves for the evil, for the sadism, to which they subjected others, including little children.
Gavin Newsom is a hero for being so open about his dyslexia, for taming it effectively, for being such an accomplished public servant and governor, and for standing up to Trump.
Unlike Trump, Governor Newsom knows that one of the keys to life is delayed gratification.
We all need to work hard, to summon the love, the free will in our bodies and souls and realize our potential on this planet.
Even if you don’t believe in God, we should all realize that we are here to create, not destroy.
We are here to be part of something greater than ourselves, to serve a greater good, as, for instance, John McCain did, throughout his life as a naval aviator, a prisoner of war, who was tortured and may have had PTSD, a Republican congressman and Senator, a presidential candidate, who lost honorably to President Obama, and a statesman, who saved the Affordable Care Act.
Like Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, John McCain, a Republican, was a patriot, who stood up to bullies his whole life.
We all need to do that.
No one is perfect. But we all can reconfigure our lives and do what is right for our country as well as for our souls.
Yes, I was abused by my kindergarten teacher, and I was further victimized by Dick, my classmate, who perpetuated the abuse when he lied about me for decades.
Mrs. Crawley was not only a classic bully; she was a sadist right out of the Nazi mold.
And Dick was a coward.
On this day after St. Patrick’s Day, it might also be fair to characterize him as a so-called informer, someone who not only lies but also betrays the cause of his friends and countrymen.
It is too late for Mrs. Crawley to atone.
And it may be too late for Trump, a wannabe Hitler or Putin.
But it is not too late for Dick or for others to tell the truth, to apologize and ask for forgiveness, and, if I can say this, to save their souls, while also serving our country.
Dick was raised a Catholic, and his mother was devout.
When I was in my twenties, she apologized to me at a party. She said that she and Dick’s father had hurt me because they wanted to help Dick.
Dick’s mother was a good woman.
Dick was raised to believe in God. Even if he is not a believer, I would like to think that he loved his mother.
Again, today is the day after St. Patrick’s Day, when St. Patrick, according to tradition, banished all the snakes from Ireland.
Like others who have committed evil, who have participated in it, Dick might want to banish his own snake, his own treachery, by telling the truth.
The truth shall set you free.
As for Trump, he should apologize to Gavin Newsom, a highly intelligent man, for calling the California Governor “dumb” and a “low-IQ person,” as well as for saying that his dyslexia is “disqualifying” for the presidency.
It is obvious that Newsom’s dyslexia has not stopped him from being a stellar governor of the largest state, with the strongest, most diverse and creative economy, in the union.
And Newsom, as I say, should be applauded for his courage in being so open about his dyslexia.
Of course, it is Trump, who disqualified himself years ago.
It has long been clear to many of us that Putin has kompromat on Trump, who is a traitor to our nation.
Trump has never believed in democracy or our Constitution. He does not protect the American people, which is the single most important role of the presidency.
To return to the subject of dyslexia and reading, it has also long been clear to many of us that Trump does not read anything except bullet points with his name on them.
As we will recall, Trump announced before he entered the Oval Office the first time that he did not have to read his intelligence briefings because he is “like a smart person.”
At that time, a decade or so ago, Trump added that he would have Mike Pence, his then-vice president, read the intelligence briefings for him.
Trump’s cognitive failings pale in comparison to his moral failings.
He has no moral compass.
He has never harnessed even a fraction of the drive and spirit of Gavin Newsom.
No, Trump has never worked the neurons in his cortex. He has never put in the years, the decades, of love, of character, of hard work necessary to become an accomplished reader and a person of substance.
Reading is a difficult pleasure, but it is indeed a pleasure when you do work those neurons and hopefully gain a level of wisdom.
Trump has no wisdom; even worse, as I say, he has no character.
He wants immediate gratification for everything.
But he has never earned a darn thing in his life.
The Congress must stop him.
If Republicans really want to save America, they will ignore Trump’s so-called SAVE America Act, which would subvert our Constitution by threatening to disenfranchise millions of Americans.
And Republicans need to begin proceedings to impeach and finally convict Trump for his high crimes and misdemeanors.
Members of his cabinet, like Joe Kent, who recently resigned as Trump’s counterterrorism chief, know, for the sake of our country and their souls, they “cannot in good conscience” continue to do the bidding of Trump, who betrays our country every day in so many ways, including attacking Iran, a sovereign nation, on the pretext, the lie that it presented an “imminent” threat to the United States.
Trump once again was played by Netanyahu, just as Trump has been played by Putin, both of whom, as I have stated previously, have manipulated our solipsist-in-chief by telling him that he is brilliant and that he deserves a Nobel Prize, two points that are laughable.
Trump clearly lacks the fitness to be president.
And it is not because Trump doesn’t read.
No, it is because he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors against our country from his illegal immigration sweeps, deportations and arrests of U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike, his violations of the emoluments clause through his conspicuous acts of graft, enriching his coffers with billions of dollars, the extrajudicial killings of fishermen and others in the Caribbean, as well as Trump’s unprovoked attack against Iran, an attack he initiated without consulting the U.N., our allies, or the Congress, a clear violation of the Constitution.
To repeat, Republicans in the Congress and Trump’s cabinet need to do the right thing and stand up to Trump, as Joe Kent just did.
If Republicans in Congress and the cabinet do testify to Trump’s lack of fitness and his treachery, they will be showing an element of the courage that Gavin Newsom has shown for decades in working hard to subdue a learning disability and to transmute what seems like a curse into a blessing.
In the words of John Kennedy: One man can make a difference, and every man should try.
And in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I might add another quote from our nation’s first Catholic president, who was of Irish descent: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
Correction: On a separate note, in my last article, “Arthur Miller Will Always Speak to Us,” I discussed All My Sons, a Miller play, which is being revived at the Antaeus Theatre in Glendale, Calif., a suburb north of downtown L.A.
In that piece, published yesterday, I referred to the movie version of All My Sons as coming out in 1947. The play itself debuted on Broadway in 1947.
The film version, starring Burt Lancaster, was released in the theaters in April 1948.
I regret the error.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Erin go bragh!