I had a serious epiphany (and do those hurt) after posting in the Pensions and Healthcare thread, so it seemed appropriate to create a new thread on the subject of governmental employees and their seeming “entitled” attitudes.

In August 1973, several bank employees were held hostage for six days in a Stockholm bank vault by would be robbers. Over time, the victims became emotionally attached to their captors and even rejected assistance from officials. An attachment that was so great, the captives even defended the criminals after the ordeal.

Simply stated; the “Stockholm Syndrome” is where individuals who are held captive over extended periods of time, eventually become sympathetic to their captors. Given enough time, the captives may even begin to support their captors beliefs and/or causes.

This syndrome is present in virtually all family and spousal abuse, wherein the victims believe that what the abuser is doing is not totally wrong and may in fact be the result of some personal failure on the part of the victim in not pleasing the abuser enough.

I’ve seen this in history, in family affairs and personal relationships, it is also present in many business settings and easily observed. I cannot count the number of times, where I’ve seen a Mask Of Sanity boss, regularly abuses and uses those in their charge, to the point of mental and physical decline, yet the employee will rally behind and defend their abuser.

In one situation I witnessed a man who was a business serial killer, destroying one successful business after another. He was also an emotional Vampire, who after a few days of being nice and becoming weakened, would walked into a room, chose a victim to scream at and became re-energized as he did. Bounding out of the room afterward, refreshed and happy, leaving his victim in utter despair.

He was a charismatic individual who was one of the most abusive and destructive persons you could ever meet, yet was supported and regularly recommended by a top accounting firm at the time. A serial abuser who to this day is defended and admired by some of the employees who worked for him, even though he eventually cost them their jobs when he bankrupted the company.

My father lived the last couple years of his life in a nursing home and his “institutionalization” was a phenomenal thing to witness. Over a short period of time, we watched a man who had been fiercely independent and loved the outdoors, become totally obsessed with the cloistered routine and irritably anxious to return when on outings.

He was a man who was always a stickler for honesty and fair play, yet once institutionalized, never noticed some of the very negative situations that would sometimes arise through poor nursing care and was always ready to defend his caregivers actions regardless of their transgressions.

So with all this said, I could not figure out after all the truth presented in these threads, how some people could so easily dismiss facts and disrespect me. After posting a reply to Sid Saltfork in the Illinois Retirement thread it hit me and after this point, it is probably safe to add to the “Stockholm” list, the “institutional” members of our society who work for governmental agencies.

They are individuals who have spend years, decades and even lifetimes, living off the sustenance of our taxes, as they grow financially comfortable in their well supported  and guaranteed lifestyles. Incomes and benefits that are beyond what most Americans can even dream of. A cocoon of stability, guaranteed by law, comfortably lined with bureaucratic fleece and protected by union muscle.

If there were ever a group so reliant upon, so entirely immersed in and so utterly influenced by - it is an institutionalized government employee.

So it makes perfect sense for people like Buz and myself, who like most Americans have no security in our jobs and little recourse when regularly abused by our bosses, to be attacked by those who do not understand. For we must be rabble, who challenges their aspersions of a benevolent system that has given them life well healed, and to challenge the Government who has fed and clothed them all their life - is beyond reprehensible.

All of this is a most telling thing and brings to mind the question: Is all this a possible “Eichmann Syndrome”, wherein techno/autocrats are easily persuaded that they need to just “process” the citizens onto the awaiting cattle cars, because it is their duty as a Government employee? Besides the cattle cars will take those social malcontents to a better place. Right?

Which also begs the question - Buz, how many do you think, of those that have attacked us through the years, were current or former governmental employees?