"Finding Your Roots" - The Nancy Pelosi reveal

"Pelosi comes from a strong family tradition of public service. Her late father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., served as Mayor of Baltimore for 12 years, after representing the city for five terms in Congress. Her brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, also served as Mayor of Baltimore. She graduated from Trinity College in Washington, D.C. She and her husband, Paul Pelosi, a native of San Francisco, have five grown children and nine grandchildren."  pbs

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Being married to a genealogist, I find it obligatory to observe Professor Henry Louis Gates'  weekly TeeVee extravaganza on the subject of the ancestry of various famous, or semi-famous folk.  The show is a classier version of the oldie "This is your life" which ran for many years during my "ute."  ("My Cousin Vinnie" reference).  During the proceedings in that show, one's cousins, 3rd grade teachers and former bosses were brought out from behind the curtain after attempts to guess the identity by remembering their voice.  It was truly fun for the feeble minded.  Gates' show mainly involves construction of a "book of life" on the basis of records research and DNA wizardry.

Last night's principal guest was Nancy d'Alesandro Pelosi.  Wow!  I have never met her and have never paid much attention to her as a personality, but all you had to do was watch her "mug" for the camera and "sculpt" her answers to create her desired narrative to understand that this woman is carrying a lot of psychological baggage and has done so for a very long time.

Her  paternal grandparents were immigrants from a mountain village in Abbruzzo.  Her father, Thomas d'Alesandro, was born in Baltimore (photo above).  He comes across in the Nancy construct as a political version of the De Niro character in "Raging Bull," no beatings but lots of bullying and domination by "the Don."  

This guy was determined to keep his family "in line," especially Nancy and her mother, another Nancy.  Any effort on the part of the mother to establish a separate identity was squelched by the father.  The mother created a cosmetics business that had nation wide custom.  The father made his wife close it.  The mother bought investment real estate.  The father made her sell it.  These women, the two Nancys, were his, his possessions, and they were not allowed to have anything like a life of their own.

Speaker Nancy "excuses" his behavior by saying that Italian American men were like that in that era.  At the same time she extravagantly praises her mother.  Gates takes note of the expression of a greater depth of feeling for the mother.  The excessive praise is a hint of the kind of daughter-mother rivalry for the affection of the "Raging Bull" that characterizes the neo-freudian Electra Complex.  

I am not a psychiatrist but I made a living for many years by perceiving and manipulating the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of others, both men and women.  Pelosi exhibits the characteristics of someone wounded by her father's personality. 

Speaker Nancy escaped the pain of her parental relationships by  marrying a nice Italian-American fellow from San Francisco and migrating to the west coast where after having given life to five daughters she turned to politics.  Her husband is still living but invisible.

Trump seems to be for her an avatar of her father.  He is a domineering man who recalls for her the frustrations of her childhood and adolescence.  The childish, mocking acts of revolt, the tearing up of a copy of his state of the Union Address for all the world to see, the tunnel-vision focus on revenge before all else, these are all symptoms of an irrational obsession.

This is IMO profoundly unfair.  Trump is  a boor.  He is a boastful braggart about women.  He is crude in the mainstream tradition of New York City bullies, but there is no evidence that he ever did anything to hold the women in his family back from personal or business success.  Actually, the women who worked in his corporate headquarters praise him highly.

But, you cannot tell that to anyone suffering the kind of psychological scars that Speaker Nancy bears.  pl

https://www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots/about/meet-our-guests/nancy-pelosi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra_complex

Comments

[Diana L Croissant]

Thank you for this very interesting analysis. I actually have noticed a sort of hurt little girl in her when she speaks.

That said, I don't really feel sorry for her but for us, the citizens of our country, who have to put up with her damaged psyche, which causes her to use liquor, ice cream and chocolate to assuage the pain.

I am and have always been forever grateful for my own father. He was not a wealthy man, but he was the best father a young girl could ever have. I've put all that Oedipus Complex analysis aside and have lived knowing how much he loved my mother and his children. That made up for all the wealth that other men, fathers of many of my friends, which caused them to demand enormously high expectations of their children. In most cases I out-performed those girls in school and in my working life. I was able to do that simply because I knw my parents felt I could do well since they raised me with values other than the greed for money and power.

Now, please provide an analysis of Diane Feinstein. My bet is that her father was the Devil himself.

[fakebot]

Her brother was accused of raping two very young teenage girls, but was later acquitted.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/7213742/dalesandro-freed-of-charge-in-1953/

[roberto]

ADDITIONALLY, ALL THAT BOTOX MIGHT HAVE FURTHER ADDLED HER ALREADY PATHOLOGICALLY WEAK BRAIN.

[Horace]

Broken people breaking our country.

familial stability -> community stability -> civilizational stability

It's why the marxists attack the family.

[akaPatience]

What an insufferable crone. Her power seems to have derived from and is sustained by being a major conduit between ambitious pols and the tremendously wealthy oligarchs of her CA district.

[Fred]

Horace,

"familial stability -> community stability -> civilizational stability

It's why the marxists attack the family."

Yes, absolutely correct.

[Leith]

Her Mom's birthname was Annunciata. Her son Tommy said that she was the true politician in the family. During the depression, hungry people or those seeking work came to her seeking help, not her husband. And the line would extend halfway around the block. During her husband's elections it was her that organized volunteer ladies to write letters, make fliers, and address envelopes. Every evening in the run-up to the election she would host ravioli and lasagna parties. Not just for volunteers and neighborhood ladies from Little Italy but also for the wives and daughters of other Baltimore ethnic groups. She was described as being a stereotype of old world motherliness but was no doormat. She she was a very fiery woman with a lot of moxie. Her political insight and common sense judgement was the reason she was her husband's main political adviser. I seriously doubt that her husband could have made her dump Velvex cosmetics unless she too realized it was in trouble. Ditto for any real estate. She was a child immigrant born in a mountain town of south central Italy, only 15 or 20 miles from Monte Cassino. .

Tommaso her husband was no raging bull. If he had been he would have banned her being on the boards of the Red Cross Home Nursing Association and the YWCA, plus her involvement with Sodality and other church organizations. But with five sons growing up in his home he perhaps had to birch them into shape every now and then when they were teenagers. The people of mountainous Abruzzo, the Abruzzese, where his parents immigrated from are known throughout Italy as being strong and kind. BTW it was he that dedicated the Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monuments in B'more.

[sbin]

Absolutely reprehensible person.
People such as Pelosi and McConnell are why congress is held in such low esteem by Americans.
Graft corruption and in fighting seem to be all that branch of government is capable of now.

[Eric Newhill]

Interesting. Seems like sound analysis and does, indeed, explain a lot of Pelosi's behavior.

SWMBO has been telling me for a few years that the crazy trouble making female liberals all have "daddy issues"; all of them. In fact, she is convinced that daddy issues leads one to be liberal in general. Same kind of Electra complex you note in Pelosi and, in men, a sense that they cannot measure up and achieve what is expected of them, which, in turn, leads them to criticize and reject the existing structure. It's way for the defeated to pretend that they are not defeated, but more enlightened.

[Artemesia]

Perhaps it's in the nature of political operatives with an unsavory agenda: they choose damaged people as front men (women) to carry out their plans.

Woodrow Wilson comes to mind. Whether or not the tale of the blackmail letters from a former lover are true, Wilson had other vulnerabilities. Joyce Carol Oates's The Accursed slices and dices Wilson savagely.

Haim Saban invested in Hillary Clinton at a time when she had been about as publicly humiliated as a woman can be. He poulticed with cash & power those wounds in her psyche.

It's not unlikely that Nancy Pelosi's psychological vulnerabilities, coupled with her early exposure to the exercise of political power and relationships with influential Jewish leaders, were assets, in the eyes of those who use her for their purposes.

Jeffrey Epstein couldn't compromise everybody.

---
My four grandparents and my mother were born in Barrea, about 60 mi. NW of Pelosi's origins. I never knew my grandparents, but I recognize the style of paternal control. In my Mother's case -- she graduated from 6th grade at age 16 and was offered a scholarship to the high school the French nuns ran. Her father said No, she had to go to work to help support the family, not so much a case of "Italian American men were like that in that era," as "an Italian American laborer had to do what he must to keep his family fed" -- which is what brought him to the USA in the first place. My Mother completed her GED at age 65.

My own father was born in USA of Italian immigrant parents who were probably illiterate (in English). I came upon my Father's grade school report cards: his mother signed the first few with an X; the next few with her printed name, and finally, her signature in script.

My Father benefited enormously from the Americanizing impact of WASPish public schools, then US Navy in WWII until he was wounded and medically discharged. He was intelligent, possessed self-discipline and a sense of order, but his peasant background made him less socially polished than was acceptable to my own spouse and in-laws whose American roots were deep; their family members observed the fighting from their farm on the edge of the Antietam.

American leaders intent on opening borders to one and all would do well to spend some think-tank time considering how immigrants are supposed to learn how to be American, and how matings between long-term Americans and the newly arrived are going to navigate a marriage and child-rearing.

[james]

thanks pat... it widens the picture... projection is a powerful force in her life it seems.. i think you are right in your analysis.. she is living in the past, like a lot of people today...

[turcopolier]

james

Pelosi IS NOT "living in the past" any more than the Jews are "living in the past" over the shoa. It is a present psychological reality for both.

[Deap]

Nancy Pelosi has the gift of looking you directly in the eye and lying to you without even a blink. This is sociopath behavior. Which may be the key to being a successful politician. Obama had the same quality.

Quite different from Trump's bluster and bombast. You know he he hyper-ventilating. But something more cold and deadly goes on with Pelosi and Obama - and because they both are true believers that the ends justify the means, they are doubly dangerous.

At least when Biden lies, and often he does, he is so ridiculous if it quickly debunked. Not as deadly sinister as Pelosi and Obama. They enjoy knowing they are lying to you.

[mcohen]

there is a rainbow ending at the pot of gold that only the blind can see.

mcohen 2021

[Leith]

"Actually, the women who worked in his corporate headquarters praise him highly."

Not according to Barbara Res: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Lies-Eighteen-Working-Reveals-ebook/dp/B08L62QB55/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=barbara+res&qid=1610651106&s=books&sr=1-1

[turcopolier]

Leith

C'mon man! she was a very ranking executive with him for 18 years. This kvetching is just petty of you.

[turcopolier]

james

Don't bother to try to post here again. You are just anther anti-American troll.

[turcopolier]

Escarlate

Has the Party bought you a copy of my book yet? I may suppress the digital version to make it more expensive for trolls like you.