Karen Monahan VS Keith Ellison: The Tyranny of Victimhood

In the old days — maybe two or four or more years ago — women who accused men of abuse usually weren’t believed. Not only were their allegations rarely investigated or taken seriously, they weren’t even documented by law enforcement authorities. Not anymore.

Nowadays, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme — and not for the better.

Not only are accusing women immediately believed, regardless of their individual situations, accused men are vilified, disgraced, and immediately found guilty by social media. Forget about due process or even actual proof. Who needs such legal formalities when accusing women have the Internet and Facebook, along with relentless support from the #MeToo Movement?

And yet, some of these accusing women who are now believed and venerated for their courage, also choose to “heal” themselves in a surprisingly dysfunctional way. Despite their ever-increasing public support, they continue to launch vendettas against the same men they’ve already accused.

Although their allegations have been granted supportive media coverage, they’re still crusading about their personal injustices. Even after their stories have been widely accepted without the usual legal verification, they continue to accuse — almost to the point of celebrating their own “victimhood.”

Almost when they might not, TECHNICALLY, be the victims they’re claiming to be.

Nowhere is this dysfunctional M.O. more pronounced than with Karen Monahan, ex-girlfriend and accuser of Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison. Her unsubstantiated allegations have already destroyed his good name, erased his accomplishments, probably ruined his chances of becoming Minnesota’s next State Attorney General. And yet, she continues to remind everyone of HER continual struggles with gender discrimination! In August, she posted these misperceptions:
“A woman needs to wear a body cam, have a recorder and camera on hand, show she is always prepared if she is ever abused in any way. A man just needs to make a statement ‘It’s not true’ and he is good as gold…”
And this one:
“I was well prepared for the smears, etc. It is exactly what I wanted to bring to light. This issue is so much bigger than my story, but with each story that surfaces, we make a dent each time and it brings us closer to justice.”

Ironically, more than any other accuser in recent memory, Monahan has been taken seriously and believed without question. Especially by Republicans. In fact, Monahan’s attorney used to be Doug Wardlow’s boss…and Republican Wardlow is Ellison’s opponent in the race for Attorney General. Talk about a highly partisan conflict of interest! Monahan has also become the latest “victim” for FOX NOOZ’s campaign to vilify Democrats. Last year this GOPropaganda network helped depose U.S. Senator Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, with ex-model and sports accessory Lee Ann Tweden. This year, they want to go statewide with Sierra Club Senior Organizing Representative Karen Monahan. They might just succeed, too.

Needless to say, I’m very concerned about this chain of events. Keith Ellison is my Congressman. For years I’ve been electing and re-electing him to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives with no hesitation. He’s been an excellent public servant: interested, involved, dedicated. Furthermore, his staff has always been courteous and readily available whenever constituents like me have had questions or problems. More importantly, his voting record almost always coincides with the way I want him to vote.

So when Monahan began accusing him of domestic violence, I had to look into it.

For the past three months I’ve been studying these allegations. Online features, postings from Monahan’s Facebook, newspaper clippings, televised interviews — different information from various sources got reviewed. No matter how much research I did, though, I kept encountering the same unanswered question: WHY ARE MONAHAN’S ACCUSATIONS SO READILY ACCEPTED AND BELIEVED BY SO MANY?

With little questioning or investigation, her charges continue to be believed. But denials from Ellison — a dedicated public figure with a history of admirably serving his constituency, and, a victim himself of domestic abuse from his ex-wife — have not been believed. Why?

Why is it so easy to believe this woman’s unsubstantiated claims of herself as victim but so difficult to believe the accused man in question as victim of abuse?

Did Monahan get elevated to this special status as Sole TruthTeller simply because she’s a woman?

After going over her accusations, assertions, behaviors, and modus operandi, I’ve become increasingly skeptical of her “victimhood.” Her accounts are too calculated, too contradictory, to be believed. Her stories raise too many questions, too many red flags to be plausible. Too many things just don’t add up.

Because of the limited factual information and inherent contradictions she does give in her stories, she herself has made it incredibly difficult for any rational thinker to believe her.

It’s not just that her claims are unsupported by fluctuating chronology. It’s also that her versions of events are tainted by inherent racist undertones.

Then too, there are significant details from her own past that have been deliberately deleted by Monahan’s handlers. It’s almost as if she and her attorneys — along with pseudo-supportive FOX NOOZ, of course — realized that such personal background information could somehow damage her credibility…Well, yeah. It sure could. That’s why that front page story from The New York Times (from Friday, August 31, 2018) that reveals her Dickensian life has been all but figuratively erased by the GOP establishment.

In Monahan’s case, she was an orphan from Iran who was adopted by a blue-collar Texas family. Instead of finding solace and security in America, however, she was sexually abused as a child. Then she endured teenage pregnancy and childbirth. No doubt her early years were difficult, even heartbreaking.

So here’s someone who has never experienced, firsthand, how a healthy family should function.

In a dysfunctional family, children are not given what they want or need in order to grow up to be healthy, functioning adults. In Monahan’s family she wouldn’t have experienced the amiable give-and-take of a healthy relationship, either. With only a history of abuse and with no healthy role models to emulate, it’s not surprising that she would recreate another dysfunctional family of her own.

Is it not possible then that someone with Monahan’s background would have had a major chip on her shoulder when it came to relationship interaction, family responsibilities, and personal boundaries? It’s highly possible she’d be clueless about these social connections. Certainly, she’d be inexperienced — even unable to function — with the daily dynamics and compromises that healthy relationships require.

Another possibility: When Monahan moved in with Ellison she could have reached a place of safety and security that resulted in a “rekindling effect.” Victims of trauma and abuse often begin remembering and re-experiencing their initial trauma once they reach a protective space. Monahan could have started to physiologically experience her own trauma long after the initial
traumatic event had taken place. That’s what P.T.S.D. really is: a POST traumatic stress disorder.

It’s pretty obvious to me that, as soon as Monahan found a nice guy, she very well could have begun to relive and experience past abuse. She also might have started to project all her fears, anxieties, and anger on Keith Ellison after she cohabitated
with him. He didn’t have do anything to her; he didn’t have to lay a hand on her. In her state of mind, she was going to make him the bad guy in her life script.

She recreated a dynamic with him that resembled scenes from her old abusive life. This time, though, she could react and defend herself in the way she’d wanted to when she was younger. The big problem with this recreation was that Ellison was living in the here and now, while she was addressing dynamics from her childhood and teen years. No wonder this couple used to argue so much…

So maybe Monahan was a fragile human being who was trying to recover from a traumatic past by dysfunctionally scapegoating Ellison? Maybe that’s what really happened. Unfortunately for Ellison, she was given such a pervasive benefit of the doubt by her supporters that no one even considered the possibility that she was experiencing PTSD psychosis. They should have.

To complicate matters even further, Monahan has been giving so much misinformation about Ellison in her narratives that it’s difficult to examine and analyze only one.

I finally selected the one story that started it all: the “bed incident.” It’s significant because her narrative of what happened puts her own allegations in serious doubt. In each retelling, Monahan changes her details so much that any reasonable listener would start to wonder if any “domestic violence” had happened in the first place.

No, I’m not blaming the victim here. I’m just saying what she claimed happened to her probably didn’t happen. Why?

For starters, she gave different versions of her “abuse.” Then when inaccurate descriptions and misinformation about her experiences became widespread in the media, she did nothing to correct the inaccuracies.

So what really happened?

Did Keith Ellison actually drag Karen Monahan off a bed?

Or, did Keith Ellison only attempt to pull Karen Monahan across a bed?

In other words, did she end up injured and down on the floor? Or disconcerted and on top of the duvet?

Even Monahan seems unclear about this key point because she alleges two different things. In one version she accuses Ellison of “dragging her off a bed.” In another, she accuses him of “trying to drag her across a bed.” That’s the difference between trying to start your car and actually starting your car.

Which one is it, though? Can you start your car and drive to work? Or does a dead battery keep your car out in the driveway long enough for you to lose your job?

This might seem like a moot point to Monahan’s supporters, but it should be important to anyone trying to figure out what really happened.

HERE’S ANOTHER SCENARIO. After studying the available information at hand, I have reconstructed another probable sequence of events…one that FOX NOOZ, the Republican Party, and Karen Monahan don’t want anyone to consider so close to election day.

In other words, if the essential structural components and details of Monahan’s versions are somewhat accurate, here’s another possibility.

Remember, Monahan didn’t initially accuse Ellison of physical abuse. At first, she contended “emotional abuse.” “Narcissistic
abuse” — to be more specific. She said he was this controlling bully who liked things done his way. He wanted to talk about his day at work — not hers — because he thought his job was more important than hers. Oh, and he wasn’t sensitive to her needs, either. With this kind of male chauvinism so apparent to Monahan, you’d think she’d just shrug it off as “one of those things” and leave. She didn’t. She continued living with him.

Although she had enough misgivings to make him ex-boyfriend, and not soul-mate, she stayed…long enough to start accusing him of cheating on her. She called it “soul-rape” — another new descriptive term not officially recognized by legal and medical communities. (Like “narcissistic abuse.”) They argued. A lot. They simply weren’t compatible. At all. As a couple, they just couldn’t get along on a daily functional basis.

Later when Monahan did want to move out, she just couldn’t afford it. Although he was under no obligation to do so, Ellison graciously allowed her to reside at his house until she could leave. Apparently, no good deed goes unpunished because Monahan took “squatters rights” to a whole new level.

She didn’t want to do anything around the house to help the man who — she believed — had cheated on her.

Their final showdown came one night when he asked her to take out the garbage. Because he was leaving the following day to attend an important meeting, he wanted to make sure she’d take it out to the curb and bring the waste can back. She didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want to talk to him, either.

How easy it would have been for her to simply agree to his request. Or refuse but assure him she’d get someone else for trash detail. But she wouldn’t give him that courtesy. Instead, she took a passive-aggressive stance of silence.

At some point while he was talking, she left without a word and retreated into her bedroom. She lay on the bed, put her earbuds in, and began listening to music. Then when she heard him come into the bedroom, she said she played dead. So now besides not speaking, she wasn’t moving, either.

Obviously, Ellison thought something was wrong with her. What was it? Fainting spell? Bad reaction to medication? Overdose? Stroke? Heart Attack? She wasn’t talking. She wasn’t moving. He asked her if she could hear him, if she was all right. When he got no response he started touching, pulling, holding onto her foot — making attempts to revive her.

Ever tried to move someone who’s “playing dead?” It’s almost impossible. Even a little thirty-pound kid can feel like an immovable boulder if he makes himself a dead weight. So “dragging her off or across the bed” makes no sense.

What makes more sense is that Ellison was trying to get some reaction from Monahan because she was exhibiting symptoms of someone who needed medical assistance.

It’s certainly possible, though, that when he saw her engaging in P.A. behavior of playing-dead-because-I-don’t-want-to-take-out-the-garbage, he became frustrated. Apparently, when he becomes frustrated and exasperated, he gets angry. When he gets angry, he yells, uses obscenities, and says things he later regrets. Not very gallant. Not very Minnesota Nice. But not necessarily a criminal offense, especially under these circumstances.

Furthermore, if everyone who exhibited that kind of anger was imprisoned, there wouldn’t be enough jails to incarcerate all the guilty men — and women.

But according to Monahan, Ellison suddenly turned into this evil monster. She was just lying on her bed, relaxing and listening to music, when he stormed into her room and began screaming obscenities at her!

Here we go again! Another scary story about The Big Bad Black Man threatening the life of the poor defenseless white woman! Oh, please. Not again. Monahan’s narrative wasn’t just designed to elicit sympathy for her, it was also calculated to vilify Ellison. How so? By stirring up emotions of fear and anger from America’s collective consciousness of racism.

Monahan’s versions of this event might change, but this undercurrent of racism remains constant. That, sadly, is the only thing in her storytelling that does remain constant.

As time passed, her story of “domestic violence” went though various transformations. Take a look at how the following subtle variations in both description and narration can actually change a reader’s understanding of what happened. Which version of events is your favorite, gentle reader?

From The New York Times, Friday, August 31, 2018: here’s what Monahan told journalists Julie Turkewitz and Farah Stockman when she was interviewed:
“…Ms. Monahan alleges that she was lying down on a bed and listening to a podcast episode when Mr. Ellison asked her to take out the trash. When she did not respond verbally, he grew angry, she said.
In a profanity-laced tirade, she said he asked her to leave and called her a bad guest.
‘He kept trying to pull me and pull me and pull me off the bed,’ she said. ‘And I just laid dead. Because I was scared.’
Mr. Ellison left to catch a flight, she said, but warned her to be gone when he returned.”

On Monahan’s Facebook page, this story about her interview on CBS TV was posted (Sunday, September 2, 2018):
“Last month, Monahan sat down with CBS News and said in 2016 Ellison confronted her and proceeded to drag her off her a bed.
‘He looked at me, goes ‘Hey you f***ing hear me…and then he looked at me, he goes ‘B***h, get the f*** out of my house,’ and he started to try to drag me off the bed,” Monahan told CBS News’ Jericka Duncan. Monahan also said she videotaped the altercation but does not feel comfortable releasing the video because it’s too traumatic for her.”

And yet, when Monahan issued a full statement to the local FOX TV affiliate KMSP(9) earlier on Sunday, August 12, 2018, another variation was given:
“…The next morning he came into the room I was sleeping in. I was laying across the bed with my headphones on, listening to podcast on my phone. He said he was about to leave town for the weekend and told me to take the trash out. Given the explosive outrage that occurred the night before, I just should shook my head yes.(sic) I didn’t look up at him or saying anything.(sic) That is when he tried to drag me off the bed by my legs and feet, screaming “b***h you answer when I am talking to you. I said take out the trash, your(sic)a bad guest (even though we were living in the same place). He kept trying to drag me off the bed, telling me to get the f*** out of his house, over and over. I froze. He had to leave and get on the plane. He knocked the shoe off my foot and told me I better be gone when he gets back (which was in two days). This happened in 2016…”

Also, there’s no agreement on the circumstances leading up to Ellison’s alleged physical contact. Did they actually argue about this trash detail? Or did Monahan remain silent about it? Did Ellison make his request the night before his departure? Or did he do it at the last minute, on the morning of his departure?

And wasn’t she literally a guest if they’d decided they were incompatible and she’d wanted to leave but couldn’t afford to — and he was nice enough to let her continue living there rent-free?

If the #MeToo Sisterhood wants everybody to believe all the women, then all the women should be willing to come up with one consistent version of their respective events. But for some unknown reason, Monahan keeps coming up with ever-changing, inconsistent, implausible versions that keep getting immediately believed. Why? Maybe because the GOP machine doesn’t want a Progressive Black Muslim Democrat to become Minnesota’s next Attorney General.