Jane Fonda and the pathologies of the Left

Hating Jane FondaIn connection with my post my post about War, Disease, and Malthusian Leftists, Kathy from Kansas wrote something very interesting (and, when my comments are restored, you can see it for yourself).  She said “I noticed a long time ago that most of the little foot-soldiers in groups such as PETA are mentally disturbed: self-hating and humanity-hating. I actually pity most of these unhappy souls.”

Aside from being an excellent statement on its own merits, Kathy’s comment reminded me of something that’s been swirling around in my brain today, and that’s Jane Fonda.  You see, in the course of the past two days, I’ve read two things about Jane Fonda.  The first is an apocryphal tale about Fonda visiting American POWs and, upon receiving messages from them, turning those messages over to their North Vietnamese captors. While Fonda didn’t do anything quite that bad, her behavior during the Vietnam War was appalling, insofar as she gave aid, comfort and propaganda chops to the enemy:

Hanoi Jane
Jane Fonda in North Vietnam

The second thing I read about Fonda was a Daily Mail story reporting on her utterly appalling parents and the abusive marriages into which she entered. Her mother, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, was a manic-depressive nymphomaniac who eventually committed suicide by slitting her own throat, while her father, famed actor Peter Henry Fonda, was as mean and cold a son of a bitch as you’d ever hope to find. Fonda’s first husband forced her into sexual debauchery and her second husband, rather typically for a hard Leftist, treated her like a slave.

As I read about the horrors — the very real horrors — of Fonda’s young life, what I thought was “And this is the kind of person who takes that anger and despair and trauma and abuse . . . and becomes a Leftist.