Bitten: Abuse, Contagion, and the Lingering Wounds of Power
By Joyce M. Strong
I’ve spent the past few days glued to the news. I wish I could say it was just interest, but it’s deeper than that—more like compulsion. Something in me is watching, frozen. Something in me is triggered.
I hear Donald Trump’s voice echoing through the halls of the Capitol, the Oval Office, the microphones he grabs like weapons. I hear the shouting, the name-calling, the lies. The gaslighting. And I feel it—not just politically, but personally. I know that voice. I’ve heard it before.
Like so many Americans, I know what it’s like to experience abuse. Some wounds are visible. Others are psychological—cutting deep, echoing across years. And even when we try to move forward, a voice, a tactic, a pattern can bring it all rushing back.
That’s what this week has done to me.
Watching Trump escalate—raising his voice, lashing out, belittling, lying more aggressively the closer we get to taking something from him—has been gutting. He behaves like a classic abuser, growing more dangerous the moment he senses loss of control.
And we’re letting him talk to us like this.
We’re letting the most powerful man in the country behave like an unhinged, raging abuser—and too many people are pretending it’s politics as usual. But this isn’t normal. It’s not strength. It’s not strategy. It’s harm.
This is where the metaphor becomes real. Like in The Last of Us, Trump is patient zero. The first infected. The first to mutate into something monstrous—and now he’s biting others.
Marco Rubio.
Pam Bondi.
Kristi Noem.
Pete Hegseth.
They’ve been bitten. They’ve absorbed the toxin. They now speak in his voice—mocking, deflecting, accusing, gaslighting, bullying. And they’re spreading it.
That’s how abuse works. It metastasizes. It jumps bodies. It hides in plain sight until the entire system is contaminated.
I refuse to be subjected to it anymore.
This isn’t strength. This isn’t leadership. This is a virus—and we need to name it before it consumes us.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
— Maya Angelou
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
So let’s stop giving our consent.
When you’re in a hearing, a courtroom, a press conference—or anywhere where truth and accountability are supposed to happen—and the person you’re questioning becomes hostile or evasive, you don’t have to absorb the abuse.
Here’s something we can say:
“You are not answering the question. You are using this time to abuse, deflect and confuse. I will not be abused. If you continue this behavior, I will take it as your answer that you are either unable or unwilling to defend your actions truthfully.”
This language is calm but unshakable. It acknowledges abuse, refuses to tolerate it, and reframes the outburst not as strength—but as weakness. As fear. As guilt.
It puts the abuser on notice—and demands that the people in power, including committee chairs and moderators, stop allowing these tactics to dominate public discourse.
Because this isn’t just incivility. It’s domination theater. It’s systemic harm.
It’s abuse in plain sight.
Do not let the abuse continue.
Donald Trump must not be allowed to verbally abuse us, mock the law and drain our dignity.
It has to stop. Not next year. Now.
