THREAD

I don't talk much about it, but @AOC 's brave comments brought home my own experience, decades ago, when I was abducted at gun point for an hour.

The feeling that your life may end, that your fate is wholly in someone else's hands, that you have no control...

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...never leaves you.

The emotions don't disappear after the situation ends, but they do evolve, from fear to anger--that anyone else would claim for themselves the role of determining whether you live or die. That anyone dared place themselves in that position is enraging.

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And when you see similar situations that arise--a video on the evening news of a 7/11 being robbed at gunpoint, for example--you remember it all again. The feeling of seeing that gun pointed right at you. The lack of control.

And now someone new just joined the club.

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Or for years, when you read in the news about someone else being abducted at gunpoint, who didn't live to tell about it (because most people abucted in a car at gunpoint don't live to tell about it), you remember it again, and wonder how you got so lucky.

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But I also was in politics when this happened, so I also know the whiplash of having the whole thing politicized. People questioning the story. Media doubting it. Personal attacks. Innuendo. A judge, of all people, still telling people years later you made it up...

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