Zach Fansler's Self Deception

A very recent example is one about a former Alaskan legislator named Zach Fansler. As The Juneau Empire attests, Zach Fansler was praised as “...one of the rising stars of the Democratic Party’s rural wing”. He is from Bethel, Alaska. He was definitely considered a good guy from democratic standards. Before he became an Alaskan legislature, he was involved in the Women's Coalition, an organization aimed at reducing sexual assault against women, and Teens Acting Against Violence which served the same purpose with the difference of the message coming from teens. Unexpectedly, on January 15th, 2018, a very recent ex girlfriend of Zach Fansler had told the Juneau Empire that Fansler had struck her. Just a few nights before, she had been in a hotel

Whether or not he had had previous experience with abusing women, he likely harboured those tendencies and instinctively knew that he had to hide it. His reaction, in turn, was to be the opposite of an abusive person, by being involved in anti-violence organizations and by running as a democrat. Democrats are typically more strict when it comes to their politicians exhibiting gender equality. Zach Fansler’s violent tendencies and the subsequent self deception did indirectly have an effect on his policy and his values as a legislator. It is possible that Zach Fansler may not have run (or been successful) as an Alaskan democrat if he had not been involved in the organizations that he had. His self deception actually caused him to make positive change before he was a legislator. It is possible that he could have made more positive changes in regard to gender equality had his true tendencies towards hitting women not come

Unfortunately, there really are no examples of repression in politicians available to the public. As discussed in Neel Burton’s book, repression is the subconscious forgetting of undesirable memories. The resulting exhibits of repression can be “...a range of psychological problems such as difficulty concentrating, irritability, anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, and depression...” (Burton, 18). Those things can also be caused by many other psychological problems making it hard to tell if any given person exhibiting those things actually represses some memories. It can be even harder to tell while looking at politicians because they are always attempting to hide things like depression and anxiety from the public. Even if one could pick out which politicians were suffering from things like depression and anxiety, they would then have to find out what caused the repression to occur in the first place, like sexual or physical abuse, in order to determine if that is the cause of repression. At that point, if there is some kind of abuse, it would be highly unlikely that the public would know about those events while the politician has forgotten and is completely unaware of them due to repression. Therefore it is nearly impossible to find credible examples of repression among