applegrove
applegrove's JournalYes. There is a danger when too many in a group have been breathing rarified
air for too long. It is downright henious not to have some grounding in real peoples. Look at what has happened to the Republican Party as an example. Sotomeyor has a great story and a decency missing in people like Scalia and his ilk. May Kavanaugh learn from it.
Read the book. The author got conned. Psychopaths make the false
narrative (s) they spin so compelling to the people who believe in them feel compelled to act in some manner. Things feel realer than real. They feel like you must do something. They appeal to our vanity and this author is no exception. He starts by taking the advice of a cult as to going to the most difficult of diagnoses with no background and gets conned. Scientology is against psychology and psychiatry because scientology is run by psychopaths who manipulate people into handing over their money. Of course they don't want mentally robust and self actualized people running around the world. Those are all people who will not join scientology. They need a hook and if it is not vanity is could be some hidden wound (or want to be hidden)....something to hold their followers captive. And knowing yourself through psychology/psychiatry does away with the hooks. Plus the psychopathic leaders are always vulnerable to being diagnosed by the psychopathy checklist themselves. Cults are not led by other people than psychopaths most often. I read another writer on psychopathy who quoted a policeman saying to a psychopath something to the effect of "Don't try that stuff on me. Psychopathy only works on smart people and I'm not smart". It is true that to fall into their sway you need to absorb all the lines, narratives and play acting the psychopath spoon feeds you to change the structure of your mind heart gut and emotions. At least it goes faster. The author is obviously a smart, funny guy but unschooled in the techniques a psychopath would use to fool him. For sure there are problems with psychiatry and psychology. They are the most complex of sciences. This author is obviously a bright guy but he's got no background. Psychopaths rely on people not being wise to the science. A check list is just a tool. Like anything else. It clarifies. It diagnoses. It gets refined over time as the science gets better. Letting scientology direct you to one example of one person being 'misdiagnosed' by the checklist across the ocean is like asking Putin to help you find out about Gods by visiting with Kim Jong Un when you know nothing about authoritarianism. Of course Un is going to convince you he is a god. And he can prove it. It is nonsensical.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8565585/The-Psychopath-Test-A-Journey-through-the-Madness-Industry-by-Jon-Ronson-review.html
"SNIP....
It is difficult to imagine anyone writing a more quixotic book, unless they were actually Miguel de Cervantes, yet where Ronson sees giants the reader will often struggle to discern a windmill. Again and again, his books return to the moment we lost faith in the idea of madness as liberation. I suspect Ronson is a romantic, still cherishing the hope that lunacy may be a glorious way out from a life of routine.
.....SNIP"
Me, personally, I hope Van Jones finds a way into the minds, hearts and guts of
Trump voters that he can then share. I don't like the idea of 39% of americans being MAGA cultists. I know some can't be saved. I don't want to save the others for their own good, though that will be a nice side effect, I want to wake them up for the good of the country.
Yes. Most dyslexics get out of their own ego and think of the big picture
every so often. They are known for it. Not Trump.
I think that it being put out that maybe the US will expel Gulen back to Turkey
to appease Erdogan after the killing of a Washington Post reporter in the Saudi Embassy in Turkey is just a ruse. The public airing is the ruse. It is so abhorrent that putting it out there and then not doing it will cause massive relief. And perhaps satisfy Americans and others around the world that they don't want to hold the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia guilty anymore if it were not to means sending another landed immigrant to his torture and death. Quite brilliant little set up in our minds. We will not want punishment for a crime if it means a similar crime will then occur.
It may be as simple as dyslexics are herd avoiding. So they can think
outside of groupthink back when we all lived in little villages. And they could tear down human created fictions if their village went to crazy in cooperating over human constructed 'reality. Maybe that is the simple reason why Trump hates being in an alliance. Why he wants to tear everything down. It is pure instinct. Only the world and the West was and is working well for people. We believe in people centered banking and trade and publuc education and public healthcare as well as helping the poor and helping people get ahead. But it was not working in the USA republicans, desperately unhappy with their lot, gutted workers incomes as some billionaires in the US did not think they had enough money. They also financially traumatized the public with risky bank regulations. So it stopped working for the little guy. And the West was not working well for misogynists and racists and the intolerant either. Trump is just going on dyslexic instinct to put the brakes on human cooperation in the West. To benefit his coalition of the dispicable few and the many snowed. He's not fixing anything or saving anybody. It is very typical of dyslexics to think of the big picture over hours, days, weeks. To get out of their own ego and think big picture. Not Trump. He is missing that.
Melania fight still on. I wonder if Bolton has chased anyone down the hall.
https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/1062515114866339841?s=20If I had to guess what the issue is I would say Bolton and his aide were trying to control Melania and her influence and thoughts and it has not gone well. Why else would you try to control the seating plan on an airplane unless it was about controlling who sits beside who, who influences POTUS. That would be my complete guess. Melania might just have lines she will not let Trump cross on foreign policy, or they suspect it. 'It' being that Melania might be a feeling human being. Edit to add: and they leaked Melania's hotel bill from Egypt? Okay they are definitely trying to lower Melania's self esteem, or that of her team, so they can control her or those around her. Typical of palace intrigue types: protectors only of themselves, their place and the spun 'realities' of those they deem should have power (true right wing believers), imposing said 'realities' on everyone with a sledge hammer (following the 'reality' with such intense passion that they are delusional), kiss up and kick down, annihilate those not your friends (no live and let live) especially if the relationship winds up or ends, smart with details (hired for their understanding of complexity), no capacity for the big picture which requires periods of time of ego-lessness (and the GOP are counting on that), impose impose impose the order of her 'boses' to maintain/improve her position within, etc.. IMHO
The right say that democrats are naive in their fight for good and equality.
I think the right are naive if they think Putin befriending and mirroring them is going make America great again. The whole base on the right has been fooled into voting against their best interests for decades. But for years, and now under Trump, the leadership of the GOP are fools too. There is not enough room on New Zealand for them all to escape there when climate change starts wars and strife and spreads disease. When you share stuff, like good information, justice and equality prevail. Hoarding at the top is how many empires died. Economics and democracy only work when they are dynamic. There are always unintended consequences to any system. The right seems to have consequences they don't care about with things like climate change. (Putin thinks it is great). Think how many brown people will fall off the face of the world as it heats up.
Positive unintended consequences of sharing include: Canada responding to the threat of Quebec separation in the 1970s with deciding to share everything with French canadians including government jobs and language. It was a long time in coming. So generations of English speaking kids in canada have gone to French immersion public school. It was so popular across the country they at times run out of teachers. The unintended result is that kids who have two languages when they are young learn what a concept is much earlier and it helps them their whole life.
https://wehavekids.com/parenting/Benefits-of-Raising-Bilingual-Children
The right think they know so much, and they hold back so much from the public, that they can game the planet. They are desperate for more because they don't find meaning in their greater communities. They can't game the planet. They are just not that brilliant or dynamic. Anyone can tear something down. Takes a community to build something substantial. They are the fools. Fools about their own psychology being used against them because they have been schooled in vanity in thinking they came to be successful all on their own, covetedness and nihilism, projected or internalized. They could be self actualized, all-in human, part of a community and feeling lucky instead with the knowledge that whatever happens in the future we will work together to overcome if it is bad. Which way to be would a sharp person pick?
Nihilism is the philosophical viewpoint that suggests the denial or lack of belief towards the reputedly meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.Wikipedia
Yes I agree sober stuff that asks us all to take our own pulse doesn't fit in with
the deep anger people feel about Trump, the GOP and their base. When you are angry it is about fighting for your ground. Not sober reflection on the nature of humanity. So I well understand why threads like my own might sink. It will not stop me from posting threads that speak to me, a Canadian, and thus a little more removed from this traumatic time in us politics. All we can bring to the fight us ourselves. And i believe if all of us bring it..we will win.
I was at the hospital a few weeks ago. A young orderly with an accent walked by pushing an
elderly male patient. The orderly was explaining to the older man how many of Canada's social programs came to be in the early 1970s. How we had to watch out for those forces that will try to undo them. And to watch out for the false narrative that will start it all. Immigrants to Canada are encouraged to contribute to social capital. It has traditionally been high in rich places like the US North and low in the US South. Think listening to public radio, volunteering, union participation, political participation, giving up your seat on the bus to someone feeble, chit chatting with the bus driver, participating in festivals, etc.
I'm not gloating. I'm thanking you in the USA for going through what you have gone through and talking about it so we all could be warned. That being said it does look like the GOP base has been encouraged to do the opposite of increasing social capital: look at all the black people who are being turned in for being a kid and having a lemonnaide stand, for opening a business while black, minding their own business. I wonder how those antisocial capital instructions are getting out and who is responsible for starting the meme.
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