Month: January 2017

As I have shared regularly, I view John Wooden as an ideal of sorts. He was the sort of person who could come up with a plan, implement it diligently and consistently across a wide expanse of time, and continually improve in slow but real ways the entire time.  This is a sort of perfection.  Very, very, very few people are capable of following simple plans with enthusiasm and discipline for long periods of time.  It requires a psychological integration few ever achieve in this life.

He commented once that he liked his players to be “fun, but not funny”, and I think I finally know what he meant.  People who reflexively use humor can make everyone laugh, but in most, perhaps all, cases, this is a psychological defense mechanism, which means that they are not fully present emotionally.  They are hiding, and he didn’t want people who hid.  This is inherently a separation from the core self, and the core self is where true emotional strength is found.

I recently heard second hand that among some people I knew years ago I was considered “fucking funny”.  And I did used to joke a lot.  I can be very witty at times, and very fast. But I am finding the more work I do, the less recourse to that I have.  I am not as funny as I used to be, but I am also finding myself sometimes capable of staying in the room when dealing with other people, which I was not when I was deflecting with humor.

Receptionist: How do you write women so well?Melvin Udall: I think of a man. And I take away reason and accountability.

Although of course this is not uniquely a problem of women, it is still a funny line.

Actually, one could alter this slightly: Receptionist: How do you write Leftists so well?  Melvin Udall: I think of a conservative.  And I take away reason and accountability. ]

but this is the net effect.  They are willing to ally with people who literally want their women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and who think it their right and even duty to beat them regularly if they step out of line.

And with regard to Muslims in the West, the real issue is not terrorism, although it it stupid to discount the possibility that what has been will continue to be, more, and more often, but rather that Muslims seek to, and largely succeed in, imposing their values on the communities where they land.  There are no-go areas, especially for women, across Europe.  It is dangerous to go to some swimming pools, to the extent that some German pools have been segregated by gender.  Groping is common.  Indeed, it would not be entirely inappropriate to view the hijab as a symbol of pussy grabbing.  Where infidel women are concerned, Islam really recognizes no boundaries, no limits.  Anything up to and including the rape and murder of infidel women is just fine, and within their culture “women” can be sexualized as early as age 9, after the example of their own Prophet.

And, importantly, I think we need to recognize that in this war against Western culture, an important ally is George Soros, who allies with everyone who opposes things like the rights of women, the right to free speech, the right to local self government, the right to own effective means of self defense, etc.  Open Society is a propagandistic term for cultural and political Fascism.

Soros seems to have American citizenship, but I think all means possible need to be pursued to counter his activities across the world.  Specifically, what I would propose is a de facto partnership with the Russians in pursuing our shared interests in preventing this psychopath from continuing to pursue and implement his demented schemes which harm the lives of innocent people, who do not deserve it, who were born into free societies he is trying to undermine from within.

I would strongly encourage Trump to make this a priority, using all legal means, with a very flexible understanding of that term in the international realm.

I did WAY more shaking last night than I usually do.  I kept having waking dreams of being abandoned in windswept and decrepit old houses.  I have denuded my haunted houses of ghosts, but the senses of abandonment, desolation and darkness remain.

I went into a grocery store I know well a week or so ago, and realized that I felt fear, like I didn’t belong there.  I was for some reason keenly aware of all the space in the store, and the process of my occupying successive portions of it.  I felt the same in a hotel room.  I do often sleep in strange places, so some part of my anxiety is related to current events.

The essence of trauma is contraction, so perhaps the awareness of space is positive.  It is certainly one of the practices taught in Kum Nye.  To occupy space is to occupy oneself.

In this same grocery store last night, I felt a sudden onset of my shadow, so called, but layered on–like in one of those kits where you have multiple colored layers of plastic, and as you lay them down one by one the colors change in interesting and unpredictable ways.  I felt complete, but my complete self had this innate sense of horror, of grinding.

And I feel this morning that, if I might attempt a Freudian scale deconstruction of the human experience, the alimentary sense is VASTLY more important than the sexual sense.  It’s not even close, but it is so primal we don’t see it.  We all eat every day, don’t we?  Is eating not one of our primary interests and even obsessions?  Look at the vast quantity of cookbooks created and consumed in the form of purchase every year.  Does the very word “Consumerism” not reference the alimentary process?

Consuming is grinding.  You first masticate the food.  One of the things that scared me as a child I still remember is some monster movie where the monster put a human being in its mouth, chewed it up, then spit it out as a bloody mess.  That really bothered me,  for reasons I now suspect I understand: this is what was done to me.  I was masticated.  I had a dream early on I know I have mentioned, where two women were grinding me in a giant mortar and pestle to a bloody undifferentiated mess.  That dream was at least 40 years ago, but so vivid I still remember it.

Now, I was reading yesterday that using brain scans researchers found people who they felt thought like themselves much more attractive, which makes sense.  We are attracted to people who “get” us, with whom we feel affinity, with whom we feel a bond of understanding.  Logically, a person capable of communicating love must therefore have a broad spectrum of perceptual and affective capacities, and the flexibility and adaptability to display them.  You have to be able to be with people where they live.

It popped into my head yesterday that I was not a “truth” baby.  I pondered what this might mean.  I have many such ideas pop in my head, that I then have to tease out, channeling my inner psychological Columbo.

As I have shared, I believe both my parents are narcissists, which in my current understanding means they were subjected to stresses, to trauma, at an early age they were never able to surmount or understand.  It became a background part of their lives which was completely invisible to them.  They don’t know what they don’t know, and rarely suspect it exists.  The world is simply confusing to them, irrational to them.

But a mother of that sort, looking into the eyes of her baby, sees only herself.  The baby, whose very existence depends on keeping the source of life happy, soon realizes this on an instinctual level, and begins to mimic the mother, rather than the mother mimicking the child.  You create a modus vivendi which is congenial to the mother, which meets her needs for recognition, but which is inimical to the child.

Now, here is where I would like to propose something a bit original: the human brain has evolved to seek out pattern recognition in others, to know who is “safe” and who is not, and at a primitive evolutionary level we fear those who are not like us are going to eat us, which is a source of much violence.

I have felt the wolf in me, the voracious and aggressive instinct which kept our ancestors alive, which is felt daily in all predators the world over.  Is it not interesting how the same dogs who will love the people they know will kill people they don’t?  It is all context dependent.  They are still predators, still killers at heart (most of them at least: we all know dogs who wouldn’t hurt a fly).

And psychologically, we have all met or heard of people who will chew people up, grind them down, then shit them out.  This is the root dynamic of sadism: consuming the souls of people who are different.

Add to this mix the patterns of narcissist relationships.  Link chosen more or less at random: http://breakups.org/relationship-with-a-narcissist.html#.WItWAtQrLGg
The following is a bit disjointed, because I am thinking out loud.  Nonetheless, I think there are important ideas here.  I have gone these places before, but I don’t think ever so directly.

They start seeming to understand and value you.  They move on to wounding you with a thousand cuts, then finally see you as the enemy.  This is because they see EVERYONE as the enemy, since their capacity for actually perceiving others empathetically is ruined.  It is a social retardation, a massive defect in the ability to connect.

I was feeling this morning that “we lack stories”.  This came to me in a dream state.  What a common culture does is provide a means for mediating the social and anti-social impulses.  It creates a means of connecting to others through shared stories, shared history, shared sources of meaning.  It creates a consistent means of saying “this person is like me”, with the following conclusion “I do not need to fear them”.

What happens when this social sense goes off-line, when we live in an endlessly perplexing world where we are all wondering if our neighbor is secretly a serial killer, because such people end up all the time in our media?  It reduces us evolutionarily to a more primitive state.  It activates the fight or flight response, chronically.  And it brings into play the “alimentary” response: eat or be eaten.

Even today, in our strange, strange world, cannibalism still retains taboo status.  It is both fascinating and horrifying.  John Podesta, to bring up a recent example, had a picture of two cannibals–dressed as gentlemen as I recall, certainly in garb contemporary to whenever the painting was created–eating a third, and when asked about it he did in fact say, in effect, it is better to eat than be eaten.  This is the same man who, in my estimation, has been credibly accused of being a sadist.  Why not?  Within that mindset, and within the paradigm I am proposing, it makes perfect sense.  Something he can’t remember–likely a cold and very abusive mother early on, and perhaps a cold and violent father later–fucked him and his brother up badly, in ways they cannot see, and cannot correct.  Sadism is simply a means of self regulation. of damage control, of not going completely off the rails.  It is a means of survival, when suicide might otherwise make a great deal of sense.  All serial killers, I read, are in the end suicidal.

Ponder the saying “lone wolf”.  Wolfs run in packs.  This is their nature.  A lone wolf is an aberration, perhaps not a traitor to its kind, but also not really a member of its race either.  It is a cursed wolf, in important regards, even if in America we do tend to regard radical individualists with respect.

There is something very important in all this.  The current national growling, and displays of bared fangs warrants sociological explanation.  The sheer venom and hatred on display is not even remotely warranted by who Donald Trump is or what he stands for.  What he stands for would have been self evident and generally applauded in the 1960’s by nearly all.  He would have been very popular.

But what I would suggest has happened is that the patina of generosity and tolerance has been peeled away from the Democrats.  They stand naked, as what they are: monsters seeking to consume all of us in the self annihilation they chose for themselves long ago, as the price for finding refuge from a demon haunted world.

But the demons are in us, all of us.  True Liberalism is about social and individual growth, which is only made possible within the frontal cortex, within the social brain, within negotiation, empathy, compassion, principle, and devotion not to abstract ideals, but to actual people around us, to communities, to families, to friends.

My work continues.  It is not easy work, but God has granted me a nearly infinite tolerance for emotional pain, and the ability to learn from it and press on.

Without giving up too much detail, some years ago, somebody I know told me somebody they knew, in a unit involved in such things, said that waterboarding in the right context was a virtual gift from God.

Now, some people do not respond to torture–and it is torture, although torture most of our special operations forces have to undergo, and which leaves no marks–but most do.

This person said that in dynamic situations flipping people with “enhanced interrogation” was easy, quick, and productive.  They flip one, move on to the next.  In situations like Iraq when attacks were common, it is easy to see the value of this intel.

Now, I have not forgotten the Berkeley dude who wrote the rules around this whole thing, and I applaud him for it.  There need to be rules.  We Americans are not Nazi’s.  But once the conditions are met, which include a present danger, then the process has merit.

Now, if there is not present danger, or reason to believe a given person knows nothing, then we should leave it alone.

Here is the thing: this is a tool, but one which should be used wisely, judiciously, and appropriately .  We need to remember terrorism is truly a thing, but one which most benefits those who hate our democracy.  Don’t forget who you are, what you believe, and where you come from.

In anthropology, they speak sometimes of an “emic” and an “etic” perspective.   Since EM is close to IN, and ET close to OUT, that is how I remember them.

An Emic perspective is how people view themselves.  Every lunatic you have ever seen on the street behaves logically, according to his or her factual understandings, perceptual capacities, and emotional disturbances, known or unknown.

I am watching a documentary on Joseph Goebbels called “The Goebbels Experiment”, in which against the backdrop of much very interesting documentary footage, Kenneth Branagh reads entries from Goebbel’s diary.

Here is the thing: everything Goebbel’s did and said made perfect sense to him.  He did not see himself as attacking the Jews: he viewed himself as defending Germany from THEIR attacks. They started it.  They started the global Bolshevik conspiracy.  They controlled the banks which ruined the German economy on purpose.  They were the ones who kept ordinary Germans down and caused so much suffering.  Hitler and Goerring both were very likeable, honest men with whom he greatly enjoyed spending time.  Propaganda was the natural concomitant of a well run State.

Likely inter alia, one of his own Rosebud moments seems to have happened when he became ill and contracted a permanent problem with his foot, which prevented him from playing with the other kids, and from being normal.  He drifted and was lost in his rly 20’s, and National Socialism–Hitler seems to have emphasized the National, and Goebbels the Socialism (he called their Parliamentary success a “revolution” and used the word “bourgeois” quite often)–was his way out.

Sad and lonely people are often attracted to radical causes, which include them where they are otherwise excluded, which need them where they are otherwise useless.  In my own case, I have had a number of “enthusiasms” in my life, and as I look back at what a sad and lonely child I was–I was told by a girl in my late teens that I always seemed like an orphan to her, which is how I felt too, even though I had and have two parents–it seems logical.

There are a couple of points I want to make:

1) Many of the kids protesting Trump now would have been Nazis, had they been born in Germany in that era.  We have been conditioned since childhood to see those uniforms with hate and disgust, but there was a long time when they represented pride, purpose, honor, and self assertion in the face of global hatred.

There is no principled or psychological difference between the hate the Nazis felt for Jews, and any of the objects of hate the Left targets in  its own propaganda campaigns.  Why hate white people?  Why hate Christians? Why hate the rich?  Are we not a wealthy nation, and is there any reason to supposed that, say, Bill Gates or Warren Buffet do not deserve their money, or that they have not made countless other people rich, who in turn provided jobs and income to ordinary Americans?  Of course not.

But, they say, they are attacking our RIGHTS.  They are attacking US.

This is the same argument the Nazis used.  It is not similar: it is IDENTICAL.  What exactly and how exactly are they attacking?  You have no good answer, if you are honest.

2) Authoritarianism and violence are synonymous.  The essence of Authoritarianism is the centralization of  and “rationalization” of violence.

Who in our current public “dialogue”, so called, consistently resorts to violence?   Who beats people up in the streets?  Who tells nasty lies continually?  Who goes into full blown hyperarousal the moment they hear a dissenting view?  Who starts insulting and name calling nearly immediately?

Who wants a One Party State?

True Liberalism requires self restraint, at worst, and benefits, at best, from openness, curiosity, and an attitude of exploration.  Where does one find curiosity on the Left? Granted, conservatives often have no interest in the ideas of the Left, either, but they are not the ones trying to impose their ideas and to radically reshape society.  They have a belief system and way of life they find congenial and just want to be left the fuck alone. What worked yesterday will work tomorrow, and stop trying to reinvent the fucking wheel.

I have work to do, but I would suggest that most modern academics share much more in common with Goebbels than they have the self awareness and capacity for honesty to admit.

I really hope Trump will sign the legislation, and soon, to audit the Fed.  We the People of America more or less handed over what is likely now trillions of dollars worth of gold to the Federal Reserve when Nixon took us off the gold standard (which really wasn’t a gold standard, but which was something at least slowing down the pace of money creation and theft by banks), and we have NO IDEA what happened to it.  Even though it is our money, it was handed over to the complete control of an institution which allows ZERO transparency, and which is owned and controlled by our nations largest banks with no Congressional control whatsoever.

Ponder that: our nations largest banks literally have the power to create essentially infinite amounts of money, which can be used for any purpose, with no one to tell them no,or even to KNOW that they did it.  They created $12 TRILLION in 2008-2009 to bail out, in some cases, OTHER NATIONS.

Now, they are not stupid, so they keep this massive transfer of wealth at a steady trickle, but it has been running for over a century.

Bottom line as far as Trump: our car manufacturers can build all the plants they want, and the building itself will employ a lot of people, but the direction of manufacturing is automation.  This is not the 1950’s: the long streams of blue collar but middle class men with lunch boxes and thermos bottles streaming into the gates will be in the future a tenth or less of what it once was.

In order to avoid mass unemployment–or underemployment in the service and other industries–we have got to return the wealth stolen from the American people back to the American people.  We have got to make slaves of robots–Oscar Wilde long ago suggested automation would be the morally acceptable equivalent to slavery, creating time for an increasingly large leisured class–and make spare time a permanent feature of American life.

This all begins with an accurate snap shot of where we actually are, and how we got here.  We don’t know, and can’t know, until we penetrate the Fed’s veil of completely ridiculous secrecy.  There is no down side to this bill and a major upside.

It seems likely Rand Paul–who seems to be developing a good working relationship with Trump–can make all this clear, once he is done with the Obamacare replacement.

Some football teams will preplan their first twenty plays or so and do them no matter the outcome. Then, as needed, they make adjustments. It helps maintain focus and kind of puts the teams energy on a railroad track.

Likewise–and this certainly what he is signaling–I think Trump should ignore the press completely for 100 days. It’s been HIS WORST WEEK EVER pretty much every week since he announced his candidacy, so getting a real handle on things will be next to impossible. And he was voted in to do a job, and enacting a policy agenda is no different in principle than erecting an office building. As Charlie Beckwith said, on getting things done, you develop a simple plan, communicate it to anyone affected, don’t change the plan, and kick the shit out of it.

That’s what Trumps done all his life, so I like our odds of getting everything, or close to it, that we voted for.

Can we start using words like anti-elitist, and counter-elitist? It is really quite astonishing how patronizing the Left is, in presuming to speak for people they don’t understand and would not associate with. It is insane how hard they fight for policies which do not affect them, and whose actually outcomes are a matter of indifference.

There has been something that has bothered me since I read it, but I keep wanting, and not finding, the time to do a more in-depth analysis, of what came to be called “Pizzagate”.

In one of his emails John Podesta wrote “should I play dominoes on pizza or pasta?”

In what I am told is called Handkerchief Code, which was a thing with gay men before being gay was even legal in some States, white means child, and black means sadomasochism. Within what I am told is a pedophile code, pizza means girl, and pasta means boy.

Self evidently, dominoes are white and black, and domino already contains the first two syllables of dominate.

That phrase makes no sense as anything but code, and any other coded interpretation seems unlikely to me.

There is something going on here that warrants FBI involvement, in my view, and I hope Trump orders it.  Her has a lot to do, but that would only take a phone call.

As I think about it, I think one thing Trump can also begin doing immediately is point out that Social Security and Medicare are charity programs, in which people take out, on average, far more than they put in.

There is nothing inherently wrong with charity, obviously, even taxpayer funded charity.  To some extent, I think we will need some form of “safety net” for a very long time.

But we need to be clear that this thing has been a lie since the outset, when it was claimed it would be self funding, that people would get out only what they put in.

In trying to think clearly, it is important to use clear language, and the sooner most Americans realize that Social Security is charity and not their just deserts after a lifetime of work, the better.  I see that argument made over and over and over, that they are just getting what they deserve, and that they have been “robbed”.  The ones getting robbed are me, and those younger than me.  The Baby Boomers are making out like bandits.  They paid far less in, and are taking far more out.