Author: White Whale

God, I have no idea where all this is going, but thanks for the ride.

I will add, on a related note, that what I am feeling is that trauma is like a horror movie where you just had to stop watching at some moment.  By now, most Americans have been acculturated to watch in movies the most horrific scenes of torture, murder, grotesque images, and other violence.  I saw a kid at Infinity War who could not have been older than six.  It was likely a single mother, and I felt some pity for her.

Be that as it may, the first time you see something awful in a movie, you cover your eyes.  You look away.  You just can’t stand to see it.  It is just too emotionally painful.  You get over this with conditioning, but that moment still happens at least for the more sensitive among us.  Certainly it happened with me.  I hated horror movies for a long time.  As I have shared, I forced myself to watch the whole Saw series and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and then called it a day on horror movies.  Watching those was useful.  As I have also shared, it reminded me of my home, at the emotional shadow level.

But to my point, PTSD is the equivalent in some real world situation.  You can’t physically pull your body out of the scene, and you may not be able to cover your eyes or ears, but you stop processing emotionally.  There is an increase in tension that reaches a fever pitch, then POP, nothing.  It all goes blank emotionally.  It is like it is happening to someone else.

To make the PTSD go away, though, you have to finish watching the movie.  You have to complete the loop.  In the real world, whatever the stress was, it has presumably ended, and likely ended long, long ago.  Stress can reach a high pitch, then come down.  Everything calms down.  The movie ends, and people walk out of the theater chatting.  But you never get to see that part if you are stuck.

One hypnotic technique I have read about is double dissociation, where you watch a mirror of yourself watching the movie.  You don’t even have to see the scenes the double is watching, but you do have to see that double watch it all the way through to the end.  This may be very effective for simple trauma. 

Complex trauma is an emotional loop.  What you are “watching” is a cascade of feelings which were utterly overwhelming at one time, which had to be suppressed and buried.  In principle, though, it is the same, with the difference that it is a kinesthetic movie versus one that you can confine to the visual and auditory pathways.

I feel this.  I feel this today.  The movie is starting to come back to me.

The Left seems to default to the “we have to do SOMETHING” argument about guns routinely now.  When they say something, the only thing they are willing to consider is some sort of law which makes it less simple for law abiding citizens to own some types of guns. 

Problem number one with this, of course, is that they never hide the people in their midst–usually standing right behind the ones pretending they are interested in moderation, that they just want to ban “high capacity” magazines, or “assault rifles”–who are calling for a complete gun ban and confiscation.  They aren’t even trying to hide it.  The supposed moderates have zero credibility.

Problem number two is that there is no evidence this will work.  I personally don’t have a problem raising the age to buy a gun to 21, but as a general principle, the guns laws we have are poorly enforced, when they are enforced at all.  New laws will do nothing.  The Left, because it wants a gun ban outright, has shown–as far as I can tell–something close to zero interest in making the background check system more effective.  As things stand currently, the way it has been explained to me, when you go to buy a gun the FBI has 72 hours to stop the transaction if it gets flagged for some reason when the gun seller puts in the gun buyers name.  If they don’t get back with the seller, the gun gets sold, no matter what.

One obvious fix is using Social Security Numbers for background checks.  It would make it quicker and easier.  I might even support using finger prints as additional backup.  These are policy question with philosophical, legal, and logistical considerations.  But the Left can be relied upon to simply focus on “we need to do something”, without saying concretely what that something is, or how it is expected to help.

And this is the core point I wanted to make: doing SOMETHING is the battle cry of imbeciles.  Anyone who has ever done anything in the real world–the one where your mistakes become YOUR problem, versus the one where all mistakes and their solutions are abstract and free of consequence for the person making them–knows that it is as easy to make things WORSE than to make them better. 

In both Great Britain and Australia violent crime went UP after the gun bans and confiscations.  If the goal is less violence, this is a massive fail.  And if someone breaks into your home in the middle of the night–home invasions were one of the crimes that went up significantly, in my understanding–brandishing a knife or machete instead of a gun, does that make the crime somehow less odious, less terrifying, less awful?  Of course not.  And given that that crime becomes more likely, this is a massive policy fail.

When you see this refrain “we have to do SOMETHING” what can reliably be inferred is that the person DOES NOT CARE about actual consequences, and is simply virtue signalling their submission to the dominant paradigm.

I feel narcissism, per my last post, is an effort for a person to make themselves whole, but an effort which fails.  It is a circle that never completes.  That is why it keeps on going.

And even where what I might term “clinical evil” is concerned–let us take as a concrete example the hockey coach who raped Theo Fleury 150 times–there is a process of trying to complete a broken self.  This coach was broken.  He would otherwise not have done those things.  What was done to Theo was likely done to him, in a cycle of meanness which no doubt goes back far, and which can and does restart spontaneously everywhere people feel afflicted, afraid, and in pain.

Obviously, I reserve the right to judge anyone for any reason.  But I also recognize that this is often not a helpful thing to do.  Sometimes there are better questions than “is this right or wrong?”.  An example might be “what don’t we understand about this yet?”

Or: if we were to accept this as normative behavior, what would the social consequences be, in the short, medium and long term?  Europe needs to be asking this question.  Even without absolutes, practical considerations–quality of life considerations–can easily and should be put into public and policy discussions.  A question there: If every third woman is getting raped in ten years, can this be called good by any standard whatever?  Is this fair to women?  Is this supportive of women’s rights?  Is this defensible in any way other than through mass deceit and censorship?  [no: the answer is no]

Few thoughts.  I am floating in an odd place.  I often feel unanchored, but this must be good, because where I WAS anchored sucked.

I feel love is a thirst for wholeness, a drive to wholeness.

My practice for this week includes a meditation on love, and it occurred to me that love is everywhere.  It is found in every activity where someone is trying to right some wrong, in themselves, mostly.

What we call evil is a person trying to make themselves whole by taking from someone else.

What we call goodness is a person who has found wholeness in themselves, and is trying to help foster it in others.

I feel today that compassion is the result of feeling your own pain, and not allowing it either to spiral into self pity, or get projected outwards as self righteous anger.

We do not feel compassion for those who are happy, do we?

If pain is the nature of human life, then compassion is a sharing which connects us, and makes it not quite so bad.

I feel, too, at this moment, how odd this blog is.  I’m fulminating about Mueller one minute, then posting things like this in the next.  I don’t claim to be consistent.  I categorically am not.  And I am no doubt often wrong.

But sometimes, I am right.

The more I think about it, this whole assault on Trump was supposed to be secret until the last moment, and then overwhelming.  They got Flynn, by not giving him a moment to breathe, reflect, and fight back.  They intended to get Trump the same way, but the operation was miffed.

Mueller was part of the con.  He likely knew he was scheduled to be appointed, if Trump won, several months before it happened.  But he, too, was supposed to act quickly.  They were supposed to mobilize all possible resources in such a way to overwhelm Trump and force a quick resignation.  It was likely assumed–manifestly inaccurately–that he really was a lightweight who was just playing a game he didn’t take seriously.  Why would Trump not just hit the road, if the road got too hard?  Of course, they were thinking he would quit all through the entire campaign season.

But now, Mueller has nothing.  His one guilty plea, by Flynn, may get vacated and has certainly been questioned.  Manafort’s charges may get thrown out, and he may get boxed in the ear by more than one judge.

Most discussion is focused on how Trump gets Mueller to quit.  The flip side of this is that Mueller HAS no way to quit.  He has accomplished NOTHING related to his core mandate, does not appear to be even close, has no way to get close, and also has no way to simply throw his hands up and say: Trump is innocent.  That would be much too embarrassing for someone who engages in competitive endeavors because he likes it.

So what to do?  I am almost starting to like watching him squirm, at least in my mind.  What brought this all together for me today was a headline on Yahoo showing Cohen with someone from, I think, Qatar, who is ACCUSED of corruption.  They can’t even place him with someone who is clearly guilty.

The whole thing has become a farce.  Mueller has egg on his face.  He is fucking up, and he can’t unfuck this thing, no matter how he tries.  And he stands a very good chance of making things even worse by trying to force things he should not be forcing.

Maybe he can feign a health problem. Or he could just do the stand up thing and walk away by concluding the investigation and exonerating Trump.  Don’t bet on that, though: he’s not a stand up guy.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/12/harry-reid-sent-sensitive-trump-collusion-letter-o/

It’s hard to know what really happened, but Brennan’s account of this rings true.  What makes the most sense is that he wanted to spring a trap for Trump he was not prepared for.  They wanted to fabricate evidence, fabricate proof, then either attack Trump decisively before the election, or use the “evidence” to keep him on a short leash through blackmail in the then unlikely event he would win.

Reid, by leaking the fact that Trump was being accused in secrets places by shadow people of insidious and subtle crimes, telegraphed to Trump to look for and prepare for the surveillance which eventually happened.  It is hard to know whether Reid’s stupidity or his corruption are his most salient aspect.  It is like having to choose between two Pinocchio noses.

And who roughed him up?  This adds an interesting possible angle. [Edit: I looked it up, and that happened in 2015: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/31/why-harry-reids-home-exercise-accident-story-does-not-add-up/ .  Still: who knows what is possible in this country, at the present time?]

Here is the thing: the people in the news, the “mouths”, are in general not who you need to be looking at and for.  I figured Brennan early on for the most likely architect of this whole thing, for the simple reasons that 1) he is smart; and 2) he knows how to keep his mouth shut.  He doesn’t have any need to now, since his influence, now, has to be in the public eye.  But then, he had powerful surveillance capacities, the ability to run covert ops, and the very willing and even enthusiastic collusion of the FBI and Obama.

I would stipulate as a general rule that we should ALWAYS be looking at who is behind the people in the news, and who is behind them.  No one with brains EVER allows their influence to become obvious.

[The topic was a black woman writing about yet one more way that black people have it way worse than white people, citing some likely accurate examples involving media bias.]

All of what you say makes sense, but it focuses mainly on white media. You can’t control, as you say, what other people say. You can’t control how other people view you. You can’t control racism.

But you can control what you say to yourself. And I would ask: what message does hip hop send? Is it a positive message of hard work, self empowerment, self respect, love and happiness? Some of it, maybe. But most of it? No, not at all. It is misogynistic, power hungry, and violent.

And what message do Democrat politicians–the ones you support, the ones who claim they are on your side–send when they speak continually of the ubiquity of racism, but never speak of opportunities which actually DO exist, such as performing well in school, and the institution of charter schools in inner cities to improve performance?

If you say: “hey, if you graduate high school, don’t get anyone pregnant out of marriage, and show up to work on time, things will get better”, you get called “racist”. Why? This makes no sense, unless the goal is keep things exactly the way they are. My grandparents were poor. So were those of many white people.

There is nothing inherently wrong with pointing to real problems. But there is something profoundly wrong with, in one moment, blaming others for how they treat you, then in the next ignoring all you CAN do to empower yourself. The last 50 years of political history in the black community amounts to demanding fixes of white politicians–and black politicians who in effect report to them–who never deliver them.

Their excuses vary, but amount to “it’s a tough world, kid. Racists everywhere. I did what I could. Vote for me next time, and I’m sure something good will happen.”

When will you wake up? I’m not saying the world is fair, or that racism is a fiction. Clearly, real problems exist, racism is in many cases quite real, and examples of unfairness abound. But ALL OF US deal at times with unfair situations. All of us can honestly say that some parts of our lives suck. PARTICULARLY if all that is claimed to be true is in fact true–if you do as a community face all the objective challenges you say you do–then you need to find your own way, and not depend on people who let you down continually, and have for 5 decades.

To say you want something better, then to demand it of everyone but yourself, is a failure of responsibility, and a de facto plea of helplessness which is undignified, and which will never lead to better outcome of any sort.

I know I’m not supposed to write things like this [this is presumably why it was removed, since somebody’s head would have exploded], but it angers me to see the entirety of the rhetoric involving this issue oriented around, on the one hand, moral sanctimony ,and on the other relentless language of defeat, and defeatism.

Your friends are the ones who demand more of you, not less. They are the ones who see potential, not victimhood. They are the ones who believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself. Your enemies are the ones who tell you, in a thousand ways, that you can’t make it on your own, and there is no use trying, and who, in the process, personally enrich themselves beyond the imagining of most. The wealth of a typical career politician is hard to believe, but the cynicism needed for such a career path–one based on keeping the downtrodden downtrodden, while claiming continually across decades to be their savior–is truly mind-boggling.

I continue to be confused as to how so many people can be so fucking stupid.

My operative hypothesis–and obviously I’ve visited this topic many times–is that all the people whose entire morality consists in the saccharine dictum “be nice” have to have an outlet for all the hatred and anger which boils up in them.  They have been trained, through propaganda, not to believe in principles, not to believe in the rule of law, and so it is hard to KNOW when it is OK to be abusive and willfully hurtful.

Trump gives this to them.  He does not deserve a whiff of the vitriol directed at him and his supporters daily, but THEY HAVE NOTHING ELSE.

Unlike Alan Dershowitz, who does believe in something, they can’t simply say “breaking the law is wrong for everyone.”  They can’t point to absolute principles which guide them, such as “working to cover up a rape is always wrong”, which is what Hillary was accused of by a former Democrat supporter.

They have nothing.  This is why reason and logic and proportion are completely absent.  They are howling ghouls because there is so much rage they feel–not least at their more or less complete disindividuation, and emotional separation from their own instinctive and intuitive knowing–that they cannot get out any other way, and it is a rage which has been boiling in a small bottle for a very long time. Ever since they found out the world wasn’t perfect, and that is was vastly easier psychologically to find some simplistic villain to blame it all on.

Leftism is very literally the OPPOSITE of healthy psychological development.  We all need to wrestle with life in our own ways.  They choose not to do this work, and instead view all people and circumstances through a narrow prism of good and evil, Us and Them, then cloak the whole thing from their own eyes (but not those of us who took the harder path of growing up) by lying about their intentions, affections, and capacity for tolerating actual difference. 

It is childish.  Clinically.  These rages are those of three year olds who have never been told no, and refuse to admit it applies to them too.

I feel what the weight symbolizes is the need to use will to manage emotions you can’t express.  A perfectly calm person need never be violent, but a person who is constantly beset by internal stressors which are inappropriate socially–such as those which result from trauma, which is atemporal, and rarely relevant to all but circumstances unconsciously engineered for the purpose–will find violence a release.  A release from what?  From the continuous need to use willpower simply to exist in a social space.

We hate people when we feel we cannot express what we feel around them.  I think this is close to an important truth, although of course I have a tendency to universalize from my particulars.  And this hate of others can easily be redirected into self hatred.

And I feel we become depressed, in the end, from emotions which simply won’t flow, or–perhaps more accurately–which we cannot allow to flow without winding up in jail or a mental asylum.  Again, I think this is close, if perhaps not precisely on the mark.

The process of knot-untying, of releasing, of relaxing, is inherently something which makes life easier, since there are fewer emotions you have to control.  You can trust in “life” when you can trust in yourself not to feel a spontaneous and powerful impulse to strangle someone.

To let tensions drop away is inherently to become less violent.  Conversely, to live in continual tension–as so many Americans do–is to become more violent.  And just look at our TV and movies.

Often, to release a feeling, we need someone to release it to, to confess it to.  When they then say “yes, I recognize this feeling.  I have felt it too”, this often allows you to allow it to fade away, or at least diminish in intensity.

Kum Nye, by focusing attention of feelings, and the sensations and images which precede them, is a sort of internal, non-verbal conversation which I feel over time has the same effect.  You can always understand yourself with much greater precision than anyone else, and, having done so, you will also understand others much better too.  You will see what they are feeling, perhaps better than they do, because you have gone so deep into the process of emotional awareness.