Author: White Whale

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/opinion/campaign-stops/i-ran-the-cia-now-im-endorsing-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0

This is out and out propaganda–self serving, conscious, carefully crafted lies–coming from the top of a key sector of our intelligence apparatus.  This is prima facie evidence of high level corruption, of the sort we already saw more or less in the open in the FBI’s unwillingness to do its job and prosecute her for the crimes she clearly committed.

Nothing is impossible if she gets in office.  Nothing.

Short except:

I
spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of
state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically
important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented,
thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with
a compelling argument.

I
also saw the secretary’s commitment to our nation’s security; her
belief that America is an exceptional nation that must lead in the world
for the country to remain secure and prosperous; her understanding that
diplomacy can be effective only if the country is perceived as willing
and able to use force if necessary; and, most important, her capacity to
make the most difficult decision of all — whether to put young American
women and men in harm’s way.

Mrs.
Clinton was an early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to
justice, in opposition to some of her most important colleagues on the
National Security Council. During the early debates about how we should
respond to the Syrian civil war, she was a strong proponent of a more
aggressive approach, one that might have prevented the Islamic State
from gaining a foothold in Syria.

First off, she fucking hates America and most of its troops and law enforcement officers.  She has made this obvious many times and in many ways.

Second, no mention of Benghazi.  Two of the 4 men killed were CIA employees, or so I understand.

Third, no mention of gun running to Syria, which almost certainly happened, and which he very certainly knew about if it did, since he would have been one of the people coordinating it.  That gun running armed what became ISIS.

I could go on, but if you don’t get the picture, you’re not going to.

This is a senior government official telling lies in the service of a corrupt candidate.  America, wake the fuck up.

I have long dealt with unwanted emotions by participating in arguments on the internet. It’s not just that I’m good at it, or that I feel like what I am saying needs saying.  Those are both true.

But I want friction, anger, fight.  And I was trying to trace this today.  What feelings lead me down that path?  How do they start?  What other possibilities exist?  Arguing is not wrong, but compulsivity is unhealthy.

Arguing consists in large measure in judging compulsively, in labeling things right or wrong, positions and people as right or wrong, defensible or indefensible.

And it hit me: the process of judgement is related to the primitive instinct of in/out, safe/dangerous.  It is related to the animal instincts that kept, and sometimes still keep, us safe, that keep us aware and switched on when we need to be.

As such, it is–without me knowing enough to be more specific–related to the fight/flight/freeze response.  Fear and judgement go together.


If we posit, as I do, that feelings precede explanation (Existence precedes essence, as a severely traumatized man once said), then compulsive judgement is a consistent outcome of developmental and other trauma.  So too would be the inability to judge. Hyper and hypo arousal.

So I manage my own fear by judging others, as well as–more or less continuously–judging myself.  It has been a not particularly funny joke I tell myself for some time that I’m fucked no matter what I do.  There is and can be no right answer to any situation concerning my emotions and behavior.  That is likely another reason I like abstraction so much.  There resolution is possible.  I land, or crystallize, my fear, my generalized anxiety.

But if we imagine ourselves as wild horses, running on a primitive and open prairie, we would not–even if we were talking horses–spend too much time on ethics, or political theory, or how to develop the prairie and get rich.  We would live in primary experience.

One could say that the cultivation of fear which has so characterized the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions has happened pari pasu with the ubiquity of strong moral judgements.

And I was wondering today if one could speak of “trauma cultures”, where children are acculturated through fear and violence, and who then develop those traits in their own children.  Children who are traumatized will naturally gravitate towards being highly judgmental.  Their culture will reflect that, and in a cycle, create it.  Fearful kids become judgmental adults who foster fearful kids.

There are so many things in the modern world which are CLOSE to important truths.  It is true that dogmatism is bad, and that most moral situations have many possibly valid interpretations.  It is true that competing dogmatisms–competing fears disguised as absolute judgments–often lead to violence.  Violence, too, is of course on the continuum with the already-activated fight or flight impulse.

One could view judgement as a sort of attack.

I fear I am meandering, but hopefully there is something useful here.

I will add that my own moral philosophy on judgement–moral decisions must be local, necessary, and imperfect–is quite consistent with a judgement which is not compulsive.  In some way, I saw all this long ago.

I have an odd mind that is perennially thinking thoughts I don’t have anyone else to share with.  That is where you, silent internet, come in.  Thank you!!!!!

Oh, and this: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/judgement-or-judgment/  I was judging my spelling, but it’s apparently all good.

Logically, breeding weakness brings about following dependence.  It discourages individuation, and creates a demand to be cared for.  Everything being done on college campuses, therefore, is seasoning for tyranny. Indeed, the expectation no doubt it is will create a DEMAND over time for tyranny.

A nation–let me say culture–can only be as good as it treats its children up to 18 months, and it can only be as good as what it demands of its youth.

I do believe in global elites, and for some time it has been my belief that how they condition their own young is by molesting them.  I have some slight, but personal, evidence for this.  This creates both a blank slate for inserting desired ambitions and passions, and a long term lust for power.  In all events, it protects dynasties, by ensuring that indifference is not an option.

Could not “maturing”–an increasingly antiquated concept–be viewed as the progressive development of self regulation?  Is it something other than being able to manage calmly increasingly difficult and heterogeneous situations and people?

Put another way, would maturing not consist in the ability to deal better with life without activating the “fight, flight, freeze” system?

The opposite, self evidently, of self regulation, is OTHER regulation, which is what we are seeing on college campuses.  The sense is that creating safe spaces will make them safer, but the reality is that by making them weaker and less resilient, less self regulating in a healthy way, it will make them more anxious, more violent, and less able to live happy lives.

A wise person once said “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken”.  This is a good motto.

The converse is “It’s a shitty life, if you are weak”.

The task of good people is to become strong themselves–to be able self regulate in highly heterogeneous and challenging situations–and to help others do likewise.

And those who seek to cultivate weakness in others, and to accept it in themselves, make everything worse.  We see this.  We feel this.  But I am trying to explain it more clearly.

What if there was an outbreak of serial murder in the country of Genovia, all the killers were red heads, and as a consequence of the violence, large numbers of people, many of them red headed themselves, wanted to immigrate to the United States?

We would not be able to say that all the red heads were killers, but that at a minimum if we did not let the red heads in, we would not be importing serial killers.  We could let in blondes and brunettes and blacks, and hispanics, and Asians.  Just no red heads.  Or if we did let in red heads, we would ask a lot more questions.

Would this not make sense?

What if, in your city, a red headed serial killer were operating?  The only description is “white male, aged 20-45, between 5’8″ and 6’2″, red hair”.  What do you think would happen to the dating prospects of red headed men who fit that profile in that city?  On Match, Tinder, or whatever else people use?  Women would KNOW that not all men were guilty, and in fact that only ONE was likely guilty.  But why chance it?

This is a logical sentiment.  It takes training to get around it.  I believe in Liberalism, but I don’t approve of the abuse of Liberal ideals in support of idiocy.

What if the motto of all politicans was “Above all else, do no harm.”?  What if the bias was in favor of conservatism and gradualism, and a firm insistence on reconciling policy outcome with intent, honestly?

Over and over in Obama’s early years we heard “we have to do SOMETHING”.  We have to pass the “stimulus”,  we have to pass Obamacare, we have to do this or that or the other, because it is a CRISIS.

Self evidently, the use of the word crisis, and the drumming up of hysteria generally, is a tactic cynical power mongers use to get and keep power.  Induce fear, and use it to do something with good “optics”, like “health care reform”.  Then for good measure accuse anyone who objects of “fear mongering”.

What if doctors took as their motto “Above all else, do SOMETHING”.  We can imagine conversations like “well, ma’am, I”m not sure what’s wrong, but I have these samples sitting around. Take them.  It might do something.  If it doesn’t work or makes things worse, I don’t want to know.  Not my problem.  I did something.”

They don’t have the word “interoception” yet in Dictionary.com .  It is relatively new, I think; certainly relatively new as something of clinical importance in optimized mental and emotional and physical health.  It is introspection, but at the physiological level.  It is feeling inward.  It is not seeing how you feel about how you feel–that is introspection–but rather FEELING how you feel, at a primary level.

In the lengthy quote I posted yesterday, they commented that what your mother does not mirror, becomes difficult for you to express in yourself.  What you are wanting is the feeling of being comforted, protected, nurtured, recognized as individual, rewarded for initiative and learning.  The process of growth for the wounded is remembering it is still possible to feel what they feel.  It is not too late.  There is a layer of muck and habit, but feelings never disappear, nor does the possibility of feelings, except of course in cases of gross organic defects, which do not afflict most of us.

Thus, when you are feeling what you feel, when you are undergoing conscious interoception as a growth process, you are self parenting.  You are doing for yourself–I am doing for myself–what my mother failed to do.

And it seems to me that trying to do this in a clinical setting is almost inherently problematic and unhealthy.  The idea is that as a physiologically mature adult you enter into a different relationship with your parent using the therapist as a substitute, and that you do this without touch, without constant contact, without leaving, at the end of the day, the relationship as other than pay for service.  This seems absurd to me.  Parents don’t charge by the hour, and they are not forbidden from touching you, or at least forced to undergo lengthy classes on the ethics of touch.

And the therapist IS NOT YOUR PARENT.  I can’t see how it could even be healthy on their side either.  Personally, I have regressed in therapy, but there was nothing the therapist could really do with it.  It was needed–I had to know this was there, in order to deal with it intelligently–but it would be easy to spend a small fortune and be barely better, even with a good, well trained, sincere therapist.

To my mind, quiet interoception is the only way forward.  This is the essence of Kum Nye.  And what is interesting about Kum Nye relative to similar practices presented by trauma therapists, is that it explicitly incorporates both physical nervous energy, and more subtle, spiritual energy.  The two are clearly related.

I visualize it as a series of locks you coax into opening, to allow new energies to flow.

Actually, I would add that group celebrations of all sorts are likely useful as well.  In America, we don’t celebrate very well.  At least white Americans.  Large groups dancing, drumming, singing: all that is very healing.

Feelings want crystallization.  We want to have a reason to feel the way we do, and as social animals innately wired for connection and mirroring, we want ways to conform.  We all have these needs.

Leftism crystallizes the need for social connection among those who cannot accept traditional ways, such as nationalism, or religion.  As a principle form of social belonging, it becomes vitally important in and of itself.  The ideas are not what matter, but their uniformity: their reliable uniformity among otherwise differing groups.

This is the main reason that such stupidity endures.  Certainly, it is reinforced by cynical psychopaths.  But they are tapping into a latent psychological need, one which is expanded greatly by continual attacks on all other potential sources of belonging.

The human race is in an odd place.  It is quite true that tribalisms of various sorts can and often have led to violence.  But the problem has not been solved.  Leftism is more violent than most traditional forms of tribalism.  It didn’t fix anything, and made many things worse.

I was sitting in a bar yesterday, pondering trauma, pondering the need to fight, to attack, to interact with others through aggression, and I saw armies forming.  That is where people always went: to war.  You start with a need to connect through violence, and then you find a reason, and you say the reason created the violence, when it was the other way around.

Self evidently, I am no pacifist, and not willing to say violence is never justified, or that we do not need our soldiers.  But I do think it worth recognizing on a macro level how these things work.

And on a related, but very tangential note, I was pondering an episode in Fallout 3.  You get locked into  a Virtual Reality device, which mimics a typical American suburb, with psychotically happy music playing continually, and everyone nice, except for this mean little girl in the middle playground, on a street with houses on all sides.  You tell her you want out, and she starts giving you tasks.  The first task is to make a kid cry.  They give you speech options, and the most obvious one is to tell him that his parents are getting divorced and it is his fault.

This was to me what I might call a Milgram moment.  What reaction could and should a normal person have?  It is “only” a video game, but as David Grossman pointed out, such games can and do teach real behaviors.  I balked.  I got on the walk through, and found out there was an alternative way out.  What I read was that after you bully little Billy, or whatever his name was, you have to kill each of the adults in the space, none of whom are mean or aggressive in any way.  You then find out the little girl is really a German scientist who finds sadism amusing, you find your father, who was a dog, and the game progresses.

Here is the thing: most of these games are on the internet.  It would be a simple task to build an algorithm to gather data on the decision patterns of the kids (and adults like me) playing these games.  You could build a good psychological template for their suitability as little Nazis,. or their willingness to submit to tyranny, and do so across large populations, as meta-data.

It is of course impossible for people on the outside to know what decisions are being made by who and why; to know who is planning what.  But I do think it worth fearing extremely wealthy people pursuing radical agendas.

If it wasn’t clear, my post before last explains most of what we call “evil”.  It is not a metaphysical question, or need not be.  With evil we are dealing with an organism pushed past its breaking point, nothing more, nothing less.

This is a powerful idea, in my view.

I don’t know why I’ve never put this together before, but left wing media, by creating a false sense of reality, creates a following sense of what is “normal” and what is fringe.  In my own view, most of the whole fucking country is crazy.  9/11 was a vast conspiracy.  We elected twice a man who is likely the illegitimate child of a Communist pornographer, and whose books were ghost-written.  This seems to be the truth.  I am well educated, well read, intelligent, and even if I have major emotional issues, I have learned to manage them when I am doing thought work.  All they do is predispose me to paranoia.  As I keep saying, that doesn’t mean those ideas are wrong. I think a great deal of paranoia is in order.  Hillary should have been indicted, and everyone knows it.  At a minimum her Security Clearance should have been permanently revoked, and they couldn’t even manage that.

Here is the thing: by shaping reality, they create an incentive system in favor of their reality.  Corporations will not put their dollars on anything controversial, because they risk getting branded with it, and losing customers.  This is likely part of the reason Glenn Beck lost his job.  He landed quite nicely, but the dirty tricks campaign likely did work.

Alex Jones at Infowars (btw check out this great rant by Paul Joseph Watson: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCittVh8imKanO_5KohzDbpg ) has to sell Male Vitality, and coffee, and other products he more or less just remarkets under his brand.  Why?  You think Proctor and Gamble is going to let any of their names get seen with him?

So if you toe the left wing line, you can get money.  You stay in business.  If you don’t, then your business, if it is a traditional media business, does not.  Absent the internet, I truly believe we would be living in a dictatorship now.  They haven’t stopped Drudge and Infowars, and Breitbart, yet.

But people have to go to these places, places they are told are “hate filled”.  They do not show up on the TV.

I am not saying all this particularly well, but hopefully you get the point.