Author: White Whale

Now, I would be lying if I said no one has ever done anything nice for me.  Many people have, and no doubt many have tried that I pushed away.  But at no time in my life have I ever not felt like my life was my burden and mine alone, and that it was likely to be that way forever.

This is the thing in dealing with narcisssists: they isolate you.  They separate you from your true self, from your own reality, from the free expression of your own emotions.  In my own case, the early trauma combined to make the narcissistic effect much stronger.  It is a miracle I am not a really fat, perpetually angry, overly intellectual computer geek obsessed with video games and utterly indifferent to any and all emotions.  Hell, I am some of those things any way, but I have traveled far.

Any time you get strong abreactions, that is a positive thing.  That means growth.  Some, of course, can put some people in the hospital, but I can take just about anything that can be thrown at me, albeit sometimes with some booze as a narcotizing agent.

The point I wanted to make, though, is this: living with narcissists is like living in prison.  But conversely, living in a totalitarian state is like living with narcissists.  What is the essence of a Fascist state like the old Soviet Union, or current regimes like Cuba and North Korea?  It is that individuation is strongly discouraged.  If you fall outside the lines, you are immediately labeled defective, in a society they are trying to build like a personality and belief assembly line.

In Cuba a very high percentage of the population gets a bit of extra money every month to spy on their neighbors.  Clearly, they would build a massive surveillance apparatus of the sort, say, China has built in Tibet to suppress monk suicides, which apparently continue to this very day, but their system doesn’t work, so they have no money.

Ponder a world in which you have to suspect everyone you meet–including close relatives–of betraying you if you say anything coherent and TRUE about the abominable condition of having suppress every last vestige of your spirit, your individuality, your soul?  There was an aspiring member of the Resistance in East Germany, who was betrayed by his wife.

Societies cannot grow spiritually.  Only individuals can do that, and only societies which permit liberty, which permit individual quirks, obsessions, ideosyncrasies, journeys without clear destinations, can possibly grow morally, can possibly grow in the only ways that ultimately matter.

Aspiring totalitarians are narcissists.  They are unable to separate the needs of the world from their own psychological need to find meaning by “helping” others.  It is not OK with them that most people don’t NEED helping, so where need is not present, they manufacture it.

Again, the so-called War on Poverty is a good example.  If existing economic processes had simply been allowed to continue in the black community, they would have reached a middle class average 20-30 years ago at the latest.  Instead, all sorts of perverse incentives were introduced, which rewarded single parenthood, which rewarded laziness, and which encouraged people to work the system, rather than work a job, all while making sure that all blame for everything bad was laid at the feet of white men, and specifically Republicans.  The truth is that if blacks had not been “helped”, they would have been vastly better off.  I don’t think they are intrinsically inferior.  Democrats do.  

This is one of the allegedly best minds in the country repeating by rote grammar school propaganda.  It is that bad.  You can get a FREE, acceptable ID in Texas according to this law merely by asking for it.

But that is not the bigger point.  Here are several:

1) in what respect should blacks not be OFFENDED by the severely patronizing tone implied by the claim that they are too stupid to adhere to standards we demand of whites without thinking about it?  Why is Al Sharpton not up in arms about blacks being called stupid and inferior?

Why?  Because it has been happening for 50 years, and it has made him a wealthy man.  If blacks were the equals of whites, they wouldn’t need him.  They wouldn’t need professional advocates.  They could just work their way up the ladder through education and effort like everyone else.  But that doesn’t get votes for Democrats.  That doesn’t allow Democrats to make false promises about all the free things blacks will get if they just vote a straight D ticket.

What they get are free phones, and long term unemployment.  But they keep voting the same way, year after year, so I afraid I can’t object to the Democrat’s contempt for this core constituency–for poor blacks–except in principle.

2) Anyone in this society who does not have an ID is not participating.  You have to have one to drive.  You have to have one to check into most hotels.  You have to have one to cash checks.  You have to have one to get into most Federal buildings.

Anyone who does none of these things is not a tax payer.  Period.

And think about it: what right, really, should anyone have as to how public moneys should be spent who has contributed none?  Why do they even show up?  Again: to get more “free” (to them) stuff.

No system can survive this selfishness for long.

What makes America America?  Why have we succeeded where most of Latin America has failed, to greater and lesser extents?  Why, for example, do so many Mexicans want to live here rather than their home land, where everyone speaks their language, understands their customs, where they were born?

Simple: Mexicans, proportionately, are much more corruptible than Americans.  I work next to Mexicans with green cards all the time, and they tell me the Army and Police are more or less direct extensions of the drug cartels.  They do not have a functioning system of impartial law.  Moreover, given the chance, they have always tended to want to implement policies where you get free stuff.  Most of Latin America has been like this.  This is why Venezuela is sinking daily into deeper poverty despite huge oil reserves.  This is why Chile is faring quite well.

None of this is complicated.  What is infuriating to me is the utter lack of common sense, of common decency, of the ability to add 1+1, among elites with the power to affect us all.  There is no need for  America to fail, but fail it will if enough of these people get in power.

3) Finally, I have been wanting to comment on Obama’s long rumored abuse of executive power to grant, illegally, amnesty to millions of Hispanics who came here to escape the long term failures of their home nations.

What you have to do is eliminate all sympathy, all compassion, all decency, all common sense, all concern for the general welfare, all empathy, all kindness, and look at everything SOLELY through a political lens, solely through an eye to getting and keeping and expanding power for your particular power elite.

Obama said he would grant amnesty before the election, but chose not to do so.  Why is simple enough: these people are going to be mobilized as Democrat voters, but they don’t have enough time to make sure all the illegals are registered and put on buses to the polling stations.  Further, amnesty clearly would harm Democrats in the mid-terms.  So what to do?  Well, if Republicans have a really strong showing, maybe put it off indefinitely.  Anything short of that, put amnesty in place and IMMEDIATELY begin using these people as voting tools.

Specifically–and I have not heard anyone say this, although I have not been reading much news lately–Obama in my view CLEARLY thinks he can use ICE to simply bus people around to places where he needs them.  Texas has long been a prize.  Do you think they do not have detailed lists of what counties are on the bubble and could be pushed Blue with a couple dozen busloads of illegals who should have been deported, but were retained as Obama/Democrat voters?

People in this view are tools, nothing more, nothing less. They are ways of implementing vote-getting strategies that have NOTHING to do with advancing the lives of anyone outside the power elite.

This whole things is sickening to me, particularly that so many people who ought to know better find themselves reciting grade school slogans, childish slogans, delusional propaganda created for the already infected.

“I have had more trouble with the union than with management and after this I will never come back to the UAW,” he said.

He felt the need to speak out after witnessing the establishment of voluntary unions in Chattanooga and Alabama. The UAW has said it merely wants to give voluntary union supporters an option, but the worker sees it as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“What they do behind the scenes is harass non-members, those who choose not to belong,” the worker said. “The workers [in Chattanooga] can look forward to seeing their names on a list just like this one.”

Reading this, it occurs to me that the long-term relationship between unions and gangsters–especially on the East Coast–is natural and obvious.

How does a normal protection racket work?  Three guys–one with a suit, and two plain dressed but large–walk into your store one day and suggest that you need protection, and that they are the ones to provide it.  You say you’ve never had a problem, and don’t need their help.  The suit tells you that things happen.  Who knows? Your windows might be broken tonight, one of your workers might break his leg, someone might through a nitric acid bomb through the window.  Who knows?  It’s a dangerous world.  You get their drift, and if you are in New York or New Jersey, you can’t legally own a gun.  They, of course, have illegal guns because that is what they do.  You fork over $1,000, $2,0000–who knows?  Whatever they thought they could get away with–and in exchange they don’t attack you.  This works particularly well for foreign born people in ethnic neighborhoods whose experience with the police in their home lands has not been good.

What do unions do?  Something quite similar.

If you want to work at a car plant in Michigan, you have to join the union. There is no opt in.  There is no choice.  And if you tried to work without joining, you would both be breaking the law, and risking an assault on your person or property.  Most people don’t realize this, but laws were passed under FDR making it legal for unions to do many things which would put people in jail if done by anyone else.  This includes physical violence, the threat of violence, and damage to property.  It is an outrage that these laws are still on the Federal books–they effectively grant unions their own class of citizenship; they effectively make them above the law in some ways–but as far as I know they are.

And what people fail to grasp is that unions are a BUSINESS.  The top executives make very good money, and to keep it that way they have to keep the union dues coming.  And how do they get the union dues?  Coercion, in almost all cases.

Protection racket.

Barry Goldwater (and Brent Bozell, who was arguably the brains behind Goldwater) argued in 1960 that unions need to be reformed in three ways:

1) Membership must be voluntary.  As they note in the article linked above they provide many more services, and work harder in Right to Work states because they HAVE to.  Everywhere else they have State granted monopolies and coerced membership.

2) One company, one union.  The UAW is the labor equivalent of Ford, Chrysler and GM executives getting together and price fixing labor, which is against the law.  It is not against the law for the UAW, again, only because unions are in a place somewhat above the law.

3) No political contributions.  Unions are tax exempt, in my understanding.  They pay no taxes, and should therefore not be able to contribute to elections.  In practice, they use their protection racket, which was created both by and for certain dissolute, dishonest policians, to keep them in office.  This is not contributing to the generalized public good, but rather the good of union leaders and crooked politicians.  It is wrong and should be abolished.

Hell, I’ll add a couple more obvious points.

Unions are inherently unproductive.  They create nothing.  If we had only unions and no corporations, then we would have no unions, because no one would have anywhere to work.  Unions exist solely as counterbalance to an otherwise monolithic corporation, but even in this case, no one company can command wages when people can do work somewhere else.  And as I said, collusion is illegal.

Only in socialist systems can companies achieve sufficient monopolies that people can be forced to work somewhere they don’t want to.

And on a lesser level, only when we pursue socialist policies, as Obama has, can the economy remain so bad that people feel they HAVE to remain at jobs they hate because management is awful.

A pro-business bias is a pro-people bias, and an anti-business bias is an anti-people bias.  As I say from time to time, just look at Detroit, once the envy of the world, once flush with cash,and filled with happy prosperous people.  What happened, effectively, is that the policies pursued by City Hall told people with money to leave, and they did.  That simple.  If you want a recent example of a country where that happened, look at Venezuela, which is increasingly Fascist.

It is a curse because the thoughtful person quickly becomes aware of all the things that COULD, theoretically, happen.  The bad possibilities are endless, and there really is no final way to conclude all of them are impossible.

200 years ago, there were troubles, too, but they were things like your horse breaking a leg, or a bad harvest, or illness.

Paradoxically, I suspect that despite all our material progress, despite the eradication of most major germ-related diseases, despite the eradication of most hunger and want, we are more worried than ever, and this is because of abstraction.

As I ponder this, I think this might be the root of the authoritarian impulses within our intelligentsia.  Being intelligent by definition, they are well anchored in abstraction, and well aware of the many bad things that COULD happen (even if some, like overpopulation and Global Warming, seem easily dismissable), want some FINAL answer (might we say Endloesung?) so that they can relax, so that their minds can finally rest at ease, now that everyone has a place, and mistakes and disasters are at least THEORETICALLY eradicated from the system.

There is something important here, I think.  I’ve gone down this approximate path before, but perhaps not quite this way.

I release my hate to the South Wind.

I release my hate to the East Wind.

I release my hate to the West Wind.

I release my hate to the Sun.

I release my hate to the Moon.

I release my hate to the Earth.

I walk in freedom.
I walk in freedom.
I walk in freedom.

I posted a link on my Facebook to this song by Travis Tritt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5Mwig3VqXg

Any politically engaged “feminist” could object to his objectification of women if they so chose.

Here is the thing, though: sometimes women WANT to be objectified, they WANT to be appreciated for their beauty and feel sad when this no longer happens.

One can argue, on one hand, that demands for surface beauty are awful, superficial.  But one can argue on the other hand that that is how we are wired.

Life is not fair.  If the egalitarians win, the unfairness will consist precisely in what they call fairness.

There is something Luciferian in telling young adults they can be anyone they want to be, EXCEPT who they were and who they are.  There is a death in this, from which many–perhaps most–never recover.

One can both value gender roles and reject them.  One can see where they facilitate happiness and a clear sense of order; and ALSO understand how they can be unnaturally constricting, and irrconcileable with happiness.

This is henomoralism: I can change the moral God I worship, as circumstances change.

This is why Edward de Bono called arrogance a “mistake in the future”.

Intelligence DICTATES, DEMANDS humility.  The more you know the more you know what you don’t know.

I’ve said this many times, of course, but perhaps not this way.  It is wearying trying to remember everything I’ve said.  Just on this blog I have I think nearly 2,000 posts (Edit: I misunderestimated it: 2,288).

And for the record, I think the Sufis taught this lesson the best.  As I understand it, in at least some schools everyone was classified according to what type of idiot they were.  I’ve always liked that.

And I’m honestly not sure what type of idiot I am.  Likely an emotionally constrained idiot, one unable to connect with people deeply due to a lack of development.

But there are of course grades of idiocy, and one can always strive to achieve the status of Top Idiot.  It’s something to shoot for, to be sure.

What I am realizing now is that the only way to complete this process is to have FAITH that it can and will complete.  Only trust will do it.  Only a sincere love of myself will do it, and love always requires faith.

Related note: You know, I rarely write in my diary any more.  There are certainly many things I wrote there that I would not have written here, but in some odd way this feels to me like a communication, a communication to a perfect listener who never interrupts or offers advice.  This itself is therapeutic.

I am of course ridiculous in some ways, but perhaps evidence that God has a sense of humor.  He created me!!!

I want this for everyone.  I told my youngest “I pity those who cannot afford this”.

Almost by definitions, those who value equality over wealth for all are NOT working to help everyone afford such meals.  Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton?  OF COURSE they will always be able to afford such meals (obviously, much better meals, since their “public service” has made them piles of money).  The question is do they want that for everyone else?

Will any amount of welfare every put poor people in such places, comfortably?  Will extensions in unemployment insurance, Social Security increases, or ANYTHING that is even remotely possible ever do it?  No.  Categorically, absolutely, finally: NO.  Not a chance.

Only a generalized increase in national wealth will do that.  Only better jobs will do that.

They claim to want this, but the only jobs they create are government jobs, which take money from more productive uses in the private sector, and thus COST jobs.

They claim increases in the minimum wage will do this, but the minimum wage would not come CLOSE to allowing people to comfortably afford such meals, and the higher they set it, the more unemployment they create, which creates a negative effect.  It hurts, on balance, far more people than it helps.

The core impediments to a generalized increase in wealth are

1) Government, obviously, and particularly punitive and unnecessary laws and high taxes, particularly corporate taxes.  I have argued often and will argue again that the corporate tax rate should be zero, and the difference made up by increases in income taxes.  This alone would lead to HUGE increases in economic growth, and would prevent fully companies from leaving. On the contrary, many foreign firms would likely relocate here.  This alone would likely ensure full employment.

2) Illegal competition with native born Americans, which depresses wages.  This is categorically the case, and the contrary cannot be argued, in my view.  Yes, Americans will probably not work hard for $8/hour, but if there were not people willing to work for $5/hour, they would be making $12 or more.  It is not that Mexicans–and they are Mexicans until they get citizenship–are doing jobs Americans won’t do. They are doing jobs for WAGES most Americans will not accept, and should not have to accept, given a sane immigration policy.

3) Finally, and most importantly, our banking system must be completely reworked.  Our nation is a nation in debt, which is to say characterized by massive claims on our collected wealth and labor which have been created ex nihilo due to a fatal flaw in our financial system.  I have linked my proposal often.

But returning to my meal: ask any Democrats you know if it would make them happy knowing that everyone in America could afford such luxuries, even if the rich got richer.  Their politics compels them to say no, and that is why I could never support such awful, callous, angry, and ultimately hateful people.