Author: White Whale

As I posted a couple days ago, a mailman for the parents of Bill Ayers–who were of course rich, making Ayers a spoiled rich boy–commented that he met Barack Obama at the Ayers home a decade or more before Obama claims he first met Bill. At that time Obama claimed he was going to be President, on this guys account.

Here is the question that needs to be asked: with whom did he make contact in New York that he had that confidence? We know virtually nothing about Obama’s Columbia years. We can’t even verify that he went there. We have his word for it, and he seems plainly to a truth-optional human being.

David Rockefeller, Jr? The intersection of the Federal Reserve and political radicalism? Who was it? Who has the power to create a twenty year plan to put an undocumented alien in the White House, who can then insert cronies like Leon Panetta into our intelligence and defense networks, who in turn can make sure the right people are in the right places?

Just how foolish are we Americans? There is no courage required to put your head in the sand, and to the extent that courage becomes an extinct virtue, we have no hope, no reason for hope. People who know things need to make decisions. To do otherwise is de facto treason, in my view.

Every horror of the Communists was preceded by exhortations about justice, freedom, and democracy. They say what they need to say, but in the end all the leaders want is power.

As an end note, I was thinking about this yesterday: Vladmir Ulyanov (changed to Lenin when he joined the cult and surrendered his personality) is arguably responsible for more human death than any human who ever lived. All the Communist atrocities of the 20th centuries–and those which may still be planned–can be laid at the feet of the man who led the first Communist coup (to call it a revolution is of course to misrepresent what actually happens in Communist take-overs) and who created the Comintern that enabled so many more coups around the world. Some 100 million dead can be reasonably directly attributed to him.

And again: for WHAT? Communism is just sadeism implemented into a political regime.

I have been trying a new psychotherapy out on myself–always be your own guinea pig–and it seems to be working. I have a benchmark for myself, and when I achieve it, I will post the method and results.

For the moment, I was in the grocery store, and by habit I am one of these fast moving, impatient, irritable people. Someone who has a blog called the Goodness Movement should not be like this, but regretably I am how I am, and not yet how I ought to be. The best I can do most days is recognize it and tone it down.

Yet, today, the thought popped in “no nausea”. Now, I don’t ever feel nausea. I don’t get sick with anything. I don’t even get headaches from hangovers. But I thought about it, and I think for some people–the number is hard to estimate since we are less than fully honest with one another–life is something to be feared, and holding back in anxiety a “rational” reaction to this fact. I do this. I always have. I literally think it started in the womb.

But these reactions must ALWAYS be considered as habits that are provisional, mutable, and which can be altered. It does not matter if literally every waking moment of your life you have had some feeling: it can still be reduced in size, and quite possibly erased as a significant factor in your life. No matter what neuroscientists tell us, I will believe the brain remains plastic, potentially, for the duration of our lives.

That wasn’t the point I wanted to make though. The point I wanted to make was this: Jean Paul Sartre, in his “Nausea”, was pointing to a psychosocial dysfunction not “out there”, not existential in the human condition, but rather something that was definitive FOR HIM. He claimed we choose our own emotions, but one is hard pressed to see why if this is the case he would choose anxiety and nausea.

Rather, I think we need to look at him as a malignant narcissist, almost certainly raised in an emotionally detached and yet emotionally demanding family, and who reacted with clinical narcissism of his own.

Virtually everything he wrote had one purpose: elevating him in the eyes of the masses. Yet, one could easily see clinical sadism in a philosophy which condemns you to freedom without giving you any idea what to do with it; which equates authenticity with morality, and both with anxiety and angst; which in the end insists on perfect conformity to a political doctrine oriented around what I term Cultural Sadeism, of which the Stalinism Sartre and de Beauvoir admired so much was an excellent example.

Why are these people studied by philo-sophers, “lovers of wisdom”? Can not all “philosophies” in some measure be reduced to the psychologies of their creators, UNLESS they are practically valuable in some measurable way for the general population?

Few thoughts.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/03/postman-ayers-family-put-foreigner-obama-through-school/?cat_orig=us

Interesting that the Drudge link was disabled.

It may literally be the case that our President is a Kenyan born Indonesian national who has been living and working in the United States illegally for 20 or more years, and who could literally be deported for it. He could also likely be arrested for fraud because of his use of a false Social Security card.

On that last point, to be clear, if he used that number to apply for work with a roofing or landscaping company, he would not be hired, as it doesn’t pass muster as a valid SSN.

In researching this last, though, interestingly, just in the LAST THREE YEARS courts have started deemphasizing the criminality of using a false SSN.

You have to KNOWINGLY use SOMEONE ELSE’s number, or put someone else’s name on there. If it is just fake, then it’s not that big a deal, if it has your name on it.

All the same, if we survive this period of history in freedom and the truth comes out, I think it will be astonishing how little we knew about a man we entrusted all our secrets to.

In another example of how little we know about Obama, a postman who had Bill Ayers family home on his route describes meeting a young Barack Obama back in the 1980’s, who told him that he was going to be President, and who said that the Ayers (who were quite wealthy and left wing) were putting him through school. For her part, Ayers mother described him as a “foreign student”, which makes sense, since the last citizenship we can confirm is Obama’s Indonesian citizenship, listed on a school application that is extant (perhaps because record scrubbing is harder overseas).

Here is a link, that appears to be getting interfered with by unknown internet forces: http://www.wnd.com/2012/03/postman-ayers-family-put-foreigner-obama-through-school/

Here is another link: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/what_the_mailman_knows_about_ayers_and_obama.html

For those who have been watching this issue, it comes as no surprise. Ayers got Obama into the Chicago political scene in the Annenberg Foundation, and it has long been speculated that they must have had a prior relationship.

A credible case can be made that Ayers was the actual author of both of Obama’s books, since Obama is a dunce and almost certainly could not have written them alone.

I would like, however, to focus on one small detail, the fact that Ayer’s father–a very successful business executive–thought with absolute certainty that he could speak and act for the ordinary working man, without even ASKING ANYONE what it was they needed or wanted.

This basic conceit is that of the narcissist, who thinks their way is the only way, and that whatever makes THEM feel better, must be good for EVERYONE. They literally conflate their own sense of satisfaction with the general good. This is a universal trait among totalitarians; and remember in this regard that Bill Ayers and his group talked openly about murdering ten million Americans. This is the man who may have done more than any other to put Obama in our highest office.

One wonders, if we do lapse into tyranny, if there is one member of the Supreme Court or Congress–whose job it long has been, among others, to ensure the qualifications for office of Presidential candidates–who will feel shame in having failed so utterly. There are many fingers.

But anyone, anywhere, who failed to do their job, is responsible. Period. There is no ambiguity in this. Personally, at the back end of a successful defense of our freedoms in the civil war that may yet come, I would have a lot of people shot, and many more jailed, as de facto traitors. I don’t care what the cause of their cowardice is: it is unAmerican, and unequal to the traditions laid down by those who died for us. Anyone whose inaction causes injustice or tyranny is guilty of complicity.

It is best to avoid falling into all forms of fixity: postural, behavioral, cognitive, emotional. The world is much richer when you are able to greet every dawn as a unique miracle, to be approached as an individual, one-time, not to be repeated event.

As I look at my own history, and learn, it occurs to me that it is quite possible to pass from birth to death without ever learning how to learn. It is in fact so common that it might be termed the default outcome.

There was a long time I wanted to be in the military. I enlisted in the Air Force when I was about 19, but they wouldn’t take me. I got booted out of MEPS. I tried to get into Marine ROTC, but they would not take me either. My eyesight was too poor.

As I see now, what I wanted was an external framework to build within me the rigidity to avoid facing my emotional conflicts. When you are in a behaviorally small, conformist, and demanding environment, the little voices inside of you can readily be silenced. And having once done it, I think many people cross lifetimes like that.

Please do not get me wrong: there is huge value in self discipline. All the spiritual traditions and most cultural traditions are in accord on this. We read that some one third of CEO’s nationally are former Marines. That is a huge number.

The point I am trying to make pertains to me, certainly, but I suspect others as well. It is that we need to beware of easy fixes to deep emotional conflicts. As annoying as it sounds, particularly for men, sometimes we do need to admit a lack of control, a lack of the ability to form a clear plan of action, and even a lack of genuine hope that things will get better. I think that admitting these things is how light gets back in.

I have “Don’t whine/don’t complain/don’t make excuses/Never quit” tattooed on me. I get the desire to refuse to “wallow”. It has kept me going. The first three come from John Wooden’s father. But to the point, he clearly came from a wholesome, loving family, in which everyone felt they belonged, and in which there was clarity as to roles.

Genuine, useful discipline comes from a well tempered desire for the pleasures of accomplishment. It is a simple extension of the perception that most things in life that are worth having require work and delayed gratification.

The type of discipline which is bad is that in which no deep emotional expression is allowed (anger and envy likely being OK for most men, but nothing else), and in which the focus is on work precisely to keep this from happening. You can be a highly successful lawyer, or doctor, or business executive like this, and yet still feel misery, and feel the need for “hits” of power, prostitutes, and booze to silence that inner voice that is starved for attention and recognition.

Persistent failure can only be the mark of persistence.

A parent who is narcissistic wants their child to be just like them, to be an extension of them, and, in the spirit of latent but very real violence, to serve as the repository for all of the unprocessed emotional needs they feel the need to “outsource”. In a broken child, the parent/child is an emotional complex in which neither exists fully.

I was thinking, though, about traditional cultures. Let’s take a Sikh family from the Punjab. There are certain expectations for both boys and girls, certain ways of being, of dressing, of relating to others. There are certain beliefs that one is expected to share, and ritual and traditional roles to play.

Is a father’s demand that his son internalize these roles narcissistic? No, in my view, for the reason that these are generalized roles, and the son is being acculturated for inclusion into a tribe, a group of people who share the same ideas and values. The “narcissism”, and I am expanding the word here, is that of the WHOLE GROUP.

In our Western family, we have one father, one son, and a tribe of two (I am simplying the numbers for clarity; self evidently there are usually mothers, siblings, grandparents, etc.). In our Punjabi family, we have a tribe that is quite large, probably in the millions, although of course there are likely hundreds of sub-tribes, which account for regional variations of various sorts which are both class and geographically determined.

Given this setup, I got to thinking about ethics. For a Punjabi Sikh, there are certain absolutes. Values are listed on a proverbial card, and there is no need for individuals to interpret them, outside the legal parameters provided in their culture. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and the sanction for ignoring either BEGINS with social exclusion and shame.

In a two person monad, where one person has effectively stolen the spirit of another, there is no ethical content whatever, outside conformity to the mutable wishes of the pupper master. This, I would submit, is roughly the cultural substrate of what gets called multiculturalism or moral relativism.

Now, the broader point I wanted to make is that I don’t think any ethical absolutes with very specific content (thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife) will INVARIABLY result in what is best for all involved. I therefore reject moral absolutes.

Yet, plainly judgement is often needed. If you are unwilling to speak up, you are at some point going to contribute to evil.

Historically, morality was encoded in external behavioral codes. But today I would reference our psychological culture and submit better is possible.

Specifically, I have somehow wound up in a position where I am again reading self help books and benefiting from them. This is a surprise.

You read “he said this, and I felt that, harkening back to when I . . .” and on some level I want to shout “shut the fuck up and deal with it.”

Yet, when I look at my own behavioral limitations, I plainly need this sort of thing. Where in some other day and age I would have been told who to be and how to be, now I must create an autonomous self that makes its own decisions based on chosen principles.

I would submit this is progress. The moral ideal is for each individual to interact with every other individual not as subject to external absolutes, but as subject to the well being of both individuals. Morality is something that is constantly negotiated, with no final answers possible or desirable.

We are currently in a stage culturally where we (the westernized world generally) have rejected many external behavioral standards–particularly those associated with religion–but lack collectively the psycholgical maturity to negotiate with one another in substantive ways. Practically, people trade one set of absolutes for another. Try reasoning with a dogmatic leftist or atheist. It can’t be done.

In my view, leaving behind the chains of absolute moral codes is a good thing, but that brings the problem of narcissism to the fore.

Let me offer another thought on this topic. In large measure, narcissism is the result of unprocessed emotion, things felt by the child that the man lives but cannot remember.

Prior to all the technology surrounding us, most people spent a lot of time in silence. In silence, you cannot still persistent thoughts. I think a credible argument can be made that many people stop short their emotional development process simply because they CAN, because the endless distractions made available to modern man work effectively to silence unwanted emotion. What is Twitter, but a way to reach out to others and kill time, without saying anything substantive, or truly connecting with anyone? It is emotional styrofoam: plastic, dry, tasteless, lifeless.

Thus in a time when we need to be becoming more emotionally intelligent, we are getting dumber. This is not a necessary outcome.

Overall, we do seem to be much less brutal than previous generations of humankind. The cultural/tribal narcissism that enabled, say the conquest of the American Indians, or the Chinese invasion of Tibet, has largely faded. The old tribal bonds have loosened.

We do need to look forward, though, to something new, untried, and likely better than anything we see looking backward. Those who would return us to Feudalism are acting as narcissists, unable to differentiate between their own emotional need for control and order, and what is actually needed by humankind.

This is rambling, as I tried to incorporate multiple ideas, but I am tired and do not want to edit it. What normally in any event happens with me, is the same ideas will get developed on separate lines, and posted on at a later date. Hopefully this is useful to someone.

A fifteen year old outshines 99% of Ph.D’s in economics.

I’m not big on videos, but if that is how you prefer to learn, please watch it, then share it. He has literally isolated the entirety of our economic and following political problems.

I posted some time ago on the social costs of the Federal Reserve/Fractional reserve banking system. They include virtually every source of suffering extant in our nation today, including poverty, unemployment, racism, unaffordable healthcare, and the national debt.

My own solution is a bit bolder than just going back to something we had before, but getting just this knowledge out generally will change our political landscape, and hopefully get the bastards in New York at some point under control. There is a thin line between being a dreamer and being stupid. In this case, he has proposed nothing but a return to the latter half of the nineteenth century, in which the value of our labor rose steadily. This is demonstrable, empirical fact.

Virtually every economic idea has been tried at some point. The only one that works every time is free markets and sound currency.

The only one that in my understanding has never been tried is 100% reserve banking. I have no desire to abolish banking in the form of actual capital accumulation and the charging of interest. I have a desire to abolish banks risking MY money for their own profit, particularly when they also ask me for MORE money when they lose it. Our system is nuts.

Look at this article, then read the rest.

I think it is important to note that the various dystopian scenarios–1984, We, Brave New World–should not be seen as having suddenly come into being, but as having been accepted gradually, with the acceptance of each step being so much more emotionally easy than active resistance, that soon the framework is in place. This is the essence of Fabian gradualism: the frog in the boiling pot. Large s…egments of 1984 are already upon us. We look at the internet as freeing us, and it does do that, but it also eradicates the possibility of freedom from spying. The government can already turn on your cell phone invisibly and use it as a bug. If your computer is on, and on the internet, they can see it, and everything on your computer. If you have a cell phone, they know where you are.

From this basis of technology, a more or less perfect surveillance state can and has been built, largely on the basis of needing to combat “terrorists” who seem nowhere to be found. I thought those who argued in 2001 that the attacks would be used to build a surveillance state were being paranoid, but I no longer believe that. Power that can be abused, WILL be abused. This power has been accrued, so absent aggressive and effective Congressional utilization of our Bill of Rights to combat it, the next step is a certainty. When, I can’t say, but it is not a question of if.