Moderates United

I do think it can be credibly asserted that unnamed power elites have developed a system for manipulating public opinion in ways which further ends which are unknown, but which certainly include at least increases in their already enormous and unusable fortunes, and their considerable power.

They have a method for using directional pushes in the American political climate.  They have ways of using Democrats to get rich, and ways of using Republicans to get rich.

There are two competing rhetorics, those of compassion versus security, those of progress versus freedom.

In reality, of course, both words are abused.  In the name of security and  freedom we enacted the Patriot Act, which allows government snooping of a scale and scope that would have astounded Orwell.  He merely envisioned cameras everywhere.  With smart phones, and particularly with the many apps people use, considerable behavioral data becomes possible: psychology profiles, spending profiles, friend networks, movement patterns.  They can even know how well you sleep and if you snore, if your phone is in the room with you, which for most people it is.

In the name of compassion and progress we enacted Obamacare.  We fought and lost the war on Poverty, which may as well have been named the war on the nuclear family, or on two parent families.

We swing this way, then that way.  Everybody gets to feel like their people are in charge from time to time.  And the same people get richer and richer no matter who sits in the White House.

Trump, I hope, is not a part of this.  This is why, I think, we are seeing this highly irrational behavior relative to Russia.  Perhaps somebody is thinking that if we can provoke patriotic sentiments that command and control of the Republican base at least will become easy again.  Push our buttons and wait for Pavlovian reactions.

But I don’t think this is what is going to happen.  Most of us don’t give a flying fuck what John McCain and Lindsay Graham think.  They are either imbeciles or traitors.  Solid thinkers, and honest patriots, not so much.  We have no interest in war with Russia, and the very, very thin thread from which Obama seems to be trying to weave a casus belli rests on the hacking of John Podesta’s emails, which seems not to have even been the Russians.

We can only hope that these demons run out of ideas, and are cornered by the logic of the situation, and their inability to fool all of us all the time any more.

It is apparently the practice of some Tibetan Buddhists to do solitary meditation retreats for long periods of time.  One I have seen referenced is 3 years, 3 weeks, and 3 days.

Here is the question: morally, can such a practice improve a person?  Can they become better people in the absence of interactions with other people?

It would seem to me that for a true Leftist, the answer would necessarily be no.  They do not think in individual terms.  They might have something to say about the economic position of the monastery, the selfishness of such a practice, the uselessness of such a practice and the like, but one person cannot become better for them EXCEPT in relation to others, and specifically as a member of one group in relation to another.

This is the root problem of Leftism: it is not a morality worthy of the name.  Abusive abstraction inheres in it and cannot be removed by any means.  It is an abuse of thought.  It treats words like “society” and “class” as if they actually existed.  Individuals exist-because they have bodies and names–but societies do not, not in the sense they intend.

Obviously, believing in God makes moral development a much more obvious thing: it consists in doing those things which bring you into closer communion with God.

But even absent a belief in God, I would argue that moral development consists in psychological development, which itself is at root learning to physically relax the body, learning to avoid spasms of learning and ratiocination, and learning to connect deeply with the social brain, and thus with other people.  Having done that, all other virtues fall into line naturally.

I want to argue that Kum Nye is a moral system par excellence, even though it says NOTHING about morality at all.

Here is another way to put it: the more force needed for you to do the right thing, the less moral you are.  In the worst cases, law alone and the threat of punishment keep you in line.   Slightly better, your conscience and sense of guilt.  Best, though, is consistently WANTING to be compassionate, generous, light-hearted, diligent, and honest.  True morality is its own reward.  It needs no justification, and no commentary by pundits.

Edit: I almost forgot an important point.  I also want to argue that Leftism is the method emotionally dissociated individuals use to create the feeling of connecting to other people, through the medium of “society”.  It can and does obviously induce strong passions, but not strong passions for actually helping people, not in the fully developed disease form we see in true Communists and Fascists (actually, Fascists are not as sick, because they at least do care about some people).  No: it provokes strong connection to the IDEA of helping people, not the people themselves.

It thus constitutes a psychological trick to avoid unwanted emotions by pretending that they are already there, that virtue is already there, that moral coherence is already there, that they can both be good people and never, ever deal with their own unprocessed emotional shit.

I will note as well that this basic process could easily be applied to all dogmatisms, such as sick Christianity.  God did not ask the Spaniards to torture Jews or Aztecs.  No: sick people used religion as a means to justify their sickness in their own eyes.

I am really liking what I am going to call my Mobility Meditation program. I can literally watch as my desire to think, post, pontificate, rant, write decreases across an hour.  I find I have less to say.  But I’m saying it for now, because I wanted to work a couple things out for myself.

Inner work consists in the main in finding and feelings emotions which have hidden.  Accepting feelings is equivalent to completing the delivery process.  They arose to tell you something, but you didn’t have the capacity or insight at the time to hear them.  So they held on, perhaps in the viscera, perhaps in a persistent tightening of the shoulders, perhaps somewhere else or in overall body tension.

The core insight I think some of us walking wounded have to come to is admitting we did not get the love we needed as small children, and that there is NOTHING we can do about this.  We cannot change the past.

And to some greater or lesser extent I think a great many of us carry some incompleteness into the present.  There are many ways of dealing with it.

Abstraction is a great one.  I literally think muscle tension leads to the need to philosophize.  Intellectuals, people who talk and write and think all the time, do so as a means of dealing with and expressing persistent tension.  This is the root distinction between intellectuals and what I call thought workers.  The latter are trying to solve concrete problems.  The former think because they have to, and inefficient thinking is actually preferable, because if no problem is ever solved, they never need to leave their comfortable thinking place.  I think this is a CORE problem with Leftists, and this tension is a principle reason that violence comes easily to them.

Work is a solution.  Addiction is a solution.  And developing unhealthy relationships with others is a solution, particularly grown men asking women to mother them.  It is an emotionally logical request, but it is unfair, and it does not solve the problem.  No wife or lover can take the place of a mother, although this request is perhaps related in some way to Freud’s Oedipal Complex.  He was always almost right, but never quite.

But what I am realizing is that all the components of self love, of the feeling of having been loved, can be assembled from scratch.

What are they?  The capacity for deep relaxation, a positive self image, positive self talk, the capacity for pleasure, and the ability to relate in a healthy way with other people.

Both a top down (a decision to act in certain ways), and a bottom up approach are applicable.  Bottom up, though, is vastly more important, which is where the Kum Nye comes in.  It is a gradualistic process of first undoing tensions and emotional blockages, and then of developing positive feeling.  Positive feeling, in turn, becomes at some point (I’m not there yet, but this is the theory) self reinforcing. This is the Nye.

What I felt today is that I have been waiting for someone to rescue me.  It is not fair that I was unloved, and frequently abused.  It is not fair that I didn’t get a chance at a happy childhood, and that all sorts of things have carried into my adulthood, all sorts of dysfunctional patterns I could not even see for a long time, expectations about the world and other people, unacceptably low standards for myself, and an absolute incapacity to imagine what love might feel like.  It’s not fair.

But of course this doesn’t matter.  It is what it is.  The key thing, though, is I have finally accessed this sense at the root, base, bottom level.  I have confronted it, owned it, allowed it to percolate, and can now imagine holding myself to higher standards, which in turn will begin over time to generate the results I want.  I think 2017 will be a great year.

And it helps a lot that I don’t have to worry about our highest leader working daily to undermine and destroy everything that works in this country and around the world.  Trump will have flaws, and no doubt I will disagree with some decisions. But he is not a zealot focused on avenging crimes none of us committed, in the name of people he holds in contempt.  That is an ugly world.  That is a world where hate truly wins.

If we had to pass Obamacare to find out what was in it, we will need to repeal it to see if there was anything we liked.

Commenting on any of these manufactured controversies which erupted following Trumps victory has come to seem to me a species of perverse masochism.  They are so obviously fabricated, the arguments so weak, that one has to be a fucking imbecile to buy them, or in on the very poorly played game.

Be that as it may, ponder the spectacle of the same people who hate Citizens United with every bit as much fury as they were told to exhibit, being ENTIRELY silent on the issue of foreign governments funding our political candidates.  Hillary spent some 1.2 billion dollars, and I read the Saudis funded 20% of that.  That is a lot of money.  The Qataris, I think it was, sent Bill a cool million dollar check, just cause he’s a swell guy.

Trump has proposed a ban on such investments in our political process, which DO stink as much as the alleged Russian hacking of John Podesta (which was likely done by UFO hunters, or our own intelligence apparatus).

Joke:

How did the Russians help Donald Trump win the White House?

Answer: by helping the Democrats finally deliver on their long promised transparency.

I read even Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are buying into this “punish Russia” bullshit.  Well, Trump went around them to win the Presidency, and although it would help to have them now, there is a whole lot he can do without them, and not much they CAN do without him.

The Presidency remains a powerful office, and it is always helpful to be on good terms with the man occupying it.  And sometimes vindictiveness is a useful political virtue.  It helps the negotiating process by clarifying options.

It is obvious to most of us that, barring some unforeseen and unprecedented catastrophe which somehow prevents Trump from being inaugurated, everything Obama is doing at the moment, and most of what he has done as President, will be undone.  The pipeline in the vicinity of Standing Rock will be completed, the Keystone pipeline will be green lighted, Obamacare will be vitiated if not fully repealed, and a whole lot of people can expect to lose their jobs and/or face criminal prosecutions.  Obama had no Plan B.  And at this point, I can’t see anything he can do which will not result in his immediate arrest which will stop Trump from taking office.  I guarantee he is not well liked by the FBI, by intelligence agencies other than the CIA, by the Secret Service, and is likely loathed by most of the military.

It seems equally obvious to me that he, the press, and a power elite that had grown very comfortable still cannot wrap their brains around the scope of the disaster.

Here is what I would suggest: Obama has NEVER been as popular as the media has suggested.  I think massive fraud was present both in 2008 and more notably in 2012.  Because Trump made it a campaign issue, it was vastly muted in 2016, such that it was not enough to carry the country.

But the numbers indicating a lot of people liked him were as wrong as the stories I read daily about how many people hate Trump.  He won the fucking election, DESPITE voter fraud.  Quite obviously, a lot of people like him.

James O’Keefe, of course, helped to get the dirty tricks team fired.  But the size of his splash was made much, much larger because Trump made it an issue.

Obama’s silly gestures towards the Russians won’t do anything.  It would not surprise me a bit to learn that after Obama’s hissy fit and completely amateurish actions that Trump just picked up the phone, called Putin, and said “look, the JV team is on the way out.  He’ll be gone in less than a month.  Just be patient, and let’s work this out when I get into office.”

I will note in regard to “tampering with democracy” that none of the Democrats seem eager to investigate the numerous cases of voter fraud–such as in Detroit–or the voting machine malfunctions, or all the other accidents that uniformly helped them and hurt Trump.  Nor do they want to learn more about DHS hacking attempts to the ACTUAL election computers in Georgia and elsewhere.

Electoral integrity, to be clear, is not their concern.  Their concern is not even that they really think the Russians did it.  They are just clinging to ANYTHING which hides from them the extent of their failure, and particularly what it portends for the future.  They cannot believe the world has changed so much so fast.  They went from a 98.1 percent chance Hillary would win on Nov. 8, to a man winning they said could never win.

But of course that world was a fabrication of their own making.  They created lies to further propaganda purposes, then committed the cardinal error of believing their own lies.

Ask yourself: what is Russia doing currently that we should be working so hard to restart the Cold War and turn prospective allies in the war on ISIS into devout enemies?  I continue to fail to understand the lunacy both of Obama, and fools like John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

Could we not even conceivably partner with the Russians to ACTUALLY end the Iranian nuclear weapons program?

It occurs to me as well that I have focused on the money making the Qataris and Saudis would get access to by opening up a second source of natural gas to Europe, but somebody has to build the pipeline, too, don’t they?  Could that somebody not be American, and could they not get some share of the profits, which in turn would create business interests in Syria?  Could those people not buy off imbeciles like John McCain through intermediaries and bad arguments which were nonetheless good enough for him and his rapidly fading mind?

Diplomacy is really the art of the deal, of negotiated compromise.  In that regard, Donald Trump has been doing that job all his life.

Given that Hillary’s poll numbers were manifestly cooked, why couldn’t Obama’s approval numbers be likewise cooked, for example by oversampling in large cities?  I read in his 8 years Democrats have lost over 1,000 seats, net, across the country, including those in Congress.  Remember that when he was first elected in 2008 Democrats held both houses of Congress.

He has been nothing short of a disaster, but the Democrats can’t let go of him, and the left wing utopian dreams of control and power and oppression that he represents to them.  Keith Ellison would be disastrous as the next DNC chair, but that seems to be the direction they are going.

Ideologues are inflexible in certain areas, and the thing is to awaken to reality, they would have to lose their left wing pipe dreams, and they just can’t do that.  They can’t admit they have been living for decades in a miasma of foggy thinking, factual misunderstandings, impudence, assumption, GroupThink, and continual failure (with respect, of course, to their claimed goals; in respect to getting power, their failures are quite recent, and record of success quite long).

So you have this spectacle of Obama being soundly rejected by voters in the election, and a Democrat Party that wants MORE, not less, of what was rejected.

We can only sit back and applaud.  Their options are waking up, or disappearing.  Both are good for the future of the United States and the world.

At root, if I might use a bad combination of metaphors, the egalitarian impulse–and it is an EMOTIONAL impulse–is a pruning, not a fertilizing, a reducing, not a growing, a destruction not a creation.

As s vehicle for the expression of latent anger in the name of good it is perhaps unsurpassed. Manifestly it has utility across virtually all human cultures.

But we can always ask: what are you trying to build? If they answer ” a more just society” we can ask: and how are you planning to enrich and fulfill the inner worlds of each individual in that society, such that life becomes a blessing beyond mere things and small comforts?

They have no answer to this question, if they are honest. It is not a human world they seek to build, but a mechanical one.

I would like to create a continuum with. Egalitarianism on one side, and on the opposite the notion of Individual Moral Progress.

Inherent in the former is the assertion that all people are equal. Within the latter is the OBSERVATION that people are NOT equal, that in fact diversity with regard to emotional well being, intellectual capacity, motivation, erudition, etc., is the RULE, and that all coherent thinking about people necessarily views them as individuals, and that no greater barrier to clear–which is say PRACTICAL–thinking could be imagined than the necessity of viewing group membership in lieu of personal characteristics.

What led to this pattern of thought was a series of severely politically incorrect thoughts. I was waiting to get beeped into a building and a young black woman comes by and says EXCUSE ME in the impatient way which we have all seen in black women with attitude. You’re not supposed to say this, but most people who have worked a lot with black folks know what I mean.

Then an older black woman comes along, who looked very sweet, but her path was in a collision course with mine, and only at the last minute did it occur to her it was not possible for me to get more out of her way. And I thought: that is the emotionally rigid pattern of someone who doesn’t want to be here, and who likely has some grief in her past.

Then I recalled that I have heard anecdotally from various black folks I’ve talked to over the years that rates  of child sexual abuse seem to be much higher in the black community. Rates of rape, in my understanding, certainly are.

Then I wondered–given how difficult life is in much of Africa, I wonder if the sexual instincts in blacks became a bit stronger as compensation evolutionarily. Then of course I self censored: the HORROR, you can’t think that. All people are equal, period.

Then I thought: what SCIENTIFIC basis do we have for assuming this? Is the NBA 80 or 90% black because white people just don’t want to make millions of dollars a year doing easy and fun work?

Egalitarianism has no way forward, truly, except to make all equal in misery. The doctrine of Individual Moral Progress can speak truth, because it offers a way out. EVEN IF disparities of talent and motivation exist today, they can be overcome. No matter who you are or what your experience you can choose s path of personal betterment, which helps not just society but your race.

Is it not much more interesting to make statements about what people are capable of than who they “are”? If you are assigned a slot, you become that slot. But if you are given a possibility, you GROW to fulfill it.

The Egalitarian philosophy is inherently one of confinement and violence, and diminishes inherently all it touches.

I will add as a perhaps needed end note that it amazing, truly amazing, that white kids, raised in white suburbs, and educated at largely white schools, think that they both can and should speak to what black peoples need, and that what they need MOST OF ALL is speech codes on white college campuses.

This is farcical and delusional. It not only does no concrete good, it stands in the way of the open and probing discussions which would make actual solutions to the problems of unemployment, crime, and hopelessness possible.

There can be little serious doubt that Obama–and handler Valerie Jarrett, who should not be left out of these narratives–broke the law continually and shamelessly for substantislly his entire time in office. The list is necessarily truncate because my memory and time are limited, but ponder Fast and Furious, the corruption of the IRS for nakedly political purposes, the illegal war in Libya, the illegal transfer of arms and provision of training to jihadists in Syria, the release of 5 senior Taliban commanders in exchange for deserter Bo Bergdahl (which violated a law HE signed), the corruption of the FBI by James Comey, and others I am forgetting. In a country ruled by LAW our current President should have been impeached and removed from office and criminally prosecuted and jailed long ago.

But we do not live in a country ruled by law, do we? Class and connections get some of us much better deals.

It does seem obvious though, that the egregiousness of Obamas crimes indicate the PLAN was a continuity of power from one criminal regime to another, and crooks cover for each other.

The problem with Obama pardoning the Clintons (Bill, Hillary, and likely Chelsea and her husband) is that he himself has done things that could and should get him arrested–not political crimes, to be clear, but crimes which undermined Ametican safety and security, got thousands of innocent people killed, and which were committed solely out if selfish personal interest.

Now, in an ordinary, sane world, Trump would have to weigh the risk of alienating a large segment of the electorate if he chose to prosecute their Messiah and his trplacement, but I would argue the profoundly violent and infantile response of the Headless Ones actually creates an OPPORTUNITY. Here is the thing: with that much hate, there is NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, he can do to win them back,, they are gone and will stay gone. They are dead to him politically.

But the people who put him in office want to see some respectability restored to our government, some possibility of trust returned. They want the IRS and DHS, and FBI, and ICE (another scandal), and CIA, and EPA (another scandal), etc., PURGED of all the people who committed crimes for political purposes under Obama.

And they will be HAPPY to see at least Hillary prosecuted, and most of us would feel a whole lot better about the integrity of our government if Obsma and Jarrett were prosecuted too. I think that would be a no lose proposition for Trump. There is no point triangulating with lunatics who hate you. Double down with the people who love you.

I think some of this calculus shows in the desperate and ludicrous things Obama is doing, like expelling Russian diplomats based on charges even he knows are cooked up. He knows this is stupid and wrong. But I think the full gravity of the possible blowback resulting from his wholesale assault on our institutions and the values they represent is still sinking in. He has been in denial. This was not  the game plan. This is not how it was supposed to work.

And at the end of the day, his intelligence has always been vastly inferior to that claimed for him.