More and more we are coming to realize that this is all about psychology. About personality. And while our Enlightenment Revolution has relied on some of the strongest positives in human nature, there are wretched reflexes -- e.g. fear -- that would-be tyrants exploit.
Elsewhere, I referred to George Lakoff's much-bruited appraisal of the 1/3 + of Americans who need a "strong father" in their politics, a desperate yearning that - ironically - led them flocking to the most fragile leader we've ever had. Indeed, this led to my proposal that the Democrats in 2018 should run retired military officers - whole sheaves of them - into every red Assembly district, providing men and women whose mien of strength is genuine, mature, fact-using and undogmatic. It's happening! But much too slowly.
But above all, we must admit that facts will only play a minor role in this struggle. And righteousness will be an impediment. Instead, what we need right now is clear-eyed understanding of the dark psychology of our crisis.
Below, I will cite several books - one of them by Rebecca Solnit - that appraise our present danger in terms that are more subtle and accurate than shouts of good-vs.-evil. Moreover, while our much-maligned "deep state" public servants will do what they can to protect us from rash impulses at the top, this is also going to take savvy political leadership. And hence...
The French to the rescue. President Macron is being criticized for "cozying up" to Donald Trump, during the recent Bastille Day visit. I shout "magnifique!" At last, someone in the West who understands the psychology of our peril. We already have one terrified, thin-skinned, nuclear-armed narcissist, in Pyongyang. We don't need a bigger one entering siege mentality, feeling that his only friends are family, fundies and Fourth-Turning apocalypse fans, all of them urging a spasmodic response.
Elsewhere, I offered up a proposal that the smartest democratic politicians (e.g. Al Franken) should draw straws, and the losers take on an onerous task for the possible survival of our republic and even species. These Short Straw Democrats should continue to denounce every loony administration policy! Only then, they would end every such statement with a flattering remark about how good looking the President is! Something shallow - certainly transparent - yet personal.
You think this is a joke, I know. But I'm quite serious. This is a fellow who actually cares very little about the policy stances he's taken. All that matters to Donald Trump is his personal sense of pique. Sociopaths in his circle are taking advantage of that. Are democrats and adults in Washington too stupid or obstinate to even try?
You say that everyone will know what they are doing? Of course they will! Bannon and Kushner will scream at DT to ignore the obvious ploy. Franken & co. can even wink! It won't matter. The flatterers will be invited to dinner... to golf... and the Man With The Button will wind up being less isolated. Less under control of the Pence-Bannon cabal.
Alas, no Democrat has either the brains or the guts to grit their teeth and do what's necessary. But President Macron apparently does! Vive La France!
== The Loneliness of Trump ==
Elsewhere, I referred to George Lakoff's much-bruited appraisal of the 1/3 + of Americans who need a "strong father" in their politics, a desperate yearning that - ironically - led them flocking to the most fragile leader we've ever had. Indeed, this led to my proposal that the Democrats in 2018 should run retired military officers - whole sheaves of them - into every red Assembly district, providing men and women whose mien of strength is genuine, mature, fact-using and undogmatic. It's happening! But much too slowly.
But above all, we must admit that facts will only play a minor role in this struggle. And righteousness will be an impediment. Instead, what we need right now is clear-eyed understanding of the dark psychology of our crisis.Below, I will cite several books - one of them by Rebecca Solnit - that appraise our present danger in terms that are more subtle and accurate than shouts of good-vs.-evil. Moreover, while our much-maligned "deep state" public servants will do what they can to protect us from rash impulses at the top, this is also going to take savvy political leadership. And hence...
The French to the rescue. President Macron is being criticized for "cozying up" to Donald Trump, during the recent Bastille Day visit. I shout "magnifique!" At last, someone in the West who understands the psychology of our peril. We already have one terrified, thin-skinned, nuclear-armed narcissist, in Pyongyang. We don't need a bigger one entering siege mentality, feeling that his only friends are family, fundies and Fourth-Turning apocalypse fans, all of them urging a spasmodic response.
Elsewhere, I offered up a proposal that the smartest democratic politicians (e.g. Al Franken) should draw straws, and the losers take on an onerous task for the possible survival of our republic and even species. These Short Straw Democrats should continue to denounce every loony administration policy! Only then, they would end every such statement with a flattering remark about how good looking the President is! Something shallow - certainly transparent - yet personal.
You think this is a joke, I know. But I'm quite serious. This is a fellow who actually cares very little about the policy stances he's taken. All that matters to Donald Trump is his personal sense of pique. Sociopaths in his circle are taking advantage of that. Are democrats and adults in Washington too stupid or obstinate to even try?
You say that everyone will know what they are doing? Of course they will! Bannon and Kushner will scream at DT to ignore the obvious ploy. Franken & co. can even wink! It won't matter. The flatterers will be invited to dinner... to golf... and the Man With The Button will wind up being less isolated. Less under control of the Pence-Bannon cabal.
Alas, no Democrat has either the brains or the guts to grit their teeth and do what's necessary. But President Macron apparently does! Vive La France!
== The Loneliness of Trump ==
There are few essayists in America with the verve,
sophistication and diversity of topics wielded by Rebecca Solnit, whose “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster” utterly smashed the pat notion that average Americans
are wimpy little cowards. They are – as
demonstrated by the heroes of flight UA93 – agile and adaptable and – as I
portray in “The Postman” – capable of great heroism.
In "The Loneliness of Donald Trump," Solnit turns her perceptive gaze on
our president… only with an added layer of compassion for a man whose mix of
feral cunning and low-brow mentation blend with the insatiable yearnings of some
Vonnegut character, unable to relish or enjoy any accomplishment other than
brief episodes of delicious revenge.
(Cue the photo of DT having dinner with Mitt Romney; all right, that was precious.)
Have a look at Solnit's remarkable essay; both laugh and cry. And grasp that this fellow is not Satan! He’s dangerous and damaging, to be sure. But also a tragic figure and perhaps best neutralized - even drawn toward pools of light - rather than fought like an enemy. (There are, in his circle, genuine enemies of all that's good and American, to be sure.)
(Cue the photo of DT having dinner with Mitt Romney; all right, that was precious.)
Have a look at Solnit's remarkable essay; both laugh and cry. And grasp that this fellow is not Satan! He’s dangerous and damaging, to be sure. But also a tragic figure and perhaps best neutralized - even drawn toward pools of light - rather than fought like an enemy. (There are, in his circle, genuine enemies of all that's good and American, to be sure.)
One of Solnit's paragraphs encapsulates the problem humanity
faced, during the 6000 years that feudalism controlled most human affairs:
“I have often run across men (and rarely, but not never, women) who have become so powerful in their lives that there is no one to tell them when they are cruel, wrong, foolish, absurd, repugnant. In the end there is no one else in their world, because when you are not willing to hear how others feel, what others need, when you do not care, you are not willing to acknowledge others’ existence. That’s how it’s lonely at the top. It is as if these petty tyrants live in a world without honest mirrors, without others, without gravity, and they are buffered from the consequences of their failures.”
“I have often run across men (and rarely, but not never, women) who have become so powerful in their lives that there is no one to tell them when they are cruel, wrong, foolish, absurd, repugnant. In the end there is no one else in their world, because when you are not willing to hear how others feel, what others need, when you do not care, you are not willing to acknowledge others’ existence. That’s how it’s lonely at the top. It is as if these petty tyrants live in a world without honest mirrors, without others, without gravity, and they are buffered from the consequences of their failures.”
And oh, there is this wisdom I have pushed in so
many places, like The Transparent Society, but not quite so well as Solnit does here:
“We keep each other honest, we keep each other good with our feedback, our intolerance of meanness and falsehood, our demands that the people we are with listen, respect, respond—if we are allowed to, if we are free and valued ourselves.”
“We keep each other honest, we keep each other good with our feedback, our intolerance of meanness and falsehood, our demands that the people we are with listen, respect, respond—if we are allowed to, if we are free and valued ourselves.”
Oh, the tragedy that Americans have no sense of
this history. That humanity – largely led by this nation’s Great Experiment –
began to escape 250 years ago, via new tools of transparency, reciprocal
criticism, gradually expanding rights, and yet more reciprocal criticism, of
the kind that Donald Trump and his ilk so desperately seek to avoid. Solnit writes of the truest kind of friendship,
which is non-destructively competitive, provided by: “equals who are generous but keep you accountable, true
mirrors who reflect back who you are and what you are doing.”
Alas, she paints a portrait of our chief executive that we should keep on
our walls… comparing it to the pictures of FDR and Eisenhower
and Kennedy that the Greatest Generation kept on theirs:
“A man
who wished to become the most powerful man in the world, and by happenstance
and intervention and a series of disasters was granted his wish. Surely he must
have imagined that more power meant more flattery, a grander image, a greater
hall of mirrors reflecting back his magnificence.
"But he misunderstood power and prominence. This man had bullied friends and acquaintances, wives and servants, and he bullied facts and truths, insistent that he was more than they were, than it is, that it too must yield to his will. It did not, but the people he bullied pretended that it did. Or perhaps it was that he was a salesman, throwing out one pitch after another, abandoning each one as soon as it left his mouth. A hungry ghost always wants the next thing, not the last thing.”
"But he misunderstood power and prominence. This man had bullied friends and acquaintances, wives and servants, and he bullied facts and truths, insistent that he was more than they were, than it is, that it too must yield to his will. It did not, but the people he bullied pretended that it did. Or perhaps it was that he was a salesman, throwing out one pitch after another, abandoning each one as soon as it left his mouth. A hungry ghost always wants the next thing, not the last thing.”
Have a look at “The Loneliness of Donald Trump,” so
voluptuous in blending sad empathy with righteous anger.
Mind you, I sometimes disagree with Solnit. Her dips into liberal finger-wagging can at times go overboard, though the direction that she aims is almost always wise. In this case she uses compassion as a weapon, to diminish our terror of what may, in time, turn out to be something pathetic, rather than truly dangerous. From that realization may come quiet strength.
Mind you, I sometimes disagree with Solnit. Her dips into liberal finger-wagging can at times go overboard, though the direction that she aims is almost always wise. In this case she uses compassion as a weapon, to diminish our terror of what may, in time, turn out to be something pathetic, rather than truly dangerous. From that realization may come quiet strength.
== Bipolar politics ==
Oh, may we be so lucky! But meanwhile, we must prepare against the worst. Here is another article that attempts a detailed diagnosis of what's happened. About half of it is spot-on, which is way above average.
See “How dangerous is Republican manic-depressive syndrome? While the normal GOP condition is sullen, lazy, depressive obstructionism, this can take a sharp swing to feverish frenzy. In fact, it always happens, when a Democratic President gets out of the way.
Both bipolar phases are destructive, but the manic ones kill. Moreover, last time I described how the latest war-seeking cult in the Trump White House, lacks even the optimistic veneer of the Bushite neocons. Busily concocting any excuse for a violent distraction, their most-likely target would seem to be Iran. The Saudis want it and Vladimir Putin adores the idea! Any U.S. attack on Iran will strengthen the mullahs, weaken the modernists over there and drive Iran to seek shelter under Russia’s nuclear umbrella, making them a client state. Oh, and what better way to divert attention from the GOP’s domestic troubles?
But forget all those surface reasons. These people are propelled by zero-sum psychology. And war -- whether against Iran or North Korea or made-up aliens -- is its most extreme projection. That terrifying psychology is one reason that most of our senior officer corps -- steeped in Marshallian, positive sum traditions and trained to cope with a world of actual facts -- want nothing to do with war mania.
And hence, the fanatics will need pretexts. A cassus belli. Our intelligence agencies will balk at doing another WMD spoof. So it’ll have to be something violent and dazzling. A Tonkin Gulf or Gleiwitz incident. A 9/11 city disaster or a Reichstag Fire. Putin’s guys had better be very careful, though. Our intel guys are watching for this, now. Exactly this.
== What is the Far Right's Endgame? ==
Continuing with this posting's psychological theme... this article from Slate by Rebecca Onion plumbs the roots of the program of the U.S. aristocratic right, and in particular Charles Koch's relationship with a Nobel winning economist-philosopher, James McGill Buchanan - explored in Nancy MacLean's new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America.
Even more than Leo Strauss or the oft-misquoted Friedrich Hayek, Buchanan concocted the incantations by which the Lords rationalize undermining democracy.
At surface, these incantations sound vaguely plausible, e.g. fear of mob rule and the mob "voting themselves largesse" by taxing the productive members of society. Then there's the "Iron Law" that bureaucracies lose track of their mission and soon work only for their own enlargement.
I have attended many libertarian events and read a lot of their works. (I'll be speaking at Freedom Fest next week, in Vegas, hoping to wean some liberty-lovers away from their concocted bond with oligarchs.) Over the years, I've been dazzled by the effectiveness of these outrageously false memes -- how each and every one of them has been devastatingly refuted by actual facts... and that makes no difference to the devotion that feudalist zealots devote to them.
I have attended many libertarian events and read a lot of their works. (I'll be speaking at Freedom Fest next week, in Vegas, hoping to wean some liberty-lovers away from their concocted bond with oligarchs.) Over the years, I've been dazzled by the effectiveness of these outrageously false memes -- how each and every one of them has been devastatingly refuted by actual facts... and that makes no difference to the devotion that feudalist zealots devote to them.
See - for example - my own evisceration of this religious cult... because that is what it is, when incantations are used to make adherents feel special and chosen, despite mountains and mountains of contrary evidence.
Alas, while Nancy MacLean's book is cogently necessary, Rebecca Onion's review leaves out that crucial word -- Feudalism. The right's entire program is to concoct incantations, rationalizations and strategies for its re-imposition, despite 6000 years of history, in which 99% of human cultures used that governance method and failed calamitously. Indeed, this is the burden of proof that they skirt with their magical chants.
1. One civilization has achieved 100x as much success in each and every category of human accomplishment than all feudal realms combined. So? Prove to us how that one success story should be deemed a "wrong path."
2. You fellows howl that bureaucrats are at-best inefficient and at-worst tyrants. But prove to us that lordship, oligarchies or corporate CEOs and boards are any less prone to every single failure mode that you rail against. Except the agile tech companies... whose leaders are mostly... democrats.
== Miscellany ==
So much happens, it's hard to sort it all. So...
Over the last 12 months, 70% of buyers of Trump properties were limited liability companies – shell companies -- compare with 4% of buyers in the previous two years. Oh, how you people would have screeched, had a democrat done even one of DT's hundred+ outrages. Drain-the-swamp, indeed.
In a recent interview with The WorldPost, Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani argued that the last 30 years of globalization have been some of the “best” ever in Asia because a new middle class of hundreds of millions has arisen out of the dead end of poverty. Als, does anyone else point out that the uplifting of the world was America's greatest project, and it has more than half succeeded?
== Final Words about the latest S#*+ storms ==
Meanwhile, the Russia Imbroglio just gets worse for the Trumps. Amid revelation after revelation... now about Donald Trump Jr.'s admitted-blatant meetings with openly-known Kremlin emissaries...
...and those who claim that Donald Senior knew nothing bear a steep burden of proof.
Dig the timing. Between Junior's "I love it!" email and the actual ("disappointing") meeting in Trump Tower, then-candidate Trump made excited predictions that "within days" there would be devastating revelations about Hillary Clinton. That promise dissipated - like many others - unfulfilled. We now know why -- because in fact the Russians had found very little on the Clintons. Neither did 24 years and half a billion dollars in GOP-led "investigations" into the most thoroughly probed couple ever, in human history.
Sure, the Donalds - Senior and Junior - must have been disappointed. Still, the timing remains on record, and stinks.
