I think my biggest failures as a Trump-watcher were not seeing his ongoing denial of his election loss and that there were people in the militia world who would organize an insurrection for him. I guess there are a couple of reasons for that failure. First, I was and still am so tired of Trump, but that don’t make him go away and it don’t make him any less dangerous. However, I was hoping that once the election was past, he would fade into the woodwork to quietly work the grift of being out of office. He is, only he ain’t being so quiet about it. Second, I thought that the FBI had a better handle on the militias. Seriously. I thought they had infiltrated groups and were keep tabs on these yahoos, especially after the Michigan plot to kidnap and execute Gov. Whitmer. And, third, I figured the GQP leadership would give Trump the lipservice brush off once he was out of office because they were as desperate to be shut of him as the rest of us.
There are lessons to be learned from these failures and from applying our understanding of narcissisitic personality disorder to our current national political situation. Between losing the election and the indictments that landed today, he’s likely to continue ratcheting up his already frothy frantic state. Let’s kinda go through these in some kind of logical order.
The Diagnosis: Unproductive Malignant Narcissist
First, I reckon, anyone who needs a refresher on what happens when you mix a narcissism of a purity never seen before among humankind, with an executive dysfunction approaching absolute zero, and a sadistic cruelty streak a mile and a kilometer wide, then you should follow those links. Here’s the upshot of the whole mess:
- A narcissist is a blackhole of insecurity, self-doubt, and a self-esteem as low as the Mariana Trench embedded in a turd with laminated in a gleaming golden cover of pseudo-perfection. In order to protect themselves from experiencing their inner core of dread, they’ve convinced themselves that they are perfect, literally. Perfection means:
- They are the smartest person in the room, so there’s no need to listen to anyone else.
- They know everything, so their every thought is right and correct, every idea is genius.
- They don’t make mistakes, so they cannot learn by evaluating what went wrong.
- They believe that exceptions to every rule will be made for them.
- A narcissistic wound is anything that pierces their conscious awareness and suggests that they are anything less than the thin veneer of perfection must be destroyed immediately in its entirity. A raging vindictive monster lurks within the echoing hollowness of the narcissist.
- Executive dysfunction means that he lacks the executive functioning necessary to manage his emotional impulses, plan, or execute a plan. He has minimal reasoning and logic skills.
- Malignant means he enjoys the suffering of others but doesn’t personally inflict physical harm on others. He prefers to the emotional and psychological suffering that result from his actions or inactions.
Because of his diagnosis as an unproductive malignant narcissistic personality disorder, I correctly surmised that he would not organize a violent reaction to his election loss. He couldn’t organize it because he’s incapable of planning anything that complex. He wanted it to happen, but he personally is incapable of actually doing it or participating in it, which brings us to the second point.
Two Narcissistic Wounds
Trump is now dealing with the mother of all narcissistic wounds: he’s lost the election and he’s facing indictments. He’s franticallly doing the “I’ll be re-instated” pee-pee dance to stave off the reality of having lost. It is inconcievable to him that he could’ve lost.
Election Loss: All of the harebrained desperate schemes to thwart the outcome of the election from trying to get alternate slates of electors appointed by state legislatures to Mike Pence just not counting slates of electors to finding the votes in Georgia to the Arizona fraudit are all the products of desperate man desperate to deny the reality of having lost because it would confirm to him that he is such a loser and the turd that is his life would implode upon the empty cavity where his soul should be. Trump will never give up trying to prove he won the 2020 election.
The indictments: He and his businesses are one. There is no difference between himself and his business. He personally may not ever be indicted, but the threat to Trump Org is an existential threat to him. He’s putting tremendous pressure on Allen Weisselberg to stay loyal. I don’t know what he has as leverage, but the man has been gaslighted for the past fifty years, it might not take much to convince him to die in prison to keep Trump outta prison.
When reality intrudes into the life of a narcissist and none of the usual tricks in the gaslighting toolbag can keep it at bay, denial will work. We see it in response to the election. Trump is simply in denial. He cannot and will not ever accept that he actually lost. We’ll see it with regard to the indictment and conviction. He will cry witchhunt to whoever will listen and then continue crying even if we aren’t.
What’s going to happen?
Trump relies on chaos. It is how he has achieved anything and everything. Listen to his speech in Ohio the other day claiming that the US has been plunged back into carnage — remember his American Carnage inaugural address? — without his leadership. He believes that through some magical alchemial elixir of public violent chaos that the adoring masses will beg him to return to the White House to deliver us to the unique version of Trumpland nirvana that exists only in his head. That some mythical power-that-be will re-instate him. Whoever needs to make the exception to the rule will make it for him.
To achieve this, he needs to fire up the ol’ grievance machinary gin up the base and get the masses in the streets with tiki torches and pitch forks. Again, listen to his “campaign” speech. Who did he mention?
- The GQP House members that voted for the 6 January Insurrection commission
- The state officials who wouldn’t throw the election to him, yes, we’re looking at you Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger. Why do are you even trying to re-ingratiate yourself to the Trump base?
- The Michigan Senate Oversight Committee report stating that there was no fraud and Joe Biden won
- “Woke” generals who wouldn’t lead the Insurrection Act since it would’ve been an illegal order
- All the forces that are conspiring against him to keep him from assuming office
His rhetoric is intended to inflame the base to spontaneously combust into some kind of as yet undefined violence against his enemies both named and alluded to. There are two problems with this. First, many in the base are getting bored with his rehashing of the old hits. The problem with throwing red meat to the ravening wolves is that it has to be fresh. It goes off pretty quickly. You can’t just chopping on the rotting decaying corpse of your same old grievances. We need new grievances. Trump can’t move on from the election and the inaction of the GQP to steal it for him. He can’t. And, he can’t believe that the base will either. It can’t believe that the grievances that animate him don’t animate them. That’s a big prolem for Trump.
Also, the people who organized the last violent insurrection are in jail and some are turning state’s evidence. Who is going to organize the second insurrection? The Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers aren’t deep organizations with new leaders being groomed to step in at a moment’s notice to take the place of fallen leaders.
What are they going to attack? Congress? The White House? State capitols? It’s hard to figure out what exactly a coup that Trump won’t plan and lead would look like. Yet, Trump’s narcissism demands that others do it for him. Others take all the risks, face all of the dangers, and, then, just like Allen Weisselberg, hand him the spoils of their hard work.
Which is more likely? An organized insurrection like on 6 January or sporadic lone wolf style attacks maybe even an attempted assassination?
Instead, the GQP has a different coup in mind. While they have Trump to act as a distraction and driving force, they are changing state-level election laws so they can install the candidates of their choice over the outcome of elections. After that, it won’t matter whether the MAGA Nation is with them or not. It won’t matter if the majority are voting Democrat and a minority Trump. The GQP will win regardless.
We’re worried about and by worried I mean social mediaing about another violent insurrection when we should be calling OUR members of Congress and demanding that they pass the For the People Act to protect our elections.
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Categories: Politics
The Psy of Life 
So I’m driving down I-75 from Tampa to Naples and draped over various interstate crossover bridges are conspicuous banners that Trump remains our king. I’m thinking why don’t the towns nearby remove them?
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Howdy James!
I think the answer to that question is that the people who run the town nearby agree with the signs. I’m growing increasingly worried about how we will reconcile the two sides of this political divide especially given the changes to our election laws and tehe likelihood that neither side will be entirely satisfied that the results are correct.
I’m afraid that we’ll be seeing real political violence sometime between now and the 2022 election.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I would tend to agree from what I’ve seen recently.
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Howdy James!
I’ve just recently read how vaccination rates correlate so closely with the presidential vote in 2020 that you can go state-by-state and determine not only who won the state but by how much just based on the vaccination rate. That’s amazing. In some states, it is reflected at the county level. When you leave your vehicle in those areas with those signs, wear your mask. The Delta variant is hypercontagious and can infect the vaccinated.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Unfortunately, the orange demagogue has given the retrumpian party and whomever they pick to run, a blueprint of how they can cast doubt and toss in another big lie on the next and future elections. Even if the majority does not believe they have enough base to continue to do serious damage.
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Howdy Jerry!
Yeah, I’m afraid that the GQP has gone full HItler’s Propaganda Playbook on us. They’ve learned how to muddy the water with a firehose of falsehood and keep people from noticing what they’re reallly up to. Hopefully, it will motivate enough people to call their senators that we can get the For the People Act enacted and stop them from really stealing the 2022 election, which is their real intent.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
Calico Jack – Slight of hand?
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I recall a comment by some stage magician or other to the effect that the trick is to keep the attention of the audience on one hand while you do the manipulation with the other hand. Why vote in the Senate to prevent an independent commission investigation of the Capitol invasion? Because you (i.e., Mitch) know that then Nancy P. will be forced to create a Select Committee in the House that you can then claim is politically biased, but which will still keep attention on Trump and the MAGAs and militias.
BTW, a prediction: If it becomes clear that the Democrats will manage to get the votes together to pass the Really Big Infrastructure Bill by Reconciliation without GOP votes, the GOP will filibuster down the Compromise Infrastructure bill because, what’s the point in compromising (or, pretending to) if the other side is going to do what they want anyway. That is what will happen unless 10 or more Republican senators figure out that bringing home the bacon gets more votes than following orders.
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Howdy Bob!
I agree with your prediction about the infrastructure bill. Mitch had planned to filibuster the compromise bill before compromise was a twinkle in Manchin’s eye. It was always DOA. The thing the compromise process did was push Manchin and other Dem pro-compromise folks into a corner. It essentially forces them to support the full reconciliation bill.
Just like accusations of socialism, the GQP will accuse the Dems of politicizing every issue and bill they pass. Every hearing every commission everything they do will be labeled politicizing the issue. And, just like Buttiegieg argued in the campaign, they’re going to make the accussations regardless of what we do, so we should do what we think is right.
It’s the same with Pelosi and the 6 January Insurrection commission and select committee. No matter what was done any and every investigation no matter who is conducting it, House Dems, Congressional committees, FBI, IG’s, AG’s will all be labeled as political partisan witchhunts.
The Dems job is to focus attention on the insurrection and the perpetrators and the Reps job is to distract from it. We’ll see how that works out and whether either will get people to the polls in 2022.
Huzzah!
Jack
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And, as of this morning SCOTUS (6-3) has upheld two new voting laws in AZ. Here’s the details: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/voting-rights-breyers-future-spotlight-us-supreme-court-2021-07-01/
So, not just getting people to the polls, but to the right ones, even if they live in a hogan on Black Mesa at the end of 30 miles of jeep track.
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Howdy Bob!
And, once votes are cast, we have to get them counted, and the results certified. This is not adding up. The more impediments that they can put in the way, the more likely one of them will work and allow them to claim the election as their own.
Huzzah!
Jack
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And some of the states are passing or proposing rules that make it easier to disqualify ballots (especially mail-in) and give local officials or legislators the option to simply refuse to accept results (Texas!).
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Yes. Texas tried and unless the Dems pull a killer bees act, will do so soon. Georgia and Arizona have these laws. Pennyslvania just vetoed such a law. I believe several other states have them as well. If those laws stand, we will not be able to stop the GQP from just arbitrarily deciding the outcome of elections short of using violence. They will simply ignore any mass protests, declare them riots, and send out the national guard to quell them.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Gosh, Jack, that sounds like a single party authoritarian pseudo democracy, of one that just drops the pseudo democracy part.
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I”ve been suspicious for a long time that the powers that be in the GQP feel like they are reaching the tipping point with rigging the democracy and not being at risk of losing elections. As far as I can see, it looks like they’ve made it. Now they don’t need the pseudo part any more, they can create a single-party minority-rule autocracy. They don’t need to pretend.
Huzzah!
Jack
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That is a shared suspicion.
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Howdy Bob!
McCarthy’s reaction to the appointment of Chaney to the Select Committee is just more evidence that they don’t need to have truth, right, or democracy on their side. Democracy is whatever the GQP says it is and your rights are whatever we let you do is now the official GQP position.
Huzzah!
Jack
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And, the blocking of the independent commission which forced the creation of the Select Committee takes us back around to the memory laws and all that.
The saying that the winners write the history has a corollary: Those who can control the writing of the history have won.
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Howdy Bob!
It is clear that the GQP strategy in the 2022 elections is to suppress the vote as much as possible and rile the base with projectory accusations of authoritarianism, partisanship, and politicization. And, if that doesn’t work, just not counting Dem votes and refusing to certify Dem winners.
Huzzah!
Jack
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So it looks.
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Howdy Bob!
We can’t forget demagoguing fear of crime through the rising crime numbers and defund the police and casting chaos and confusion around the economy and pandemic response. Once self-serving takes hold, there is no end to what will be sacrificed to make a small improvement to your personal situation.
I can’t believe that McCarthy wants to be Speaker so bad, he’s willing to be Speaker of an ineffectual rubber-stamping House rather than the be the deal-making badass that Pelosi is and O’Neill was. Then again, maybe he lacks the confidence in his own ability to pull it off and the prestige from the title alone without the work and risk is enough for him.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The Republicans managed to frustrate and abuse their last two Speakers out of the game. McCarthy would just go whichever way the wind was blowing at the moment.
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Howdy Bob!
Both Boehner and Ryan were ill suited for what they had to deal with. Perhaps no one really could cope with the mess that is the GQP now. While Boehner was a real snake in the grass, he was a likeable one. Ryan just believed the stupid rhetoric of the ’80’s Reagan era. I can’t believe he was such a puffed up paper tiger. He was absolutely hollow. Had no solutions no way of dealing with he had nothing to offer. McQarthy will have even less.
Huzzah!
Jack
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A truly professional propagandist never believes his own propaganda (he might have to change it). At the leadership level then only the useful idiot amateurs (Ryan was a great example) believe the BS and try to act on it. The GOP has been weeding out serious critical thinkers and substituting people who may be clever, but not smart, and definitely not capable of independent thought (example, Liz Cheney).
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Howdy Bob!
Like the dealer, never use you’re own stuff. Leave that for the stooges who are buying it from you. The problem is that there was a generation raised on Reagan’s trickle down lie. It was the only thing they knew. Of course, they believed it. I think the short life of most 20th century authoritarian regimes demonstrates the difficulty of running a country based on lies. You can do it for a little while, but sooner or later, reality bites you in the ass.
This GQP thing is not going to end well.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Indeed. But it is not going to be easy to keep them from taking the rest of us down with them.
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Howdy Bob!
It’s like the GQP has taken every cognitive and social psychological tendency towards dysfunction and implemented. Groupthink, gaslighting, cognitive dissonance, diffusion of responsibility, social identity, persuasive design, and so many others. They just engage in this knee-jerk cognitive biases without reflection or thought of how it will affect our collective future with only an eye to winning the next election.
Huzzah!
Jack
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And then we see them find new candidates who are already brain fried by it all, like Madison Cawthorn, and several others.
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Howdy Bob!
Recruitment of candidates is always tricky. The parties encourage people they like to run but have a harder time discouraging people they don’t like from running. Look at Trump, Aiken, and others. One theory is that the nuttier the GQP candidates are, the easier they will be for a moderate Dem to defeat. Cawthorn is a good case-in-point against that theory.
Right now the GQP is attracting the nutty candidates. They are radicalizing their base and encouraging people to run for office that in times past could never have gotten through the primary muchless elected. They are electing what used to be the perinnial fringe candidates.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Turnout in our primary elections is disastrously low. Only the most motivated (usually by fear and anger) base voters show up and the fringe candidate wins. Then, the party is stuck with them until they screw up enough that someone a bit more moderate can beat them the next time. Parties also tend to mistake enthusiasm for competence.
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Howdy Bob!
After Claire McCaskill ran pro-Aiken ads in the GOP primary to get the opponent of her choice, so she could go on to beat him in the general election, the GOP got a more moderate candidate to run against her and win in the next cycle. In that cycle, they got a lot more moderate candidates running in part from lessons learned. However, now, with the base radicalized, they can’t run moderate candidates. Because of that, they have to bet that independent voters (a) are susceptible to the same old fear mongering tactics of yore and (b) won’t take the “the GQP threatens our democracy” line from the Dems seriously enough to make a protest statement vote. The problem is is that it just might work.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I do not envy any odds makers taking bets on which way that will go.
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Howdy Bob!
If it weren’t so damned dangerously close to working, it would be funny. It is like the Keystone Kops, the Three Stooges, and Abbott and Costelo formed a political party and won office. It would be jenius if it weren’t.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Alas, when incompetence becomes a litmus test for achieving political office, that incompetence effects everybody and the damage is not easily undone.
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The ringers and bombs that Trump.salted the admin with are probably one of the worst and most difficult to overcome. One of the few books on Trump I’m interested in reading is about his last year in office and comes out today, I think.
Huzzah!
Jack
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He really was going toward politicizing the bureaucracy and sidelining the career experts. Given another four years to continue that, he would have gone much farther.
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Howdy Bob!
Someone in the admin knew what they were doing with those political appointments. Another four years of Trump and our government wouldn’t have been recognizable.
Huzzah!
Jacvk
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Indeed
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Howdy Bob!
What is the connection, if any, between the Koch Bros and Ailes and Murdoch?
Jack
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I don’t know, but I suspect (now that you mention it) it is indirect. One thing to look at would be the advertising on Fox “News” and count the number of Koch owned brands and the frequency (and time slots) of their adds.
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Howdy Bob!
The Trump Disinformation Age pulls at the inner paranoid conspiracy theorist in all of us, don’t it?
The Guardian has a report out on a leaked Kremlin document outlining their plan to help an unstable Trump into the White House, which only goes to show that just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
Huzzah!
Jack
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And the ones who are out to get you are also paranoid, often professionally so, like Putin, a second generation KGB operative.
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Howdy Bob!
I’m sure you’ve heard of the Kremlin papers confirming that the 2016 disinformation campaign to interfere with our elections and put the “mentally unstable” Trump in office by now. It came out over the weekend in The Guardian. I would link to it, but my Kindle Fire knockoff won’t let me.
It isn’t surprising. We all knew it. It is just confirmed.
Huzzah!
Jack
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From Putin’s point of view with his no doubt thick dossier on Trump in hand, it was the obvious thing to do.
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Howdy Bob!
One of the best parts of the report is that it references the kompromat they have on him. Another is their psychological analysis.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The Russian (and, before them, the Soviet) intelligence services have always been very good at finding useful idiots and targets for blackmail and bribery. Trump, of course, is all of those things.
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The surveillance state was always helpful at finding kompromat because o of all of our “naughty” human proclivities that the young men and women of their various youth groups would supply.
I remember touring a spy museum some where where they had a hotel room and all of the ways that they would monitor and record what was going on inside. Advice given to business people traveling in Eastern Europe was to do nothing that they wouldn’t be happy for their spouses and employers to find out about. Trump lacked the executive functioning to resist and assumed rules didn’t apply to him. Conclusion: the pee tape is real.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Very likely. He always enjoys watching somebody do something fundamentally humiliating. The pee hookers would be irresistible. There is always some hope, however small, that Putin will decide that Trump is no longer more useful than troublesome and arrange for more leaks.
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Given the absolute chaos Trump, MAGA Nation, and the useful idiots in the Republican Party I’m not sure how Putin will view Trump’s continued usefulness. Will he see Trump essential to the continual destruction of the US or will he see the idiocy of Trump as being self-perpetuating and Trump no longer necessary? I don’t know what the JOB manual says about managing this situation.
Jack
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Putin and his team probably do see the chaos as self perpetuating with or without Trump. They will continue to feed disinformation into that system and keep supporting/tolerating the ransomware hackers and their in-house cyber spies and trolls. Their level of interest in Trump himself will become evident if he definitely does run for President in 2024. If not, he will be old news to them.
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Howdy Bob!
2024is a long way off in political time.. A lot can happen between now and then. I think a lot depends on the 2022 midterms. If the GQP retake Congress, Trump is running unless he’s been convicted.
The system of disinformation is self-perpetuating. The ransomware folks work with Putin’s blessing because they don’t hit Russian or Russian friendly organizations. They are part of the plan to keep us destabilized.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I suspect that the best of the hackers are either alumni of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear or the GRU, or actually moonlighting from those day jobs. They got their training somewhere, and their code tools.
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Howdy Bob!
Live by hacking; die by hacking. As I understood it Devil has their ransom payment disappear from their offshore bank account courtesy of FBI hackers and probably some good old fashioned government -to-government intimidation. And, Devil seems to have disappeared. Of course, they also seem to have been replaced by someone who hit a few hundred Western mostly non-US companies. I suspect whatever demonstration of U.S. retaliation that Biden provided Putin has proven effective for the moment. We’ll see how long the “truce” lasts.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Arms races are like that. We seem (with the stress on the “seem” part) to have gotten off the starting block a bit slowly in this one, but it is not going to end, and any declaration of victory will be premature for the foreseeable future.
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Howdy Bob!
Certainly something more needs to be done concerning ransomware and cyberwarfare. We’ve had too many disastrous incidents over the past few decades.
Huzzah!
Jack
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One helpful step is the current move toward mandatory reporting of attacks and incidents. Too often, companies and organizations have tried to keep them quiet for PR reasons. Then there is the problem of unpatched and obsolete systems (millions of people still running old Windows versions). Micro$soft really needs to do something about their updates being such a pain in the ass (My Linux version gives me small updates, mostly security related, almost every day – usually taking less than 10 minutes to run.)
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Howdy Bob!
I’ve always thought of computers like cars. Everybody knows how to use a car, they don’t know much about what actually makes it go. And, most are satisfied as long as it is doing what they want it to do. We may have to have some kind of annual safety inspection like we do with our cars.
We’ll need to make big changes in how we interact with the Internet and social media. Increasingly, the government has a vested interest in making it a safe experience for the good of all and minimize the social harms.
The abuses continue to increase as the hackers figure new and creative ways of assaulting us over the Internet. The federal government has a lot more that it can and should do.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The age of the Silicon Valley motto of “Go fast and break things” is ending, but we will be living with the consequences for a long time. The internet really has become an essential public utility which the vast majority don’t understand at all, confirming Arthur C. Clark’s maxim: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
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Howdy Bob!
And given our current political leadership who are terrified of actually making a consequential decision, I don’t see how we actually rein it in.
Huzzah!
Jack
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They are dealing with a mind set much too common in our national culture of focusing on “rights” without responsibilities.
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Howdy Bob!
I’m sure you remember the “Me Generation” and all of the lamenting that went on about how they only think of themselves. It started then. It was a marketing ploy to be all that you can be in our disposable throw-away society driven by individual consumption. And, now, we have people refusing vaccines because it is their “right” to endanger everyone around them. They estimate that the delta variant has a 9:1 infection ratio — one person will infect NINE others. NINE! Regular old #COVID was at worst 2:1.
I have a post on this very depressing topic coming up shortly.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Yes, all that supposed (and mostly sincere) hand wringing and hankie clutching about the Me Generation was actually telling people they were going to be out of step and out of the competition if they indulged in that sill old empathy and the social contract.
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But, it really did unmake our society. We’ve just continued down the rabbit hole of the only thing that matters is me and my needs. With the most recent generation, the pendulum has started to swing back in the other direction, though. Hopefully, there will be something left where it passes back over.
Jack
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That rugged individualism is, in part, a legacy of the Enlightenment and it’s article of faith that we are rational beings who, when presented with the data, facts, and logic of a position will reach the same conclusion. From that, comes a version of the social contract that trusts the wisdom of the crowd (in Economics, the free market, extended to The Market of Ideas). That’s not the sort of critters we are (for which you find so much evidence). The essence of the instinctual social contract for any social species is, and must be “All For One And One For All”. Ask any pack of wolves or troop of chimps under threat (But don’t be the perceived source of the threat if you know what’s good for you). Narcissism, especially when raised to the status of a social good or presented as a role model, breaks that fundamental rule.
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Howdy Bob!
That we are essentially emotional decision makers makes us essentially irrational. It is why I’m such a behavioral economics enthusiast. The thing that now fascinates me is that about a third of the population is authoritarian and willing to burn it all down to get their way. About a third of the population don’t see themselves as a member of the larger group. I think that may be a solid reliable law that we could bet on. If so, the question is how do you limit the damage that the one third does to the whole?
Huzzah!
Jack
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Gregory Bateson commented that the task in designing a political system is not to find a way to keep the scoundrels out, but to limit the damage they can do. It is a question that has plagued political thinkers as far back as written records go, and farther in myth and folklore. So, you are in good company in a long tradition.
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Howdy Bob!
Good company in which no one has succeeded in finding a solution. I do think that we are under a well-funded coordinated assault by some very wealthy people who have figured out the best way to influence government is to buy a political party.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I agree, and they have funded the worst impulses of fanatics and zealots, seeing them as mere tools to be used and discarded. If they succeed in their destruction of a system of governance that places limits on their greed, they will not find discarding those attack dogs so easy to reign in or discard.
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Howdy Bob!
History is pretty replete with the forces of chaos overwhelming the “puppet” masters who have tried to wield them for their own benefit. I don’t know if they’ve thought past the 2022 or 2024 election.We are gearing up for real violence in the streets, however. Against the government and each other. Hate crimes will begin increasing.
Also, #COVID19 is a true black swan event. Given the increasing vaxx rates in diehard Trump country like ‘Bama, it may be the reality that stops this mishegas eventually. Unfortunately, they’ve already bought many of our national assets and medium and small business along with housing stock.
Huzzah!
Jack
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After reading this article [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/] describing the 4 Americas, I got to thinking of the Big (human) Infrastructure Package as what he calls Just America aiming to peel some of Real America (working folks) from Free America (The Kochs et al) by proving they really can make their lives better. Clawing back the wealth from the oligarchs will be a more difficult project – Wealth Tax, steeply graduated income tax, and Estate Tax.
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Howdy Bob!
That was a great article! Thank you for the link. I may just have to buy you lunch for it! Maybe you should write the author and tell him!
Back when I was doing therapy, I used to talk about the lie that we tell ourselves to convince ourselves to keep doing what we’re doing even though it is making us miserable. I don’t know if it ever had any real merit, but it seems to apply here. I seems like each of the Americas has a reality and a lie. We can all see the lies of the other groups pretty easily, but it’s much harder to see the lie you’re telling yourself. I think Just America is new enough that their lie is in its infancy. It may be harder to detect.
The tension running through all of these Americas is the funneling of money to the top of society and how much each type of America will demand to continue giving over the better part of their wealth to the top. Each type of America is a profit-loss center for the 1% with Smart America being the most expensive but in many ways providing the greatest profit. I think they’ll find that Free America provides the least profit and the most cost as their nihilistic self-destruction explodes into real violence.
In that framework, racism is just a means to an end. The lie one group tells itself in order to better endure the misery of giving their meager wealth to the 1%. The more perfect union is the lie that Smart America told itself to continue living in systemic racism to justify giving their wealth to the 1%. What will the lie be that Just America tells itself in order to endure the pain of maintaining the status quo? That change is possible? That equity is possible?
Huzzah!
Jack
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I think you nailed it about Just America and the lie (at this point, more of a youthful illusion?). In a way, it seems that JA represents the generation most impacted by the wealth extraction in the form of student debt. The 1% may have miscalculated on that because the debt is preventing many from buying real estate and even starting families, harming their future accumulation of extractable wealth. Perhaps the 1% decided that that generation and onward just shouldn’t ever get to accumulate wealth, just like POC.
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Howdy Bob!
I think that is the calculation. Home ownership doesn’t make them as much money as renting does since any given house earns a monthly fee for the life time of the house whereas my mother bought her home and paid her mortgage for twenty years and then lived another forty in the house. That was forty years of rent that no one was getting, only the meager property taxes the state and local government got from her.
I think the 1% are missing the point on how we create synergy in our society. One of the problems the Soviets faced was the lack of motivation among the everyday citizen to just make things work and then to innovate. One of the chief advantages of capitalism and democracy is that people are motivated to better themselves and thereby better society. It creates a synergy that is very productive. By squeezing every possible cent from people, you really diminish their ability to do that creative work. Kinda like we got so much more out of going to the moon than just a few moon rocks and some pics of Neil Armstrong.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The dream of the 1% seems to be indentured servitude for all but themselves, which would be a slowly crumbling stagnation.
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That’s the swinging pendulum. Hopefully, it will start to swing in the other direction soon. Societies that have levels of inequality that are too great, end like Revolutionary France.
Jack
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And the recognition of that problem goes at least back Thucydides, only to be rediscovered by Cicero and other Romans. In a way, what Trump promised “Real America” was that sort of revolution, but with the wrong bad guys. But, of course, he was lying.
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Howdy Bob!
I see two game changers in this: (1) The vast difference between a billionaire and a millionaire makes things possible now that were never possible before. The billionaires have literally bought a political party (the GQP) and key Democrats (Manchin, Sinema, and others). We’ve never seen the effect of that level of wealth before to insulate the wealthy from the rest of the world. And (2) the Internet makes communication so much easier and disinformation campaigns so much more effective. People are so easily manipulated because of our cognitive tendencies and we know how to do it.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Sadly true
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