Open Thread - 11-08-24 - PTSD Nation
Well, it's over. For now.
What we witnessed in this 2024 election was a master class in voter manipulation. I often wonder how they do it. How they can produce an almost cult like following for two of the most flawed politicians in recent memory. How is it that so many voters can be lead by their noses to the voting booth in a fevered pitch of anxiety?
In my opinion it is done by instilling fear in the minds of the voters. Fear of the other, fear of what the opposition party may have in store if elected, fear of civil war, riots, detention camps. Fear, fear, fear. It was a constant barrage of fear, to make one yearn for a savior that will lead one to the electoral promised land.
Fear is the arrow, and the media is the bow. Those that benefit from our fear are the archers and our minds are the target.
If so, then why does fear work so well on so many people?
Is it possible that we all have at least a little touch of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), with some more than others, and some full blown? From the time of birth we're bombarded with fear inducing stimuli, that over a course of a lifetime could very well cause an accumulated case of PTSD. Let's face it, we grow up in and live in a violent society and a violent world. We think of ourselves as civilized but sometimes I wonder.
The causes of PTSD are myriad:
What can cause PTSD?
The situations we find traumatic can vary from person to person. There are many different harmful or life-threatening events that might cause someone to develop PTSD. For example:
- being involved in a car crash
- being raped or sexually assaulted
- being abused, harassed or bullied - including racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia or transphobia, and other types of abuse targeting your identity
- being kidnapped, held hostage or any event in which you fear for your life
- experiencing violence, including military combat, a terrorist attack, or any violent assault
- seeing other people hurt or killed, including in the course of your job (sometimes called secondary trauma)
- doing a job where you repeatedly see or hear distressing things, such as working in the emergency services or armed forces
- surviving a natural disaster, such as flooding, earthquakes or pandemics, such as the coronavirus pandemic
- traumatic childbirth as a mother, or as a partner witnessing a traumatic birth
- losing someone close to you in particularly upsetting circumstances
- being sectioned or getting treatment in a mental health ward
- being diagnosed with a life-threatening condition.
Is it much of a stretch then to say that a society as a whole can be afflicted with PTSD. And because of that become highly susceptible to fear based stimuli? Fear that triggers a fight or flight response. For example, in this election, fear triggers some to fight, by voting to defeat the "other", and some to flight, by flight I mean give up.
Fear works. Until it's understood and met head on, and defeated.
Levon Helm: Take Me To The River
3:59
Comments
Good morning Free Rangers...
We'll never be truly free until we cast fear from our minds.
PTSD
fun acronyms
post trump success disappointment
or
pre teen sexual deviance
or
pretend truth severs derision
thanks for the the OT!
question everything
It's a real thing...
you can see it in the many stress induced videos that have flooded the innertoobs the last few days. Some people are losing it.
Yeah, many are faked by attention seeking narcissists, but many are sincere. How did they get so emotionally involved to the point of breaking from reality?
Their lizard brains, where fear resides, have been stimulated by a technique that's been refined by centuries of practice by the ruling class.
Yeah it is real
I try to make lite of it
but the breakdown exhibited
by the spouse was very telling
leaving me feeling raw
people who do not have a
pressure relief mechanism
in place (like C99%) are more
subject to psyche eruptions
normal people can only absorb
a certain amount of mental stress
before an eruption occurs
question everything
My mother broke down like that too..
I'm sorry you experienced it with your wife. It's awful.
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
fear?
For most of my life, I have been a politics junky, frequently talking with friends and acquaintances about the next election. As I have lost interest in voting since 2016, I have found it impossible to talk politics with members of either the Blue or the Red cult as politics itself became a perpetual exercise of fear and loathing. Things like the Vietnam War and race relations of course led to extremely bitter feelings, but the dispute was always about the policy in question -- and very few people made the leap from disagreement to loathing. Now the cable news networks pump out hostility to The Other Guys who are no longer mistaken or misguided but are now "deplorable" or "garbage."
Along the same lines, among the few iconoclastic friends who share my non-voting habit, I am constantly hearing the expression, "That is scary," in discussion of the governmental fuckup of the hour. My wife also uses that word often to describe the political outrage of the day.
Death from Covid, Russian ambitions to rule the world, Donald Fucking Trump and his fascist throng of hooligans, global warming and Israel-hating terrorists are just a few examples of the scary reality of this horrible decade.
It is easy to understand how my friends and relatives get so scared of what fresh hell tomorrow may bring. Fear is pushed as realism non stop in this depraved transitional era.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Yup...
I think it's fear of tomorrow
For too many, change has mostly meant being worse off. From toilet paper to health care to housing....anything we need can become out of reach. What we took for granted being able to afford, we can't, even with 2 incomes. Our kids struggle, and if they don't many of their friends do, and that sets up fear. Car prices, loans, credit cards....everything seems designed to entrap you. But in the ends Americans blame themselves for their failures, with help from those that entrap you.
Also thanks for the OT.
Inflation is but one tool...
in the quiver of the archers, albeit a big one. It's a tool of wealth transference to those that can never have enough.
There's a pattern. A period of good times for the underclass is offset by inflation which wipes the board of excess wealth into the pockets of those that can never have enough. History shows it happening time and time again.
And you're right:
Thank you, Snode.
As a 99%'er
Good times were when the pols just left me alone. It wasn't just inflation. I knew when the gov. sent out covid checks, all the needs would jump in price, because after all, that money was "theirs". I mean, what can you say about a country that allows "non-profits" to keep 90% of every dollar just to give away a dime and call them charities? How many government contracts go to these things?
Our pols figure they have to do something in a time of crisis. They hash out the details, whittle down the cost to the budget so it helps people on one miserly side of a cutoff line. The people on the other side are just as bad off, but maybe can afford a set of tires. No soup for them. Then there is the helping people by giving them a tax deduction. If you don't have enough $ to have a big enough tax bill, what good is a deduction going to do you? It doesn't help the people that need it the most. It's a pretty big quiver and it seems to run through everything in our lives.
I'm old enough to remember
when there were no credit cards. Plastic had just become the New rage.
"Plastics, Son, get into plastics", The Graduate.
The credit card was the drug of choice across the world. You had to have a wallet full of them to feel successful. It made Debt Slavery fun and easy.
Before that you had lay-a-way or revolving credit accounts.
I can still remember sitting in front of my local bank president pleading for loan approval to buy a couch.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Young people seem to focus
not on savings and debt, but their credit score that will enable them to consume more.
Yup
and you couldn't rent a car without a credit card, and I think maybe get an airline ticket?
Before credit cards existed
You had to go to a travel agent or the airline itself to book a ticket w/cash, check, or if you were lucky enough to qualify for an American Express account, which you had to pay in full in 30 days.
In the 50s, any consumer credit involved a trip to your local bank and a sit down with the bank president or his designated loan councilor.
This spawned the small consummer loan outlets like Fireside Thrift, Household Finance, etc.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Good morning JtC. In addition to everything else I see a very
ironic fear of losing shit you don't really have, which is crazy, but, ignoring that:
1)
Welcome to California! You'll get over it, trust me.
2)
Huh? LIFE is a life threatening condition. Nobody gets out of here alive.
a) He not busy being born is busy dying - Robert Zimmerman
b) One needs to adopt "A resolute acceptance of death" - Miyamoto Musashi
As they say, Life Goes On, the only other option isn't relevant if one stops to think about it (at least, not until it is). You are here. It is now. There is an ancient argument that this is the best of all possible worlds, and, true or not, it is, at the moment, the only one immediately available to each of us. PTSD is one of many defense/survival mechanisms and one needs to track it down and figure out how to use it, or abandon it through some process of awareness based overcoming. What HAS happened, to cause it, is done and gone. and what IS happening is bad enough perhaps, but also all you got so get with it.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Sage advice, my friend...
words to live by.
The way to stop fear from working is to understand what is causing it, and then to face it. That's easy to say, but too hard for many to actually accomplish when so many have a vested interest in exploiting said fear.
We live in a violent world that just wont stop being violent. There's too much money and power to be gained in its promotion.
Trump gaveth, Biden took it away
People immediately lost their economic cushion because democrats couldn’t be bothered. And Biden restarted student loan repayment with draconian rules…funny how he didn’t even consider rewriting bankruptcy laws so people who have been repaying and repaying and repaying….could get some relief.
Shitlibs are playing mean girls. I saw lots of tweets in this vein last night.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Wait a dang minute...
I thought they were the party of love and joy. I bet they took down all the mirrors in their houses.
I'll wait to judge because the next administration will most assuredly taketh away as well. It's what they all do.
If that was TOP
I went over and it was the voters are stupid, racist, misogynist, homophobic shit kicker nazi rubes. I guess when looking for someone to blame they hide the mirrors.
Yeppers
I’ve been reporting that was what shitlibs were saying about the reasons Kamala lost. Even when people there post links showing that it was the economy they get shot down.
The saying I quoted was from the Twit. Like I said shitlibs have turned mean girls.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
The iconic photo at the top
I remember as captioned "Nuclear war is bad for children and other living things".
Thanks for the OT.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
The Daisy Ad...
scared the hoi polloi directly into the arms of Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. Funny how that works.
Thanks for contributing, my friend.
The most effective political ad ever
because 1) it only aired once and few people saw it 2) most people talked about it 3) it was true. Minimal campaign costs due to the one showing. Maximum public attention due to all the talk. True as Goldwater and warmongering politicians were actually advocating for nuking Vietnam. Of course the anti-communists and warmongers remained a strong political force which precluded allowing the Vietnamese to choose their own government and leaders.
It could also be argued...
that it helped to start the anti-war movement and putting daisies in gun barrels.
Nuking Vietnam
Brings back memories of 1964, Goldwater running against Johnson. I worked alongside another secretary for project managers in a large SF construction co. One of the project managers was a known Goldwater supporter. My co-worker thought it would be clever to hang a large poster in his office while he was away. It was a picture of an atom bomb exploding, with the words “GO WITH GOLDWATER!” The PM was not amused so the secretary had to confess and do some fast talking.
Anya
What a wonderful story to share sixty years on.
Might have been a factor in Goldwater's sweep of the deep south. (It's a fact that should never be forgotten.) That sweep is normally cited as a response to LBJ's civil rights legislation, but voter responses tend to lag legislation until what it means for them is experienced. 1964 was a bit early for a response,
That PM was probably in sync with upper management and the owners. Republicans have long dominated among large construction company senior managers, particularly engineering firms. (An exception in the 1960s was Brown and Root in Texas.) (I won't ask because it's better not to disclose co-workers political preferences even from long ago, but I'd like to think that the employer was Bechtel.)
I think that the result
is a combination of fearmongering, and a complete and carefully enforced media blackout on the very existence of any alternatives (other then breathless coverage of them being sued off the ballots in many locations).
People will not vote for things about which they know nothing: and third parties, as a whole, are completely unknown in this country. Truly, they might as well not exist.
Since money is speech, I don't see that changing.
However, I have to admit grim amusement in seeing the dems bleating about how the Harris campaign (after raising over a billion dollars) is somehow $20 million in debt. Perhaps it will turn out that they are every bit as good at stiffing their providers as is Trump.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Heh...
who knew that spreading
bullshitjoy cost so much? But what a great party (pun intended) it was, huh? Didn't the Harris campaignsteal, I mean inherit tons of moolah from the Biden re-election campaign as well? Easy come easy go, any way the wind blows.If the new administration was really intent in fixing things the first thing they would do is work to repeal Citizens United. But we all know that wont happen.
I too put much of the blame squarely on the media, the catapulters of propaganda, fear and deception. But much of that Citizens United moolah ends up in their coffers, so until third parties can come up with tons of advertising monies then they'll be relegated to the back of the bus.
Speaking of JOY there is this.....
Election night:
LOL!
Hah...
two great images that tickle my fancy. thanks for that.
Mine
If Hillary lost to Trump who thought that Kamala could beat him? Both ran on 'Trump is bad' and offered nothing to those who were hurting economically.
Hillary wanted to create a no fly zone over Syria bringing us to war with Russia.
Kamala oversaw our war with Russia bringing us close to nuclear war. Plus her total support of Israel’s genocide. Gee no wonder voters rejected both women.
It had nothing to do with misogyny!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Caption this:
Hillary;"Maybe if you kick him in the balls"?
Kamela; "Wouldn't be hard to miss".
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
How is it
that their profiles are so similar ...
"Nothing Trump might do to us…..
.
….is worse than what Biden/Harris have done to Palestinians."
Kamala supporters said that "yeah, but Trump will be worse" belittles what Biden is already doing.
See my sigline…
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
A sheepdog tries to rehabilitate his image but some are not
buying it.
A post election song...
for the Dems:
It works for the pre-election as well.
Hi all,
Happy Friday!
I had an alarm go off for 'too many posts without an appropriate song'...
A personal anthem for 50 years.
\\There may be no greater motivator fear, and so what better to manipulate with? Starts with the fear of God, and gets worse from there.
In a non-political context... I was never afraid of snakes as I grew up handling them. I was never afraid of sharks as I devoured every piece of literature on them, and since have handled many. I was afraid of spiders. I do not recall getting bit badly, but knew some who did. As soon as I read a great book on spiders the fear disappeared. Immediately and completely. Knowledge indeed is power. Especially, over your fears.
Be fearless friends!
happy trails all!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Back in the 1990s and 2000s...
I lived in a home owners association mostly occupied by Chicagoans, a nasty subset of humans when you catch them out of their elements. I was wrangled into running for the Board of Directors which I won and became the president for three years. I didn't know I had a fear of public speaking until I actually had to do it. I met that fear and found out I was actually pretty good at it. Who knew? It was at that time I found out I could write when inspired as well. Who knew again.
That was my first and only go at politics. Some day I may write about that experience.
Be fearless is right, old buddy. Thanks for cruising by.
PS: Roger Waters is a study in fearlessness.
Hola Dysto.
Got FOS Butterbutt and Robin today
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
As Sam said ….
She’s done speaking! And now she is unburdened by what was.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
So very true...
'Fear is the arrow, and the media is the bow.' I think that's why I've not paid attention to a lot of the electioneering this time. I don't want to be made afraid.
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
In 2005 I passed on watching the movie V for Vendetta.
At the time I saw myself as a pacifist. Blowing shit up was not my “thing”. When I went to DC for the anti war protests in the early seventies, I studiously avoided the car flipping and tear gas at the DOJ building.
On the recommendation of an online friend I decided to fire up V for Vendetta on Nov 6, as part of my celebration of the Trump victory / Harris defeat as a small step in the right direction. I was surprised at the depth of correlation to the COVID situation we have all just lived through and the depth of the character portrayals in the slow unwinding of the “mind control” that those holding power wielded relentlessly. Mass Formation psychosis > propaganda breakdown > and a gradual awakening.
Yeah, there was some violence and the resulting PTSD that was depicted, but it was incidental. The main theme was about regaining our individual freedoms by recognizing the lies and psychological manipulations that were instilling the FEAR that was hobbling our higher human possibilities. All in all a very well done movie with an almost eerie similarity to the troubling situation we actually find ourselves in today.
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024
Have you read the book?
It goes into much more detail about what happened to people who weren’t natives and explains what happened to the people who were sent to the concentration camps and how they were experimented on to create both the disease and vaccine.
I just finished listening to it again this week. It totally nails the Covid scam.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
The only thing we have to fear...
Well, all I can say is they didn't scare me.
I voted for Tim Walz. I have a question: How did a badly made-up yahoo who was a running joke on the rags one glanced at in the checkout lines at the grocery store end up as POTUS? I probably already know the answer but I'm curious about what others think. Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
The key to unlock the mystery of how this happened
is Trump's experience with the World Wrestling Federation -- of which he is a member of their Hall of Fame. Wrestling is a fake show that militantly refuses to admit its fraudulence. This becomes a running joke, but the characters of the show NEVER break character.
The money men who own the industry have kept the cheap thrills of pro wrestling alive and thriving for about a century -- and after the weirdness of W. Bush and Barack (the Hopester) Obama, Trump brought the logic of "pro" wrestling into national politics -- a logic contrived to make money for the owners of the show. Thus it was a relatively easy sell for The Donald to gain support from the powers that be.
The most significant feature of the morality tale that is pro wrestling is that the villains have to win some of the matches, but not all. Thus Trump eked out a minuscule victory over Her and then threw a hissy fit over losing a close one to Sleepy Joe -- and now soundly beating the lame-ass Harris, who was utterly unconvincing as a good guy wrestler.
Very few people have taken me seriously as I have pushed the wrestling connection as a way to understand what animates the Trump Phenomenon.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
A day late and a dollar short...
Yesterday was limb and leaf clearing, so didn't get by.
I had no, zero, investment in the election. Fear and TDS didn't play a role in my observation of the election.
However, now that the dust is clearing, I suspect the Trump administration might be interesting. We'll just have to wait and see.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
It will probably be less predictable
just as the first one was.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Hi JtC
I watched a doco of The Talking Heads concerts on my flight home, and the following version of Take Me to the River was a part of it. I’ve always loved them, and one of their songs I have adopted as my personal theme song.
PTSD can be a life-long, fast or slow descent into madness. For those suffering from it for real, I wish they find a life affirming path toward healing.
Edited for jet lag mind fog