On Sociopaths, Narcissists, Believers and Provocateurs.

I was reminded of this by the UC Berkley demonstration surrounding Milo Yiannopoulos who fits quite nicely with three out of the four with the exception of believer. As someone wrote a while ago "Milo Yiannopoulos is the ideological analogue of Kim Kardashian’s rear end " [Laurie Penny in the Guardian from memory]

Glenn Beck was another typical example and apparently the world has turned upside down because he was interviewed by Anderson Cooper and wailed about the dangers of Stephen K. Bannon.

The perceived need for a 24/7 news infotainment industry has distorted reality. The infotainment channels have anointed/appointed themselves as the ring master of the clown circus where alt-news, fake-news and alternative-facts have replaced the buckets full of whitewash.

These are then balanced out by the self styled "serious media/MSM" declaring that they are the holders of the torch of "fact checking" even when their reporting has definite and obvious political/corporate bias.

A multitude of political blogs have sprung up for one reason or another [often with good intentions and you can all probably come up with quotes about good intentions] that have now turned into refuges where many go to confirm their fears and any contradiction must be quashed.

Someone else is always to blame wherever you go, those that didn't vote for Hillary are to blame for Trump, I don't remember Trump getting even a majority of the 70% or so of those that did not. If not that, Russians!

Then again the other lot are claiming that they represent the populist will of the people by appointing similar Oligarchs and snake oil salesman as the other lot to actually run the country. The only difference being the wedge issues to keep the faithful motivated enough to ignore the reality.

We now have a Presidency run via tweet by an eleven year old that apparently hacked someone's account. What...really...oh dear, I don't believe you...good grief....damn.

Our democracy has become the playground of Sociopaths, Narcissists, Believers and Provocateurs and it is sometimes hard to distinguish between the last two. Reality tends to be complicated, apparently it should be avoided at all costs since it'll probably bite into the profit margin. Machiavelli would be laughing his socks off on the one hand then worrying like crazy where it would all lead and could it be controlled on the other. I have always wondered how many Oligarchs keep a copy of "The Prince" to hand, then again, have they actually read it?

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.
~Niccolo Machiavelli

“Appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.”

Machiavelli worried about the end result, I'm not sure ours could care less.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.
~Niccolo Machiavelli

Or as I take the last quote; be careful/observant when those "according to the wickedness of their spirits" write the laws.

Also, I hate clowns, they always have scared me.

Just a thought.

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riverlover's picture

They call it Steampunk, I call it calming. I also hate clowns. Happy groundhog Day, early Poisson d'Avril to you.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Steven D's picture

Obama was "no drama" and kept himself out of controversy as much as possible.

Trump is a creation of the infotainment industry and "reality TV." It's worked for him before, so I see no reason why he would change his "Operatic" persona while President. He knows he gets TV coverage whenever he says or does outrageous things, so I expect that to continue. It's how he turned himself from being a failed real estate developer into a "brand."

And not so secretly. I'm sure the cable news industry's executives are thrilled by his initial two weeks as President. He's not the President they supposedly wanted (not even Fox News was his champion for a long time), but he's the one they deserve and the one they will ride as hard as they can to exploit for TV ratings and ad revenues. We are merely meant to be consumers of their product. Even stories about our protests or misery are merely fodder for more articles and breaking news reports and endless panel discussions, which are no more than shouting fests or circle jerks (depending upon who has been invited to the table that hour) to harangue us with their shallow analysis of whatever situation or crisis requires it.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

@Steven D should be a whole lot of fun.

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Steven D's picture

@LaFeminista and will revel in their hatred.

It will reinforce his connection with those poor and working class whites who voted for him in the Midwest as most of them are easily swayed by nativist and isolationist appeals. They will see rejection of Trump by the Euros as a badge of courage. It will make for great political theater, but it won't change much of anything back home in the U-S-A among Sarah Palin's "Real Americans" just as the Woman's March the day after the Inauguration, to my mind, has done little to unite the disparate factions on the left around anything more than the current outrage du jour.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

@Steven D you cant keep on appeasing bullies {Re; Britain's T May at the moment] they just get worse.

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divineorder's picture

@LaFeminista

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

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@Steven D
"We are merely meant to be consumers of their product propaganda."

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Alligator Ed's picture

@Steven D For a fellow who oversaw the most shameful, antidemocratic (both the small D type and the big D type) government to have escaped major sludge on his "legacy" (at least so far), it is only because he uses the same techniques on the public as the elites do to their flunkies: bravely, standing in the shadows, pushing two combatants into a brawl nobody wins, saying "Let's you and him fight".

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@Steven D ever tell the truth unless he was pressed for it. You had to prove you knew he was a lying sack o' doody (like with NSA spying) before he would cough up the truth. Otherwise he'd just quietly go about his crap, like how counterproductive it would be to hold Wall Street liable for their crimes.

No Drama was a ringer. He was no Democrat. He was another Turd Way 'New' Democratic sow's ear instead of the silk purse we thought we were buying.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Song of the lark's picture

Central coast where up the road away the natives were restless at my alma mater. Milo Y came to the campus in my little town. Cal Poly. Not much happened was all civilized police protesters standing around. The newly elected mayor a well meaning green liberal had a city wide protest pot luck and spoke in the plaza. She used to babysit my children some years ago. But up north in Berkeley where I spent my youth going to school and protesting a wicked war, the people were out in the streets shutting down Milo Y' s speech. Shades of reverse Mario Savio. Does it make me a bad DFHippie if I sort of agree with Milo at least, about the free speech part and liberals being willing to shut it down. I don't know his material. I suppose it's a version of the usual rwnj libertarian, anti politically correct crap with a little hot sauce. I see the world pretty clearly if a bit dystopian, Since we are clearly in thermodynamic collapse, with the attendant over population resource depletion etc. So they were setting fires fifty feet from where Mario Savio spoke and shutting down speech. Red pill or blue pill I don't know where we are going back in the day at the Fillmore we called it windowpane (LSD) a mirror on your spirit. Alas here we go.

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@Song of the lark @Song of the lark quote from Laurie Penny.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/26/my-night-out-in-clevelan...

Always remember these lovers of free speech will be the first in line to shut it down if they have the power to do so.

Original here

https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/im-with-the-banned-8d1b6e0...

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@LaFeminista much go for folks trying to write like HST.

i remember back in the day, how angry i would get about anti-male feminists like Andrea Dworkin. i can't imagine what it's like to be on the receiving end of the same sort of in-your-face and unapologetic epistemologically bankrupt hateful bigotry, but with the added elements of:

a. mass media and internet exposure
b. exhortations to adopt an approach, both in attitude and in actual social practice, that is fundamentally abusive and even violent.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@LaFeminista

I was torn between interest in the information and awe for the writing - thanks for the link!

I'll still have nightmares over these idiots/psychopaths, but such snark does help bring a certain perspective.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Alligator Ed's picture

@Song of the lark there was also an anti-free speech movement which boycotted or even shut down the campus if a conservative was scheduled to speak.; This is and was unbridled bigotry and hypocrisy (nothing new to politics) taking place in a forum allegedly fostering an environment of learning. How combat an opposing ideology with reason and perhaps facts, if you don't even know the ideology you're ostensibly combatting.

Even the ACLU supported George Lincoln Rockwell's Holocaustic-denying white supremacist, anti-semitic organization ability to march through Skokie, Illinois, home to many Holocaust survivors. The right to free speech of course ends when threatening violence to your fellow citizens (i.e., you can't falsely yell "fire" in a crowded movie theater).

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but they are very lazy thinkers.
They will only do their own thinking when forced to. When everything else fails.

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@gjohnsit on a personal level. Intellectual curiosity is also in short supply, I prefer Europe for that one.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@gjohnsit but on a much larger scale than some are forced to do currently. Outside of the rich, the group of people that have to think the most are the destitute who must think about where they are going to get their next meal or where they are going to sleep tonight. Considering the trajectory of modern income inequality that survival thought process is being forced upon more and more people. A major catalyst of the French Revolution was starvation of the general populace, which ironically was meteorological and not political.

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Song of the lark's picture

Thanks for the link. I suppose there is going to be plenty of loud speech for awhile. Soon we go outside the wire and into the tall grass long knife in hand. Then everything goes quiet except for the swoosh of the katana and the smack of necks separating. Buckle up! The financial zone will be the tell. Everything goes sour in bankruptcy. And America is surfeit, broke and wasted in every way at the moment. Wither thou goest la femme, where is the wisdom?

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Every person must have his own limit, beyond which speech becomes "speech" and is intolerable. Every society must also, though that limit must be looser than for an individual.
The Skokie march was blatantly an attempt to terrorize holocaust survivors and mock American principles. That is how it is consistent to say that Bill Maher's criticism of Islam is tolerable (for most) but Rockwell's antisemitism (or Madeline Albright's "it was worth the price" or Hillary's "the Iranians are not abiding by the treaty. I will destroy their nuclear facility, and if necessary nuclear weapons are not off the table, and I will use a military response to Russian and Chinese hacking") should not be. (for us)

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On to Biden since 1973

@doh1304 @doh1304

When speech becomes incitement of contempt/hate/slanderous accusations/forms threats aimed at vulnerable people/groups, it is no longer free but at the expense of victimized others also entitled to protection under law.

The concept of freedom of speech within democracy does not entitle anyone to slander/abuse/threaten/terrorize the vulnerable.

Edited to add a missed word.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

I don't think we should ever take it at face value when a small (small can vary according to the size of the overall protest) number in a protest are being violent. There is always the possibility that anarchists and also cointelpro agents, not to mention plain-old hired mercs. shilling for propaganda reasons, can be the culprits, and I've read elsewhere that the violent actors at Berkeley were Black Bloc.

Further, I tire of justified disgust and anger at the tactics the "Democratic" side of the duopoly use to coopt them being used to paint all protests, particularly those occurring after tRump's election, as failing some elite "true progressive" test of legitimacy. Sure, plenty of the people protesting tRump's various but nearly-universally disgusting policies and nominees voted for her Heinous, but continued protest in numbers followed up by political and other actions and both short-term and long-term planning is our only hope.

I sure don't have all of the answers, hell, how about none of them in any cohesive "that'll fix everything" sense, but some of the disavowing of protest as a tactic if there's even one "I'm with her" sign anywhere in the crowd I'm seeing here seems to overstep the mark. We have to be able to overcome the corporate Democrats without throwing away any of the tools we could use to achieve it just because some of them might show up to protest the same things we're against too.

We have to turn the tables on them by remembering how they got up and hogged the spotlight at such events and then scurried back to Congress to vote in favor of a completely-unqualified ideologue like Ben Carson as another ridiculous keeping the powder dry moment when we primary their asses right out of those comfy seats of greed and power.

But we still have to stand against the Republicans and tRump at the same time even when the hypocrites and those they've lied to are there too. It's not an either / or proposition, obviously. That's what makes this all so difficult and challenging.

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