Author Archives: oinsketta

Complying with unreasonable demands

Sometimes you will be confronted with unreasonable demands from others.  People at times set conditions for relationships that are grimly unfair:  whenever I’m upset with you, I get to confront you immediately; you have to patiently respect my right not to deal with your hurt until some time far in the future.   I cannot be patient when I’m in great pain, you must always be patient and calm with me when you think I hurt you.   Shit like that.

You can say these kinds of conditions are endgame scenarios, they are imposed when everything is so fucked up betwen people that all they have left is their reflex to defend themselves at all costs.   I wouldn’t argue.  In a mutually empathetic relationship you will not encounter these kinds of unreasonable asymmetries.   They arise from long held grievance, which accrues until the weight of it becomes unbearable to one party, who then feels compelled to inflict it on the other party.

These childish conditions are imposed in an unthinking attempt to make things right, somehow.  Everything harmful that I do is purely unintended, a mistake, forgivable human weakness, for godsake, and everything bad that you do flows from your disrespect, malice and sadism.

“You are a reflexive sadist, I realize you can’t help being a sadist, probably, but that is your default setting for treating others, or at least for treating me.  You’re aggressive, threatening and mean as a goddamned snake.”  If you have a productive response for that, one that will change the view of the speaker, you’re more inventive than I am.  When someone frames things to me that way, in stunning black and white, it’s time to move to the next car.

I have a friend who listens patiently to my horror stories.  He is sympathetic, offers whatever insight he might have, tells me a related story from his own life.  That is truly all a friend can do when we are up against it, listen, relate, offer his best ideas.  Our need to vent sometimes has us persist, once a friend has done all these things.  At that point my friend would nip that shit instantly with a simple “wee, wee, wee!”, said in a mocking, singsong cadence reminiscent of a crying cartoon baby, or piglet.

“Wee wee wee!” is a great, shorthand evocation of this kind of childish need to insist, beyond the limits of all reasonable conversation.  It makes me laugh, snaps me out of it, as I realize I’m now behaving like a fucking giant baby — and that I don’t have to.

Violent crime by state

Television pundits tell us that Republicans have successfully made a huge voting issue about violent crime, predominantly in “anarchist (and antichrist) jurisdictions” run by godless heathens, presumably. The GOP has focused on the rise of violent crime all over the country, under the watch of “soft on crime” communist Democrats who control two branches of the federal government and are therefore responsible for all local criminal behavior.

A few seconds of research on the internet tells a different story. Here are the top 27 States, (including one that should be a state but is not), ranked in order of prevalence of violent crime.

Looks to me like the old Confederacy, the MAGA heartland, that region of the country who never bowed to “Negro Rule”, never lost any war, except by being cheated out of victory, leads the pack in violent crime.

Hmmm…

Meanwhile the FBI and Homeland Security have both issued reports that domestic terrorism, white supremacist violence, is the gravest threat we face as a nation going into the midterms. Talk about yer violent crime…

Death during life

The finality of death is a crushing thing.  A cherished conversation ended, forever.   The chance to fix a once-precious, broken thing, irretrievably gone.  Traces of the little quirks that endear us to each other remain, remembered fleetingly, painfully at first.  Death reduces the dead person to the memories of those who loved her.  That we all must go there is little consolation, it’s the opposite of consolation, really.

Death during life?  That is the death we decree on others who have crossed a painful line too many times to endure.  “You’re fucking dead to me” is the cry of pain we direct at those who prove over and over that they will not yield, for any reason.  Once they are dead to you, of course, the painful dilemma — trying to unilaterally resolve things you cannot resolve to save a relationship that is already dead — is over.  The gangrenous foot is surgically removed, a prosthetic foot is attached and, after a short period of rehab, you walk better than you have in a long time.

I think most people have experienced this addition by subtraction, the relief it produces to finally not force yourself to bang your head against an immovable object,  a locked door, an adamant refusal to acknowledge hurt a loved one cannot personally feel. Your hurt reduced to peevish triviality when weighed against their own pain and anger.

I recall the wonderful feeling of lightness, waking with a great weight removed from my shoulders, neck and head, after an unusually good night’s sleep, when I have finally told someone turned monstrous to get out of my fucking face.

Whenever I’ve found myself being bullied by an old friend, given an ultimatum, held responsible for their pain and inability to behave reasonably, urged that only denial will solve what is bedevilling my sleep, the only relief, in the end, is removing myself from the situation.   You win, I lose.  I take myself off the chess board.  You are absolutely right, have a nice day and a very nice life.  It can be done politely, if you want, but the finality of it, when that moment comes, is also unmistakably clear.

I am dead to them while still alive.  Their pride will prevent them from reaching out, no matter how painful my death during life may be for them.  I have rejected their version of love, after all, an unforgivable thing for a dear friend to do.  In a case where I reached out after several years of estrangement, my old friend, although delighted and relieved to hear from me, was unable to reach back, being too neurotic to resume the friendship he claimed to value above all others. I don’t take it personally, it’s not about me, intimacy is not in his skill set.

Though it’s a very painful thing, there are worse tragedies than death during life.  Few relationships live forever.  People change, come to value different things.  People grow apart in their beliefs and their needs from others.  Understanding is not the universal coin of human affairs and love is not a magical balm that can heal things we can never touch or understand.  We are “wise apes” and we do the best we can in a violent and largely irrational world.  Sometimes we resort to cannibalism.  What else can you do when the place you used to live is now under the sea and you and your twenty million neighbors are on the move with nothing but the dead to eat?

CNN – Both sides guilty of political violence

I never had a strong feeling about Jake Tapper one way or the other. Tapper seemed reasonable enough, the few times I watched him opining on the news.

New leadership at CNN, formerly disparaged by the right as the “Clinton News Network,” determined to capture more centrist viewers with content more sensitive to the views of American Nazi types.

In the aftermath of the horrific assassination attempt at Nancy Pelosi’s home in San Francisco, and in the stinking wake of new Twitter CEOs tweet claiming Pelosi’s husband was drunk and fighting with a male prostitute (tweet since taken down) Jake Tapper weighs in to remind CNN viewers that certainly not all political violence is restricted to the extreme right.

In fact, in 2017, Tapper intones, it was a left-winger who shot up a bunch of Congress people at a softball game. He then goes down a short list, a guy wanted to shoot Boof Kavanaugh. He includes on the short list the (right-wing, pro-Trump) punks recently convicted for their plot to kidnap and execute the Democratic governor of Michigan, and a presumably left wing attack on MAGA NY gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin to, eh, prove his point. Both sides are violent!

Apparently a highly paid shill like Tapper will read whatever is placed on his teleprompter. Fuck media pundits like Jake Tapper, who know better, but speak with the authority of paid celebrity product endorsers.

Listen for yourself to how fair and balanced CNN’s presentation of political violence is. No reason to mention that American intelligence (Homeland Security) and law enforcement (FBI) have rated the alarming rise of right-wing, white supremacist terrorism as the number one threat to our democracy.

Or, as Jake Tapper points out, political violence is never acceptable and does not belong to either party. Here’s 90 seconds of fair and balanced influencer Tapper, giving both sides, for his new boss at CNN.

The cost of lying

A lie can cover shame, sure.  It’s done all the time.   We can tell lies we can argue aren’t actually lies, they are just ways of sparing some pain, to ourselves or others.   There are gradations in lying, too.   We can lie in a way that is, arguably, basically truthful.  We can leave out just one key detail, more or less accidentally, and satisfy ourselves that this small omission was completely justified.  Without that troubling detail, the rest of the story makes more or less complete sense, so what is the harm of the “lie”?

Because we now live in a culture where a lie, unless told under oath and punishment for perjury is actually pursued, is no longer a big deal.  So, I lied, so what?  I wasn’t under oath, only loser chumps take an oath not to lie.  Everybody lies, and you’re lying if you don’t think you’re a fucking liar too.  And if you don’t lie, you take the fucking Fifth, like a man.

The analysis is fine, as far as it goes, which is not far at all.   When you accept a lie you choose your poison.  

Why is the United States poised for an era of stochastic terrorism, angry, unbalanced men, rabid lone wolves, poised to do deadly violence to themselves and others, always ready to be triggered by an angry suggestion that this person or that is deserving of death? [1]  

Because the widely accepted lie that one party is run by demented, murderous, child-raping Communist blood-drinkers is as accepted (among a solid 30% of Americans)  as the one that Blacks are irrationally angry about nothing, that Jews are about to replace all “white” “legacy” Americans with brown dupes, that elections lost by your candidate are rigged by these all-powerful Commie traitors, etc.  If you are angry, and alone, and everyone else in your social media silo also faithfully believes these demonstrable lies are true, and you have lost faith in everything else, and an assault weapon is legal and readily available in your state, why on earth wouldn’t you take out some of these demonic scum in your heroic last act on earth?

What is the cost of accepting a lie, being faithful to defending a lie to the death?   It costs you your integrity, your authenticity, your credibility. It also costs the ability to ever solve a problem or conflict based on what actually caused the problem or conflict.

As in politics, so in our personal lives.   If saying something that is true enrages or humiliates someone you know, you tactfully avoid the topic.  Some topics are easier to avoid than others.  If it is a shameful single event, unrelated to anything else, that you both acknowledge is mutually painful and worth avoiding, it’s reasonable to agree to not bring it up anymore.  If the topic is honesty itself, that’s a tough bridge to cross with your relationship intact. 

“Uh, OK, we can’t talk about why it’s better to be honest than dishonest, OK, let me try to remember never to say anything that might bring up that flaming bag of shit.  Honesty is overrated, LOL!”

To me, the cost of my integrity, authenticity and credibility is too high a price to pay, in most situations.  Then again, I have a lifelong issue in that regard.  Life itself, making a living, often requires limiting the scope of one’s integrity, authenticity and even credibility, in the name of going along to get along.  Too much insistence on a right to be whole, and treated by others with the same care you give to them, can make you as welcome as an agitated scorpion at a baby shower.

On the other hand, if you are honest, you will understand that the price of lying is almost always unacceptable.

If we don’t trust each other, what kind of love do we have between us? What kind of savage world do we live in?

[1]  Walking neo-Nazi pustule Steve Bannon called for the death of Anthony Fauci, and his family, on his podcast the other day. Free Speech, bitches.  First Amendment, you fucking blood-drinking Fauciist cucks!

If it was me

If it was me and a close friend I’d had for decades, since I was a kid, a person I loved, a person who finally found it impossible to remain friends with me in my embattled, inflamed marriage, called me to reconcile and be friends again, I would have taken him up on it.

Especially if it was true that I found this person unique in my life, funny and smart, still dreamed about him regularly, and both of my boys had very warm feelings toward him. I would have arranged a jam session with my two musician sons and my old friend, that would have been my first move.

There were many things I would have done that would have probably been better than sending him this text in response to a music clip he’d sent a few weeks earlier.

Just lovely! But I can’t contain my rage at the pussy assed Democrats and the pussies that they make Attorney General
who are too scared to put an ex President in jail. Fuck Garland. Imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot? Would have been the electric chair for Obama.

Well, on the plus side, at least he’s praying to God every morning with great devotion. As long as you’re right with your Creator, what do I have to say about anything?