Author Archives: oinsketta

Insecurity on steroids

The thing with someone who can never acknowledge they were wrong, or behaved hurtfully, is that it comes from a terrible insecurity. We all have insecurities, it is part of the human condition to wonder and compare yourself to an ideal you have of how you should be able to act in the world. People who can’t be wrong live in a different world than the rest of us fallible earthlings.

If you admit you’ve hurt somebody, it makes you a bad person, in their crabbed, black and white worldview. People who hurt others are bad, they need to be perfect, so it is impossible that they could have hurt someone without a very good reason. That reason is always the same: “that person who claims I hurt them, that liar, actually hurt me, really, really badly. I am the victim, not them! How dare that morbidly oversensitive defective attack my perfection, and expect me not to react!”

“I was only reacting, like any normal person would, reflexes got the best of me. You made me shoot you in the gut, because I was rightfully afraid you were going to attack me. You didn’t see that terrifying look on your face, I had to stand my ground. Everyone has a right to self-defense, that’s all I was doing when I shot you a few more times just to make sure you couldn’t get up and beat the living crap out of me, pistol whip me with my own gun. Don’t pretend that’s not exactly what you were thinking as you were lying there, fake bleeding!”

In my personal life I’ve recently experienced this insecurity on steroids, in my face so constantly I had to grapple with the underlying principle of how these emotionally driven motherfuckers truly believe they are acting righteously. Coming from a loved one, someone you’ve long trusted, it really fucks with your mind. A person who is sometimes wrong, who apologizes from time to time, cannot understand that for someone with crippling insecurity these simple human acts are impossible. The logic is not hard to understand, once you grasp the basic principle.

I am so insecure that any criticism or complaint against me is a deadly attack. I cannot be wrong, because everyone loves and respects me. I am an exemplary person. I will not be attacked by people with mental problems. You are insane if you don’t understand that you are wrong and I am right, no matter what.

You can’t reason with these good folks, they are beyond the reach of introspection, empathy or the ability to see nuance or take responsibility for the harm we all sometimes do to others. All they see is deadly threat, competition to the death and victory. Once you realize this about them, how paralyzed they are by insecurity and anger (which hardens immediately into implacable rage) during even the most minor conflict, the only thing you can do to preserve your integrity (and what’s left of your sanity) is follow the advice of the second best fortune cookie I ever opened:

The best throw of the dice is to throw them away.

Well done, Robert Reich

Robert Reich:

Friends,

I hope you read today’s Common Good essay, which I posted late last night. 

In the meantime, though, I want to talk about symbols, images, and fascism.  

Here is Trump’s mugshot from his arraignment yesterday in Georgia. It’s a look of defiance — which I’m sure he practiced repeatedly beforehand — intended for his supporters and his Republican base to feel defiant, too. 

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is Trump’s thousand-word response to Wednesday night’s Republican debate which he declined to attend. 

He timed his arraignment in Georgia for yesterday so that it — and this photo — would dominate Thursday’s and Friday’s news, rather than anything or anyone emerging from the debate. 

But a defiant photograph isn’t “news.” It’s a symbol, an image. Which is exactly what Donald Trump is. He has no political platform, no specific policy agenda, no new ideas, and no plan for what he’ll do if he gets a second term. 

He exists as a symbol for the anger, discontent, bigotry, and vindictiveness he has unleashed in America. 

He is as close to America has come to a fascist leader, who doesn’t want his followers to think or analyze. He wants them only to feel. 

Last Thursday, Trump complained that Fox News “purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big “orange” one with my chin pulled way back. They think they are getting away with something, they’re not. Just like 2016 all over again … And then they want me to debate!”

Of course he’s angry. For the man who’s all symbol and image and without substance, a photo like the following conveys a brainless buffoon. It must drive him crazy. 

But Trump is not a brainless buffoon. He’s a cunning marketer, a diabolic manipulator of the public, a sly producer of his own daily reality show. His lead in the GOP’s presidential sweepstakes has grown. He will almost certainly be the Republican candidate for president next year — even if he’s in jail. 

How to debate a symbol? How to take on an image? How should Biden and the Democrats, and everyone who cares deeply about this country, respond to a demagogue who obsesses over what he projects rather than what he stands for? How to deal with a demagogue who doesn’t want followers to think but only to feel rage?

Expose him for who he is.

Nice move, DOJ

Go to like this bit of reporting from the great Heather Cox Richardson

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force (CFETF) established by Attorney General Merrick Garland in May 2021 to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud, announced its results today. The Department of Justice is brining federal criminal charges against 371 defendants for offenses related to more than $836 million in alleged COVID-19 fraud, most of it related to the two largest Small Business Administration pandemic programs: the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans, both funded by the March 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. In April 2020, Trump removed the inspector general tapped to chair a special oversight board Congress put in place to oversee the distribution of the act’s funds.

Removing rules, regulators and watch dogs is one of the hallmarks of MAGA and their original patrons, insatiable fascist billionaires.

America the credulous

You can listen to the braying of geniuses like Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Bobert, George Santos, Lyin’ Ted, Sean Hannity and the 19 RICO defendants in Fulton County. Apparently tens of millions of our fellow citizens do, believing every stinging accusation about inflation, communism and Hunter Biden’s criminal late filing of taxes and his nefarious laptop.

Then there are the facts, which don’t seem to get much political traction in this land of nonstop advertising and propaganda, according to the polls, though they do actually matter to the average citizen very much. Here’s one minute of Mehdi Hassan, debunking some widely held MAGA bullshit.

Clarence Thomas’s fanatical former clerk surrenders in Fulton County

Eastman was booked and released from the Fulton County Jail shortly before noon. Outside the jail, Eastman told NBC News that he “absolutely” still believed the 2020 election was stolen.

“No question in my mind,” said Eastman, who added that he was paying his own legal fees in the case.

a source

He’s on record telling co-conspirators, in the lead up to January 6, that if his creative legal theory ever reached the Supreme Court it would lose 9-0, even Clarence Thomas would have to vote against the idea that the Vice President has the power to singlehandedly decide the outcome of a presidential election during the ceremonial counting of electors by declaring a false controversy and letting loyal, partisan legislators decide who actually won the electors of their state.

Ginni Thomas, at least, must be delighted that her fellow-traveler Professor Eastman is sticking to his original story that the 2020 election was absolutely stolen. Jesus personally told Ginni the exact same thing, in a series of undeniable revelations. If you have fanatical faith you really don’t need anything else, as long as you have wealth and power too.