To understand how delicate bragging, strutting narcissists are as they advertise their unique greatness, you have to consider that their stilted worldview is an attempt to escape the unbearable pain of a crushing sense of their worthlessness.
If you have a burning sense of inferiority you must construct the facade of a superman, just to survive. Pick at this facade at your own risk, losers!
Give yourself a six minute break and go to a party. Man, this track brings up so many memories and feelings from years back. And it is so joyous.
Very hard to argue with anything he’s saying in this short clip
Excellent short presentation of the extreme views taken by both sides, both sides!
Gladiators, the successful ones who survived battle to the death after battle to the death, apparently became celebrity superstars in the Roman Colosseum. In an oligarchy with widespread slavery and poverty, the spectacle of superstar gladiators fighting to the death was the reality TV, the bread and circus, of its day. Passionate crowds were mesmerized and forgot their own troubles screaming at the carnage and voting for life or death at the end of the contest. The power of life or death!
There were also philosophers, scholars and historians in ancient Rome. There was little glory, or money, in any of that, so the intellectuals pursued what they did out of their own passion for knowledge. But they made the average hungry Roman feel stupid — who cares about what’s in a dumb book if you don’t know how to read? Bring on the mighty death defiers!
Which would you rather watch, a vicious battle to the death between heroic gladiators, with savage wild beasts on chains leaping at them to tear them apart, or some boring fuck droning on and on about stupid things you can’t even understand?
Capitalism remembers these important lessons from antiquity. They have been repeated in every epoch, are being repeated right now. It is rage. fear and passion — and courage in the face of death, and bold lies about courage in the face of death, if you lack that courage — that sway gigantic crowds of angry people with easily stirred eternal grievances.
People who think things through generally prefer peace to the hellscape of war. Even warmongers envision peace after the war is won. Eternal peace is every religious person’s vision of Heaven.
Men of action prefer action. Which is more exciting to see, a hard punch in the fucking face, or a thoughtful person thinking and speaking quietly?
Let us hope the iron law of capitalism has not made imbeciles of us all in a land where thoughtful people with the power to do so hesitate to punish open corruption and criminality that threatens everybody, seemingly cowed, while the fans of people powerful enough to remain always above the law arm themselves and prepare for mortal combat to decide what is justice.
I still think human decency and common sense wins, I think it wins tomorrow’s election too, but, if I’m wrong, I’ll see y’all in concentration camp.
Perfect for real Patriots, if you mean by that MAGA members of the New England NFL team!
If you find yourself locked in a titanic battle of wills, remember one fact: there is no way to resolve that kind of impasse with logical discussion, no matter how calmly you get yourself to proceed. Will, once inflamed, is not amenable to compromise, facts, persuasion, the observable law of cause and effect, the consensus of most calm, disinterested people in the world. This kind of showdown is famously phrased as “my way or the highway.” The best you can do, when confronted with another person’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge they’ve hurt you, is hit the road.
If we are not in a do-or-die war of wills, and we find ourselves suddenly and confusingly at odds, we can talk. A conversation can reveal that there may have been a misunderstanding, something taken out of context, a disorienting echo of past trauma that made us act badly, something we can later understand clearly was wrong of us to do, hurtful, causing damage. After a good talk, we can make amends, agree to be aware of what caused our conflict and try not to hurt each other as we have.
In a war of wills, all that is beside the point. The need to win justifies victory by any means necessary. This kind of fight is a desperate struggle to the death. Remember that willful people are deeply damaged, so badly hurt that they’re incapable of acknowledging they could ever hurt anybody else. They are always the victim.
We see it in our politics, of course, and it trickles down to almost all of us in this litigious, zero-sum culture where for every “winner” there are ten million losers. If you are terrified of being a “loser” (an absurd and deadly construct, we should note ), there is no limit to what you will do to try to win. If you don’t win, you will scream bloody murder (in my grandmother’s great phrase). The game was rigged, you were cheated, everybody else is a fucking liar, weak, traitorous, stupid, a puppet, sick, dangerous, a monster! This enraged outburst is the reaction of a “Terrible Two” year-old, a child just discovering that they won’t always get their way and fucking inconsolable about it.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as the saying goes. If you want something badly enough, you can often find a way to get it. Where there’s a will, there’s a won’t — in every battle of wills. You say it was this way, I say no it wasn’t. You say you were hurt, I say no you weren’t. You say you have a recording of me saying what I now deny saying — I say you wore a wire on me, you fucking fuck! If facts, actual events, cause and effect, how most people not involved in your conflict would feel, are all dismissed as the Devil quoting scripture to win an argument, my best advice to you, friend, after every good faith attempt to make peace shows you only the implacable face of war: hit the road, Jack.
Stable Genius At Work. More political genius from the smartest man to lead a violent political movement since the Führer himself. Got to love this shit. The guy is truly sui generis. His ever-changing crew of lawyers may get fed up, quit, call him nuts, but he doesn’t pay them (unless the RNC ponies up their fees) and just gets new ones.
His latest batch of legal luminaries filed this in Florida state court, the other day, against the New York State Attorney General, after an argument against filing that the boss won. Smarter legal minds than my own have no explanation for this, outside of five dimensional chess in an alternate universe. Here are a couple of nice bits, apparently dictated by the smartest man in the world himself.
This lawsuit means he’s mad as hell, as he was as a baby, a child, a young juvenile delinquent, his father’s reluctant second choice, serially bankrupt business genius, leader of an enraged political movement. Oh, well, I guess he’s got a plan for his Grand New Party!
It really is as simple and brutal as Bernie lays it out. MAGA truly is the party of billionaires (real and wannabe). It’s a handful of those endlessly greedy fuckers against the rest of us. Here’s the senator from Vermont with ninety seconds of indisputable clarity.
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