4-2 quickly becomes 8-2 in a group of ten

When I was six or seven, and first learned about Switzerland’s neutrality in World War Two, I thought it was great that peaceful Switzerland didn’t get involved in the hideous carnage. It wasn’t long afterwards, once I learned a bit more about the Nazis, that I understood that Switzerland’s principled neutrality was actually an acceptance of the equal right of plundering Nazis and desperate, wealthy Jews, to safeguard their fortunes during this world catastrophe, to the great benefit of a banking nation who took no moral position on anything other than protecting, and enhancing their own, wealth. In other words, Swiss neutrality, when Nazis were going full ape shit in the world, was not a good thing but a rather evil thing.

Heather Cox Richardson, in a recent talk with Jon Stewart, made an excellent point about the feelings of most people. We want to get along, not have to fight, or be intimidated, or made to feel isolated or uncomfortable. In any group of ten, she pointed out, if two are intent on power and control, they will choose two, make them the source of all evil by vilifying them, often by lies, and turn the other six against them. You can see the short clip of her description here.

What I have come to realize is that it is only necessary for the two who want control of the group to recruit two others to their side.  If they can convince two, the next four are almost automatic.  The two they convince will be very credible advocates for the proposition that those two selected for exclusion are beyond redemption, sick, evil, disgusting, dirty, nasty, mean, ugly etc.  They will be the best ambassadors for the position of the two they follow.  It will be natural for the next two and then the last two to follow the group.  In a tight-knit group, consensus always makes sense if the group intends to remain intact. It is, after all, a loving group that very much cherishes its closeness.  Nothing brings people closer than shunning a common enemy.

Finding myself on the short end of this common equation, with a group of lifelong friends, I’ve had to ponder the dynamics of this in order to make some kind of peace with it. I’ve learned that those who can never be wrong, must be perfect, have no tools for resolving conflict, need to control others or they feel threatened themselves, live their lives on a war footing.

As you try to resolve a conflict with them they are already busy recruiting allies, spreading a stilted story to make you hateful, forming an iron coalition, first with two and then with everyone. It is impossible, then, after a good, righteous lynching, for a group to believe that they have done the wrong thing when they are unanimous in their moral position. In fact, the more wrong they are, the harder they will fight to make sure you’re good and dead and without any ability to make them feel like the credulous lynch mob they’ve become.

When you ask your old friends how they could believe such lies against you, they will insist that they are completely neutral, like Switzerland. Who are they to decide who is actually the Nazi in this scenario and who are those persecuted by Nazis? It’s a flawed metaphor. They are Switzerland, they will insist, taking no side, but, sadly, they will never see you or talk to you again.

Another very unweird stable genius

Elon speaks to fellow ordinary American, Tucker Carlson, revealing a completely beautiful personality and an empathetic, thoughtful, humanistic view of the world.

The People rest. You can cut my Medicare and Social Security any time, big feller. Nobody holds it against you that there’s a federal law making it illegal for government contractors, like you, to spend hundreds of millions to get benefactor politicians elected, you’ve earned it, philanthropist.

Post-truth culture, anyone?

Heather Cox Richardson breaks down the dynamic when people who need to control others want to make sure they have a stranglehold on control.  You vilify and dehumanize members of the community and force everyone else to choose: share my hatred of these insects or be a hated insect yourself.  The majority of people, intent on avoiding trouble and just getting along, will always make the easier choice. (Link if the video below dicks you around as it did me)

https://www.youtube.com/?v=bjdFsAh6PXQ

The chart below tells the whole story of disinformation and how it can infect a population, an election and government policy going forward. The lies the red bars show swung the close election to Trump are demonstrable, and based, feebly, on a larger truth. Yes, most Americans are getting screwed — most expensive health care in the world, highest price on drugs, biggest wealth disparity in history between those who have over 1,000 million dollars and everyone else, stagnant wages for working people, a corrupt corporatist Supreme Court purchased by right wing billionaires, a largely bought and paid for corporate Congress, manifestly incompetent political hacks appointed to important government posts, a two-tiered justice system strictly punishing the poor and letting the wealthy and connected go about their criminal business, child poverty, an epidemic of child murder by gun; killer storms, rising sea levels and climate science dismissed by fossil fuel lobbyists as having nothing to do with burning fossil fuel; every issue blurred and both-sidesed by a spineless, complicit corporate mass media, etc.

If there is no consequence for spreading deliberate disinformation, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, incendiary lies told knowingly to achieve a political result, then you get President Donald Trump. 

What does he know about foreign policy that gave him high Republican support on this issue?  That he can make all wars everywhere stop instantly with the force of his genius personality.  Why do only 25% of Republican voters polled care about red states forcing raped women and girls to give birth to their rapists’ babies?  Because Jesus said it’s right, according to their mega-pastors.   Everyone has a legitimate beef about the corporate greed at the heart of our economy, consolidation of goods and services under quasi monopolies that can raise prices at will.  All these corporate conglomerates had to do was keep ruthlessly raising consumer prices to make 80% of Republicans say “fuck Biden and his socialism, look how expensive bacon and eggs are at Publix!”

Immigration is perhaps the biggest lie on the list, and the most pernicious and powerful one.  Immigrants do a tremendous amount of crucial work that Americans won’t do, and they pay a gigantic amount of taxes.  They commit crimes at lower rates than born Americans.  There was a bipartisan bill to finally solve longstanding border issues along lines proposed by the most conservative Republicans.  Biden was ready to sign it, although it was a very good deal for right wing bigots who want to restrict legal immigration from poor countries.  Candidate Trump ordered his party to torpedo the bill, knowing it would be a great campaign issue to continue to lie about immense caravans of raping, murdering, sodomizing, blood poisoning mongrel vermin pouring into the country as Biden dithered, napped and slid into catatonic senility.   How well did that ploy work?  It was the number one reason people voted for the compulsively lying serial fraudster felon. Take that, fact-based assholes!  Who’s the political genius now?

From the same great, infallible, doctrinaire team that brought you Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, Coney Barrett, Thomas and bland, corporate superhero Roberts.   Trump, not Biden, is the true Unifier-in-Chief, libtard cucks!  So there. Be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray, J6 forever! Deus Vult, heretics.

Hegseth’s right arm

Healthcare, USA style

A very strong case can be made that we live in an extremely toxic culture here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Our culture is so insanely poisoned that the regular slaughter of school children and their teachers by insane “gunmen” is considered, by a powerful, immovable minority, the non-negotiable price for American freedom, somehow.   Our toxic culture is the only one in the world that allows the regular mass murder of our children.  Number one cause of death for children one to eighteen years old — gunshot.

How toxic is our culture? A candidate for the American presidency can tell this colossal, hateful lie, pulled directly out of his own floridly insane imagination, (in a manner that even Hitler might have hesitated to voice in public) gain millions of likes and as many votes, become president again:

He’s angry about a fact that he just made up, young American girls being raped, sodomized and murdered by these illegals…. the dark brown, scary, violent, pet eating ones who are poisoning the blood of our country like the vermin enemy within (folks like me and Mike Pence)…

Just to be clear, this imagined rampage of rapes of young girls by dark-skinned “illegals” (listen to the evocative way the mad fuck pronounces that word), in the mind of this asshole’s diehard fans, means that, blessedly, (for the ones who wear crosses), even more rapists’ children must be born, because that is how Jesus wants it. Fetuses are clearly infinitely more sacred and precious than kindergarten children.

The public’s reaction to the cold blooded murder of a wealthy health insurance CEO has been, largely, to treat the man who killed him as an avenging folk hero. When I told a friend someone had quipped that there are 50,000,000 Americans with a motive to shoot him, his response was “only 50,000,000?” Another friend questioned whether the gunshots were actually the cause of death, isn’t it likely the dead man had many comorbidities?

What did this CEO do to inspire someone to kill him?  He simply did his job, vastly increasing the profitability of his health insurance company by using AI to deny 99% of all claims.   He noted that far less than 1% of those denied health care by his insurance company ever appealed the denial of claims by his bots.  A fucking genius innovator, this guy.  His company, the largest health insurance giant in the world, took in $260,000,000,000 (with a B) last year [1].  They were doing great, more profitable than ever, and the CEO was raking in piles of money for himself.

Did he deserve to be murdered?   Arguably, nobody does.  The public reaction seems to underscore the feeling that in an age when well-connected psychopaths are constantly rewarded, their crimes excused, where no accountability for powerful white men shitting on the world seems to exist, some will argue that this is exactly the kind of exception to the rule that we need right now. 

These CEOs will now all be accompanied at all times by armed guards, ready to maim anyone who might threaten the boss.  Nobody wins this kind of war.  In fact, American fascists are spoiling for exactly this kind of war.  Newly minted acting Minister of Treason General Michael “Q-Anon” Flynn will be empowered with the discretion to create death squads to counter the violent enemy within, particularly in anarchist jurisdictions, where these enemies proliferate like insects.

The point about the brutality of the American health insurance system remains, though.  The United States is the only wealthy country where health care is not a right, where buying health insurance is the best anyone can do when it comes to paying for our own health care.  Who put these parasitic middle men into the loop?

Why are there so many Medicare Advantage and Medigap plans?  Because the gold standard of American health care (health insurance, actually) only covers 80% of covered procedures, while dental, vision and other crucial elements of health care are excluded entirely.  Who benefits from this system?  A company that had revenues of $260,000,000,000 (with a B) last year.   That’s a shit ton of incentive to keep things just the way they are.

No matter who has to fucking die or be killed.

Nothing ever happened to any of the murderously incompetent idiots who willfully allowed twice as many Americans to die of Covid-19 than died anywhere else. The angry moron who oversaw that shitshow of televised carnival barker-led carnage is back in charge again, with loyalty oaths to ensure nobody ever contradicts him again. What a country! Pay your health insurance premiums or die, don’t tread on me!

[1] Forbes

Certain stories have only one reasonable response

We like to think that there are two sides to every story. Many times there are way more than two sides. The truth can be very slippery to get a grasp on, particularly when compelling stories that contradict each other are told. There are some stories, however, that almost anyone, weighing the events fairly, will relate to as true.

Some stories are not complicated in the least, if you look at them clearly. If you ask one or two people, or ten, likely they will all have exactly the same response that you did.

I think of the daughter who accused her father of wanting to fuck his son’s girlfriend, after he defended the girl as a good match for his son who made his son happy, in spite of what the daughter thought of the girl. The father was pissed off, felt disrespected, gave his twenty four year-old daughter a piece of his mind. Afterwards his wife told him he was out of line, that their daughter was just trying to be funny. I’ve yet to meet anyone who has agreed with the wife’s assessment that the girl was joking and believed the father had no reason to feel hurt by the remark.

There are some stories that simply don’t have two equally compelling sides or a lot of nuance. Sometimes a story has one demonstrable truth — for example, a three hour violent riot filmed and broadcast in real time, with more than a hundred injured police officers taken to the hospital. There is of course a counter story, in this case that the riot we all watched was, actually, “legitimate political discourse.”

The second story, to be remotely true, must discount the violence that injured outnumbered law enforcement, the breaking and entering, mass criminal trespass, vandalism, the necessity of heroic actions by a few policemen to allow lawmakers to flee the threats to their lives, the gas masks, the gallows and all the rest. One can’t believe the second story without dismissing a huge trove of evidence we all witnessed.

We can, of course, discuss which of these stories is closer to true, and millions will be compelled by one side or the other, but what actually happened is the deciding factor in which story is closer to true.  You can spin a story, as the studiously both-sides New York Times has become so adept at doing, but that is not the same as presenting an intelligible story that doesn’t make both sides, no matter how ridiculous one side is, seem equally plausible.  During legitimate political discourse, for example, people are rarely, if ever, injured en masse or taken to the hospital with grievous injuries. 

Here are two nice headlines for illustrative purposes, from our beloved journal of record

MAGA judge appointed by Trump, nothing political here
One person’s complaint was based on lies, the other’s was based on facts on the ground right now

Some stories are not complicated in the least, if you look at them clearly. If you ask one or two people, or ten, likely they will all have exactly the same response that you did.

A surgeon described to me a ten to twenty minute procedure that involves no cutting, merely the stretching of a constricted structure by a method called dilation.   A little shaving of the place the structure inserts into may be required, he said, but he could only tell that once he was looking through a scope during the procedure.   The procedure he described was much less invasive than the one I was expecting to have and without a side effect I was dreading.  I was relieved. 

A few weeks later when I got the presurgical papers, dilation was not included among the procedures I was scheduled to have.  There was a surgical resection described (likely the shaving he’d referred to) and the possibility of something called a cold knife urethrotomy.  As I’d never heard of this procedure, I looked it up.  Here’s what the device looks like:

I was concerned about this unannounced change of plans.   The risks associated with slicing with a urethrotome are not inconsiderable. The odds of success appear to be depressingly low.  I needed to talk to my doctor.  The corporation the doctor works for, a subsidiary of the the nation’s largest, and presumably most lucrative, corporate provider of such medical services, does not allow patients to directly speak to their doctor.  My need for this procedure is close to an emergency level, but I had to finally cancel the fucking surgery today, as there is no way to give  informed consent without knowing the risks and benefits of a surgical procedure I was never told about.

This outcome is what I mean by certain stories have only one response.  Any patient, or friend of a patient, hearing surgery A proposed, getting notification of surgery B, would have questions of the surgeon.  It is not the result of PTSD, trauma, the experience of abuse or being bullied that would make someone need an answer to this question.  It is the nature of the questionable behavior that makes the question necessary.

It is like having to inform a loved one that they had no right to punch you in the face when they were drunk.   There aren’t multiple sides to this story.  If the loved one tells you to shut up, they were drunk, it only happened three times in fifty years, it doesn’t change the essential nature of the story.  You are not wrong to either need this talked through to ensure it never happens again, to not see this person again, or whatever the solution you need is.  It’s not like there are two equally compelling sides to the story, outside of the question of how you let it happen a second and third time.

Corporations were ruled to be people by a corporatist United States Supreme Court. The kind of person a corporation is has all of the characteristics of a psychopath. Here’s a checklist from the excellent 2003 documentary The Corporation, which lays out the case in a manner so irrefutable it will make your spine tingle.

You can see the entire movie here, on YouTube, for only the cost of having to skip the infernal corporate ads inserted every ten minutes.

Your spine will tingle at the recognition that we are all prey and the corporate person, an eating machine without any other consideration, has virtually no constraints on its appetite.

Adversity has a million tricks

Say your sleep is robbed by the daily aching in your prosthetic knee after it hasn’t moved for a few hours. The surgery went perfectly, every surgeon who looks at the beautiful x-ray agrees. You are apparently one of the unlucky tiny percentage who suffer from Highly Successful Surgery Suboptimal Outcome Syndrome and chronic pain and limited ability to walk is something you will have to get used to, asshole. It’s not the surgeon’s problem if you’re unable to heal properly.

On waking you agitatedly consider the nonresponse to the concise, urgent letter you wrote to your urologist seeking clarification on an upcoming surgery that is different, on the presurgical consent form, than the one you discussed and agreed to in his office.  You hand delivered the short  letter to his office Monday.  It is now Thursday, 6 pm.  On Monday morning you must get up early and have a battery of presurgical tests, for a surgery you were never informed of, can’t weigh the risks of and certainly never consented to.  The internet is a Christmas tree of blinking red lights about the many risks of this changed procedure, one with an alarmingly low success rate that involves shaving the inside of your urethra, lifelong urinary incontinence being but one of its unwanted outcomes (that’s why they make adult diapers, pant load).

Your new urologist is, like most other doctors in America today, an employee of a medical corporation run by vulture capitalists to extract maximum profit from the lucrative sector of human medical anxiety. The name should have been a give away: Psychopath Urology, PLLC. They talk a good game, I do have to give them that. These fuckers are nothing if not adept marketers:

At Psychopath Urology, PLLC, we are dedicated to providing the highest level of urological care to our patients in a friendly, compassionate office environment. Our Practice utilizes state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment, computerized medical records, and office based minimally invasive surgery.
In addition, we are deeply committed to providing expertise in treating urological conditions that specifically affect women with the latest laser techniques that treats vaginal atrophy. We are part of Medical Psychopath Vulture Capital, LLC, the largest group in the nation dedicated to the treatment of urological problems.

A forwarded text I had from my beloved that I saw as soon as I looked at my phone made me immediately shift my focus.  A ninety year-old woman we both love and cherish is in bad shape, hooked up to machines fighting to save her from congestive heart failure.  This sharp, funny woman is apparently confused (yet still somehow feisty) and very close to death.  Her daughter wanted us to know, because we are close to her mom and left her a couple of unanswered messages the last few days.  Devastating news.  Sekhnet sent me an agonized proposed text to the daughter, I suggested adding this:

Your mother’s feistiness is one of her enduring qualities, along with her great sense of humor, her wisdom, compassion and her deep faith.  She does not fear death and has a humble confidence in where she’s going afterwards.  Of course we hope she recovers, so we can have more of the love and joy she brings to us.  If she does not recover she will soon be in heaven, a beautiful, blessed soul, reunited with those she loved and lost.   It’s heartbreaking to us, who love her, but we must take consolation that she knows where she is headed if this is her time to go, the place for all such wonderful souls.  

History lesson from Heather Cox Richardson

I have to say, Jefferson’s words (which, of course, applied only to wealthy white men) get to me every time. Who can reasonably argue with the idea that the ideal government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed? Informed consent can only be given based on knowledge of the alternatives. This remains true today, when tsunamis of deliberate disinformation can drown all reasonable discussion among those who must give their consent. Here’s Heather:

The Founders of what would become the United States rested their philosophy on an idea that came from Locke’s observations: that individuals had the right to freedom, or “liberty,” including the right to consent to the government under which they lived. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

source

Why they marched a Confederate battle flag through the Capitol on January 6th

The driving will of the super-wealthy to become ever wealthier cannot be overstated. While most people could live very comfortable lives on $10,000,000 or $100,000,000, those people are, objectively, losers relative to those competitors who have a billion (one thousand million) or a hundred billion (a hundred thousand million). The greed of those obsessed with owning everything is apparently insatiable.

We can see it every day among our greatest, most admired and important citizens. Elon Musk made $64,000,000,000 in the week following Trump’s election, after spending chump change, $200,000,000, to advance Trump’s electoral chances. An astounding, immediate thirty-two fold return on investment. 3200% profit, most excellent! Mark Zuckerberg rushed down to Mar-a-Lago to sample the famously delicious “ring”.

What is the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? A millionaire is rich, a billionaire is an insatiably greedy psychopath.

In the old South these best of the best inherited vast fortunes based on slave labor. They inherited land, slaves, a lavish lifestyle of privilege and every advantage. A tiny percentage of white people ruled everybody in the antebellum south, in the manner of the old aristocracy in Europe. Poor whites were regarded, by the “Planters”, as rough tools to keep the slaves in line and were respected about as much as these genteel best of the best respected their dark-skinned human chattels. The poor whites, for their part, got to feel infinitely superior to, and brutally abuse, Blacks who showed them disrespect.

Poor whites died, or were maimed, by the tens of thousands supporting the cause of slavery and defending their masters’ right to rule them as well as their actual slaves. The myth they fought for was their superiority as white men, as a matter of their manhood fighting Northern Aggression to preserve a traditional, Godly way of life. After the Civil War, the Lost Cause myth [1] emerged quickly to explain why they had been righteous to fight, why their fight had nothing to do with slavery and why the South had never actually lost the war. Fast forward 156 years and you have rioters unfurling the Confederate battle flag in the Capitol. Here’s the story, drawn in a straight line, in under five minutes:

[1] Compare this racist alternative history of the Civil War to other myths about lost causes.

Hitler came to power after decades denouncing the “November Criminals” who, in 1918, “stabbed the victorious German Army in the back” by traitorously negotiating a humiliating surrender when the German Army was on the cusp of glorious victory (like they were again in April 1945, when the madman eventually shot himself in the mouth in his bunker).

Trump came to power endlessly screaming about a lost election that was stolen by sick, dangerous criminals and traitors (of both parties) that made a riot by patriots necessary, heroic patriotic martyrs who were viciously persecuted and unfairly locked up for justifiably attacking and hospitalizing more than 100 Capitol policemen in an attempt to selflessly save the nation they love. USA! USA!!!!

Note on gratefulness for Thanksgiving

There is always a lot to beware of in a world where psychopaths, more focused on power over others than most, hold a lot of power over the rest of us. Beware of those who repeatedly lie to win arguments, elections, discussions of who needs to be ostracized, rounded up, roughed up and why. Beware of smug certainty, inchoate anger, apathy, depression. Beware of anyone who shows you they’re incapable of ever being wrong, who blame you and always fight you to the death.

On the other hand, take care to appreciate the things in your life you are grateful for. If you have a talent that allows you to spend time in a special zone — be thankful as you enjoy it. If you gain an insight that helps free you from a painful cycle you’ve been trapped in, gratefulness is the proper feeling to have about it. If you have one person in your life who you can share your deepest feelings with, you are very lucky and Thanksgiving is the right day, as is every other day, to consciously feel appreciation for that great blessing.

I surprised myself a few weeks ago, during a discussion of my numerous, interlocking medical problems, any one of which can find me in an emergency room if not treated skillfully and soon, by expressing gratefulness. An overwhelming appreciation of good fortune, particularly amid hard luck and trouble, itself is something to be grateful for.

I’m grateful to find myself grateful.

It’s always worth a few moments to take a short inventory of the blessings in your life, no matter what horrors you are facing — particularly when you’re facing monsters, actually. The miraculous, precious, fleeting nature of life is worth considering from time to time, and being very grateful for.