Things your parents can’t teach you

Nobody can teach you something they have no ability to do and no understanding of. Our first teachers, from before we can do anything but imbibe lessons we don’t understand, are our parents. If our parents don’t know how to compromise, how to resolve conflict, how not to become frustrated and enraged at others, how to forgive — we have a hard time unlearning whatever they demonstrated for us everyday so we can learn those crucial skills.

Rage is hard, fear of shame is devastating, the need to be right, no matter what, is crippling. The best some people can do, with every intention of being loving and teaching those they love by their example, is not very good. It is very bad. They will teach their children to take the blame for their parents’ shortcomings. The child grows to be an adult with deep cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, their parents are great people. On the other hand, they find themselves always in pain, especially around their parents, who love them, but are exhausting to be around.

My father lamented just before he died that in a challenging world with so many obstacles in everyone’s path that he placed additional obstacles in the path of his son and daughter, the two people, beside his wife, who he loved the most in the world. I’d have followed up on it, but he was dead.

If you work hard and have some luck, you can figure out how to become the parent to yourself that your disabled parents weren’t capable of being. Clearly, if we got to choose, it is much better never to have had this kind of asshole parenting. Parenting is in large part based on authority, but when the respect isn’t mutual, you wind up having to accommodate yourself to tyranny that may cause your brain to explode, unless you can come to see it for what it actually is. As Robin Williams’s character, the shrink in Goodwill Hunting, told Matt Damon’s, his super vulnerable tough guy patient, “it’s not your fault.”

It’s not your fault.

Questions for the jury

Imagine a vexing event from your own life, a time someone treated you badly. Take all the names out and present it to an imagined jury of twelve reasonable citizens, like so:

An overbearing, tyrannical father talking to his college grad son who has moved back home while looking for a job, tells the young man that he knows of a good contact to get into his field, television, writing and media. Then he tells his son that he’s not going to set up a meeting with this excellent lead because “what would that teach you about life?”

In hindsight the adult son knows his father probably knew no such person. Falsely claiming to know him, to be able to help, gave him the power to fuck the son he hated almost as much as he hated himself. So, armed with this knowledge, and a time machine, the son goes back to the original moment of abuse with the father.

“OK, dad, I get what you’re saying. Give me the guy’s name and I’ll do the legwork to get an appointment with him.”

“How would that teach you about pulling yourself up by your own initiative, will and strength of character?”

“By teaching me to help others, when it is within my power, instead of hindering them. Please just give me the guy’s contact info and I’ll take it from there.”

After more tap dancing from his grandiose father, madly insisting that by providing a phantom lead and then hindering him in his moment of need that he is actually building his character, the son comes to the point.

“If you actually know this guy, let me call his office. If you’re lying, what is your fucking problem, father?”

Questions for the Jury:

If the father doubles down with the whole “I’m doing this abusive thing for your own good, son, and I’m right and you’re wrong, no matter what” bullshit, is the son within his rights to get angry?

If so, and the father escalates to yelling, is there a point where the son might be justified in grabbing his father by the front of shirt?

A point where a slap might be in order, with a stern instruction to stop talking?

Is there any point to any of it? Should the son just tell the father to have a nice day and get as far from him as he can?

BUT, he is unemployed and broke. He is living in the abusive father’s house.

Discuss equitable remedies, in light of the requirements of justice.

A group’s greatest love

There is no greater love, believes the group, than undeviating antipathy toward a hated betrayer of the group. This principle seems to operate everywhere, throughout history. If you can show someone is disloyal, a traitor, has betrayed a loving group, well, whatever is coming to such a person is well deserved, in the eyes of the loyal, loving group.

We see it daily with MAGA. We see it with groups like the Klan, Nazis, all those fine people, in every insular group. We see it on the left and on the right, though it is most conspicuous lately on the right. There is nothing a beloved member of the far right can do that will cause other members to condemn the behavior. Loyalty über alles. On the other hand, criticize the beloved member and you will be promptly vilified and tossed out of the group. MAGA has a great term for traitors like Bill Barr, lately come to a realistic assessment of his former master: RINO. Republican in name only, like Liz Cheney and her filthy ilk.

Having experienced this ostracism recently in my personal life – a minor conflict with two people who can never be wrong, a series of threats and long periods of silence, lies about my behavior, unanimous judgment by old friends insisting they love me but won’t talk about what they already know I did and am now lying about — I understand that the evil involved in this human reflex is almost incidental. Going along with the group is as natural as taking the underdog’s side in a fight.

At the same time, the person who tells the initial lies, no matter how desperate they feel when they assassinate the good name of an old friend, has no right to do that. The group, if they take her side, is acknowledging that truth and falsehood are trifles when it comes to the seriously hurt feelings of an overwhelmed, beloved member of the group. You could also call those reputation killing lies evil, I would, but, fuck, I’m judgmental enough without bringing good and evil into it. Ask any of my former close friends.

The ongoing gift of childhood trauma

If your parent, whenever you were upset and needed comfort, told you that you were weak, cowardly, needy — well, that is a gift that keeps on giving. If they alternated between merciless blaming and name calling and silence, well, silence by way of response will take on a magically painful quality for the rest of your days.

It’s very easy while waiting for a reply, if you’ve been subjected to cruel, strategic silence, to imagine, just because somebody is being silent (they could, of course, be busy, preoccupied, forgetful, distracted, ill, in a crisis, taking care of someone else), that they are silently seething at you. You can picture them glaring, arms folded, in a hostile posture of complete opposition and denial. Whatever you say their answer is ready – a silent glare of negation and blame.

Silence, to which you have been morbidly sensitized from before you can do anything to defend yourself against it, will be your kryptonite. Loved ones who know this about you, when smarting over their own issues, may deploy it from time to time, as blamelessly as the parent who simply kept quiet when you most needed a few sympathetic words.

The emotional mind is literally like a bucking bronco sometimes. When it starts to kick all you can do is take a few deep breaths and use your rational mind to try to rein it in. “This steep path is very rocky, “ you might say calmly to your bucking bronco mind, trying to recall it to reason. “There’s a long drop down the side, maybe a thousand feet… OK, OK … there you go… there you go, good mind, good mind!”

Weaponizing the air we breathe

You wouldn’t think it possible to weaponize something like sensible health precautions during a deadly plague. It was very easily done here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Wearing a mask, at government demand, was turned, for tens of millions of free citizens, into a tyrannical indignity calling for armed resistance. The Covid vaccine the otherwise negligent president, to his credit, fast tracked, became, as soon as he was out of office, a hated injection of wokeness that would turn you into a transsexual.

It turns out that anything can be weaponized. I saw this recently with a small group of old friends after a couple I was very close to felt humiliated by what I’d witnessed between them. They share a characteristic with everyone who must always be seen as right, perfect and correct: they went to war to win the hearts and minds of the others and make sure I would never be believed. Life, to the sort who must always be right, is a constant and total war where no prisoners may be taken. All critics must be thoroughly discredited and silenced, on pain of unbearable shame.

The charge of weaponization is a great weapon, it turns out. If you are inclined to believe somebody you will not question their claim that someone who criticizes them is a fucking liar. You see how smoothly this works? I confide in you how hurt I was that my close friends maliciously lied about me. I did nothing wrong, they attacked me viciously, continued to attack, blaming me the entire time when all I tried to do was make peace. I’ll provide a few truthful examples, to cement my lies. You will be all sympathy. Unless – they got to you first with a convincing story.

Note: these motherfuckers will always get there first. A lie is halfway around the world while the truth is just putting its pants on, as it’s been aptly put. Maybe it’s shoes truth struggles to put on, while the lie is wildly boogying its way around the world. You get the point. Tell the story first, make your version definitive, lament the awful truth, grieve, be consoled. The end.

On that note, the corrupt political appointee who enabled a corrupt president to skate for obstruction of justice and his campaign’s 140 instances of collusion with a foreign power, now using the weapon of his bad breath to criticize the man he fought so doggedly to corruptly protect. The clip is short and sickening, as this “gutless pig” finally speaks truthfully.

https://youtube.com/shorts/YcZae05tqu4?feature=share

Thought experiment

Imagine you had a relatively minor conflict with two of your oldest friends. Afterwards, as they withdrew from you, you remained patient, reassuring when they threatened you, or told you they were unsure that they could ever forgive you, or were angry at you. Imagine you extended friendship to them, no matter how wildly they attacked you.

Now imagine that after a year of this they told all of your friends in common, and everyone in their family, that you were implacably enraged, unforgiving, bent on being right at all costs, sadistic, harshly judgmental and totally unloving.

Then imagine that all of your friends embraced this series of lies, this character assassination. The only problem, everybody agrees, is your immature paralysis, the result of a painful childhood that left you incapable of dealing with your rage.

Now the thought experiment is not imagining how to get through or make peace with these people who, there’s a very strong case, were never really very good friends in the first place, but how do you move on with your fucking life?

$64,000 question, doc.

Trumpie seeks another writ of mandamus

He had his lawyers file papers in Georgia Supreme Court to force the Fulton County DA to stop her criminal investigation, remove her from his case, and suppress all of the evidence she has gathered, forever. To seek this extraordinary relief his lawyers had to argue that he has “a clear and indisputable right to the [extraordinary] relief requested” and that there was a serious error in the court below not granting this extraordinary relief.

There was no error and the extraordinary relief requested is only available if there is no other avenue to justice available and several conditions are all met. None of the conditions have been met. Trumpie caused another completely frivolous set of legal papers to be filed, wasting everyone’s time with vexatious delay, using the court as an offensive weapon.

To understand how ridiculous Trumpie’s request for a writ of mandamus is, see the dissent in MAGA Judge Neomi Rao’s erroneous ruling granting Mike Flynn the same extraordinary relief, to which he was also not entitled. Rao was appointed by Trumpie himself to fill the smelly seat on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals recently occupied by the supremely entitled, gassy Boof Kavanaugh.

In her highly deferential opinion, Rao states the law she is about to ignore (before being roundly reversed on appeal):

For this court to grant a writ of mandamus, “the right to relief must be ‘clear and indisputable’; there must be ‘no other adequate means to attain the relief’; and ‘the issuing court, in the exercise of its discretion, must be satisfied that the writ is appropriate under the circumstances.’” In re Cheney, 544 F.3d 311, 312–13 (D.C. Cir. 2008)

Here is very detailed description of the corruption of Trumpie’s first attempt to get Flynn’s guilty plea thrown out. It contains the dissent’s excellent description of what is required for a writ of mandamus and why none of those factors were present for Flynn. No matter what his new attorney, Sidney Powell, or corrupt religious blowhard Bill Barr had to say to the contrary.

Unfortunately for Trumpie, judges are still constrained by the law, until they reach the Supreme Court, of course. Even then, they cannot always wipe their asses with the Constitution. They need carefully constructed Federalist Society-hatched fact-specific cases, lawsuits brought to selected Federalist Society judges for particular outcomes. When these selected cases make their way up to the Supreme Court, where the majority, if sufficiently partisan, may wipe their collective asses with the Constitution. Trumpie’s desperate, frivolous filing is not such a case.