politics

Why does America like assholes so much?

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Donald Trump Attacks Puerto Ricans Who ‘Want Everything Done For Them’

The above article is based on actual tweets from Donald Trump in reference to the recent disaster in Puerto Rico.  Personally, I think Trump is becoming rapidly senile, and we can expect more gaffes and non-understanding as his presidency wears on.

In the meantime, Trump fans are again sticking up for this as if their dubiously Christian values are supported by pointing and laughing at people in serious trouble.

This feature of American education struck us in the UK first when the fights broke out about the impeachment of Bill Clinton.  America apparently could not decide between worship of an adulterer, on the grounds that he was a go-getting success story, and disapproval of a man getting his bits licked by an unsuitably cuddly intern.  America likes its women stupid, thin, and compliant, and its men greedy, nasty and brutal, with no regard for others, apparently.

So, should we take it from this that ultimate capitalism is basically a dom/sub game, where you pick your preference, to fuck or get fucked?  What implications does this have for the future of all these ravished countries they have insinuated themselves into by bringing them their idea of demawkraseeeee?

Further, since there is some similarity here, a case of narcissist versus empath?  Empaths are clearly a bit socialist, and socialism is a very bad word to many Americans, who are not taught sufficient economic history to realise that they are educated to believe this in an effort to prevent any dangerous resurgence of unionism or workers having anything approaching rights?  Capitalism, on the other hand is inherently narcissistic.  Lose your empathy and shit, shit, shit on other people as hard as you can, quickly, before they notice.

So, to be happy and realise your American dream, you should lie, steal, shit on other people, grab as much cash as possible and spit on anybody that has not done the same or that shock-horror actually wants to help you for no apparent reason.  (Some readers will know that I have some direct experience of this) Once you have done this, you should patronize and use anybody that you regard as beneath you, no matter what the evidence of their being more intelligent or nicer than you, on the basis that they have less in the way of cash.  This is purist narcissistic behaviour, so it is little wonder that Americans are fascinated by this particular personality disorder and apply it at every opportunity.

We are seeing some new American aggression online too, in the form of the obsession with the kneel protest against racist brutality, because the kneelers apparently do not worship the flag sufficiently.  We in Britain know all about this, as my friend ‘Aldous’ used to say:

“Why is Great Britain the best country in the world?”

“Because it simply is, sir.”

We used to do the same thing, when we expected our little soldiers to go and slaughter people all over the world to establish our linguistic empire.  We were very successful, for such a piddly little country, and we still reap the rewards.  However, we left a trail of engineering and industrial seeding that we are not seeing from the Yanks.  The Yanks are more interested in sustaining the hopefully soon-to-decline oil industry and making sure that everyone will buy their poisonous food so that they can install their money-pit healthcare and fake voting system all over the world.

Trying to explain this to shouty and ill-educated Yanks is a fairly boring sport.  Sometimes I waste as much as fifteen minutes on it.  Yesterday, a Canadian who was writing a science fiction book about Canada invading America with the aid of aliens was being ‘destroyed’ by a Yank shouting about how this could never happen.

“Try looking up epistemology.”  I said.

This is a polite way of saying “Don’t you know the difference between knowledge and opinion, you miserable little shit?”  but he failed to look it up and could not join the fairly obvious dots, so I then had to explain it to him, which he then ignored because he could not answer.  American education is some of the worst that I have ever seen.  They like to keep people dumb and unhappy so that they will buy more stuff and believe more shit.  It is, in short, the most dangerous country in the world.  In my lifetime it has gone from dumbass teenager to violent twenty something, and the results are not pretty.

So, next time you get to Macdonalds, Baskin Robbins, Asda or Starbucks, keep walking.  You are supporting a violent, stupid and narcissistic country who would fuck you and then see you dead for an extra tenner.  You have been warned.

 

 

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motivation

As time goes by (yet another David Wolfe post)

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It honestly feels like months since my last post, but it was actually only five days ago.

I am going to the Wolfe event after all.  This may seem very odd, but it is time I did something selfish for the sake of my sanity.  I felt that it was unlikely that I would be able to do it for a few years so it was now or never.

There are several options as to how this will go down:

1.  He hates me, and will do something horrible like suddenly realise who I am and prevent me from attending once I have gone to all the trouble of actually getting there.

2.  He plays a horrible practical joke on me, which I would probably deserve after all these years.

3.  He does not know that I exist at all. (I doubt it, since he gives online stuff about him an Assange level of attention, which means he spends a great deal of time on that smartphone looking himself up)

4. He chooses to ignore me entirely, which I would again probably deserve.

5. He actually felt exactly as I did and is as similar to me as I thought he was, in which case he will be cautiously pleased to see me, with caveats.

6. He liked me more than I thought he did, in which case it will be a very strange experience indeed.

All I want to do is discuss my book and the game, both of which are designed to benefit him.  The book because I would like to ensure that he reads it at the very least, and the game because it has business implications.  Anything beyond that would be unexpected, and frankly it will be a miracle if I get that far.

In the meantime the preparation going into this is astonishing, and I haven’t even started on going through the research material yet.  In the last three days I have walked about 50km from sheer nerves.

I am still a little fat lady, albeit with bizarrely good skin, so I am hoping that I do not find myself feeling like an alien at an event which promoted itself as being full of hippy fanchicks and pale bodybuilder types.  I assume that this is not strictly the audience, although I note from the material sent to me so far that more than the first 80 tickets have apparently sold, so I may just melt into the crowd.

For the sake of reassurance, I am not attending this event as Ina Disguise the entity, but as my shy and retiring self, so I do not forsee too much in the way of drama coming from me.

Considering that I am still unable to watch any of his videos, I am not sure how I will react to this, but I am hoping that watching the audience will be as fascinating as I think it will be.

I am now going to go and read ‘Rhetoric of Economics’  to put myself in more of a ‘me’ mood.

 

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motivation

David Wolfe Uk Event update 2017 (sigh)

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I have two weeks left to see if I can attend the event that I was still trying to stop myself attending.  I have decided to stop asking myself permission.  I am not very nice to myself as a rule.

I have not had any flat out refusals, the big issue at the moment is care for my mother, which will be very expensive.

Should Wolfe happen to drop in on the blog, NOW would be a good time to object rather than after I have made the relevant arrangements, as Birmingham is amongst many of the countless things I hate about doing any of this.  You can do this via Tree of Life or by leaving a comment, which I can then hide.

It was extremely funny this morning trying to explain who he was without actually saying it.  I still cannot imagine actually doing this.  I have run through several scenarios so far, none of them particularly glorious.  I am trying to calculate how big a book I need to hide behind and whether I require a heavy veil and irritating hat.

 

Toodle Pip, I will hopefully know later in the week.

 

Ina

 

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health, motivation

Narcissism and other Pop Diagnoses

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My Sweet Somatic Narcissist – it’s free

 

I wrote the above story this week, and duly punted it for a couple of days.  The first four copies were poorly edited, so if anyone got one of these, my apologies.

Having spent the last week or so investigating the matter, I have come to the conclusion that you can easily get sucked into a vortex of extremely complex self-evaluation as a result of investigating this topic.  I would just like to reassure any potential readers of the above free story, that it is not particularly heinous or ‘victim’ orientated.  In fact, Kate responds reasonably well to her 18 months or so.  I did leave out some stuff, but it was more about poor self-management than drama.

So, today the mild panic was over whether I am an Inverted Narcissist  – someone who seeks relationships with narcissists because they know what to expect and seek validation from tolerance of narcissistic behaviour.  Given that I am drawn to complicated relationships, and that I have had a few narcissistic people in my life, I wondered whether this was a possibility.

Whilst I certainly don’t seek to cure people of whatever their problem is, I have probably shown too much flexibility in terms of tolerance in the past, and should be valuing my emotional and physical safety more highly.  I am also highly practiced at managing the feeding of narcissists, evidently, which is why I have managed fairly long term relationships with some very difficult people.  I do also suffer from flash rages, which are, I think more evidence that I was brought up in a large house where I could easily go and chuck a tantrum and avoid dealing with problems face to face, rather than evidence of CPTSD.  I could go down the other road, and investigate whether I am suffering from dependency issues etc, but I think it is healthier to develop a harder core and go ahead and do what I am capable of.

Therefore, I would like this blog post to be a warning to other people like me, who discover that the answer to some unanswerable questions is that you are dealing with people suffering from a variety of personality disorders.  Your trauma is yours, and you do not necessarily require intervention or company.  As I have said to many people in the past, feeding the sharks is not necessarily a good idea.  Sometimes it is a good idea to starve your particular shark and go and do something else.  It is not so much a question of avoidance, as a willingness to say OK, I think I will close that chapter and move onto something else.

In the more distant past, I moved on successfully from being an angry teenager to being a highly productive twenty something, and a stupidly caring thirty and forty something.  I got some answers this week, as to why I was so angry to start with, and why I am taking the very odd path that I am currently taking.  I do not think that this is justification to question or alter that path, as I think it is a positive development.  In many ways the Wolfe project is continuously positive.  I have rarely been so happy to avoid hating someone on the grounds of it being obvious to do so.

This does not mean that I will not be carefully considering the new information that I have, yes, I have been ‘mobbed’ by my family for several years, yes, I have made a lot of mistakes with people, and yes, I have developed some symptoms of trauma.  However, the knowledge of this does not change the validity of what I am currently doing or plan to do, especially as it does not involve harming anybody and might help a great number of people if I can pull it off.    Even a few years ago this would have thrown me a bit off-balance, as I would have sought to ‘fix’ the problem.  Now, I think ‘meh.’

Feel the fear, and do it anyway.  Additional information is a good thing, using it as an excuse to stop moving forward is not.

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motivation

Where do you want to be in five years time?

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Well, it seems like nobody wants to answer my complicated question. I guess I should write a more interesting post.  I was just watching a yank video on emotional problems, as usual money was mentioned, and it asked where I wanted to be in five years time?

I was actually just discussing this on youtube a couple of days ago.  The great thing about not climbing any sort of ladder until later in life, is that your youth is kind of artificially preserved by your lack of self-definition.

I have always answered the above questions in interview by relating it to the particular job I am trying to get, so I have never really had an answer to this question.

At the moment, I plan to have resolved my health issues permanently, have at least 70 books out and have sufficient downloads to consider monetizing them, have sold some artwork (I have not rushed at this, since I do not want to either sell crap, or have to spend money on advertising that I need for creating)  and possibly have a small computer game enterprise on the go.  In the event the original book (it does have a working title)  is complete by then, I will also be putting actual work into advertising that.

What I do not plan to be doing is having another shitty relationship with somebody that doesn’t think well of me.  That has been a lengthy waste of time in the past.  I would like to have snapped out of it entirely by now, but clinging to things that really don’t matter and that should not affect my life that much have kind of held this back. I need to stop hiding behind other people.

If you have emotional confidence issues, you are likely to spend your time with other people with confidence issues, which leads to a kind of vortex of self-doubt.  Sometimes, if you want to grow out of it, you have to spend some time alone.

Pleasing such people is a waste of time, since it is kind of locked into the relationship that anything you do is likely to be regarded as sub-standard.  This affects the most surprising of people, including people that should really know better.  If you are self-critical, it also feeds that monster.

I have also learned, to my cost, that other cultures do not understand the notion of ‘friendly fire.’  British people are very fond of it, to ascertain views, explore topics and gain momentum in terms of communication.  Other cultures expect undying admiration, and they are not likely to understand when you point out defects in the course of trying to establish communication.

So, next time somebody asks you where you want to be in five years time, try to think about your personal answer to that question, unrelated to your current employment, friends or family.  The answer may lead to a more radical change than you expected.

 

 

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health, motivation

A complicated question

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This is going to be a complicated post, complete with hideous scenarios and consequences.

The question is whether I should take a gamble on myself, in the form of tolerating a social situation I do not want to be in, in order to see a person that probably does not want to see me.

Risks of attending

He does not want to see me. There is significant evidence to suggest that this is the case, and no evidence at all that this is not the case.  I tried emailing in advance, and my messages were both ignored by the company dealing with it.

I become irate within minutes of attempting to listen, because I currently cannot bear listening for a variety of historic reasons.

I have to speak to people.

I am ridiculed.

My mother would have to go into care, risking her diet, and my cats would have to go into a cattery for a couple of days whilst I locked the house up.  This is also complicated by social services involvement.  It is also a very expensive operation.

I look hideous and this affects the purpose of my attendance as the person certainly gave the impression of being extremely superficial and undervaluing me on my last futile attempt at contact or rational conversation, which is what started this project in the first place.

I am regarded as some sort of monster and am treated like dirt. (again)

Possible pay-offs

I resolve a problem that has been crippling me and my work for the last seven years.  If so, I instantly gain about thirty life points in terms of confidence.

He might actually be pleased to see me.  (unlikely, but possible)

The people might be OK.

I need a break anyway, and maybe this is sufficiently selfish to make up for a few years of garbage in the past.

The fact that I have a life outside this situation might shock a few people into behaving like humans.

My mother’s health is unlikely to improve, and so it is the last chance to do it for probably five years or so.  Also my own age is a factor due to this person’s probable attitude.

 

Why do I even want to do this?  I didn’t before.  I just think I might regret it if I don’t.  He has had ample opportunity to speak to me, and been given ample reason for doing so.  Why should I not expect to be treated like an adult?

On the other hand, maybe I need to take control of this situation in order to stop thinking about it.

Should you wish to give an actual answer, the comments box appears below.  You do not need to give a real email address.

 

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health, motivation

Is your happiness the most important thing?

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If my happiness was the most important thing to me, everybody around me would be worse off. My friend ‘Leon’ would have never seen me again after the assault, my health would be better, Wolfe would probably have met me by now and would certainly have had a large present that he did not want, his agent would have had sore ears from my dealing with her, the avocadess would not be very happy, the book would be written, regardless of market, my mother would be dead due to her children’s behaviour, this house would be gone, my siblings would have no inheritance, my old friend Aldous would never have experienced shooting, my cats would still be waiting for a home.  I would not have bothered making any more art.

Is your happiness really the most important thing?

Right now, if my happiness was the most important thing, I would be out trying to find some unsuspecting male, which, given the attitude of some men would not be a particularly joyful or interesting experience.  I was told only today that women over 35 are a waste of time.  I guess we are too challenging for this dude.  All the more for me, I replied.

Maybe the pursuit of happiness itself is a risk not worth taking.  Low risk living is, however, in itself not a happy or brave experience.

Perhaps we should take it from this that avoidance of regret is more important than happiness.  You do what you can live with.  As I have said before, life is a series of trade-offs. Maybe that is the answer.

Maybe being polite is a bad thing.  Maybe we should all take the motivational attitude that you keep pushing until you get whatever it is that you want, at any cost.  This would make for a deeply unpleasant and unstable world, but at least we could say that we have gone after our bliss at any cost.

The problem with this is that our bliss changes from minute to minute, and what we think will make us happy is not necessarily what genuinely will.  Therefore we have a margin of risk aversion to stop us from being too impulsive.

I find that medium to long-term goal setting stops me from being too impulsive, whether happy or sad. If I am sad it stops me from doing anything too damaging, and if I am happy it stops me from being too selfish or smug.  I am still not sure that I rate happiness highly enough.  I am just happy not to be a shit.

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creativity, health

Am I a covert narcissist?

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Am I a covert narcissist?

I have just spent another few hours investigating narcissism, and began to wonder in the course of this if I qualified as a covert (shy) cerebral narcissist.  To cut to the chase, I failed to make the grade.

Why?  I failed this test Are you an undercover narcissist?

I qualify as self-centred, but I am a dismal failure as a narc.

It is a bit miraculous, given my family background.  My eldest sister is an overt narcissist, my mother has some narc qualities, but is more complex.  My father was strongly empath.  I have at least two exs with strong markers for covert narcissism.  My brother is an undiagnosed depressive (the NHS prefers to diagnose professional depressives as having ME), and my other sister is so twisted that I have not even begun to figure out what her problem is, beyond the alcohol.

So, from the perspective of someone who has, one way or another, always had to deal with at least one narcissist, it is no wonder that I am always on the look-out for the familiar.

Youtube is a hotbed of information for people who would like to qualify as the victims of narcissism.  Reasons vary from actual abuse, to simply wondering why their text messages are not returned.

Whilst diagnosing your friends and family with personality disorders is always a fun way to spend the afternoon, it does not mean that you can actually do anything about it.  I do not plan to bother telling any of them, since it is not something that you can do terribly much about.  As my father demonstrated, the only thing you can do is avoid them if you can and keep working.

In the event that you are the victim of a narcissist and become aware of it, the best thing to do is get out of the situation, rather than assuming that you can do anything about it or force them to change.  Any self-respecting narc will then simply move on to a more fruitful target, rather than making an endless tit of themselves completing any creative or pop-academic projects. (as I have been doing)

One day, I will be free of this situation and will probably live in penury in a cottage in the middle of nowhere.  I will then struggle to feed my cats and keep a car on the road in the course of putting some work out.  In the meantime, whilst I have access to the university library, I am going to complete the next two big books – both of which require actual research – whilst I finish the Best Ever project.

I have, in the meantime, been getting used to the idea of people looking at me, so I have made a stack of youtube videos, which thankfully few people are watching.  This should desensitize me to the extreme intolerance to people which I seem to have acquired over the last five years or so.  I did not always cringe quite so much, but then I did not always form irrational attachments to people in public. (see previous posts)

I am trying to think how to improve my presentation skills, which I will work on further later on in my rebuild project, as I am still very unhappy about my looks at the moment.  I think it is a case of making a bad video, and then remaking it until it looks better.

As the ‘victim’ of narc abuse since I was about three, I would agree that it can affect your health and self-image, but if it is your family you do not have the option of crumbling and running for help.  You basically grow up knowing that something is wrong.

The head narc in my family used this to indicate that something was wrong with me.  She is still doing it. The only thing I have been able to do to counteract this is cut my siblings out of my life entirely, since the delusion is so deeply engrained (it was also encouraged by my mother)  that there is just no point in even trying to discuss it with anybody.

The point I am trying to make is – you don’t need to choose to be a ‘victim’ of a narcissist.  You can choose to accept that you are dealing with an entirely unreasonable and irrational individual who hates you and lies about it.  Then you can take appropriate action to preserve yourself and any available loved ones as necessary.  I have been saying for many years that if I had any sense I would have got as far away from these people as possible.  If I had done so, there would be nothing left for them to fight about, including no mother and no money.

What does alarm me, is that I have chosen at least one best friend and two boyfriends who were narcs with added violence.  This indicates that I have to select on a more deliberate basis than mere attraction as I am likely to make poor choices. I have also shown some narc tendencies, as I have seen this afternoon.  Led by example, I presume, although unlike the narcs in my life I am entirely capable of being reasonable.  I can also assure you that there is nothing wrong with my empathy or ability to form intimate relationships. I am no angel, but as far as listening to problems is concerned, if anything I have wasted far too much time and energy on it, to the point of taking years to figure out I am being played for a sucker by yet another covert narc!

To conclude, don’t get hysterical about selfish people who throw tantrums and turn the conversation back to something that went wrong long before they met you.  They aren’t all actually monsters.  Sometimes the histrionics can be extremely entertaining.  It is all in your attitude.  If you cannot handle it, you are probably best to just leave.

 

https://youtu.be/xcosL-JohCI

 

 

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health, motivation

In memory of my father

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David Wolfe post in memory of my father

Ten years ago, nearly to the day, my father’s life was ended in an NHS hospital.  The hospital in question used to exist to terminate elderly and terminally ill patients, so that the statistics were all at the same location.  Whilst it was a superficially nice place, it was the equivalent of taking your pet to the vet for the last time.

My father had vascular dementia, which I knew very little about at the time.  Nevertheless, I made sure that he was able to stay at home for as long as possible.  My mother, not the most proficient of carers, would not have lasted as long as she did had she not had someone there.  She still lied about the help I was providing until she was not listened to by the rest of the family anyway.

A lifelong socialist and pacifist, my father rebelled by marrying my mother, whom he met on the shores of Lake Geneva, despite both being from Glasgow.  His family were very well known communist/extreme trade unionists in Glasgow.  My great grandfather was behind the revolution that had tanks in George Square.

A large proportion of my father’s family rejected him when he bought this house and married a militarist Conservative, although my mother was not the most thoughtful of political thinkers.  He never told her, she was quite shocked when I broke it to her a couple of years ago.

During WW2, he and his friends were conscientious objectors.  One was jailed for it, but later had a very respectable life and did quite well.  This would not happen now, of course.  My father was sent to work in the forests as he had defended himself in court and it was established that he had rather obscure religious reasons for his communitarian beliefs and seven single widowed aunts from WW1 to support.

His interest in natural health was so obsessive that it cost quite an astonishing amount even when I was growing up in the 70s.  We had a dehydrator going and sprouts along the window sills.

He was a very quiet, humorous individual, who you did not get to know unless you showed some interest.  Therefore I was told the family secrets even my mother did not get to hear.  I have to say, since his death I have become more and more like him.  My attitude to Wolfe has been much like my father’s love affair with this house.  When he failed to secure it on the first attempt, he shuffled around muttering “that was my house” until the person who had bought it changed his mind and sold it to him.

If anyone deserved to be saved by my persistent interest in natural health, it was my father.  I did try to extract him from the clutches of the NHS, but to no avail as my mother had just had a stroke and was considered ‘a handful,’ although there was no question of my having any support at the time.  I was just expected to manage, regardless of anything going on in my life.

What really gets me annoyed is the fact that within two days of being in that hellhole he was drugged because he was considered difficult.  When I challenged this, I was flatly told that he was suddenly in pain.  He was still capable of speech and eating normally prior to this.  Within three months he was less than half the weight and we were told that he must not even drink anything.

The figures for Alzheimer’s deaths in Scotland indicate that this is deliberate policy.  I can see that the NHS regard aging as an unacceptable burden, and that they are trying to take quality of life into account, what I do not understand is why the alternatives are so frightening to them.  I am still suffering from an invasion of nurses who appear to think I should be burnt as a witch because my mother is still alive, despite their best efforts.

I am, rather helpfully, very angry about what happened to my father, and about the continuous bitching and battling I have to do to protect my mother.  Anger is a useful energy.  I daresay it is considered negative in some circles.  Personally I think it is the best fuel ever.

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