Showing posts with label Hal Brown. Show all posts

November 8, 2022

Trump want's to imprison journalists if he's reelected. Would I make the cut?

This is a photograph taken of Freud, and some of his earliest followers.

Reading "Trump is hoping to jail ‘significant numbers of reporters’ in a second term: report" by Bob Brigham in RawStory I thought about whether I might end up on his radar. After all, he may go after anyone who criticized him publicly and while I am a mere blogger, not really a journalist, I am also among many mental health professional who wrote about why his personalty disorders made him dangerous and unfit to be president.

Trump might be vaguely aware that a very large group of mental health professionals called him dangerous, or more likely he's oblivious to this but some of his zealous minions might inform him, therefore in addition to putting journalists in prison he might want to round them up too.

If he managed to lock up a significant number this would severely exacerbate the mental health crisis as therapists would be even harder to find than they now are.

One of the terms frequently used to describe Trump was malignant narcissist so his gestapo might get to web searching who wrote about him having this disorder.

If his lackeys Googled Trump malignant narcissist they'd have to go to page three to find something I wrote. Find me they would. Who is the guy they might say, never heard of him but what they hell let's show that nobody no matter how obscure they are can escape our reach.

I admit that I am pretty impressed with myself even making it onto page three of that Internet search considering who else's articles and publications precedes mine.

My story is third from the bottom shown above.

This is what I wrote. It clearly makes both Robert S. Becker, whose article gave me the idea for mine, and me candidates for Trump's new gulag or an expanded Guantanamo Bay although Becker is actually well known.

Only as an irate “F-ck You” does the mystery clear: why Trump fiddled for 187 minutes while the Capitol burned

Below are excerpts from Robert S. Becker’s (profile) “Nation of Change” essay which I recommend reading in its entirety.

When months later no plausible, tactical or rational explanation appears (for doing nothing to call off the rioters), must we not look to psychological derangement? Here was one profoundly sick puppy without a clue what served (or demolished) his best interests. When reasons evaporate, look to irrationality, thus I invoke pathology. Trump’s mob fulfilled his life quest to bellow forth the loudest “F-ck you” to as many people as possible from the greatest podium imaginable. And he was protected (he falsely schemed) by delegating the onslaught to moronic minions. The rampage against the Capitol was, to use Trumpian diction, the “perfect” volcanic explosion to suit volcanic rage. Finally, he found sufficiently cruel, destructive punishment against all “enemies” who ever injured his majesty, declaring “you are not lovable, even a monster; you are not the invulnerable, unstoppable world leader you fantasize; and your electoral temper tantrums will crash and burn.” These are unendurable messages for a deeply scared narcissist.
Thanks to Trump’s transparent parade of clinical deviance, those paying attention comprehend the basic dynamics of the malignant narcissist. It’s not that complicated: the sickest narcissist insists on being a big shot, though feels wounded (whatever the cause) and unworthy (terrified he’s just an ordinary putz). As a result, he (or she) cannot confront his internal contradictions (never therapy), defaulting to denial and self-deception. Trapped in this doomed dynamic, the narcissist tries every which way to fill the emotional (love) void but mistakenly with material success, status, treasure or fame. What Jan. 6 exposed is the malicious narcissist at the end of his rope: every phony election maneuver, from November through January, blew up in his face, doubling down the agony.

Becker concludes:

Trump aside – and so past his pull date he’s morphed into a political pestilence for both parties – there remains a glimmer of hope for past supporters willing to escape their fruitless messiah trip. True, loyalty to Trump after his execrable performances remain shocking to this day – as sobering as all those misguided, aggrieved 2016 citizens who judged this unqualified TV reality star/con artist a positive, constructive leader. Even take down the secular, urban, coastal elitists and the fabricated, demonic deep state. That turned out well – in fact, reinforcing establishment forces now pooling resources to put an end to the Trump terror.
Over time, multiple indictments and multiple trials, even a conviction or two, must occur before America can close out the terrible Trump treachery. How much resolution happens depends on how effectively current leaders, prosecutors and juries confirm for all time and for all who will listen who Trump was and what he remains. If not, the future is not just darker than we imagine, but darker than we can imagine.

Once again we see that Trump’s behavior is easily understood, and is predictable, based on an understanding of the psychopathology of malignant narcissism. (See Unpacking Malignant Narcissism)

A few readers of some of my diaries about Trump’s malignant narcissism have commented basically “so what, there’s no need for a diagnosis, he’s just pure evil, what are we going to do about him?” The answer I keep giving is that by understanding the dynamics of Trump’s we can predict what he will do, or try to do, and we can best develop ways to counter it.

We have already seen his rage directed at anyone or any entity he feels slighted or attacked by. We have seen him support lunatic fringe GOP candidates in some primaries who, if they win, stand little chance against their Democratic opponents. The enraged malignant narcissist often does irrational and self-defeating things.

These manifestations of a wounded ego, and indeed Trump as Becker puts it in his article, is a “profoundly sick puppy”, serve to vent some of his frustrations but they are not well thought out and many may be self-defeating. Consider most recently his trying to sue CNN over using the term “The Big Lie.” There’s no way this will accrue to his benefit, let alone end up in a legal win, but it will keep The Big Lie in the news.

His threat against CNN or something like it was predictable by understanding Trump’s malignant narcissism.

Trump will always be Trump. He is the ultimate narcissist and I rather doubt he allows himself to consider the possibility that someone he probably considers a wimp (this man)...

can ever bring him down. He will never change his core self, and if anything will be his undoing this will be it.

November 7, 2022

HUFFPOST article gave me a chance for shameless promotion of my blog

By Hal Brown

I had nothing in mind to write about this morning until I looked at HUFFPOST and read their lead article:

Days After Laying Off Half The Company, Twitter Asks Some Employees To Come Back

Twitter is reportedly trying to reverse course and hire back dozens of workers it just laid off – continuing the chaos Elon Musk has brought since taking over.

These are the comments I put on HUFFPOST hoping to promote my blog:

As someone who practiced as a psychotherapist for 40 years Musk has intrigued me so I wrote a lot about him on my blog. I can't say this has made me famous but if you do a Google search of Elon Musk and my name my blog comes up as number one. Thank you Elon.
I know this is shameless self promotion, but you are reading this blog so I hope you appreciate my stories. I trust you don't mind my trying to promote it. I like writing and don't think there's anything wrong with having a healthy desire to want to increase the readership.

If do the same search on DuckDuckGo and my blog dominates the top results. In all modesty I have sent Elon priceless therapeutic advice through my comic strip Mired in Muskland but unfortunately for him he hasn't seen it let alone heeded it.

I didn't want to put a direct link in the HUFFPOST comments section because I am not sure whether or not that would violate their rules. I did include two images from the Google and DuckDuckGo searches.

Click the images below to enlarge them.

Most Internet users, about 80%, use Google as their primary search engine but DuckDuckGo which doesn't track your activity to send to advertisers is becoming more popular. If you do the same search there this blog dominates the results. DuckDuckGo is currently advertising on television.

The search engine market is highly competitive. You can read about the most popular ones here.

Here's how the same search came out on those besides Google and DuckDuckGo among the others on the top six.

Bing is the number two search engine and this blog does very well there at number one and number three.

The blog tops the page there and included a "Mired in Muskland" story.

The Russian search engine has the blog at number one:

I couldn't find the blog on the Chinese search engine. The search blocks pro-democracy websites so that may be the reason.

14 readers this past week logged onto the blog from China. If any of them are reading this I really like to hear from you. You can use the comment section o the bottom of the page. Of course this goes for the 95 readers in Russia.

A Musk tweet and my reply:

November 2, 2022

Mired in Muskland - 5

Mired in Muskland - 5

By Hal Brown

click each image below to enlarge

Link to YouTube shown above here

Reported on TechCrunch (below) and being discussed on Morning Joe as I composed this edition.

Joe said we are seeing him unwind on Twitter before our eyes. Is Musk unwinding, frequently in red tie via his tweets, before our eyes? It is hard to say unless we define "unwinding" exactly. There are times he is impulsive but that doesn't mean he is losing control.

What caught my eye wasn't Musk explaining via tweets the idea of charging $8 a month for extras, hell, I might even pay it.

This didn't strike me as unexpected. What "caught my eye" was his tweet saying that Twitter speaks to the inner masochist in all of us.

He verged from floating a business idea to bringing in the idea of saying all complainers should keep complaining (at a fee of $8 a month) perhaps dare I say as if he enjoyed reading them, to an hour later tweeting his inner masochist tweet.

Most people throw around the term masochism more or less accurately. Here's how The Britannica defines it:

Masochism, psychosexual disorder in which eroticrelease is achieved through having pain inflicted on oneself. The term derives from the name of Chevalier Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian who wrote extensively about the satisfaction he gained by being beaten and subjugated. The amount of pain involved can vary from ritual humiliation with little violence to severe whipping or beating; generally the masochist retains some control over the situation and will end the abusive behaviour before becoming seriously injured. While pain may cause a certain amount of sexual excitement in many persons, for the masochist it becomes the chief end of sexual activity. The term is frequently used in a looser social context in which masochism is defined as the behaviour of one who seeks out and enjoys situations of humiliation or abuse.

Masochism as an isolated trait is fairly rare. More commonly, the association of pain with sexual pleasure takes the form of both masochism and sadism (q.v.), the obtaining of sexual pleasure through inflicting pain on others. Often, an individual will alternate roles, becoming aroused through the experience of pain in one instance and through the infliction of pain in another.

This is from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

1) noun The deriving of sexual gratification, or the tendency to derive sexual gratification, from being physically or emotionally abused.
2) noun The deriving of pleasure, or the tendency to derive pleasure, from being humiliated or mistreated, either by another or by oneself.
3) noun A willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences.

I'd have to literally be Elon's therapist to know whether definition one, above, applies to him, but wonder about numbers two and three. It is better I'm not his shrink since if I was doctor-patient confidentiality would apply.

Update:

I know some people, ordinary Twitterers, even those who never tweeted, have gone off the platform. Not me. In fact, I just Followed Musk.

Musk is engaging back and forth with a number of tweeters today. For example the tweets below. Clicking will enlarge but not go to Twitter.

Recent blog editions

November 1, 2022

Mired in Muskland, Edition 4

Mired in Muskland

Edition 4

by Hal Brown

Edition 5 is here

If you liked 4 you'll like 5, maybe

Scroll down for

There is no longer a "We the People of The United States"

Click above to enlarge.

Lyrics to Watch the Throne

Getting Ye back on Twitter would bring along his zillions of followers but it would also benefit him because a sequel "Watch the Throne 2" album has just been announced.

This is Musk's new personal Twitter page illustration. Gone is his photo of carrying a sink into headquarters.

The photo can be found here with other early photos of Musk.

Note he has dubbed himself Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator. I assume this is a reference to him as a child on a toy telephone. I give him credit for his attempts at humor though they sometimes fail dismally. "If at first you don't succeed," I'd tell him, "learn from what went wrong and try try again." As far as I know there is no Twitter hotline though if he wants to share his number with me that's fine. He has a photo tweeted from Halloween:

There is no longer a "We the People of United States"

There is no longer a "We the People of The United States"

by Hal Brown

The morning after Halloween I envisioned zombies dancing when I read title of this column this morning:

America must step out of this self-destructive zombie dance

The title of the column by Amanda Ripley (the author of “High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped — and How We Get Out”) suggests she is going to give us an answer.

Here are a few excerpts:

High conflict — the kind that is self-destructive and stubbornly resistant to resolution — is not mysterious. And we have much more wisdom about how to respond to it than we think.

The only good option is to do counterintuitive things. We must step out of the zombie dance we are in... One lesson I’ve learned in covering dysfunctional conflict for the past five years is that most people, even very violent people, want to live. And they want their families to be safe. That is one thing we all have in common. Horrific incidents such as the one at Pelosi’s home offer an unusual (and fleeting) opportunity to invite people to do something differently.

Here's where she began to lose me as she explained solutions The bolds are hers.

First, sign the contract. All over the world, the U.S. government has pushed politicians to sign codes of conduct in times of conflict. Gang-violence interrupters do this every day in Chicago and other cities — urging combatants and their supporters to join a nonaggression pact. It’s time to invite American politicians and pundits to do what we’ve long asked other people, in far more harrowing circumstances, to do.

Uh oh, with the word "invite" my wishful thinking alarm just went off.

She went on:

In politics, this might mean pledging not to dehumanize one’s opponent on social media or elsewhere (by saying they are evil or hate the United States, for example). The codes could include vows to accept the results of the election after reasonable due process and, of course, to condemn all acts of violence, especially when they are perpetrated against a member of the opposition.

Really? What world is she living in?

Going down the rabbit hole to her next highlighted paragraph:

Walk the walk. Part of how we got into this mess is by watching politicians and pundits gleefully attack each other on TV. Part of how we get out of it is by doing the opposite: having credible messengers from each side demonstrate human decency.

She concludes that section with:

One thing Americans still do exceptionally well is to produce original, creative content. We tell stories that move people to imagine a better world. Now is the time to tell a different story, one of courage and decency alongside honest debate.

This is true, but assuming this content is produced, where does it go to reach the people who need it the most? Fox News, the fever swamps of social media? I don't think so.

Here's her next suggestion:

Right-size the fear. One predictable cause of collective violence is collective fear. When threat levels are high and fear is mixed with contempt, disgust and humiliation, humans will feel they have no choice but to annihilate one another.

This is what disturbs me in the last paragraph of the essay. Who are the "we" (my bold) below?

We, the public, are being manipulated by conflict mongers. We are being turned against each other and we are all suffering, to different degrees. It is time to question these storylines, to question our fears as often as we have learned to question truth. And then demand something radically different, something that will enable us to coexist. We know how to do this.
There is no collective "we" in the United States and other countries where there is a battle between a group, call them "bad people" who want a facisist country as long as their side is in control, and "good people" who want democracy where, to be corny, the Gold Rule prevails. Here and in countries like Brazil the most recently, the good people barely outnumber the bad.

There is, alas, no "we the public" - just as there is no longer a "we the people" as in the first paragraph in the U.S. Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Democratic and Republican politicians have taken to holding up their pocket sized copies of the U.S. Constitution. Here's something Trump and Obama have in common. Someone decided it was worth publishing pocket Constitutions with them on the cover. The Obama is $9.99 and Trump's is $14.99. It's as it if has become a prop.

Historians and constitutional scholars correctly debate what the Founders meant by "we" and the words in the preamble to the document.

It certainly wasn't everyone in every case in every way. But it was clear that they wanted "a more perfect union" and to insure a mechanism for amending the Constitution over time. Perhaps some like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton envisioned the 13th Amendment freeing the slaves would be ratified about 100 years later in 1865.

It is now up to the Supreme Court to interpret what the Founders meant and how it should be applied to the issues of the day. The basic question remains: what is the meaning of "we the people?"

Clearly, there is a significant segment of the population that doesn't want "we" to mean everyone.

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