Ha, I wouldn't be a pimple on the butt of a real head-shrinker, but sometimes I play one on the Thom Hartmann Report for the pure hell of it. So here goes, but consider the source: Fear is one of those generalized words, like socialism, that must be distinctly relative to something else to have any real meaning. Starting with the dreaded…
Ha, I wouldn't be a pimple on the butt of a real head-shrinker, but sometimes I play one on the Thom Hartmann Report for the pure hell of it. So here goes, but consider the source:
Fear is one of those generalized words, like socialism, that must be distinctly relative to something else to have any real meaning. Starting with the dreaded "S" word — I mean, everything is socialism, right? The whole amazing planet, isolated in space, evolved into one big, near perfect socialized globe all by itself, so to speak, the gods notwithstanding. Disparate people inevitably banded together in ever-growing groups and decided what was in the best interests of everyone involved, essentially achieved through compromise. That is socialism at its core happening naturally. In fact, the very concept of government in the first place is a socialistic construct of a collective human mind inspired and conditioned by the supreme balance in nature that allowed us to evolve, is it not?
But as they say, the devil's in the details: Giving away the whole store, economically and politically, to cold-hearted, psychopathic billionaires and their buddies is bad socialism. Helping the middle class, the disadvantaged, and especially the common working women and man — ninety-some percent of the workforce — is good socialism. (And we desperately need more of that good stuff in this old rundown saloon instead of the watered-down rot-gut served up by the scrubby Republican barkeeps.)
Same with fear. The fear encountering a grizzly bear is an instant, palpable physical fear ... and a damn good one at that, lol! The fear of indicting, trying, sentencing and jailing the worst criminally minded president in American history, so that the dirty bastard can't damage our democracy any further, is the fear of a coward, an enabler (or a traitor, god forbid) people who can't face the ugly truth, neither outwardly nor inwardly.
And I'm not alluding to Merrick Garland per se. The towering, intimidating edifice of our domestic justice/political/economic system is based on instilling a healthy fear in lawbreakers, pinned to principles of fairness and accountability (by theory, anyway). Yet, hugely ironically, this badass system cowers before the worst lawbreakers of all, the ones with all the money and power to skirt the law. And, irony upon irony, the big guys love to abuse the same system that facilitated their own rise in fortunes while denying "others" similar benefits and opportunities. As Alan Greenspan once quipped (paraphrased), "Complex economic jargon is meant to confuse."
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." - Wizard of Oz (Where we live.)
Sorry to compare the constant and horrible fear despite the love that a battered spouse must feel, keeping her or him bound to an abuser, but it's kind of like that: the "battered-wife syndrome" on a political level. There's an unnamed, deeply psychological fear of some amorphous hurt yet to come, of not becoming, or of being without. In comparing ourselves, such as to other people's lives outwardly or to our own fractured thoughts inwardly, either negatively or positively — or to anything at all: wealth, poverty, status, success or failure, etc. — we set up an unconscious process of mentally induced fear through our own artificial constructs buried within, which strengthen that looming, hard-to-pin-down feeling of dread.
Countless artificial fears rule us as we try to navigate our treacherous daily lives in this highly stressful society, based on forces pulling in opposite directions, twisting our minds and emotions into hopeless knots. It's a driven desire to gain and a tormenting fear of losing. When all the ensuant pain and delusions of individual minds coalesce into opposing political parties in the real world out to win at all costs, intense psychological fear — and the accompanying hate and violence — spreads through an angry population like wildfire.
The Republican insurrectionists in Congress know full well what incites their zombie armies. Grizzly bears are far less dangerous. (Although there's nothing wrong with a good jolt of honest fear now and then to keep one honest, I don't advocate letting grizzlies loose in the Capitol. That would be too much like the Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Ron Johnson coo-coo caucus). But we should fear what can kill us. Climate destruction and the pollution of the land, water, and air springs foremost to mind, as do nuclear weapons and weapons of war on civilian streets and in our schools, inadequate social nets, fealty to Wall Street tycoons and their destructive industries, etc., etc. The list is long.
So put the fear of God in your elected officials to run roughshod over the actual "takers" running and ruining this whole stupid shit-show. It's a call for more regulation, not less! It must have been FDR, Bernie, Paul Wellstone (same thing), or maybe Thom, who once said something like, "The main problem facing our democracy is not big government in business; it's big business in government."
Ha, I wouldn't be a pimple on the butt of a real head-shrinker, but sometimes I play one on the Thom Hartmann Report for the pure hell of it. So here goes, but consider the source:
Fear is one of those generalized words, like socialism, that must be distinctly relative to something else to have any real meaning. Starting with the dreaded "S" word — I mean, everything is socialism, right? The whole amazing planet, isolated in space, evolved into one big, near perfect socialized globe all by itself, so to speak, the gods notwithstanding. Disparate people inevitably banded together in ever-growing groups and decided what was in the best interests of everyone involved, essentially achieved through compromise. That is socialism at its core happening naturally. In fact, the very concept of government in the first place is a socialistic construct of a collective human mind inspired and conditioned by the supreme balance in nature that allowed us to evolve, is it not?
But as they say, the devil's in the details: Giving away the whole store, economically and politically, to cold-hearted, psychopathic billionaires and their buddies is bad socialism. Helping the middle class, the disadvantaged, and especially the common working women and man — ninety-some percent of the workforce — is good socialism. (And we desperately need more of that good stuff in this old rundown saloon instead of the watered-down rot-gut served up by the scrubby Republican barkeeps.)
Same with fear. The fear encountering a grizzly bear is an instant, palpable physical fear ... and a damn good one at that, lol! The fear of indicting, trying, sentencing and jailing the worst criminally minded president in American history, so that the dirty bastard can't damage our democracy any further, is the fear of a coward, an enabler (or a traitor, god forbid) people who can't face the ugly truth, neither outwardly nor inwardly.
And I'm not alluding to Merrick Garland per se. The towering, intimidating edifice of our domestic justice/political/economic system is based on instilling a healthy fear in lawbreakers, pinned to principles of fairness and accountability (by theory, anyway). Yet, hugely ironically, this badass system cowers before the worst lawbreakers of all, the ones with all the money and power to skirt the law. And, irony upon irony, the big guys love to abuse the same system that facilitated their own rise in fortunes while denying "others" similar benefits and opportunities. As Alan Greenspan once quipped (paraphrased), "Complex economic jargon is meant to confuse."
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." - Wizard of Oz (Where we live.)
Sorry to compare the constant and horrible fear despite the love that a battered spouse must feel, keeping her or him bound to an abuser, but it's kind of like that: the "battered-wife syndrome" on a political level. There's an unnamed, deeply psychological fear of some amorphous hurt yet to come, of not becoming, or of being without. In comparing ourselves, such as to other people's lives outwardly or to our own fractured thoughts inwardly, either negatively or positively — or to anything at all: wealth, poverty, status, success or failure, etc. — we set up an unconscious process of mentally induced fear through our own artificial constructs buried within, which strengthen that looming, hard-to-pin-down feeling of dread.
Countless artificial fears rule us as we try to navigate our treacherous daily lives in this highly stressful society, based on forces pulling in opposite directions, twisting our minds and emotions into hopeless knots. It's a driven desire to gain and a tormenting fear of losing. When all the ensuant pain and delusions of individual minds coalesce into opposing political parties in the real world out to win at all costs, intense psychological fear — and the accompanying hate and violence — spreads through an angry population like wildfire.
The Republican insurrectionists in Congress know full well what incites their zombie armies. Grizzly bears are far less dangerous. (Although there's nothing wrong with a good jolt of honest fear now and then to keep one honest, I don't advocate letting grizzlies loose in the Capitol. That would be too much like the Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Ron Johnson coo-coo caucus). But we should fear what can kill us. Climate destruction and the pollution of the land, water, and air springs foremost to mind, as do nuclear weapons and weapons of war on civilian streets and in our schools, inadequate social nets, fealty to Wall Street tycoons and their destructive industries, etc., etc. The list is long.
So put the fear of God in your elected officials to run roughshod over the actual "takers" running and ruining this whole stupid shit-show. It's a call for more regulation, not less! It must have been FDR, Bernie, Paul Wellstone (same thing), or maybe Thom, who once said something like, "The main problem facing our democracy is not big government in business; it's big business in government."
End of rant.
hmmm--other than indigenous peoples, my recollection is of one peoples
slaughtering the next...& if not slaughtered, then enslaved or colonized. now
we live under threat of Titus.
t is M A C H I A V E L L I🪳🪳