Just reading this and wanted to put another hole in your "foreigners and fat people" description - sadly, because I agree it sounds so good! In my reading of the lyrics, it's not all fat people he's complaining about - it's specifically POOR fat people, who use food stamps to pay for their junk food. Don't get me started about food deserts and how vegetables are more expensive than mac&cheese - none of the policy discussions matter at all when the underlying belief of the Rich Men is that poor people are undeserving and just looking for handouts, etc. I've spent my career in public sector human services supporting the providers who support people with intellectual/developmental disabilities and mental illness - I see this shit every day and I'm chronically angry. Looking forward to more ideas about what to do with that anger and how to channel it more effectively.
Thank you thank you thank you for another awesome essay. In particular, for even mentioning the ludicrousness that is our society still policing college kids as if they are the power center of the left, ignoring any and all adults in the process. What makes it particularly infuriating is that there is a group of children and young adults that should be policed and a political movement of adults should be held to and subjected to endless questioning and think pieces about their culpability in it: young men who crawl out of the far right sludge to go mass murder people. It’s quite obvious and has been for some time that we need to have a national discussion about these terrorists/young men, but oh no, some kid at Harvard said something and now the entire left needs to answer for it and that is infinitely more important than mass shootings.
Ah, these fucking people. Again and again I ask, in complete bafflement, what the hell have we ever done to them to make them hate us so? I've felt this way since 2010 when Scott Walker was elected Governor and I suddenly found out that half my state hated me and everyone like me. Something about how me having health care and a pension was stealing food from the mouths of their children. Now they turn the hate elsewhere, but it's always gotta be turned somewhere, doesn't it? Couldn't just learn to go through life not hating people, where's the fun in that?
Funny. I thought the rich men north of Richmond he was referring to were the school-board-threateners is Loudoun Co., or the generals in the Pentagon. Silly me.
A quick correction: in the absence of Lia Thomas, Gaines would have still gotten fifth place. The only difference is she wouldn't have had to wait for her fifth place trophy to be mailed to her, as they only had one on hand. She didn't even need to lose out on gains to a trans woman to devote herself to our eradication; merely sharing them was motivation enough.
After living through childhood with a narcissist sibling, and having recently dealt with a narcissist coworker, I can never stop seeing the parallels between (or perhaps near eclipse Venn diagram visualization of) narcissists and MAGA supporters/white supremacists.
All the same psychological problems and terrible coping mechanisms are on display. It’s as if a behavior disorder became a political movement.
Sorry for stating the obvious, but people are really complicated and are a mixture of many, many tendencies. It's just when the political party you belong to only pushes a couple of your buttons (the hate and fear buttons) those are the qualities that are brought out over time, and over time you become a different person. Nobody has to be a narcissist to join the MAGA cult (although it helps) but over time if you stay in it you're going to bear a closer and closer resemblance to its leader.
But I think it's an important analog to understand that these people are struggling with tremendous insecurity, and the flag waving, hat wearing, threatening their fellow Americans stance is a means of trying to cover up and compensate for their personal shortcomings. Underneath that stunning facade of pride and superiority, is a fragile ego that needs all this artifice to hide behind... that's the narcissist's dilemma.
Their laser focus on marginalizing and abusing minorities is exactly the same thing you do when you're a narcissist... you choose easy marks in your life who can be intimidated or manipulated to constantly feed your ego by allowing you to feel "better than them."
Typically, the healthy ways to deal with narcissists are things like: erecting and maintaining healthy boundaries, minimizing your own exposure AND reactivity to them, not accepting unacceptable behaviors, identifying that you're not the actual source or responsible party for their outbursts and manipulations, and being very cognizant that their ACTIONS matter WAY MORE than their words.
So, in that context we know what the right behaviors are to try and deal people who are narcissists. But we've failed as a society to effectively apply these same kinds of measures to MAGA style political narcissists. All the outrage farming on social media and the media going out to a diner in the middle of no where and forcibly reminding the other 70% of the country about how these people "think and feel" (despite that it is a moving target driven by constant immediate self aggrandizement and interest) is just giving them the validation and attention they crave so badly.
I think this is also part of the reason that "Truth Social" failed so spectacularly, because you can only get so much dopamine from reading all the same shit you agree with and believe and getting likes from people who already inherently agree with you. There's no contrast, no stakes, no striving to gain actual esteem.
Sometimes the best thing to do is just be so chill and comfortable in your own self and ideals, that you don't bother letting their flash in the pan steal your energy. They are people who need someone else's energy to try and plug the giant gaping hole in their self esteem, and we're often giving them the fuel to keep going on that same path. If it lost it's means of giving them an emotional kick, then they'd lose interest that much more quickly.
The faster Trump and MAGA are functionally and socially irrelevant in society, the faster they'll need to find some new artifice to construct their masks out of.
You’re on to something there. I’ve only been able to see the ambient abuse in the household of my childhood in the last few years, much less talk about and seek help for what it wrought in my life. Feeling at risk and walking on eggshells for the first two decades of life - and this is the water that you swim in with relationship to the very people who are charged with caring for you and showing you how to live - does things to a person that can be difficult to undo. I identify with your recognizing family members as narcissists and how it seems to have played out in America in very specific ways. I accepted an unacceptable amount of shame and fear and (oddly) pride because it had been normalized generationally for me. It had the veneer of religion. It, among other things, is what bell hooks called white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy. It is a spirit that seeks to inhabit and animate who it will. Stay safe out there.
The common thread through Gaines, Anthony and Musk is ignorance and racism. These are traits that are taught, not hardwired in. Tiny children are color-blind, open minds that become what they are fed. Our failure as a species and likely doom from climate change is a behavioral problem and failure of education to overcome our basest, most primitive instincts. It appears brawn wins over brains in the end. As the end approaches, it's remarkable how many are oblivious. The controllers have managed to create conditions where the truth can hide in plain sight.
They Live!
Just reading this and wanted to put another hole in your "foreigners and fat people" description - sadly, because I agree it sounds so good! In my reading of the lyrics, it's not all fat people he's complaining about - it's specifically POOR fat people, who use food stamps to pay for their junk food. Don't get me started about food deserts and how vegetables are more expensive than mac&cheese - none of the policy discussions matter at all when the underlying belief of the Rich Men is that poor people are undeserving and just looking for handouts, etc. I've spent my career in public sector human services supporting the providers who support people with intellectual/developmental disabilities and mental illness - I see this shit every day and I'm chronically angry. Looking forward to more ideas about what to do with that anger and how to channel it more effectively.
Please listen if you may to this snipet of Maya Angelou and Studs Terkel in conversation almost 50 years ago:
https://youtu.be/l1bgJ5sNgPU?t=150
Broadcast today so much more relevant and informative than any hyper-compressed breathless commentary offered up by ___
Full interview available at the bountiful Studs Terkel Radio Archive that I've had the good fortune to contribute to:
https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/maya-angelou-discusses-her-book-gather-together-my-name
Mark
☮️💜🎼✊
Brilliant as usual. I think your style could get through to the rage driven.
Thank you thank you thank you for another awesome essay. In particular, for even mentioning the ludicrousness that is our society still policing college kids as if they are the power center of the left, ignoring any and all adults in the process. What makes it particularly infuriating is that there is a group of children and young adults that should be policed and a political movement of adults should be held to and subjected to endless questioning and think pieces about their culpability in it: young men who crawl out of the far right sludge to go mass murder people. It’s quite obvious and has been for some time that we need to have a national discussion about these terrorists/young men, but oh no, some kid at Harvard said something and now the entire left needs to answer for it and that is infinitely more important than mass shootings.
Ah, these fucking people. Again and again I ask, in complete bafflement, what the hell have we ever done to them to make them hate us so? I've felt this way since 2010 when Scott Walker was elected Governor and I suddenly found out that half my state hated me and everyone like me. Something about how me having health care and a pension was stealing food from the mouths of their children. Now they turn the hate elsewhere, but it's always gotta be turned somewhere, doesn't it? Couldn't just learn to go through life not hating people, where's the fun in that?
Funny. I thought the rich men north of Richmond he was referring to were the school-board-threateners is Loudoun Co., or the generals in the Pentagon. Silly me.
I wrote a brief comment on Trump’s use of “vermin” last week: https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/11/donald-trump-adolf-hitler-vermin.html
A quick correction: in the absence of Lia Thomas, Gaines would have still gotten fifth place. The only difference is she wouldn't have had to wait for her fifth place trophy to be mailed to her, as they only had one on hand. She didn't even need to lose out on gains to a trans woman to devote herself to our eradication; merely sharing them was motivation enough.
She seen her chances and she took 'em. Pretty clear the Olympics weren't in her future.
Thanks--I know it's pedantic, but this was bothering me too
After living through childhood with a narcissist sibling, and having recently dealt with a narcissist coworker, I can never stop seeing the parallels between (or perhaps near eclipse Venn diagram visualization of) narcissists and MAGA supporters/white supremacists.
All the same psychological problems and terrible coping mechanisms are on display. It’s as if a behavior disorder became a political movement.
Sorry for stating the obvious, but people are really complicated and are a mixture of many, many tendencies. It's just when the political party you belong to only pushes a couple of your buttons (the hate and fear buttons) those are the qualities that are brought out over time, and over time you become a different person. Nobody has to be a narcissist to join the MAGA cult (although it helps) but over time if you stay in it you're going to bear a closer and closer resemblance to its leader.
But I think it's an important analog to understand that these people are struggling with tremendous insecurity, and the flag waving, hat wearing, threatening their fellow Americans stance is a means of trying to cover up and compensate for their personal shortcomings. Underneath that stunning facade of pride and superiority, is a fragile ego that needs all this artifice to hide behind... that's the narcissist's dilemma.
Their laser focus on marginalizing and abusing minorities is exactly the same thing you do when you're a narcissist... you choose easy marks in your life who can be intimidated or manipulated to constantly feed your ego by allowing you to feel "better than them."
Typically, the healthy ways to deal with narcissists are things like: erecting and maintaining healthy boundaries, minimizing your own exposure AND reactivity to them, not accepting unacceptable behaviors, identifying that you're not the actual source or responsible party for their outbursts and manipulations, and being very cognizant that their ACTIONS matter WAY MORE than their words.
So, in that context we know what the right behaviors are to try and deal people who are narcissists. But we've failed as a society to effectively apply these same kinds of measures to MAGA style political narcissists. All the outrage farming on social media and the media going out to a diner in the middle of no where and forcibly reminding the other 70% of the country about how these people "think and feel" (despite that it is a moving target driven by constant immediate self aggrandizement and interest) is just giving them the validation and attention they crave so badly.
I think this is also part of the reason that "Truth Social" failed so spectacularly, because you can only get so much dopamine from reading all the same shit you agree with and believe and getting likes from people who already inherently agree with you. There's no contrast, no stakes, no striving to gain actual esteem.
Sometimes the best thing to do is just be so chill and comfortable in your own self and ideals, that you don't bother letting their flash in the pan steal your energy. They are people who need someone else's energy to try and plug the giant gaping hole in their self esteem, and we're often giving them the fuel to keep going on that same path. If it lost it's means of giving them an emotional kick, then they'd lose interest that much more quickly.
The faster Trump and MAGA are functionally and socially irrelevant in society, the faster they'll need to find some new artifice to construct their masks out of.
You’re on to something there. I’ve only been able to see the ambient abuse in the household of my childhood in the last few years, much less talk about and seek help for what it wrought in my life. Feeling at risk and walking on eggshells for the first two decades of life - and this is the water that you swim in with relationship to the very people who are charged with caring for you and showing you how to live - does things to a person that can be difficult to undo. I identify with your recognizing family members as narcissists and how it seems to have played out in America in very specific ways. I accepted an unacceptable amount of shame and fear and (oddly) pride because it had been normalized generationally for me. It had the veneer of religion. It, among other things, is what bell hooks called white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy. It is a spirit that seeks to inhabit and animate who it will. Stay safe out there.
I think those “minors on an Island” may be a Jeffrey Epstein reference.
I agree
I interpreted "minors on an island" as, like, Fire Festival rescue. But your way makes more sense -- Epstein is more recent.
The man is as subtle as he is bearded.
The common thread through Gaines, Anthony and Musk is ignorance and racism. These are traits that are taught, not hardwired in. Tiny children are color-blind, open minds that become what they are fed. Our failure as a species and likely doom from climate change is a behavioral problem and failure of education to overcome our basest, most primitive instincts. It appears brawn wins over brains in the end. As the end approaches, it's remarkable how many are oblivious. The controllers have managed to create conditions where the truth can hide in plain sight.