Not to digress too much, back in the Vietnam Era, the Soviet Union invested a billion dollars in America’s own anti-war movement, and that money and unknown agents of influence left their indelible mark on the American Left and Far Left. It takes some courage, curiosity, and honesty to engage with the true drivers of anti-Semitism and the Middle East Conflict, among them for certain the long animus sustained by Russian civilizational powers and their equally barbaric and thieving proxies, i.e., contemporary terrorist organizations including the Hamas, PLO, PFLP, reliably hosted and praised by Mikhail Bogdanov, Moscow’s envoy to the middle east.
Regarding the above Dylanesque Jesse Welles . . . fine voice, folksy, strong, and memorable in a way that may bind generations . . . but the illusion of the Palestinian community in Gaza as free beneath the Hamas political and religious mafia — it’s true character is fascist and repressive — has flowed down through Moscow (related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures). Israel has its own issues with “medieval war with modern weapons” but the American avant garde Left may have yet issues with its own ignorance and related malleability and vulnerability to malign forces experienced in its exploitation.
American Don – State Capture & State Piracy
I’ll be following the No Kings Day action from my desktop and may update this page as the spirit dictates. Left more or less alone on X–>
Donald Trump is an American criminal with three insufficiently resolved indictments, 34 confirmed felonies, and a monstrous Trump-Epstein accusation and scandal haunting his every appearance before the public. Most notably, Trump, who may be referred to as “Ill Trumpolini” in echo of the Italian criminal and fascist whom he resembled with the January 6, 2021 assault on the the Capitol, appears to have little interest in the United States of America as a modern secular democratic republic guided by a powerful Constitution and devoted to the elevation of its complement in humanity in ways well recognized by the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans who informed what would become a predominantly Christian west. After the Thirty Years War and consequent Peace of Westphalia, the nation’s Founding Fathers and political architects chose the classical and modern route then available in political philosophy to fashion a government wary of political and religious power both–and that has been our American Government in Principle since both the 1776 Declaration of Independence from the King of England and the American Constitution of 1789 and associated Bill of Rights declared for all Americans and, truly, mankind as well.
Whether through uncontested criminal means or a deeply dissatisfying American election, Trump and his mob of associate ass kissers and leveraged sycophants — add a Catholic-majority Supreme Court apparently favorable to unchecked power — have been degrading in every facet the nation’s security community, and instead of enjoying the back-and-forth of a collegial and cooperating if fractious American government well defended from enemies foreign and domestic, Americans have gotten an ageing, delusional, and ill despot.
No Kings! America v. Donald Trump
“I am a journalist. I am an immigrant. And I am a Muslim. I am everything Donald Trump loves!”
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ICE / ICESTAPO – “Brutality is the Point”
Velshi with Ruth Ben Ghiat–>
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No Kings! Grant Park, Chicago (Video Short)
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No Kings! New York City x Fox 5 New York
The Live Feeds have kicked in on YouTube, but for posterity, the above provides a glimpse of a day still determined, still festive, still nonviolent.
Donald Trump now appears to have lost the People of the United States of America — Americans! — before destroying with his idiot loyalists The American Experiment.
No Kings! Boston Common: “Boston Doesn’t Back Down!”
No Kings! South Florida: “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Donald Trump Has Got To Go!”
Badgering Trumpian insults to intelligence take their toll on X as may the wayward convictions of the nation’s far white right bigots and “Christian” nationalist zealots so far sunk in their Weltanschauung as to have imprisoned themselves in archaic principles discarded by the nobility of Europe–and of the American South–centuries ago–reference: Thirty Years War, Peace of Westphalia, American Civil War. After all that . . . the latest Ketaminic Sieg Heil salute to Adolph Hitler and remnant white supremacists worldwide:
Trump is an undisputed poster boy for narcissism. He demonstrates in pure form every single symptom described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, which I wrote in 1978. But lots of successful people are extremely narcissistic without being mentally ill — think most celebrities, many politicians, and a fair percentage of writers, artists, lawyers, doctors, and professors. To qualify for narcissistic personality disorder, an individual’s selfish, unempathetic preening must be accompanied by significant distress or impairment. Trump certainly causes severe distress and impairment in others, but his narcissism doesn’t seem to affect him that way.
On X, I’ve asserted the following for guidance: “delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of normal conscience.” If that’s not part of the DSM, I’d think the volume inadequate for addressing “Malignant Narcissism”, for every related–and above bolded term–may be searched on the web. Also as regards the narcissism of the healthy, the better natured and reparative in character may deserve or have earned a positive regard for the egoism inseparable from their own quest or struggle for success, i.e., the presence of a reparative narcissism along the lines of Maslow’s healthy competence-seeking behavior and self-esteem. When we’re good–or in the vicinity of excellence in our arts and professions–we many not need the limitless public adoration and validation that defines “Narcissistic Supply” and the neediness of the malign.
For additional curiosity related to Donald Trump’s persistent character, one may have a look into “Sociopathy“. Also worth a gander: “Anomie“; and on the other and brighter side of mental health appreciation, evaluation, and judgment–“Abraham Maslow“; “Positive Psychology“.
Has the United States of America been infiltrated, invaded, overpowered by elements either foreign to it, foreign to its character. or in fact opposed to its American Constitutional ideals and intentions?
American Character and Integrity Matter — Truth Matters
Down every avenue of honest nonpartisan inquiry, one finds President Trump a traitor to the United States of America, a convicted felon who has only evaded trials involving American identity and American national security as indicated by indictments for election interference, classified documents abuse, and attempted election fixing, and yet, as of yesterday, he has once again been handed the immense power of the American Presidency. Now comes a new question: have American governments and more brave and earnest American politicians as well as America’s most spirited artists, community leaders, journalists, investigators–all of whom may prefer American truth to American bullshit–the power to defend American Democracy against an apparent usurper and a tyranny of the “majority”? And Trump is a so-called “American President” who has made this bald promise in effect to all Americans: “It’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians . . . in four years you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote” (YouTube video, Turning Point Action, July 27, 2024).
American Community
Americans should be American in spirit as well as by geopolitical fact, but what an “American” is today appears questionable. Gone: an all-white polity; forgotten: E Pluribus Unum. The latest generations of American Natives and Native Americans may all claim to have been born in the United States of America, and whether happy with that or not . . . that’s just a fact of life. Whoever we are, we are all here. And perhaps now we need a New American Community, one that affirms its ethics, morals, principles, and values–and some of that may need updating and redefinition to suit the full complement of the nation–and one that rejects the racist and religious wet dreams best laid to rest in some dimming recollection of archaic medieval attitudes, beliefs, and practices.
We are Americans, and our power is not all white, nor need it ever be so again. There is no “Great Replacement” . . . .
Ol’ Whitey–and everyone else–“got around”.
So while we Americans think about who we are NOW and what we should be and mean to be–and not what may be engineered and forced on us by coercion, fraud, and force or the MAGAdumb–well, that has been the character of our Convicted Felon in Chief–we might have to accept a little bit of Moscow’s white nationalist crap at the top of what really has been a long dismissed and lost–and good riddance–America.
X Social Network
Countless hours, posts in the thousands (probably–too many for me to count)–for what? A conversation in public; trolling ladies with barely an X-presence; trolling fakes probably making up lists suited to their own derangement; a great lot of follows–really: the best notables in diplomacy and political science and related fields (most don’t know me, but I’m proud to have come to know of them)–and a pretty good base (still under one thousand) of followers–and God bless each and everything one of them. Apart from that “action”, lol, I live alone in a library. Earnest live and evolving conversations seem few to nil and far between or not expected at all.
Given a decent theory of the process by which malignant narcissists become so, it follows that denial covers the initiating or repeated narcissistic mortification–whatever imparted the humiliation never happened–and false claims and other lies abet the invention of an undamaged unassailable courageous-heroic self and related projected image. That image becomes the narcissists identity and self-concept with all contrary evidence dismissible–and the same may be and must be accepted by the narcissist’s agents, associates, employees, envoys, family, and friends.
Before one starts playing, “Who’s a narcissists?”–“You’re a narcissist!”–No, you are the narcissist!” and so on, it may be noted that the malignant narcissist has rejected one social reality, that which caused him emotional damage, for another in which he may not only play the hero in his own show, but it’s he who creates the show as an illusion in which innumerable others become party to his madness. The (#)”MaligNarc”–as I refer to the type on X–creates his own theater, and that stage and his centrality in it become his reality. This differs from the normal pride on may take in one’s “powers” as defined by one’s knowledge, skills, abilities, and talents plus energies over time, i.e., the normal endowment of a healthy person. Add a few course corrections and character-shaping habits good or bad for both a normal and successful or, alas, less so but honest sense of reality.
In my first approach to “A Dark Mirror in Language”, I relayed with it the context of Russia’s war of conquest and cultural annihilation taking place in Ukraine. My intent here is to produce a short description not attached to a present–and soon to be historical–fact of life.
For the narcissist, there is a dark mirror in language. He looks at his reflection in the pond, sees the sky behind him, and he believes he is gazing up toward heaven-and he goes on living in his own reflection.
The beautiful Narcissus of Greek mythology had perhaps youthful cause to enjoy his singular existence and self-absorbed obsession, and before even the existence of the myth the storytellers the loving grace to see in the plant the poetic cause of its form.
The malignant “Narcissus”, more Dorian Gray than innocent youth, may have other cause to view his life as seen in a mirror but lived in the black cold water beneath, a literal “underworld” for fear of the hazards of the reality around him that first imparted his own traumatic humiliation and shame. How much more fit to be admired, agreed with, obeyed for possessing the power to ruthlessly destroy any detractor and richly reward the properly admiring.
Behold the malignant narcissus, criminal, degrading, and ignoble but speaking and strutting as if an admired king, appropriately groomed, wise in the world, and responsive to his cultivated portion of the world’s most responsible advisors, that is a good king and leader, a philosopher-king and an admirable son of the language and soil of his birth. The malignant would not be so lucky as to be authentic but rather presents a fraud, imposter, usurper whose chief recommendations may be ill-gotten wealth and related criminal ruthlessness.
The Malignant Narcissist Lies
As noted, the malignant narcissist needs must lie to cover the memory of his own early and traumatic instance or continuing experience of humiliation and shame. The monster has options:
-Baseless Accusations, Defamations, Slanders -Claims Without Merit -Conspiracy to Commit Crimes -Defamations, Libels, Slanders -Deflections of Attention In Relation to Crimes -Denials of Culpability -Disinformation -Disingenuous and Fallacious Arguments -Fabrications & False Framing -Incitements to Violence -Sins of Omission
Whatever awful thing happened to him . . . just didn’t. Capiche?
Whatever the crime, he didn’t do it. Someone else must have done it, don’t you agree?
Everything he does is the best, the greatest, over-the-top, platinum, and outshines the sun–bask in his beneficence, nay his glory and magnificence–or be gone!
In his own theater, the malignant narcissist has become the world, and no one else can do what he can do or even really matters much at all.
Contemporary Irrational Actors, Diagnoses and Prognoses
I have circulated on X what follows as part of the day to day combat with–call it what is is–evil.
Signal: delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of normal conscience.
With the advent of affordable and popular “broadband Internet”, I chose to “see” the world in English through the foreign publications published in that lingua franca. The experience has been as inseparable from the study of conflict as it has been edifying and expansive. One desktop : one mind. In relation to conflict and malignant narcissism, the theme most evident across the world’s conflicts–we have a bloody busy and busy bloody world everywhere (may most–one would wish all–avoid the worst)–has been what I characterize as “Medieval v. Modern”, i.e., politically absolute systems of power poised against systems of distributed political power–so: Absolute Feudal-Medieval Cultures v. Democratic Modern Cultures. While all private businesses are in their own way absolute, feudal, and medieval in their cultural and social structures, generally speaking, the compacts with governments and the interests of governments have become increasingly integrated and sophisticated in ways requiring greater levels of cooperation in respect to communications and trade. There are no “globalists”, and we are all well defined by where we have been born–the culture of our birth and our language–and who we have become by our own design and by the forces–cultural, financial, political, social–that are a part of our existence individually. In the world of the once mortified malignant personality–someone taught him or her a lesson, I guess–there may be only defense. Lies cover shame; money puts up barriers of all sorts and helps make friends–or hire greater defensive talent–as well. Somehow in our natural mix, we are not all so damaged, or if so have sought solace and strength elsewhere to become more contributing in life than destructive.
Note: I regard myself as reparative and blame that on isolation and spoiling, an odd combination which history I will not divulge, but I may say I’ve had a life with books, cameras, and musical instruments, and being able to say that (close to 70) and for the time being comfortable (at home in an apartment), there’s not much room for anger and complaint. Would that I could change the past with the potential natural decade or two ahead, but have for late stage wealth the ownership of my time. Discretionary time. Free time. And freedom of that sort let’s us do things we choose for our own esteem or pleasure.
Back to theme (my “weave”) . . . .
Take it as a trope: modernity worldwide already involves advanced complex integrated large and sensitive systems demanding interpersonal and interstate cooperation in the appreciation of their existence and related benefits.
In fact, international laws and standards apply and bear down on absolutely every facet of business and related exchange while the space left to criminals, frauds, isolationists, and marauders grows smaller by the day. On the other hand, the presence of the malignant and their role in greater conflict and desperation appears to be growing, and all that really keeps the lid on, where that is possible, are the reparative. That’s a heady thing for me to say, but take mine as a voice from the sidelines. The greater in contribution have presence as responsible academics, diplomats, executives, and researchers who help everything else connect and work. They are modern people in a world engaged not only in trading across boundaries but in addressing a full suite of basic issues and challenges involving hazards and process that have as phenomenon–contagion, earthquakes, hurricanes–only biology or physics for what they do–never conscience. And then there are the malignant who in positions of power behave similarly to natural dangers in their absence of conscience. As a breed born accustomed to punishment, denying it, and holding power ruthlessly so as not to again suffer the same themselves, some become rather their own “forces of nature” acting wholly without conscience and devoid of compassion.
Name the capitals; note the closed, criminal, and dark; consider the malignant–always attacking because always cowardly, defensive, and weak–and consider the possibility that the modern and those who would be modern engage in repairs and the securing of their work primarily to establish a greater good that is not about power and wealth so much as the encouragement and greening of a healthy planet at peace.
Perhaps a little bit to be less blunt or hurtful in the criticism or solicited response to another’s cooking, demeanor, fashion, or life.
Perhaps now and then for hooky, nooky, and bong–that’s not so good but fair in a mood or pinch.
Perhaps a convenient compliment for a kiss.
Perhaps to spare another pain or worry in souring conditions, so one is thought just fine when things are dicey.
To hide something (not so big a deal); to get something (and make life a little more sweet).
It takes another kind of nut to snowball a whopper, to put one over on a community, to seduce, fuck over, and ruin an associate, family, institution, or state–but that’s what malignant narcissists wind up doing in the process of covering the memory of their own humiliation or mortification with a great projection of an undamaged and unassailable heroic self, courageous in adversity, heroic before all, and totally full of bullshit.
The type I have in mind: delusional, grandiose, messianic and in appearance absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of conscience. In the cause of their own baseless glory, one may wade into their swamps of baseless accusations, defamations, deflections, denials, fabrications, frames, omissions, and revisions (some of them alibis). And downstream to be found in their targets: baseless belief, confusion, and eventual disappointment as the “reality” painted turns out having had nothing to do with reality at all.
Infamous Lies
Chechen Rebels Destroyed Apartment Buildings in Moscow
More likely, Russia’s secret political police, FSB, loaded basements with explosives in the dead of night, set off the detonations, and “credited” an allegedly unruly Chechnya resistance for the act in order to convince Russians to elect Vladimir Putin as their best problem solver and hope for security and stability. Code name: “Storm in Moscow”; on this blog: “Reference: Journalist Alexander Zhilin, Operation Storm in Moscow AKA Moscow Apartment Bombings” (May 3, 2023). And the payoff for the False Flag Operation? Not only election to power–and today absolute and imperious power–for Putin, but in his head and for his twisted spirit “Unlimited Narcissistic Supply”, i.e., the adoration and validation of the Russian People without end.
Democrats Stole the 2020 American Election
The United States of America has for its defense against all enemies foreign and domestic the services of 27 integrated Federal security agencies. For election, the nation enjoys a full suite of relevant threat detection and law enforcement capabilities from Homeland Security on down to security assistance for local districts. Against all of that, Donald Trump has launched the lie, rumor, belief, and “alternative truth”–which is no truth at all!–that his opposition (how dare they…) stole the 2020 national election. “Election Denialism” appears to have become for some–including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson–their faith-based religious obligation, but no factual basis for it has surfaced, and without that, Trump’s efforts to overturn the previous election amount to no more than the most delusional and grandiose attempted theft imaginable.
A Note On Stealing A Modern Or Transitional State to Operate as Criminal Enterprise
Putin and the Russian Mafia State appear to have set a certain tone in the region of archaic-reactionary and brutally repressive kleptocracy, and my guess is Trump is trying to catch up. Well, this is for America’s Christians to know as regards how criminal power exploits faith and related institutions: “KGB FSB ROC M-O-N-E-Y” (January 18, 2021).
From gutter to mansion, America supports an extraordinary duality in relation to sinners and saints, and, quite frequently, the would-be saints turn out the most curious of sinners. The famous are known: Jerry and Becki Falwell and the Pool Boy, Giancarlo Granda (People, Jan. 25, 2022)–and noted Becki in relation to the couple’s role at Liberty University, “We had to put on an act” ; Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye (maiden name LeValley) who together in marriage stumbled over the husband’s one seemingly acknowledged affair–one allegedly forced with Jessica Hahn, who was paid off for her silence–and allegations involving several homosexual flirtations or liaisons (The Washington Post, Sept. 22, 1988). The less famous but in their own wild way as infamous, whether charmingly so (old rascal) or heinous (for having committed a crime), we may be collectively just not all that angelic. Penance, piety, prayer, and promise afterward may suffice for easing conscience and erasing guilt, and sometimes penance precedes change, present and future, for the better. In any case, I wonder if all Americans, and regardless of religious subscription, may not expect some level of pious hypocrisy in themselves, if honest, or in their ranks (if that’s more comfortable) while striving to do better, but to cover repetitive criminal intent or behavior with the appearance of piety, that is something else.
One may not refer to either Donald John Trump or Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin as ethically or morally good men. As the governors of nation-states, neither has offered much evidence of care, concern, or interest for the whole body and spirit of their respective nations–Russians suffer sustained abuse and neglect if beyond Putin’s near direct circles of influence and power; for ordinary Americans, Trump has bragged to his wealthy friends from his own gilded halls at Mar-a-Lago, “You All Just Got a Lot Richer” (Vanity Fair, Dec. 24, 2017) after signing into law substantial tax breaks for them. Having ceded substantial tax revenues to private sector interests–and the public be damned (which it literally might be if such power prevails)–why should the buccaneer not commandeer the entire ship of state for his own crony capitalist private enterprise–just as Vladimir has done? He has already developed a base ripe for ripping off.
Marching Forward Into the Past
Around the world, constituencies will find leaders who prefer to treat the idea of the state as a private and family enterprise to be milked for their own profit and the securing of their family and their associates. They’re motivated by greed and lust and–given their underlying fear of humiliation and consequent delusional self-concept and obsession with their own aggrandizement–the allure of their own potential to control others without question. Centuries ago, that characterization would have fit well with a medieval world more than familiar with the concept of “Absolutism” or “Absolute Power” and its violent and not infrequently tyrannical enforcement. Today, the same personalities and personal psychology–associate what I have in mind with Erdogan, Orban, Putin, and Trump–appear archaic but difficult to address and ameliorate from the perspective of any democratic idealism, especially from the vantage of the still revolutionary Constitution of the United States of America (related in the way of inspiration for revolution and the idea of a new nation–Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”, January 10, 1776). The named would be quite comfortable beneath the titles of Sultan Erdogan, Tsar Putin, King Orban, and, perhaps, King Trump.
Marching Forward Into The Future: A New American Community
Now that we’re all here, we’re going to have to deal with ourselves as a whole community and not so much as myopic and parochial islands fit for some Americans and not for others.
All American citizens are Americans.
Our guests are of two kinds: aspiring Americans or foreigners who have come here for business or travel.
As Americans, our challenges are not only American but by way of our own far expanded global awareness–apprehension or “consciousness”, actually–we have made ourselves global and universal in character. So have others, and with transnational business (and crime) all of the next functional steps have already been taken. Basically, our connections have changed and become enjoyable, essential, and permanent–or if adverse or made cautious by our own dependence, then a part of the challenge of an evolving new world.
Also as Americans, we have lived by a deeply devoted and earnestly defended Constitution designed to establish and sustain forever a secular democratic republic. Our western civilizational heritage–Judeo-Christian well acknowledged; Greco-Roman for the history, legends, and myths still echoing our own existence–has arrived here compassionate, down to earth, and reasoning. The wealth of the world has been brought here a long time, and as there is only one world, one Earth, we’re already blended with it and perhaps ready to adjust and assimilate, discard what’s not going to work, and appreciate that which proves good universally. We’ve been doing that a long time too, but for international relations, more may be involved than wearing cashmere and sipping tea.
We may see more than we once did; we may do more than we once could; and we should look ahead and do more than live in the past–or allow the greatest future ever to be stolen from all by evildoing feudal-medieval nutcases, whether religious extremists or criminal politicians who cannot contain their own worst compulsions.
So this much I may suggest about the next New World that is the one in which we are already living: it just hasn’t room for malignantly narcissistic “leaders” and their self-absorbed devotion to their own aggrandizement, enrichment, and power through fraudulent display and theft outright. The Next New World will need knowledgeable, powerful, and visionary high-integrity souls for its leadership in the development, establishment, and distribution of extraordinary systems for agriculture, business, education, health, justice, and general prosperity and security worldwide.
One step down, Retired European wrote, “Exactly, Russia is the new Nazis”, and to that I responded:
#Russia had been the inspiration for Germany's Nazis via Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter. This is basic-https://t.co/3z7Hgmdvcf It's only history and change for the #ModernWorld is inevitable. https://t.co/lBhnpdgrsv needs unpacking, but it's there to help all good find courage.
For my followers in many social media quarters, the concept of “Malignant Narcissism” as a political interpretation of Narcissistic Personality Disorder needs no introduction.
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In the region of the Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova wrote, “Terrorist methods have become routine for the #Kievregime and the most odious terrorists in world history would envy the scale of it.”
Twitter lends itself most of all to squawking and very little to I-Thou conversational exchange. Here, #SovietPostSovietRussia claims human rights violations for traitors with heart, courage, and narcissistic leanings who may have–I’m not certain–been able to address their core issues (in order of mention: America is being run like a prison camp; intrusion into private lives is possible, undeniable, and probable; and there should be no state secrets-everything should be online) via other channels and methods. In any case, adult, cognizant, and sophisticated Americans should understand that all states have secret lives and ours in America fewer than others (although that’s a box always a little bit compelling for unpacking).
Chelsea, Edward, and Julian hacked, extracted, and delivered top secret data to Russia, so of course they're Russian heroes.
#TsarNobody and his crew have been the schoolyard bullies who want your lunch money and your lasting fidelity to their glory. So far, none but a pissed off Prigozhin, another former criminal, has dared question Putin’s military leadership. The idea of the Tsar right up there with God appears to remain fixed in the Russian psyche, which has also practical fear of so obviously criminal a power as Tsar Nobody knows all of their secrets, controls their careers and paychecks, has ways of assaulting (or murdering) any Russian, so far, anywhere in the world by means traditional–that would be defenestration, for example–and surreal, i.e., Polonium Tea.
In effect, Putin has all of Russia enslaved to and within his own delusional and malign narcissistic fantasia.
None dare leave who have “achieved” any stature within his realm.
Putin may believe himself the personification of Russia, i.e., that Putin is Russia, but Putin is not Russia, and the cognizant and educated among Russians know it and know furthermore the Kremlin feeds Russia’s public–“The Masses” given Putin’s weird Imperialist-Stalinist revanche–garbage.
Given the dangers, including nuclear blackmail as evidenced by the mining of the Zaporizhzha Nuclear Power Plant, the possession of so-called “tactical nukes”, and the inveigling of Belarus in nuclear threat ambition, Putin may be expected to fail from within.
This morning, I posted two notes to European and global security expert Nicolas Tenzer’s Twitter feed–>
“My hope is you’ll see that Ukraine makes significant progress on their offensive and that it generates a negotiated settlement". Highly misleading words from @POTUS.#Russia must be fully defeated. There cannot be "pease talks" with #Russia. Period.https://t.co/ryZZO9lEts
I may have shared this with you already but it's appropriate here-https://t.co/Er9BwQ6Psl Putin's power resides in slavish obedience, not esteem; while he's made clear the price of disobedient intent, he may not have the internal support he believes he has and may yet be refused.
Putin's ascent to power, Moscow Apartment Bombings & all, may have been predicated on the discomforts of disaffected KGB at the end of the Cold War. Those weren't going to be left out of power & muscled back.
What is a feudal tyrant doing as the head of a still powerful and promising Russia?
Part of the answer involves a cosmic “Why not?”
As a gang, disaffected KGB–out of power, out of work in suddenly post-Communist Moscow–may have had a thick-as-thieves coordination and ruthlessness fit to their former secret policing mission and experience. Then too, they would have garnered the cooperation and interest of the post-Cold War peaceful of a productive Europe and North America.
“Why not?” for that as well.
Add condemnation, disapproval, and strong “red line” talk–TALK!–for aggression or barbaric actions undertaken on behalf of absolute power from Chechnya to Afghanistan to Ukraine and the United States (remember the Internet Research Agency!)–all squawk on the part of The West while all remained barbaric and criminal on the part of Moscow and its favored circles of disreputable mediocrities.
Left to grow Russia in his own mafia, mercenary, parochial, post-Soviet, rapacious, and ruthless manner, Putin put Russia’s army and his own demented narcissistic will on the big step into Europe, first Crimea in 2014 in response to the big “Nyet!” and boot given his lackey Viktor Yanukovych, and then the greater portion of the Breadbasket of Europe herself in February 2022.
Have Russians the will or wish themselves to be made criminal, desperate, dumb, and enslaved?
Have the less evident “forces of order” the intent and will to embrace and support those ends?
Perhaps Putin has finally gotten a certain attention secretly craved.
For the narcissist, there is a dark mirror in language. He looks at his reflection in the pond, sees the sky behind him, and he believes he is gazing up toward heaven-and he goes on living in his own reflection.#MalignantNarcissists#PoliticalCriminals#MaligNarcs#PolitCrims
More may be involved than being merely vain or having some egotism in need of some judicious but also liberating trimming: most of us–all of us–wish most of all to be what we call “ourselves” at our best, and each according to his own best assessment of abilities–and if we become too full of ourselves (offstage), we may encounter reminders, including from our own self-observing selves, that we are not all that.
Let us sit and sip more quietly.
On the other hand, the clinically (NPD) and politically (malignantly) narcissistic have a tougher self-assignment, and that is to 1) hide the damage done to them when they were helpless or incapable of their own effective defense and 2) cover it with an undamaged and much more competent and greater courageous-heroic image that would be and which becomes their own New Person–The Greatest.
The greater achievement for The Greatest: validation confirmed by love, but a capital-V “Validation!” confirmed by the Applause and Roar of the Crowd–High-Powered VALIDATION!, Limitless and MIGHTY!
We have all the right to transform from children into pretty good adults, but The Greatest want a greatness beyond the boundaries of the good.
Terms one encounters for the malign: delusional, grandiose, messianic.
In casual description: beyond limits; without boundaries.
Eventually: criminal.
“Those who conceived this war want only one thing — to remain in power forever, live in pompous tasteless palaces, sail on yachts comparable in tonnage and cost to the entire Russian Navy, enjoying unlimited power and complete impunity,” Mr. Bondarev said in his email. “To achieve that they are willing to sacrifice as many lives as it takes.”
In the dark mirror of language, the most primary lie in service to the speaker’s image may be the inverted accusation–on this blog, the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”. The narcissist is always beautiful, good, and right, and the targets unfailingly bent and ugly even though by every objective measurement and view, the narcissist is the evil.
The Greatest must be the greatest as well–not merely pretty good or, son of a gun, lucky!
Image matters and the means to produce it may be obfuscated and covered over, and in the dark mirror, the lies–the lying–really takes off. Putin, poker faced, insists that Russia attacks only military targets.
The Greatest lie to aggrandize and enrich themselves, their cronies, families, and networks; to confuse the judgments of others; to perceptually control their fans, marks, and targets–and they lie most of all to hide their crimes.
Under the guise of “liberation movements”, Russia’s “caretakers”, like Arafat and Abbas, plunder their own communities. The Palestinians remain both too vulnerable as weak parties before western power and its modern character and consequently too egotistical and proud themselves to believe it. In essence, they have imprisoned themselves in the dogma of “resistance”, and there they keep themselves ideologically, intellectually, financially, and, for the most part, physically trapped and suffocated.
“Bogdanov, Palestinians” serves as a useful starting search string on both the assertion, topic, and theme involving Russia’s power of persuasion in keeping the Palestinians hooked on a liberation theology that has no true foundation in anyone’s reality, not even that of the Palestinian leadership. All Russia has known through the 20th and 21st Centuries has been the horror that comes with the “leadership” of delusional thieves, Stalin to Putin with just a moment of post-Cold War sunlight between.
For seriously curious, independent, and industrious Palestinians, there’s a lot to unpack, a lot of Muscovian agitprop (intellectual infection) to address, and then only repairs to be done in relation to community-wide financial arrangements, security, and transparency.
For political philosophy in relation to the bullshit Moscow has been selling for decades to dictators, extremists, and useful idiots all along, I would suggest there is no justice but rather a better and happier side to history, and that it is more the true history of the assertion of human dignity, freedom, liberation, inclusion, and security. For Palestinians, it would be better to cross over to the happier side of history–and the future–than remain mired in the darkest and deepest pools of confusion, hate, and resentment.
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