Category Archives: Political Psychology

Russian Active Measures, Donald Trump, and Either Evil or Gullible Americans (Or Both)

22 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, United States of America

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Active Measures — The collection of Russian Agitation, Disinformation, and Propaganda Methods made evident through covert or subtle Influence Campaigns applied to wrecking the political coherence and cohesion of EU/NATO for the purpose of reestablishing Political Absolutism in the same and then using the most thuggish of feudal and medieval methods to leverage loyalty and wealth from them for contribution to the Greater Imperial Glory of Moscow, the Russian “mafia state” it has come to represent, and the immense enrichment of its oligarchy.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/02/13/active-measures/

Kaplan, Alex. “Trump has repeatedly amplified QAnon Twitter accounts. The FBI has linked the conspiracy theory to domestic terror.” Media Matters, August 1, 2019.

Iyengar, Rishi. “Twitter takes down 7,000 accounts linked to QAnon.” CNN Business, July 22, 2020.

From the above references, one might suggest that in or with President Donald J. Trump, Washington, like Moscow, has had some kind of energized disinformation factory. It may not be the President’s factory, but he has encouraged and endorsed baseless conspiracy theories and the most disingenuous innuendo involving his political enemies.

Among the more stunning of this morning’s headlines: “The White House is pushing a conspiracy theorist fired from the NSC for a top Pentagon position” (CNN Politics, July 20, 2020).

Related: Winter, Jana and Elias Groll. “Here’s the Memo That Blew Up the NSC.” Foreign Policy, August 10, 2017. Here’s a key excerpt —

Trump is being attacked, the memo says, because he represents “an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative.” Those threatened by Trump include “‘deep state’ actors, globalists, bankers, Islamists, and establishment Republicans.”

The memo is part of a broader political struggle inside the White House between current National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and alt-right operatives with a nationalist worldview who believe the Army general and his crew are subverting the president’s agenda.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/10/heres-the-memo-that-blew-up-the-nsc/

Foreign Policy has the full memo embedded in its account.

Said Rich Higgins back in February: “Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman wasn’t the first staffer to be fired from President Trump’s National Security Council and escorted from the premises by security. I went through the same ritual on July 21, 2017. But in contrast to Col. Vindman, I lost my job because I was loyal to the president” (by Rich Higgins for WSJ Opinion, February 12, 2020).

Well, here in an NYT lead (by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, August 11, 2017) is evidence of what Higgins thought was necessary for pleasing President Trump —

WASHINGTON — A cabal of leftist “deep state” government workers, “globalists,” bankers, adherents to Islamic fundamentalism and establishment Republicans are conspiring to remove President Trump and impose cultural Marxism in the United States, according to a former White House aide whose darkly worded memo detailing the alleged conspiracy got him removed last month from the National Security Council.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/politics/rich-higgins-memo-national-security-council.html

Who has placed themselves behind the QAnon distribution?

Who has been reading and ingesting the garbage?

Who among Americans believes everything an American president might care to tell them (especially this American president)?

Bigoted, fake, weak, willful and enamored, apparently, of the kind of powerful others known to the west as dictators, who, aware of the pain he has caused others through multiple bankruptcies and countless and apparently limitless lies can respect him out of love rather than fear?

Have some Americans been so duped and convinced of “HIS” nobility in character that they cannot admit to themselves that they may have been fooled?

Americans will now have to educate themselves in relation to the collected legacies of the nation without regard for immediate resources and public or private channeling. To have become this ignorant, this vulnerable, to such an ignoramus: politically and socially obscene and tragic.

Related Online

Alba, Davey. “Debunking 4 Viral Rumors About the Bidens and Ukraine.” The New York Times, October 29, 2019.

Oppenheim, James S. “FBI, ANTIFA, and Swamp Gas.” BackChannels, July 1, 2020.

Oppenheim, James S. “The Confidence Man — He’ll Tell You Anything.” BackChannels, November 23, 2019.

Stanton, Zack. “You’re Living in the Golden Age of Conspiracy Theories.” Politico, June 17, 2020.

Venook Jeremy. “20 Conspiracy Theories Trump Has Pushed Before and During His Presidency.” Center for American Progress Action Fund, May 19, 2020.

Regarding President Trumps big dumb “Crowdstrike” attempt at misdirecting the attention of the American public —

Gramer, Robbie and Amy Mackinnon. “Impeachment Trials and Conspiracy Theories: A Match Made in Hell.” Foreign Policy, January 24, 2020.

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Putin’s Mirror?

15 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Political Psychology, United States of America

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Authoritarian

Hobbesian

Narcissistic

Nationalist

Reactionary

Shady

Shielded

Thuggish

Wealthy

White

Which of the two or both?

Perhaps all that separates Presidents Putin and Trump are America’s still-intact Constitutional checks and balances and related authentic cultural precepts, tenets, and values having to do with equality, freedom, and justice bound to a modern and spacious appreciation of universal human character and potential.

Posted to YouTube by Republican Voters Against Trump, July 15, 2020.

The tapped popular perception of both of these heavy handed and extraordinarily wealthy politicians is that each exists to protect his image, his power, and his cronies and may be otherwise concerned with the needs of their respective nations overall to only a minimal extent.

The democracy of the United States of America requires — as do others — a soundly educated population on one hand and (it is this one on the other that’s tough) highly experienced and well educated statesmen on the other. The Republican vote coming for Biden, an “old school” politician with a manner familiar from far better days, will represent a mass of voting against the incumbent Donald Trump, but that will not hack it for American democracy except to forestall its dissolving into another shitty pseudo-democratic dictatorship.

Whoever wins 2020, it will be America’s 2024 election that will spell whether Americans will be governed by a fully responsive and responsible leadership or one bent by measures of dogma, excessive narcissism, and greed.

Regarding the psychology of dictatorship, BackChannels offers a page with a few interesting, even novel, concepts (like the “Paranoid Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation“) on it: https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/ .

“Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” might be worth a look as well.

At the end of his congressional testimony in February, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer, floated a nightmarish possibility.

“Given my experience working for Mr. Trump,” Cohen said, “I fear that if he loses in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

Block, Daniel. “How Trump Could Lose the Election and Remain President.” Washington Monthly, April/May/June 2019.

Donald Trump falsely accused Democrats of trying to “steal” Tuesday’s special election in California amid the Covid-19 pandemic by adding a polling place in one of the most diverse sections of a district.

But the county actually added the polling location at the request of the area’s Republican mayor.

Levine, Sam. “‘It’s all rigged’: Trump foreshadows how he could undermine presidential election.” The Guardian, May 12, 2020.

The announcement that Russian President Vladimir Putin won last week’s national vote to rewrite the country’s constitution and allow himself to run twice more for president was not exactly a surprise. Putin has a long track record of winning elections through a mix of genuine popularity, electoral skullduggery, and—most important of all—ensuring that no real alternatives are allowed on the ballot. This most recent plebiscite took Putin-era elections to new depths of meaningless.

Miller, Chris. “Lukashenko Is Putin’s Future.” Foreign Policy, July 9, 2020.

Charter, David. “Trump wants meeting with Putin before US presidential election.” The Times, July 15, 2020.

Hodge, Nathan and Mary Ilyushina. “Russian voters overwhelmingly back a ploy by President Vladimir Putin to rule until 2036.” CNN, July 2, 2020.

Lutz, Eric. “Is Trump Setting the Stage to Dismiss the 2020 Election Results?” Vanity Fair, May 20, 2020.

Web search and screen capture, July 15, 2020 at 1 p.m.
Posted to YouTube by Republican Voters Against Trump, May 29, 2020.
Posted to YouTube by Republican Voters Against Trump, July 15, 2020.

Related: Kelly, Mike. “Some in South Jersey have a message for Trump: Pay your old Atlantic City casino bills.” Northjersey.com, January 26, 2020.

–33–

Trump’s Big ANTIFA Bugaboo Backfires

18 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology

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All over the news: Facebook blocks Trump Campaign promotion containing Nazi symbolism — and to get through this quick –>

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-facebook-ads-nazi-blitz-20200618-lpdtlat62fcbzdy2dncj3hgsdq-story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/18/trump-campaign-runs-ads-with-marking-once-used-by-nazis-designate-political-prisoners/

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-removes-donald-trump-ad-nazi-symbol-violating-policy-2020-6

Add to the above — Breland, Ali. “Nazis Put This Symbol on Political Opponents’ Arms. Now Trump is Using it.” Mother Jones, June 18, 2020.

Trump’s hysteria-creating message begins, “Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem,” and it ends with this appeal: “We’re calling on YOU to make a public statements and add your name to stand with President Trump against ANTIFA.”

No problem for it seems that with the exception of brief coverage in Mother Jones of street gang bullying and payback (August 29, 2017), “ANTIFA” may be more of a computer-distributed idea taken up chaotically by actors inclined to “play” into their roles for a moment of political action without creating an organization. The “enemy” Trump points to — and wants you to join him in fighting — may have at best a (so far) chimeric existence. On the anti-organization organization concept that isn’t an organization 🙂 but has the Administration’s attention as at least a figment of its imagination substantial enough to promote into a quick two-minutes hate — or a sign-up with the Trump team –>

https://theintercept.com/2020/06/09/antifa-fbi-tweet/ – 6/9/2020

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/antifa-trump-fbi/ – 6/2/2020

https://www.ajc.com/news/fbi-finds-evidence-antifa-involvement-national-unrest/qVI3U9wb8Q6u1QEvVsJ7AJ/ – 6/6/2020

https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-no-intelligence-antifa-weekend-violence-george-floyd-protests-2020-6 – 6/2/2020

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-finds-no-evidence-of-antifa-involvement-in-dc-violence-the-same-day-trump-said-it-was-a-terrorist-org – 6/2/2020

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/873278314/no-sign-of-antifa-so-far-in-justice-department-cases-brought-over-unrest – 6/9/2020

Trump’s opposition hasn’t hesitated to transform the Trump Team’s action symbol into an object for editorial comment –>

When Trump’s Presidency stepped off with broadsides against the “Fake News!” and proceeded to tear down key missions and personalities in every quietly accepted or admired national institution, he laid the groundwork for his Administration’s own discredit as well as the inspiration for a new spectrum of resistance to authoritarian behaviors and claims. The earlier spectacle of impeachment and the sight of Trump associates being marched off to jail as felons could not have helped in that regard. This latest brouhaha may well cement the impression of an Administration trying mightily to create its own reality to sell to a perhaps confused faithful who believe they have been fighting “globalists”, “libtards”, and “socialists” that actually exist in the manner described to them.

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FTAC: The Briefest Comment on Epistemology and the Perception of Public Events and Issues

15 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, A Little Wisdom, Epistemology, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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“We are going to destroy each other and this country based on raw emotion, public opinion, media distortion, fake news, false narratives and unverified video and allegations.”

Amen.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/

Disciplined observation with integrity accompanied by empathy, logic, and reason may be more difficult than casually imagined, but those are the best tools we have for defining issues and answering with appropriate and progressive policy.

The Stanford philosophizing referenced above may not lead to the most cogent or helpful of references for approaching legal or policy issues, but for those two regions, any may start with the idea that mere perception is not reality, and it is generally good to investigate how things really work when on the way to making decisions or plans pertaining to them.

Peel the onion; turn over the rock; have another look; put it to a test — language has many cliches and tropes related to investigation and the methods of arriving at conclusions — “truths” one might call them — in which one might have confidence on the basis of other than ambitions, agendas, pleasant delusions, and personal interests.

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Commentary: COVID-19; Race War; Anything Else?

01 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, COVID-19, Political Psychology, Politics, United States of America

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We are sitting ducks for either external aggression or continued self-immolation.

More than 41 million Americans are jobless. In the coming weeks temporary eviction moratoriums are set to end in half of the states. One-fifth of Americans missed rent payments this month. Extra unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end of July.

What is Trump’s response? Like Herbert Hoover, who in 1930 said “the worst is behind us” as thousands starved, Trump says the economy will improve and does nothing about the growing hardship. The Democratic-led House passed a $3TN relief package on 15 May. Mitch McConnell has recessed the Senate without taking action and Trump calls the bill dead on arrival.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/31/donald-trump-coronavirus-pandemic-george-floyd-minneapolis-tweets

Regarding George Floyd

It’s an unpleasant reminder but let’s go with it: you are looking at policeman Derek Chauvin methodically, professionally even, take a knee to the life of small time criminal George Floyd. The world would interpret this image in racial terms–just like that, we’re in South Africa when power was white and slavish labor was black.

However, these two knew one another as bouncers in the same bar. Could something else have been taking place?

Also, Floyd’s wife, now divorcing him, was not white but Asian from Laos. Might we be witnessing an expression of sadistic dominance on the part of a bouncer and cop with a track record involving the applying of excessive force?

Call that 2020 hindsight and in philosophical rather than political sense, conservative (forensic) reason.

China’s Democrats, Russia’s Republicans?

Oh, the accusations — and each the reflection of the other!

Biden & the Socialist Far Out Left Democrats: everybody stay home (unless your importance and wealth justifies the hop to a good dinner somewhere else). We’ll shutter your business, put your employees out of their jobs, and worry about repairs later.

Sure they will.

Trump & the Fascist and Strident Far (White) Right: everybody back to work, but we’re not going to cover your losses (why should we? We’re wealthy and comfortable and take care of ourselves: what the hell happened to you? And sorry to hear it. Tough luck).

And the colored girls sing . . . .

Vanessa Paradis – Walk On The Wild Side [Lou Reed].

So, white girls, black girls, transvestites, LGBTs in general and all other Americans who might wish to be as God made them — or they chose to make themselves — what has happened to muscular Christianity in the U.S.A. Is it running the show? Is it losing the show? Has it found the secular humanist design of American democracy overrated and in need of a good strong power fix? America’s fear of America’s Old Money and its Puritan and other of the nation’s Christian cultural pillars seems at times in the mix as well.

Has the Great Society failed?

Regarding Biden : China and Trump : Russia, there should be no question that each has both a posture and relationship opposite the other on China and Russia. For the skinny on Trump and Russian entanglement, one may pick up Craig Unger’s findings here: https://www.amazon.com/House-Trump-Putin-Untold-Russian/dp/152474350X . Both China and Russia have made perhaps superficial moves toward the west in recent decades but have also reverted to their civilizational souls in regard to governance, power, and pride plus vanity.

China’s Communist Totalitarianism may be linked by the American Right to the latest edition of the nation’s Far Out Left (those socialist, communist, weirdo rebels!).

It doesn’t make much sense but suits for demonizing the Left.

The Left’s case against the Far Right and President Trump’s temporarily phantom (off-stage) relationship with Russia has more meat to it in blood-and-soil (white) nationalism planted in Christian conservatism and flag waving militarism. The formula established in Russia by Putin that has had a resurgent Russian Orthodox Church (funded by alcohol and tobacco revenue) beside an active military (capable of bombing undefended Syrian hospitals to smithereens) hasn’t really worked for Russians in any broad and modern sense: the might of church and state power may serve for some superficial pride in earlier grandeur and spirit, but the same, on the whole, would seem to serve Putin and his preferred company and not general and national economic redevelopment.

A “New Nationalist” United States may work differently by way of the long-term managing of the nation’s development in ways that have been over time culturally and geographically comprehensive and inclusive. One might say the pork barrel distribution of defense and development funds worked, and as long as tax revenues recycled through the nation’s economy, people worked too — and in both civilian and defense industries and downstream enterprise.

In any case, the return to feudal political absolutism in the three superpowers is something BackChannels will have to tackle in the future. For now, the felt insult of an authoritarian handling of Americans seems to be producing both the impression of a magically-thinking Left and a boot-in-the-face American Right, neither of which seem very American at the moment.

American Police Shooting at Journalists

I cannot remember a day — never! — in which American police, any, took aim at the faces — or cameras — of journalists, well marked, to inflict harm in the crowd control process.

CPJ is investigating reports of attacks and arrests in recent days in Louisville, Kentucky; Las Vegas, Nevada; Atlanta; and Washington, D.C. Journalists can consult CPJ’s safety notes for covering civil unrest for advice on how to minimize the risks of reporting on protests.

https://cpj.org/2020/05/cpj-condemns-targeting-of-journalists-covering-protests-across-the-u-s/

Related in The New York Times, May 30, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/minneapolis-protests-press.html

Kaitlin Rust’s report – “Louisville Police Fire Pepper Bullets At Reporter And Crew | MSNBC”.

What do YOU make of it?

Related: https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/5/31/21276013/police-targeted-journalists-covering-george-floyd-protests

What’s that like, being shot at by your own fellow Americans?

This infamous event involved the Ohio National Guard and produced a national conscience and passion opposite intentions to quell protests. Unknown to the students, the Soviet Union had put $1 billion dollars into funding their anti-war efforts.

“On this day: Four killed in Kent State shooting” (May 4, 1970).

How all of the above looks today, a part of the plastering of culture-altering dramas — “The Pandemic!” — Remember that one from, like, you know, a week ago? and now “Race Riots!” How long before the Next Big Thing sweeps this latest news into dimming (and crowded) memory?

“Scenes from protests, riots across the U.S. after killing of George Floyd” – CNBC Television.

The police appear to be taking and following orders.

However, given the glimpse of the above violence shown an accredited reporter and photographer, however casually dressed, are they defending America’s Constitution — or making the first small violent motions in the process of killing it?

–33–

FTAC: One More Thing Regarding Our Expectations About Politicians

28 Thursday May 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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We wouldn’t be here sick — and sick about being sick — as well as dependent on our government for bailouts and tide-me-overs and driven apart, largely by drivel, were it not for the mediocrity of some of our most powerful politicians.

On Facebook, I just ran a series of Trump Authoritarian pieces from the Mainstream Media that also informs us about Trump’s popular — or not so popular — image. These were the URLs (in order of posting):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/28/trump-has-told-16000-lies-now-hes-trying-silence-those-who-correct-him/ – 5/28/2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/28/trump-social-media-executive-order/ – 5/28/2020

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/libel-trump-new-york-times/ – 2/27/2020

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/donald-trump-vs-the-first-amendment/ – 1/18/2017

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/trump-infuriated-by-twitter-fact-check-goes-full-authoritarian-executive-order – 5/28/2020

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/26/trump-is-an-authoritarian-weakman-149573 – 3/26/2020

Like no other President in history, Trump has so inspired quintessential American passion in his own opposition that even when he strives to do the right thing and speak honestly (as I believe he has with COVID-19), he’s neither believed nor trusted. 😦

HE (Caps intentional) has brought this on himself, and we — all of us who are part of the American constituency and who have lived beneath the umbrella of our extraordinary humanist and secular Constitution all of our lives — deserve much, much better.

From the Awesome Conversation

BC’s Note:

Of course I scan and cherry pick these pieces for whoever may be around to glimpse history as it passes from the present.

IMHO, Americans — all of US — need a new class of earnest, high-integrity, honest local and state leaders and statesmen. This bouncing between peacocks – some criminal and shady; some living between The People and the upper stratosphere of power and wealth – where does that leave us?

Today we have a Far Out Left apparently incapable of digesting and independently analyzing CDC data, and as consequence we have the hijab of health fascism with few to zero lives saved in a pandemic that largely mirrors our own popular contempt for our common fate — death is immutable — and to some extent our own health (as we drink and eat too much and stay up too late). 🙂 COVID-19 takes advantage of our vulnerabilities and, perhaps, our passivity. (Do you want to fight back for real: pay attention to diet and go jogging, and, toward the end, accept ageing and increasing frailty as part of your humanity).

Regarding too many politicians, their narcissism and related nepotism and complete loss of personal and public ethics and principles: shame on them — and shame on us for letting them get away with what they do!

The arch note has come to mind: “Democracies elect the governments they deserve.”

Is all of this — from the “Helsinki Moment” to so riven a society it seems unable to remember its own mission in the world, its sense of itself, its better expression of the western civilizational ethos — what we — all of us — have come to deserve?

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/02/02/united-states-of-america-basic-training/ (Timeless)

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/05/19/covid-19-enslavement-through-peonage/ – 5/19/2020

Is it too much to ask to want to walk the streets in freedom, generally good security, and some pizza money for family or self?

Thank back on feudalism and the unquestionable character of the powerful and powerfully greedy and thoughtless.

I don’t want to live “back there”.

I hope you don’t either.

–33–

FTAC: COVID-19: The “Cure” Worse Than the Illness

13 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, COVID-19, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, United States of America

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Our nation really panicked and blundered on C19, a briefly alien presence for which neither our public nor private sectors were evidently ready with emergency treatment or burial facilities and services. We’re paying a high price for public (and partisan) responses to it. In defense language, “reflexive control” — I don’t want to ask whether the virus has been a blasting cap, the thing that sets off the greater explosion, but the results would seem to point that way.

Fast correspondence aids brevity.

C19 Lessons Learned Since January

  1. Be Prepared, Be Ready. C19 may bump America’s annual rate of morbidity from 2.813 million dead souls to 2.9 million. We were not prepared to respond with emergency facilities or, sadly, or basic carnage related to holding or burying the dead.
  2. Don’t Panic, Stay Calm. The Great “Killer Virus” has taken some older and health-imperiled lives or younger and not so well, but, by and large, it has been a bust for those yet healthy enough to fend it off.
  3. Think (and think again) about the consequences of hasty public policy, especially episode the shutting down of the base and much of the soul of our nation’s economy and related vitality.

Time to get back to work?

In 2020 hindsight, of course, the hours, days, weeks, and months should not have been lost in the first place but voluntarily as the degrees of risk became known.

We’re Americans.

Americans have been braving the Devil a long time.

–33–

Ai Fen, Chinese Authorities, and the Shame of Hiding Shame

01 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, COVID-19, Epistemology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Political Psychology, Psychology

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While C19 moves around the world, the sudden disappearance of Chinese whistle blower Dr. Ai Fen has been moving across the World Wide Web as well.

Carr, Jemma. “Wuhan doctor who was among the first to alert other medics to the spread of coronavirus ‘goes missing’ amid fears she has been detained for speaking out.” Daily Mail, April 1, 2020.

From the Awesome Conversation

What are China’s authorities hiding or trying to hide?

It’s remarkable watching the hiding of shame (or guilt) play out on the global stage.

There are people who believe — and when they’re leaders, they may be the worst of people — that any show of damage, fear, or sentiment weakens them in relation to public perception when, in fact, it is their own “inner eye” (the way the may be forced to view themselves) that cannot stand being seen as weak. In that may be the soul of “malignant narcissism” and related “civilizational narcissism”.

Such types embarrass and shame themselves, for what seems right to them looks wrong to everyone else.

Dogma may no longer serve to cover or excuse less savory designs.

Our species evolves not only physically but psychologically, and we have reached an age with sufficient global and open communications in which authoritarians, criminals, and dictators may no longer brush aside or suppress essentially truthful criticism and data. The same may not stop “black programs” and conversations “behind the curtains” — that kind of feudal and medieval egotism and power may be always with us — but by and large BackChannels believes the world evolves toward greater complexity, interdependence, and freedom. The global public may still be misled, but not for long provided the journalists have integrity and do their work.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/03/19/note-covid-19-biological-warfare-and-the-odds-and-ambiguities/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/civilizational-narcissism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/malignant-narcissism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/paranoid-delusional-narcissistic-reflection-of-motivation/

Perspective: Related Online and With the Truth About COVID-19 in the United States

This first preliminary description of outcomes among patients with COVID-19 in the United States indicates that fatality was highest in persons aged =85, ranging from 10% to 27%, followed by 3% to 11% among persons aged 65–84 years, 1% to 3% among persons aged 55-64 years, <1% among persons aged 20–54 years, and no fatalities among persons aged =19 years.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm

Annual Rate of Death for the United States of America

Number of deaths: 2,813,503
Death rate: 863.8 deaths per 100,000 population
Life expectancy: 78.6 years
Infant Mortality rate: 5.79 deaths per 1,000 live births

Number of deaths for leading causes of death:

Heart disease: 647,457
Cancer: 599,108
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
Diabetes: 83,564
Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 50,633
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

Between the people of the United States and the nation’s most prominent authority on infectious disease and pandemic, the Centers of Disease Control, hide nothing, sugarcoat nothing but report accurately, plainly, clearly, empirically, completely–and that may be the best cure this editor might know for panic and state-driven perceptual control of “the masses”.

In America, at least, democracy has just become more directly responsive and responsible to the People.

–33–