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Tag Archives: dictators

Hef & Holly – A Note on Malignant and Reparative Narcissism

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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authoritarianism, autocracy, business, dictators, leadership, playboys

PERHAPS —

The Malignant controls, discourages, manipulates

&

The Reparative liberates, encourages, and grows

_____

Attempt to escape as he may, the editor of BackChannels returns to his themes even while journeying out to Hollywood between the pages of a hardcover, i.e., celebrity Holly Madison’s Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny (New York: Harper Collins, Dey Street imprint, 2015).

As ladies men go, some peacocks appear to have an image both to create and maintain, and not infrequently that at high cost to the cheerleaders seduced into hanging on to their elbows.

Now how different is that from the global politics — and the themes attending those “leaders and their followers in a dangerous world” written about by Jerrold Post (2004)  — visited here by way of the pack of contemporary autocrats?

🙂

I have seen the term “state capitalism” applied to Putin’s medieval revanch in the creation of the post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia now wrapped around his own “vertical of power”.  The idea has its appeal (and many related posts break into a BackChannels’ category ne “21st Century Feudal“).

In the American Wildness, distributed business-borne capitalism, which in North America could not be otherwise, appears to produce in part feudal competitions and related private environs as part of the nature of power arrayed between chairmen and presidents, members of the board, and shareholders and other stakeholders.  The degree to which those at the top embrace their own “vertical of power” and effectively promote their own cultural fascism around and beneath them needs must vary, but overarched by democratic governance, such private feudal behaviors have only the boundaries of a few legal papers (noncompete and nondisclosure agreements, for a start), the discipline of their accounting departments (no workee, no checkee), and their doors for fending off equally private but solitary revolutions: employees belittled, degraded, demeaned, denigrated, enslaved by their environments can, do, will outgrow their my-way-or-the-highway keepers — and walk across the street or do that highway thing and move one big town, state, or country over.

It’s a big world, and life’s too short to tolerate a capricious and irrational subjugation forever.

Of course, with governments operated as private businesses for authoritarian elites, the same problems are much, much greater for those suffering — and not individually: en masse — beneath them.

Additional Reference

BackChannels.  “Malignant Narcissism”.

Odell, Amy.  “The 14 Worst Things About Hugh Hefner, as Revealed in Holly Madison’s New Book: From his incessant mansplaining to the constant infighting he created among girlfriends, Madison describes her life in the mansion as anything but happy.” Cosmopolitan, June 22, 2015. 

Wikipedia.  “Presidency of Vladimir Putin”: About the same time, Vladimir Ryzhkov pointed out that a bill Medvedev had sent to the State Duma in late January 2009, when signed into law, will allow Kremlin-friendly regional legislatures to remove opposition mayors who were elected by popular vote: “It is no coincidence that Medvedev has taken aim at the country’s mayors. Mayoral elections were the last bastion of direct elections after the Duma cancelled the popular vote for governors in 2005. Independent mayors were the only source of political competition against governors who were loyal to the Kremlin and United Russia. Now one of the few remaining checks and balances against the monopoly on executive power in the regions will be removed. After the law is signed by Medvedev, the power vertical will be extended one step further to reach every mayor in the country.

# # #

 

FTAC – Who Isn’t Against Tyranny?

23 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by commart in Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Political Psychology, Psychology

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autocracy, dictators, dictatorships, political psychology, tyranny, tyrants

Shalom. Moderation may be for the most religious among mankind.

One might ask, “what contributes to and defines the better humanity of humanity.”

I am an optimist who believes there is a “humanity of humanity” better served by a natural “moderate middle” that looks toward improved “qualities in living” — including psychological and spiritual qualities as well as those attending economics, justice, and health — than by deeply narcissistic extremists blinded by their own glory to the needs, privileges, and rights of others.

One hopes the world may be tiring of its tyrants and the followers who would most like to be tyrants themselves.

Is it all about word play?

Who gets to make the call?

Whose eye looks down the microscope?

Whose body wriggles on the viewing platform?

Is our condition one, the other, or both?

This kind of Facebook-inspired thought goes on throughout the course of an average day:

It’s not the “worldly gains”, Lakhkar, that are evil in and of themselves: it is how they’re gotten.

Regarding the dictator-kleptocrats that I also call “malignant narcissists” — they exceed limits and trap themselves in criminality and shame. and it is for those reasons they resent freedom of the press and strive to reject and suppress scrutiny and criticism.

As a class, dictators are weak, not strong, but, in fact, they are creative and the manipulation of belief, loyalty, and perception comprise a first set of intellectual tools for manipulation. At first, they will tell you what you want to hear; then they will tell you to agree with what you have heard. Or else. As a class, dictators come to power through various means but they all sustained eventually by a 1) treasury funded by resources over which they may assert control, 2) paid military and thugs down to street level, and 3) our old familiar, privacy attended by the deflection of scrutiny motivated by integrity.

Dictators subjugate humanity in service to their own aggrandizement associated with, in technical terms, “narcissistic supply”. They own their states and all of its resources, human or natural, and if you are unlucky enough to reside in such a place as Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, they own you too. Their worlds exist only to serve their own greatness, and that which doesn’t serve that end may be destroyed without a second thought.

It’s opinion.

It has some eloquence.

Perhaps there’s even some truth to it.

However, it may be getting a little old for the writer.

Men and women dream.

Some dream huge.

Some think so much of themselves and the God-given or godless and natural favoring of their will that throwing boiling water over a nanny’s head doesn’t give them pause for a moment’s empathy or reflection.

Or guilt.

Depending on the context and thrust of that dreaming, a dream or two might come true, myriad political and social barriers and boundaries (start with family) protecting the young on their journey to Hollywood, the old on their way to retirement aboard yachts.

And for a few, the material achievements accompanied by good enough products and services may want for the greater thrill of power among others, over others, or otherwise manipulated around themselves.

When as much develops in show business, the world goes around, and whether one likes the executive or entertainer, the two cannot grow moneyed and powerful but by charging a fee for an artifact or performance; when the same develops in the political sphere, the burden of the will of the little shit would seem today certain to become either deadly or soul deadening.

Take note: for all the devastation brought to Zimbabwe in the course of his tenure, Robert Mugabe has long achieved the dream of dying an old man: it is certain that he will do that; if he then dies peacefully in his sleep, well then, all the better testament to the validity of the venerable African political post that has been fashioned beneath the unspoken title that is “President for Life”.

# # #

 

Link

Syria – Putin – Crimea – “Russian Defiance Is Seen as a Confidence Builder for Syria’s Government”

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by commart in Uncategorized

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dictators, foreign affairs, political, political science, politics, Syria

Syria – Putin – Crimea – “Russian Defiance Is Seen as a Confidence Builder for Syria’s Government”

The Syrian government is acting with new assurance as its ally Russia moves to take over the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, dismissing American objections and signaling growing assertiveness against the West. Russia has been the Syrian government’s most powerful backer, vetoing measures against Mr. Assad that the United States has supported in the United Nations Security Council. And now, Syrian analysts close to the government say, that seems less and less likely to change.

The prospect of a compromise brokered by Russian and American officials to end the Syrian war seems increasingly remote, with no date set for the resumption of talks in Geneva.

FTAC – Comment on Sochi and Syria

28 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by commart in Eurasia, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, Russia

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despotism, dictators, dictatorship, political, political science, politics, Russia, Sochi, Syria, tyrants

“If costs are the benchmark for a ‘successful’ Games,” says Janice Forsyth, Director of the International Center for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, Canada, “Sochi is the most unsuccessful games in history, bar none.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2014/02/23/sochis-long-term-economic-impact-good-or-bad/

Countries invested in the Olympics — an amateur affair where sports are to enjoy contests to the side of politics with national pride second to pride in individual athletic striving and accomplishing.

The international press excoriated Sochi in regard to its encounter with substandard facilities; such as myself have tried keep Sochi and Syria in the same frame with the money front and center — i.e., a Russian pledge of $10 million for Syrian humanitarian aid while Sochi went forward with a $51 billion price tag.

Humanity is not what the Syrian civil war is about. It’s not about God either. It’s about despotism. Humanity would probably (that’s a validated probably, considering the numbers in casualties and refugees) not be in the middle of it. The obscenity of the treatment meted by both sides to the Palestinian Yarmouk Camp underscores the inhumanity displayed between contesting forces.

The world’s getting the message between Chinese and Russian Security Council complicity in relation to the Syrian Civil War.

Neither has interest in voting against a dynastic dictatorship; both have interest in containing or rebuffing Islam, which in the weird way described by Aboud Dandachi in the previous post, has both emphasizing and tacitly supporting the presence of al-Qaeda-type fighters as a demonstration of who is just as bad and promises to be far worse — and would be if they themselves were not there to block them.  In essence, these undemocratic political elite are attempting to curry favor with the global war watching public by keeping before their eyes the atrocious barbaric excesses of a foe that make themselves look the little bit better choice.

# # #

FTAC Guest Post – Aboud Dandachi – “Appeasing Assad; Why Jeffrey Sachs is so Very Wrong”

18 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, Syria

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Aboud Dandachi, bashar al assad, dictators, dictatorship, diplomacy, Jeffrey Sachs, political, political science, politics, Syria

Assad is a man who has proven himself utterly incapable of formulating any sort of vision to move the country beyond its current troubles. His approach to every problem has been to resort to increasingly horrendous levels of violence.

______

I may one day write an article titled, “The Six Hundred Very Cool People You Meet on Facebook”, but not today.  

You have been spared, possibly less so, however, than the author of the following opinion piece: Aboud Dandachi, who writes from Istanbul, escaped Homs, Syria just this past September. 

______

The Huffington Post recently published an article by Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University calling for the United States and the international community to drop its demand that Assad relinquish power, viewing it as the main reason the conflict has dragged on for so long. On Twitter, Sachs has elaborated on his viewpoint, claiming that all Bashar Assad wants is to preserve his rule, and that if the Syrian people just surrendered and acquiesced to living under thirty more years of his family’s tyranny, then the terrible bloodshed in Syria would stop overnight.

On a practical level, there are two main problems with Sachs’s suggestion that the Syrian people surrender to Assad so as to spare themselves anymore of his bloody repression. First, Sachs commits the cardinal sin that so many other “anti-establishment” Lefists have committed when talking about Syria; ridiculously exaggerating and inflating the USA’s role and influence on events in Syria.

Second, Sachs seems to be oblivious to the fact that some towns and villages in the country did indeed try exactly what he is suggesting, the foremost being my own hometown of Telkelakh. Today, ninety percent of its inhabitants have been made refugees, scattered all over the region, the fallout from a truce the regime blatantly broke in the summer of 2013.

In his article, Sachs makes the astonishing assumption that if only the United States publicly and clearly dropped its demand that Assad step down, that policy change would somehow have any sort of effect on the ground inside Syria. Sachs seems to believe that the opposition, made up of numerous disparate groups, is somehow waiting upon Washington for guidance on when to start and stop their rebellion against the Assad tyranny.

In reality, the United States has not contributed a single bullet to the rebels’ war effort. Indeed, Barack Obama has even gone so far as to prevent America’s regional allies from providing the rebels with the kind of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry that would have neutralized Assad’s air superiority and advantage in armor. Today, the United States could cut off what trickle of monetary aid it does provide to a limited selection of rebel brigades, and it would have absolutely no effect whatsoever on the fighting capabilities of the opposition groups in general, the vast majority of whom receive nothing from the USA.

Contrary to the Left’s frenzied assertions of an American policy hell bent on regime change at any cost, America’s approach has been very inconsistent and haphazard when it came to Syria. Far from being at the forefront of the efforts to depose Assad, Barack Obama has been exactly the kind of weak, timid, indecisive American president that Assad could not possibly have hoped for in his wildest dreams.

Assuming that lives in a conflict will be spared if one party just surrendered to the other, is to depend on the good intentions and humanity of the conflict’s victor. Germany and Japan could surrender to the Allies in World War Two safe in the knowledge that there would be no mass reprisals in the aftermath of their defeat. What happened, however, to the communities of the countries that surrendered to Germany and Japan? Two words; concentration camps.

Sachs’ second major mistake was to assume that in three years of brutal war, some city or town in opposition to the regime did not at some point try exactly what he is suggesting. We have adequate precedents that illustrate exactly how the regime treats the areas it has reconquered, and they amply demonstrate the sheer absurdity of Sachs’ view that acquiescence to the Assad regime’s tyranny would stop the killing.

I have written before at length on what happened when my home town of Telkelakh attempted a truce with the regime in early 2013. It was a truce that was set up exactly along the lines that Sachs suggests. CNN even visited the town and loudly trumpeted it as a possible template for similar truces throughout the country.

And yet as a means to save lives, it failed miserably. From February to June, dozens of people in the town died from regime sniping and shelling. Relatives of fighters were arrested at the checkpoints surrounding the town. Finally, when the regime felt strong enough to retake Telkelakh in the wake of its conquest of Qusair, the army and Hizbollah invaded the town. Thirty rebel fighters who had surrendered on promises from regime representatives that their lives would be spared were never heard from again.

The regime’s behavior in other areas it has reconquered has been no less atrocious. Human Rights Watch has extensively documented the regime’s demolition of entire neighborhoods in Hama and Damascus that were in opposition to it. Thousands of homes were razed by the regime in areas it reconquered, in a horrendous display of mass punishment. Such punitive actions on the part of the regime on areas it had reconquered, and where all opposition to it had been extinguished, pretty much makes a complete mockery of Sachs’ assertions that the Syrian people have nothing to worry about if they only just surrendered themselves to Assad’s rule.

Sachs goes on to make another outlandish assertion, that political change from within Syria will more likely to lead to regime change than an armed conflict would. Sachs cites two examples; Myanmar, and Poland in 1989.

Oh dear, where do I begin. Sachs seems to deem the ongoing genocide in Myanmar against the minority Muslim Rohingya community to be irrelevant to the point he is trying to make. Poland in 1989 benefited from the reformist tendencies of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who by that time wasn’t prepared to keep propping Eastern European client dictatorships with the USSR’s military might. If the Poles had tried in 1979 what they did in 1989, their political awakening would have been crushed under the tracks of Soviet tanks. In three years of the worst conflict in the country’s history, the regime of Bashar Assad has not once displayed the slightest capacity or capability for reforming itself.

There is no Gorbachev to be found within Assad. The post-war occupations of Japan and Germany transformed those societies because there was a vision in place for their reformation. Assad is a man who has proven himself utterly incapable of formulating any sort of vision to move the country beyond its current troubles. His approach to every problem has been to resort to increasingly horrendous levels of violence. Sachs actually thinks Assad is capable of allowing the sort of political awakening that happened in Poland? This is a man who today flings barrel bombs on Syrian cities like a monkey would throw feces around its cage. No, for the foreseeable future, in Syria, the only way to remove a bloody dictator is to kill him or have him die of old age.

In proposing ways of ending the conflict, Sachs puts the onus on the USA to change its policy towards the Assad regime, making only passing reference to Iran and Hizbollah’s massive aid to the Assad tyranny. Sachs, like so many Lefists, has got it so very backwards. If America cut off what little aid it sends to rebel groups, it would have no affect whatsoever on the conflict. And yet if Iran and Hizbollah withdrew their support for Assad, the regime would collapse within a matter of months.

What Jeffrey Sachs is calling for is appeasement, and it is the habit of appeasers to sanitize and whitewash the true intentions of those they hope to appease. Why fight Assad, the argument goes, all he wants is to preserve his rule.

Yes, why fight Hitler? All he wants is the Sudetenland. If Jeffrey Sachs had been around in 1938, Munich would have been exactly the kind of deal he would have written in favor of.

# # #

Chris Christie and “Bobby” Mugabe

09 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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Tags

dictators, election sabotage, elections, impunity, malignant narcissism, politics

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly emailed at 7:34 a.m. on Aug. 13, 2013.

The recipient, a Christie troll at the Port Authority named David Wildstein, emailed back at 7:35 a.m., only a minute later.

“Got it.”

In New Jersey, There’s No Exit for Chris Christie’s Bridge Trolls – The Daily Beast – 1/9/2014.

* * *

From August 2008 to July 2009, over 4,200 Zimbabweans died in one of the worst recorded cholera outbreaks in Africa.

The high death toll – far beyond the worst case UN scenario – was the result of collapsed water and sanitation infrastructure and state health services rendered dysfunctional by political tension and hyperinflation.

” . . . rendered dysfunctional by political tension and hyperinflation.”

I would have imagined that “political tension” leads primarily to heart attacks and nasty rhetoric as opposed to interference in the delivery of basic public services.   Taking down water sanitation stations, however, has to do with chemicals and some routine maintenance, which may be withheld or denied by removing their funding.

I recall the Zimbabwe’s 2008 cholera outbreak as tracing back to Mugabe’s efforts to sabotage the reputation of a district-level election opponent — and I can’t find the online source for that.  This may do:

Before the ZANU-PF government nationalized municipal water authorities in 2006, water treatment and delivery systems worked. The Mugabe regime, however, politicized water for political gain and profit, policies that proved disastrous, and which have clearly contributed to the ongoing cholera epidemic.  All Harare residents PHR interviewed reported that trash collection has effectively ceased. Throughout 3 Harare, and especially in the poor high-density areas outside the capital, PHR investigators saw detritus littering streets and clogging intersections. Steady streams of raw sewage flow through the refuse and merge with septic waste. A current Ministry of Health official reported to PHR: There is no decontamination of waste in the country.

www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/center-for-public-health-and-human-rights/_pdf/PHR_HealthinRuins_Zimbabwe_Jan09.pdf – December 2008.

While the consequences differ quite between New Jersey and its governor and Zimbabwe and its President for Life (so far), the manner of control — for the malignant among narcissists, “control” over others is what it’s all about — seems dreadfully similar.

In addition to sabotaging basic services to smear opposing district politicians, we know what goes on in President Mugabe’s invention of a state inside his head that, unfortunately, has been imposed on the Zimbabwean experience of reality.

President Mugabe, this with little thanks to the hated white man — and not only white men but people of color everywhere may be thankful for that —  has led Zimbabwe on a lifelong tour into the dismal regions of widespread disease, hunger, poverty, and political subjugation.

______

Apart from screwing up some east coast traffic royally, as may befit his self-concept, we don’t know what else Governor Christie may be pursuing or thinking about as regards his political enemies.  What we do know — what New Jersey’s constituents may know or come to recognize — is a signal from leadership associated with venturing on to a bad track (first the poo bah slows down some traffic . . . ).

USA Today decided to have a little fun with the George Washington Bridge scandal this morning.

The newspaper offered 10 lessons Gov. Chris Christie can learn from fictional mob boss Tony Soprano in the wake of Wednesday’s news.

10 lessons Chris Christie can learn from Tony Soprano courtesy of USA Today | NJ.com – 1/9/2014.

Related: 10 lessons from ‘The Sopranos’ for Chris Christie – 1/9/2014; Punchlines: Traffic jams Chris Christie in corruption? – Comedy video (5:13) compilation – 1/9/2014.  The video features the denial of responsibility well known to dictators.

* * *

▶ Chris Christie Press Conference VIDEO Q&A Christie Denies Knowledge Of Bridge Payback Scheme – YouTube – 1/9/2014.

“How did this happen?” Christie asks.

Damage control follows scandal.  Christie’s conversation may well involve “credible denial”, and that’s far from Mugabe’s reflexive finger pointing at Great Britain for all of Zimbabwe’s failure, which is really the expression of his guarded inner state and his manner of responding to that turmoil.

Operating in so scathing an open democracy and with military and treasuries separate from the grasp of a governor, Christie’s political environment may have developed its share of corruption and dirt, but it’s not going to give him the excess of power that may channel into real trouble.

Whatever the trouble, Christie can still clean it up.

That’s more than one might say for “Bobby” Mugabe and a pretty good cast of well established dictators (with far greater powers and reach) worldwide.

Related on the Reestablishment of Cholera in Zimbabwe

IRIN Africa | ZIMBABWE: The politics of suffering | Zimbabwe | Economy | Food Security | Governance | Security – 10/11/2012.

Case Raises Questions About U.N.’s Role in Zimbabwe – 2/22/2010.

Letter to African Union Chairman Jean Ping to Address Key Concerns During the African Union Summit | Human Rights Watch – 1/22/2009.

Zimbabwe – Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health – n.d.

Underlying causes of cholera in Zimbabwe remain unattended to | Sokwanele – 6/30/2009.

When the affected state causes the crisis the case of Zimbabwe – Issue 43 – Humanitarian Exchange Magazine – Humanitarian Practice Network – June 2009.

Cholera Epidemic Sweeping Across Crumbling Zimbabwe – NYTimes.com – 12/11/2008.

Zimbabwe: Cholera, Dictatorship, Ignorance – Oppenheim Arts & Letters – 12/9/2008.

Zimbabwe on brink of collapse as outbreak of cholera spreads | World news | The Guardian – 11/24/2008.

Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic spreads | Video | Reuters.com – 12/7/2008 or 2009.

The 2008 Cholera Epidemic in Zimbabwe: Experience of the icddr,b Team in the Field – 10/29/2011.

Update – 1/9/2014/1650: Chris Christie did everything right today. But Bridge-gate is still a very real problem for him. – by Chris Cillizza – The Washington Post.

# # #

To Be Abandoned and Betrayed by Politics’ Malignant Narcissists

03 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel

≈ Leave a comment

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despotism, dictators, excessive privilege, fascism, malignant narcissism, malignant narcissists

“This is how I live, day in, day out, in Gaza. Most of the population is less privileged than I am. When poverty wins out and there is no work and no solution on the horizon, there’s nothing worse than losing hope.”

My sea, my day – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews – by Dr. Mona al-Fara 12/2/2013.

* * *

” . . . . there are 1,200 millionaires in Gaza since Hamas took power… these people took advantage of the tunnels and the commerce of fuel to Gaza and took advantage of the people in Gaza.”

Gaza Strip full of corrupt millionaires, says Palestinian official – Middle East Israel News | Haaretz – 11/16/2013.

______

Briefest Observation: for dictators — “malignant narcissists” — political space, locality to state, provides exclusively for their own aggrandizement and comfort through the accumulation of wealth and has otherwise no significance as regards the interests of other constituents in their immediate surrounds.

For such “kleptocrat” personalities and the systems they create around themselves, the achievement of murderous and thieving power would seem the main thing, and whatever holds together to sustain that “thing” — their thing — is the only genuine concern.

As much would seem as true for “Putinistas” investing their wealth and their lives outside of Russia, for the Assads who have decimated their constituent population in Syria — now one-third displaced or refugee, and for Gaza’s “tunnel millionaires” who have essentially forsaken those around them: all have in common the abandonment and growing impoverishment of those who had believed in them and counted on them most.

# # #

Short Note – Malignant Narcissism – From Complaint to Confrontation

05 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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dictators, Erdogan, Mugabe, narcissism, political psychology

U.S. diplomats report that the Prime Minister gets almost all his information from Islamist-leaning newspapers, ignoring the input of his own ministers. The Turkish military and intelligence services no longer share with him some of their reports. He trusts no one completely, surrounding himself with “an iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors.” Despite Erdogan’s macho behavior, he is reportedly terrified of losing his grip on power.

Sassounian, Harut.  “Despite Lavish Public Praise, U.S. is Deeply Troubled by Erdogan.”  Asbarez, July 2, 2013.

Once armed with a widget like the term “malignant narcissist” to bundle all of the world’s dictators together, or, my favorite (because it’s mine) “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy (FBPS)”, we may reach a point where knowing how such personalities work and the harm they bring to themselves, their gulled peers and supporters, and the world beyond their glorious and tightly controlled bubble full of pleasing mirrors demands some response.

In Egypt, I doubt Morsi & The Brothers got the message, denial and resistance to criticism partially defining this syndrome in personality, but The People of Egypt finally got ahead of what was being done to them and that with a military perhaps equally prescient as regards both cultural and institutional “human factors” and corresponding administrative and management choices and wisdom as regards good leadership well anchored and strong.

Not all autocrats are alike — Putin’s my favorite; Mugabe’s the worst — nor or all military organizations alike in their affection, alignment, and integration with the greater spirit of the people they defend (to keep this parallel, Egypt’s infernal opposite might be Syria’s defense forces whipped on by Maher al-Assad — there hasn’t been much display of affection or regard for noncombatant Syrians on the part of that murderous outfit).

Where people come to know what they are seeing when confronted by a personality exhibiting a dangerous narcissism, then they become responsible for keeping themselves from too easily following the same.

In developing states afflicted with potential or already self-serving “presidents for life”, how to drive this perception of the peacock through the streets with either the language or technologies available becomes a challenge.

It’s not easily done or Zimbabweans would have it done it a long, long time ago.

&

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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