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20221027
Listen to them — children of the night.
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What music they make.
I mean, don't you just ❤️ Washington?
That picture says it all, one of those moments in time that truly encapsulates the dynamic of power in Washington. 👇🏼
What is he thinking, one wonders...
"Who is that woman?"
He looks mildly amused. And more than a little patronizing.
"Progressive Democrats! They are so cute, at that age."
Aren't they, though?
It's like a meeting between the CEO of some big corporation and an inexperienced delegate from some fledgling union. She went in there with some demands, presented in a very deferential, some would say obsequiously submissive way, and came out with nothing. And worse, reneged apologetically, some would say abjectly, on her demands. And, even worse, renounced and disavowed the people who had placed their trust in her to represent them. I mean, WOW! 😮 Spineless much?
Or was it just political Kabuki?
Who knows?
People like Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (above), or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her like, are wet behind the ears, and shaking in their boots in the presence of the ageless vampires of Washington DC. Some of them mean well (in spite of their impotency and lack of know-how to change anything), most know better and are well aware that they owe their position to the good will of the undeads and will keep that position only so long as they remain in the good graces of those vampires who will eat them alive if they cross them.
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was one of them, young and lacking experience in Washington political jungle, except that she was brave enough to stand her ground. Not everyone has that kind of courage — or reckless audacity.
One knows what it got her.
And who knows what became of supposedly more experienced politicians, like former Rep. Dennis John Kucinich?
Or, reputedly savvy politicians, the like of the senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders?
MORE >
What music they make.
I mean, don't you just ❤️ Washington?
That picture says it all, one of those moments in time that truly encapsulates the dynamic of power in Washington. 👇🏼
What is he thinking, one wonders...
"Who is that woman?"
He looks mildly amused. And more than a little patronizing.
"Progressive Democrats! They are so cute, at that age."
Aren't they, though?
It's like a meeting between the CEO of some big corporation and an inexperienced delegate from some fledgling union. She went in there with some demands, presented in a very deferential, some would say obsequiously submissive way, and came out with nothing. And worse, reneged apologetically, some would say abjectly, on her demands. And, even worse, renounced and disavowed the people who had placed their trust in her to represent them. I mean, WOW! 😮 Spineless much?
Or was it just political Kabuki?
Who knows?
People like Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (above), or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her like, are wet behind the ears, and shaking in their boots in the presence of the ageless vampires of Washington DC. Some of them mean well (in spite of their impotency and lack of know-how to change anything), most know better and are well aware that they owe their position to the good will of the undeads and will keep that position only so long as they remain in the good graces of those vampires who will eat them alive if they cross them.
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was one of them, young and lacking experience in Washington political jungle, except that she was brave enough to stand her ground. Not everyone has that kind of courage — or reckless audacity.
One knows what it got her.
And who knows what became of supposedly more experienced politicians, like former Rep. Dennis John Kucinich?
Or, reputedly savvy politicians, the like of the senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders?
MORE >
20220926
Merciful Heaven!
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... O, but man, proud man!
Drest in a little brief authorithy...
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.
—William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act. 2, Scene 2
...O, but man—proud man—with a little, brief power in his hands...
He mimics the essence of God like an angry ape, playing such awful tricks that the angels weep. If they had mortal bodies like us, they'd laugh themselves to death.
Meanwhile in the jungle:
I wonder why?
MORE >
... O, but man, proud man!
Drest in a little brief authorithy...
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.
—William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act. 2, Scene 2
...O, but man—proud man—with a little, brief power in his hands...
He mimics the essence of God like an angry ape, playing such awful tricks that the angels weep. If they had mortal bodies like us, they'd laugh themselves to death.
Meanwhile in the jungle:
I wonder why?
MORE >
20220804
It's so hard to say goodby to yesterdays
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The House speaker could become first high-level US official to visit Mars.
I kid the House speaker. 😌
According to Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, there is a series of eight stages that a developing individual passes through from infancy to late adulthood.
The last stage is retrospection: people look back on their lives and accomplishments. They develop feelings of contentment and integrity if they believe that they have led a happy and productive life. If they look back on a life of disappointments and unachieved goals, they may instead develop a sense of despair.
I wonder... 😐
MORE >
The House speaker could become first high-level US official to visit Mars.
I kid the House speaker. 😌
According to Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, there is a series of eight stages that a developing individual passes through from infancy to late adulthood.
The last stage is retrospection: people look back on their lives and accomplishments. They develop feelings of contentment and integrity if they believe that they have led a happy and productive life. If they look back on a life of disappointments and unachieved goals, they may instead develop a sense of despair.
I wonder... 😐
MORE >
20220722
20220709
Yeah, sure...
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This is not creepy at all...
And neither was this:
Because, you know, nothing says rules-based international orderTM and speaks for the "open character of international institutions based on universal values and transparency," like an €8 million bunker for "secret talks."
But what do I know?
If you ask me, the whole thing seems like an exercise in futility.
I mean, everyone knows that should anyone have any desire to find out what is being said during those "secrets talks," all one needs to do is ask the Danes. Or the Poles.
— 🌿 —
MORE >
This is not creepy at all...
And neither was this:
Because, you know, nothing says rules-based international orderTM and speaks for the "open character of international institutions based on universal values and transparency," like an €8 million bunker for "secret talks."
But what do I know?
If you ask me, the whole thing seems like an exercise in futility.
I mean, everyone knows that should anyone have any desire to find out what is being said during those "secrets talks," all one needs to do is ask the Danes. Or the Poles.
MORE >
20220513
20220426
White Man's Burden?
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The gathering oddly reminds me of that scene in Hergé's 1935 masterpiece, Tintin and the Blue Lotus (aka Tintin in China):
The scene is referred thusly in London Review of Books:
And here is the whole scene (pages 6 through 7):
I know, right?
Where is Mark Twain when we need him?
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20220310
The Chess Players
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The painting on the wall?
Why, yes, of course, it is an original. Like all of the paintings displayed here.
Medium: Oil on wood
Dimensions: 11 3/4 x 16 3/4 in. (29.8 x 42.6 cm)
The depiction is a present-time whimsical revisitation by the artist of his famous earlier 1876 composition, and was gifted to The Wulfshead on March 2022.
The standing figure observing the chess game is Bill Kristol, who co-founded, in 1997, along with Robert Kagan, the Project for the New American Century, generally considered to be a mainly neoconservative think tank. The seated player studying the chess board is Joe Biden, the sitting President of the United States of America in 2022 at the time the painting was made. Emphasizing Kristol's status, the artist placed Kristol centrally, with the vanishing point behind Kristol's head.
Related Entry:
MORE >
The painting on the wall?
Why, yes, of course, it is an original. Like all of the paintings displayed here.
Medium: Oil on wood
Dimensions: 11 3/4 x 16 3/4 in. (29.8 x 42.6 cm)
The depiction is a present-time whimsical revisitation by the artist of his famous earlier 1876 composition, and was gifted to The Wulfshead on March 2022.
The standing figure observing the chess game is Bill Kristol, who co-founded, in 1997, along with Robert Kagan, the Project for the New American Century, generally considered to be a mainly neoconservative think tank. The seated player studying the chess board is Joe Biden, the sitting President of the United States of America in 2022 at the time the painting was made. Emphasizing Kristol's status, the artist placed Kristol centrally, with the vanishing point behind Kristol's head.
Related Entry:
MORE >
20220308
My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma
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In an ambitious (yet, regrettably, somewhat limited and underdeveloped) study, first published a couple of years ago, researchers with an interest in Political Psychology, at the University of Cambridge, "invited 750 US citizens to complete multiple objective neuropsychological tests" designed to measure the test subjects' individual levels of cognitive rigidity and flexibility and "found that individuals who are extremely attached to the Democratic party or to the Republican party display greater mental rigidity on these cognitive tests relative to those who are only moderately or weakly attached."
Regardless of the direction and content of their political beliefs, extreme partisans had a similar cognitive profile.
While it is no earth-shattering news, by any means, to the field of Human Development and Applied Psychology (to wit, Keith E. Stanovitch's 2021 relatively recent book on the topic The Bias That Divides Us) that individuals who are cognitively rigid "tend to perceive objects and stimuli in black-and-white terms" and that "this makes it difficult for them to switch between modes of thinking or to adapt to changing environments," undeniably these results prompt many questions about the relationship between minds and politics:
Like, for instance:
- Which came first, the egg of indoctrination, or the dogmatic chicken?
That is, does exposure to a rigid dogmatic ideology lead to mental rigidity? Or does cognitive inflexibility foster a proclivity towards ideological dogmatism? The study doesn't say.
- Or, why does the dogmatic chicken cross the road?
- Or, more to the point, does partisan politics cause brain shrinkage?
That last question is the domain of Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. (One day, perhaps, some neurological study shall confirm what everybody knows.)
More relevant to the current era of cancel culture and economic warfare, Social Psychology might be more pertinent.
The Milgram Shock Experiment, one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology, comes to mind.
While Milgram's approach does not address the phenomenon of mob psychology per se, there are parallels to be drawn in the way citizens of a nation-state (e.g. the United States of America) are debriefed in a fashion that is intended to persuade the latter individuals that being willing to depress the equivalent of the experiment's toggle switches that those individuals believe will harm other people (like, in this instance, say, economic sanctions) is quite "normal" and that it is perfectly "normal" for the one conducting the experiment to permit this to happen and that it is perfectly "normal" for the organizational framework within which this all transpires to permit that kind of pathology to continue.
Milgram's approach, however, doesn't quite entirely provide a fully adequate explanation of the hate driven behavior such as the kind that one can see barely disguised in social medias and cancel culture mob driven practices, which are not by far the doing of paid political trolls alone.
Paraphrasing (mutatis mutandis) Theodor Adorno 's criticism of the belief in a spontaneity of the masses:
MORE >
In an ambitious (yet, regrettably, somewhat limited and underdeveloped) study, first published a couple of years ago, researchers with an interest in Political Psychology, at the University of Cambridge, "invited 750 US citizens to complete multiple objective neuropsychological tests" designed to measure the test subjects' individual levels of cognitive rigidity and flexibility and "found that individuals who are extremely attached to the Democratic party or to the Republican party display greater mental rigidity on these cognitive tests relative to those who are only moderately or weakly attached."
Regardless of the direction and content of their political beliefs, extreme partisans had a similar cognitive profile.
While it is no earth-shattering news, by any means, to the field of Human Development and Applied Psychology (to wit, Keith E. Stanovitch's 2021 relatively recent book on the topic The Bias That Divides Us) that individuals who are cognitively rigid "tend to perceive objects and stimuli in black-and-white terms" and that "this makes it difficult for them to switch between modes of thinking or to adapt to changing environments," undeniably these results prompt many questions about the relationship between minds and politics:
Like, for instance:
- Which came first, the egg of indoctrination, or the dogmatic chicken?
That is, does exposure to a rigid dogmatic ideology lead to mental rigidity? Or does cognitive inflexibility foster a proclivity towards ideological dogmatism? The study doesn't say.
- Or, why does the dogmatic chicken cross the road?
- Or, more to the point, does partisan politics cause brain shrinkage?
That last question is the domain of Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. (One day, perhaps, some neurological study shall confirm what everybody knows.)
More relevant to the current era of cancel culture and economic warfare, Social Psychology might be more pertinent.
The Milgram Shock Experiment, one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology, comes to mind.
While Milgram's approach does not address the phenomenon of mob psychology per se, there are parallels to be drawn in the way citizens of a nation-state (e.g. the United States of America) are debriefed in a fashion that is intended to persuade the latter individuals that being willing to depress the equivalent of the experiment's toggle switches that those individuals believe will harm other people (like, in this instance, say, economic sanctions) is quite "normal" and that it is perfectly "normal" for the one conducting the experiment to permit this to happen and that it is perfectly "normal" for the organizational framework within which this all transpires to permit that kind of pathology to continue.
Milgram's approach, however, doesn't quite entirely provide a fully adequate explanation of the hate driven behavior such as the kind that one can see barely disguised in social medias and cancel culture mob driven practices, which are not by far the doing of paid political trolls alone.
Paraphrasing (mutatis mutandis) Theodor Adorno 's criticism of the belief in a spontaneity of the masses:
Just as little as people believe in the depth of their hearts that the Russians are the devil, do they completely believe in their leader's narrative. They do not really identify themselves with it but act this identification, perform their own enthusiasm, and thus participate in their leaders' narrative. ... It is probably the suspicion of this fictitiousness of their own "group psychology" which makes such crowds so merciless and unapproachable. If they would stop to reason for a second, the whole performance would go to pieces, and they would be left to panic.
MORE >
20220302
Saints and Sinners
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Neutral ground is so hard to come by.
The bartenders, here, put up with people and behaviour that wouldn't be tolerated for a moment anywhere else. The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny, and the In-between, are always welcome. It is to the credit of the management that it has always enforced—at times, viciously—a general truce that has made the Wulfshead one of the few real neutral grounds left around.
It has been said that truth is the first casualty of war, more so at a time when the censorship and ostracism of those whose viewpoints the dominant culture disagree with have become the norm.
Others' beliefs or frame of reference are "wrong" or, worse, just simply "meaningless."
And "if there's no meaning in it,"said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any."
An early example of such sentiment in Western culture is the Ancient Greek denigration of foreigners as "barbarians", the belief that the Greek people and culture were superior to all others, and the subsequent conclusion that all others were naturally meant to be subjugated.
Xenophobia can also be exhibited as an uncritical generalization of another culture which is ascribed an unreal, stereotypical and exotic quality.
It's true!
Many are those in the West who had not even heard of Transnistria until today.
And many are those who still do mistake Moldova for Mordavia:
MORE >
Neutral ground is so hard to come by.
The bartenders, here, put up with people and behaviour that wouldn't be tolerated for a moment anywhere else. The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny, and the In-between, are always welcome. It is to the credit of the management that it has always enforced—at times, viciously—a general truce that has made the Wulfshead one of the few real neutral grounds left around.
It has been said that truth is the first casualty of war, more so at a time when the censorship and ostracism of those whose viewpoints the dominant culture disagree with have become the norm.
Others' beliefs or frame of reference are "wrong" or, worse, just simply "meaningless."
And "if there's no meaning in it,"said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any."
An early example of such sentiment in Western culture is the Ancient Greek denigration of foreigners as "barbarians", the belief that the Greek people and culture were superior to all others, and the subsequent conclusion that all others were naturally meant to be subjugated.
Xenophobia can also be exhibited as an uncritical generalization of another culture which is ascribed an unreal, stereotypical and exotic quality.
It's true!
Many are those in the West who had not even heard of Transnistria until today.
And many are those who still do mistake Moldova for Mordavia:
MORE >
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