Ironically, almost there (intended sarcasm and lack of insight notwithsatnding). Fact is, her anger was driven by fear of dilution or loss of attention, loyalty and emotional and material support, therefore security and status (“jealousy”), that fear itself driven by the distorted and maladaptive belief that she somehow needs a male to partner with, to support and validate her, in a socially approved arrangement, and that she is somehow less than OK and secure without that. The socially normative relationship is monogamy, itself a pathological construct maintained by Patriarchy to control the reproductive resource and maintain contracts to meet the status and emotional needs of men. So, yeah it is fundamentally about patriarchy, however discomforting that may be.

is in no way diminished by my inclination to also appreciate the way that Geewhiz made the thread her/his bitch.

And Geewhiz, as an obviously perceptive individual, had to know that Glenn’s lapdogs would in no way kindly tolerate being dislodged from their comfortable perch. Because sometimes they land on their haunches, yelping!

from President don’t seem to mean much, and that President is not trustworthy.

Perhaps they have been noting the content of UT?

In a recent letter in a Salon thread, which I believe to have been a UT thread, I recklessly and brazenly asserted that President Barack Obama is somehow the “shot-caller” (i.e. gang leader) of the “world’s most far-flung criminal organization” (i.e. our Nation).

I now wish to retract that statement characterizing our President and Government in that way, because on reflection, it has occurred to me that as global criminal organizations go, the Catholic Church likely runs more turf than the U.S. does. And certainly judging on the basis of bling, their shot-caller appears to be a badder muthafucka than our boy.

But that could change – let’s face it, motherfucker gettin up in Leno and crackin one about retards takes some balls, know what I’m sayin?

That shit is audacious.

then regardless of allocation of culpability in this incident, it seems that he has effectively, if unwittingly, supported the case that a) The Law is an ass and b) this has come to represent, to a large extent, what The Law evolved to serve – Patriarchy and its needs. But I could be way off on that.

(It discomforts and distresses me in ways I can’t quite gain insight around.)

As if our medical-model, technology-driven, agribusiness, militarized, free-market growth-and-consumption models aren’t working just fine! Fracking idiots.

Great review and nice touch to channel HH.

Courageous work.

Judging from the letters, I was way off.

I thought H was riffing on the absurdity of monogamy and contractual intimacy constructed as “love”.

“Government officials are discussing how to increase intelligence sharing and military cooperation with Mexico, following a visit there this month by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” (emphasis added)

Even though . . . .

"The ongoing violence is a concern, but not a national security threat to the United States," said Mike Hammer, spokesman for the National Security Council, . . .”

link at sig

persistent exchanges in these threads that become less substantive, effective and valuable, instead more personal, reactive, and aggressive.

I knew this guy. This guy was smart, incisive, well read, respected, likeable, and competent. His potential to contribute to discourse culturally transformative for his time was huge. And he was impaired. Limited in his effectiveness because, when his buttons got pushed, he lost his power to communicate. Not to write, but to communicate. Because when his buttons got pushed, defensiveness and anger took over and he lost his power, his normal mastery of reason and language, ignoring or skirting the substance of the offending comment, instead reacting with personal attacks, insults or comebacks intended to marginalize the status of the messenger and thereby discount the message. But the verbal aggression didn’t really work. It scored debate points, protected status, defended self, rallied symbionts whose validation depended on his, but at the same time revealed weakness and uncertainty and, in triggering defenses of others, blocked channels that might otherwise have stayed open to his message.

This guy eventually got it, and decided to work on it. He learned that anger is always – always – secondary to primary states like vulnerability, fear, loss of respect, of status, etc., and he worked on understanding what triggered those states in him. He found out that no matter how smart he was and how successful, he carried around beliefs he wasn’t even aware of, that he didn’t want, and that didn’t even make sense – just like all of us do. Distorted negative beliefs about self that had been “introjected” – force-fed and swallowed whole – by twisted cultural and social systems. Beliefs about his being weak, ineffectual, less logical, “less than”, that he must always be right, never inconsistent, never tolerate criticism because the criticism might really be about some personal flaw that could justify his being marginalized. But the more he worked on and tested those beliefs against reality, the easier they were to reject as simply not accurate, and replace with more accurate and adaptive beliefs that he could bring to mind when his buttons got pushed. Turned out the beliefs were about the twisted systems of ideas he was exposed to, not about him.

That is, he got rid of some baggage that was dragging him down, and unburdened, got stronger, less reactive, and even more effective. More relaxed too.

There are reasons Mr. Leonard felt compelled to make that assertion.

to defensively project away that weakness as a disallowed and defective behavior in others that must be punished, just as it is common, in the conduct-disordered adolescent male, to exhibit deficits in empathy.

I was actually having some doubts about the value of more gratuitous killing and U.S. terror of the type that elicits greater global fear and hatred.

But endorsement of President’s plans by the same criminal cabal that wasted a million lives in Iraq ? . . . . . . that says something.

That means something.