Recently I have blocked two friends from calling or texting me. I did it in part to protect myself from their inane – and insane – thoughts and theories, and partly out of anger. But I feel better. I’m not putting up with the abuse that lurks in all the subtext. All the things I have to tacitly agree with for us to have any kind of discussion. These are two life-long friends, one since childhood (a cousin my same age), and another friend of 40 years.
I’ve been estranged from my cousin before, but we resolved those differences last year – and got new ones! No, they are the same. MSNBC has driven him insane. And he’s a psychotherapist.
The other one, is a New Yorker who professes to hate Democrats but amazingly always seems to take their side on any issue. He’s ‘smart’, has worked all over the world consulting for banks. He sent me a video of Rick Wilson two weeks ago. I had already told him Rick Wilson was a fraud and a scumbag after he sent me something from him a couple months ago. I guess he didn’t listen or didn’t respect my sensibilities. Blocked.
Mind you, I can have an objective, dispassionate discussion on politics. I’m used to, and comfortable with, disagreement. But not not accepting these massive Trojan Horse concepts like “insurrection” etc.
Now I’ve returned fire from another friend. He’s a Psychiatrist – a medical doctor, Jewish (non practicing) from Long Island (still has the accent) something of a meat-glutton (loves pork) and has a well-developed ability to party and have a good time .
His step-son died of a fentanyl overdose only a year ago. He plays guitar and sings as a hobby, both very badly. I tried to jam with him and he’s utterly unable to play with others. Music for him is a dream-state he drifts into alone and without self-judgement. Sometimes I envy that ability, but the results from that aren’t at all positive. He tries to be non-political but he’s mainline BBC/PBS/CNN and claims to watch Fox on occasion to ‘get the other side’ . He prides himself on being able to prescribe just the right doses of psychotropics and other medications to offset side-effects to give his patients (yes, some of whom are really eff-ed up) a comfortable life.
Here’s the e-mail blast I received:
Hi All
I just heard this on the news and am passing it along in the hope that you might be able to help someone you know who is at high risk for Covid-19 complications. (some government website)
Here is the e-mail I sent him this morning:
On 02/17/2021 8:56 PM philaneil xxxxxx wrote:Hi All
I just heard this on the news and am passing it along in the hope that you might be able to help someone you know who is at high risk for Covid-19 complications. See Combatcovid.hhs.gov.Up to 70% reduction in hospitalization and also reduction in death.We made it a year.Let’s keep everyone we know in our lives.LoveNeil
Whatdyya think? Too harsh?
I’m interested in your thoughts. Is it just me who has found another level of I-don’t-care-anymore attitude?
Don’t know all the history so I can’t say. I will say I understand. I have 1 prog and 1 black (everything is race) coworkers I told last year. “I will NOT talk politics with you anymore.”
They were both butt hurt. As for me. I just refuse to debate lie’s anymore.
Yes, I suspect they need us to rhetorically poke and prod. It gives them some perverse satisfaction. My cousin, who I have more in common with than anyone else on the planet – he knows my entire history from age 3, we share family, we like the same music, we like sports, we both play chess and ping-pong, but the conversation always got to politics. It used to be Bush. But he’s always outraged, like Lawrence O’Donnell or Keith Oberman and “can’t believe!!” I could support you-know-who. It’s like an inquisition. He challenges me to give him “one thing” good about Trump. If I respond with ‘one thing’ it’s conclusive evidence for him that I’m locked in a personality cult.
I tried to laugh it off and change the subject, but he can’t let go. But now, he’s lost the ability to summon me into the interrogation room, make happy small talk, offer me a glass of water, and then accuse me of capital crimes.
Friends. In the age of Facebook “friends”, it is clear that the English language lacks a suitable word to describe the actual relationship. “Friend” is too close, “acquaintance” is too far.
Years ago, an old WWII veteran in England talked to me about this issue. English men would describe people they spent a boozy evening in the pub with as their “friends”. The old veteran shook his head. No, a friend is a person who will come round and dig your garden for you without being asked when you are too sick to do it yourself.
What is it with psychologists and psychiatrists? Well, I think I actually know the answer. Like bureaucrats, the self-selected personalities who enter these professions actually seek power and control over others by stealth. Rather than risk failing to persuade another individual, they prefer to rely on “professional authority” (itself based on mythologies and faked ‘studies’) to oh-so-gently bully their patients into right thinking. I recently complained to my therapist of 8 years about how dispirited I am by de-platforming and the cancel culture; I explained to him that I had a significant portion of my retirement savings in cash and was afraid these essential funds would be”bailed in” by the bank (=confiscated by the government). I told him that, to protect savings, I had loaned large sums to my two children and asked them to keep these funds in their savings account, in order to make a smaller target for the confiscators who want to “eat the rich”. Never mind that I made literally thousands of spending decisions over 60 years so as to live well below my means in order to save.
His attitude suddenly changed toward me after I said these things. In the past, he always sidestepped political discussions and told me it didn’t do any good for CBT-type therapy. In prior sessions, he had let on, of course, his progressive fides with things like suggesting I give some money away (I do, but where I choose) and suggesting that instead of organizing my neighborhood for common protection during riots, that I “reach out to the underprivileged” instead. I ignored this unsolicited inapposite advice
Anyway, after I briefly explained to him my feeling about censorship and my savings, he became critical of me in ways he had scrupulously avoided in the past. He spontaneously suggested I “spend some of my money” on one of my medications (which I pay cash for and am charged by the dose rather than by the milligram, meaning that dividing a large dose is much cheaper [4X cheaper] than buying a larger number of smaller doses). This is just one example of his newfound plausibly-deniable hostility toward me. He had never before been critical and condescending on any issue, much less one on which I had not even asked him to address. He simply seized on it to be able to be critical of me. Although we already had the next weekly appointment scheduled, I emailed the next day to cancel it and to quit therapy altogether.
I didn’t cancel during that session because I was in a bit of shock at the turn of events. I could hardly believe what had happened. Within a few minutes of the conclusion of the video session, what had, in fact happened became quite clear to me. I emailed to cancel all future sessions and asked for a final bill. He wrote back and asked why. I decided to refrain from explaining what I thought had happened because he would certainly deny it and categorize me as “paranoid” or subscribing to “conspiracy theories”. Thus, I said that I thought, while I will not speculate as to the particulars, that I must have said something which he did not like, as his treatment of me during the session was remarkably different from his usual, almost solicitous and non-aggressive manner; that while it is usually worthwhile to discuss most matters, that, occasionally, it would not be useful and that this, as I saw it, was one of those circumstances there was nothing to be gained by discussing my decision in further detail.
There is no doubt in my mind that he allowed his politics to contaminate our previously-therapeutic relationship. That contamination destroyed it instantly. Sadly, it is emblematic of modern American life as this formerly decent though imperfect country circles the drain.
It is certainly “not just you”. I have trimmed my list over the past decade. Now it’s family too. I haven’t spoken to some family since the middle of last year, and I’m sure they know why. I’ll send a birthday card.
Over a decade ago, I recall posting something on FB and a former co-0worker, connected with then-current co-workers, chimed in with the usual lefty therapeutic abuse, “I just hope that you can expand your blah blah” and I let him have it. Who the F do you think you are, who the F do you think I am, that I should need to grow to see things your way, you can F right off; I’ll quote your comments here and leave it up so anybody who wants to know can see exactly what happened.” and so fort. That was the thrust of it, the body was a couple of paragraphs.
On the one hand, I felt a little bad for kicking a guy who had been an underling type way back when, but on the other hand, welcome to responsibility — not everybody thinks your crud is cute or well-intended.
Over the years I have tried to simply elude these types, but relations are difficult. I don’t want to pee on a relative in some dramatic break, but at the same time, I have mentioned time and again that when you talk about *those people*, you are talking about me. “Oh no, I mean –” Save it. I am telling you that I am all of those people, and that the feverish things you believe about us — about me — are not true.
So they believe that we are brainwashed or worse, and we believe that they are brainwashed or worse, and that’s that.
No sense talking to people with whom no conversation is possible.
I’m not sure why it sets me off so, but the cloyingly therapeutic, smug rational voice will get me going faster than a simple Eff you. I suspect it is because it is highly effective. Honey and vinegar and all that. And I would very much like to be rational, to be seen as rational, to awe and impress all comers with the power of my logic, the force of my presentation, the art of my delivery — but no. The modern path to acknowledged erudition involves a faux-therapeutic regimen of behavior modification, conditioning and reinforcement that leads away from rationality. It requires a studied ignorance of how human beings and our societies evolve to pretend the Whitey set it all up as a trap. But that’s what the Universities are peddling, through cowardice and malice in parts indifferent to me. It is evil, and I don’t like the smaller part of it any more than the larger.
I despair of convincing loved ones, and while I have a store of beautiful memories, perhaps that is the right context for that love. I will not be lectured literally to my death by the gun-grabbing, mask-Karens global warming Bernie types who profess their neutrality or even establishment conservatism while staking out positions the Obama and Harris can only silently admire.
Done. Done done done.
Yes. 100% agree. My father was a stickler for precise language, sometimes to a fault. As a child I would say something like, “I ‘m going over to my friends house.” He’d say, they are your ‘playmates’ not your friends.
Although, both these guys have helped me move (several times) the cousin was best man at my first wedding. The New Yorker lends me his apartment in Chelsea, we travelled through Europe together with barely a disagreement in the early 80’s. They are friends. My cousin may be incapable due to insanity though. I re-friended him out of sympathy. He’s very fragile and to make things worse, has been filled with hate by the media. So I was trying to be a ‘friend’ to him by taking the arrows and the massive insult-bombs regarding Trump and his supporters – supposedly trapped in a cult, no “moral compass”, insurrectionists, blah blah.
He’s the one in the cult, and I told him so. He thinks that’s hilarious. But we know how absolutely true it is.
CW, we wrote our comments at the same time, and the similarity does not stop there 🙂
I’ll caveat this whole thing by saying that I see value to therapy the same way I see value to faith, namely, that it does seem to help a whole lot of people, and that there are a great number of good people on either side of the couch or the pulpit who pursue noble goals with honorable means.
That said, I’ll relate a story. When I was perhaps thirteen years old, I recall a long car ride with my father (every car ride with him was long) during which I said I thought that I was depressed, and that I should probably have some sort of therapy. I thought I was pretty brave (speaking to my father seemed to involve bravery at times), and I recall his words, his timing, his shift of slouch in exquisitely padded seat of 1976 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham in Forest Green Sunfire Metallic… where was I? Ah yes: “You know… there’s no magic screwdriver that anybody can use to adjust what’s inside your head. All a therapist can do is ask questions, and you give answers. Therapists have learned what questions to ask. Becaaause you already have the answers, you just need to ask yourself the right questions.”
I was disappointed, but he was on to something. This packet of wisdom stuck, and has been one of the load-bearing timbers in my little construct.
Now this is not to say that I see no benefit to therapy. Even if we accept the common description of “talk therapy”, conversations are typically more fruitful between two or three participants than alone. Still, emulating this in software is productive as well. I separate my work life (in any given job) into two roles — manager of the self, and employee of the self. Those are different processes to be carried out with different priorities, and I find great utility in acknowledging, stepping into, those separate roles in order to accomplish the related activites. And so forth.
I’m hardly special in this — each of us carries on a self-talk which is alternately disapproving, congratulatory, doubtful, exultant, idealistic, pragmatic.
These days I linger at length in the “resigned but agitated” superposition of states.
Somebody should look into that.
—
You may have been hasty in assigning malice to your therapist — well, that’s his problem not yours. It sounds as though you have been somewhat distrusting for some time, and you have probably been on good behavior, which is not conducive to therapy anyway, IMHO. I think that you were right to let him go, and that if in eight years you have not banked a store of methods and questions for your continuing self-evaluation, you weren’t getting your money’s worth anyway.
I think you were wise to demur some as to reasons, and I would recommend keeping all communications with him positive and non-accusatory. These days are not the days of old, and the therapeutic Stalins are coming. Keep his record of you as positive as possible — at a distance.
I have a sweet (and politically aligned) distant cousin whom I had to cut off several years ago. He is the nicest man ever, but cannot put down the kookerism. Back when I was on Facebook, I found it impossible to communicate with him and to keep any semblance of sanity about my connections. This overly nice good man is one of those incredibly sensitive guys who has been trashed by women and ruined by alcohol. Well, you get the women you choose, so there’s no escape from responsibility there, and Heaven knows alcohol is maladaptive. This was years and years ago, when FB’s privacy controls were really chunky, not granular. Sometimes you have to let people go even when they agree.
I guess to call him politically aligned is a misstatement based on right vs. left alone — he despises Big Lefty, but we don’t really see eye-to-eye on much beyond that.
Civil Westman, wow.
I’ve also heard a common trope that people who gravitate into psychology have an unspoken recognition they aren’t stable themselves and want to discover why. No question they revel in ‘treating’ patients.
Your therapist is total shit and I’m glad you fired him. I know. I’ve had therapists (good ones and bad ones) and my wife of 20+ years is a therapist. Through my extensive talks over the years with my wife, I’ve heard enough stories of bad therapists she’s witnessed, including having affairs with patients(!) (male and female) and a lot of amateurish therapeutic conceits. Mostly a therapist who tells you anything about their life or personal experiences, not apparently understanding how this destroys the professional relationship and undermines treatment. I actually helped her write her thesis for her Ph.D and helped her study for a State certification test (unbelievable levels of ‘woke’ propaganda in those things)
She studied psychoanalysis , like, deeply, and has spent thousands of hours with very difficult patients (not like me or you – although I’m getting there…). She is always given the most difficult cases at her clinic. She also has private clients of all kinds. Unlike many therapists, she handles about 50 sessions a week and has done so for 20 years. That’s like three times what other therapists have put in.
She was born in Germany, speaks fluent German but her English is so good she has barely an accent, and she had the default Euro -socialist outlook. It wasn’t really a big problem, but she was not someone I was able to ‘convert’. Didn’t like Rush Limbaugh, thought Newt Gingrich was “arrogant”. We stopped talking politics. No big deal.
Well, about 8 years ago, she started coming around. I think it was a result of her practice. Talking to real people. Seeing how the system works (or doesn’t). She said to me on more than one occasion, “Am I becoming a Republican?” to which I would answer, “no, don’t use that label on yourself, you’re just using common sense and seeing things you didn’t see before.” Fast-forward to today, or even 2016, the Trump-hate was a mystery to her, and we basically have zero political disagreements at this point. If you know me that’s saying something! Still, she’s too busy to follow politics at the level I do.
One of her jobs is running groups mandated by the State for treatment as a condition of probation or parole. These men are in for “domestic violence” she also has one group of sex-offenders, which is one of her specialties (also victims). She runs 8 groups of ten men each for 90 minute sessions per week. That means she gets reports from 80 (actually more) men about their lives, about all of them are black men, some hispanics and whites here and there.These are men from diverse backgrounds, Some have been real criminals, others relatively law-abiding caught in the system (deservedly in most cases). Guys who live in the ‘real world’ of Philadelphia. Guys who work driving trucks, delivering or in meat-packing plants, or a supermarket.
She’s tough but very fair. They adore her. Most of them are resistant (understandably in some ways) at first but come around to respect her. It’s like a James Olmos teacher/ghetto drama every day. A lot of these guys, probably 35% are Trump-friendly. Of course her co-workers are all at effect of the propaganda, and believe she’s naturally sympathetic to their viewpoints. She’s not.
Franco, in ref your “too harsh?”, only you can decide. I find in my own dealings that I sometimes respond with the harshness not necessarily deserved by the recipient, but with the harshness required to make my meta-point, which is that the channel is closed. Nothing like adding some injury to insult in order to cauterize an otherwise un-healing wound.
As for my own level of not giving a damn, that’s a mixed thing. Mostly I am in the position of having decided not to be fooled again, and since the left stopped fooling me somewhere in the 2000’s, my contemporary disgust and fury is all directed at the right.
I am indeed furious, so it’s not as though I don’t care. But I’ll be horse-whipped before another Republican gets a dime, a minute, or a kind word from me. We cannot fight the enemy with traitors in our trenches — well, the traitors were back at HQ all along.
My resignation is that of the forsaken, and my agitation is that of a thirst for vengeance, tempered still by propriety, law, and the hope that somebody else has a better plan. Yet the plan is not what we have lacked — the mechanism itself is corrupt — good plans were sent up to be coordinated by those who sought our ruin — and they won.
So, uh…. yeah, I’m a bit out there beyond the moon right now — when we get signal next, we’ll see if I found a stable orbit, or if I got ejected into interplanetary despair. For now, I trust nobody, I count on nothing, and I keep my head down.
I wish there was a ‘like’ button. Every comment would get several from me alone.
Loved your entire comment but want to focus on this aspect for a moment.
Nice people who are secretly hateful? Is it a kind of displacement? It’s too common to ignore. My cousin the therapist is very nice, extremely compassionate and ‘understanding’ except for ….
Thanks. Actually, the most shocking part is that this therapist was really excellent up until very recently. Very insightful and “non-judgmental” almost to a fault. When I say he had ALWAYS been solicitous, I mean he used to preface anything he thought might possibly have been disagreeable to me with, “Would you allow me to go out on a limb with an association which may be off base?…” or “maybe you think this is off the wall, but may I speculate with a thought …”? When each session ended, he asked if I wanted to schedule a next session in a most invitatory manner, making it clear it was at my option or at my pleasure. Not so with the last session. It was almost like throwing down a gauntlet – a terse, “What to you want to do about next week?” It came across as almost a dare. Extremely out of character.
On that day in question, he was suddenly the opposite of his usual extreme gentility – bordering on obsequiousness. On the power of his historical behavior, at first I doubted myself. After all, I credited him with nearly 8 years of helpful excellence. But this was so atypical and the thrust of it was clearly in response to my expressing my dismay over censorship and desire to shelter my post-tax, saved dollars. Again, he could plausibly deny and even insinuate I am making this all up. By not explaining myself, I do not leave myself open to any such accusations. I also reminded him that the therapy was optional and of marginal benefit (which marginal benefit could inure to anyone, any time); that it was never a question of my continuing life or my ability to function – only my chronic anhedonia with which I desired help. I also pointed out that at age 76 my psyche was pretty much immutable.
So mostly I am saddened and disappointed him, both professionally and personally. He is capable of better. And this is a small example of what – writ large – is destroying our society. I (like people on the right) wish to live and let live – with ‘malice toward none’. He and people on the left are compelled to coerce everyone else to conform to his worldview. There is no middle ground between those positions. Individuals like me may, fortunately, unilaterally divorce. Secession, which would be the best solution to the analogous societal problem, seems, for the moment at least, to not be on the table. It really would be best, given the intolerance of one side.
Similar with me. Here’s how it is, or can be valuable on a minimal level.
No matter who you talk to no matter how close a friend, you are probably screwing up your meta-relationships if you confide too much to them. Talk about your wife to your best buddy? It will affect his relationship with her, no matter how fairly you portray the situation. You will forget the scuffle but your buddy might not.
And how much can friends listen to your troubles and ruminations?
And they are gonna give advice, at least half of which will be bad.
But it really does help to talk about things and put them into words, so a therapist is – at least – trained as a professional to listen and it will have no repercussions on your life or relationships. That is if they aren’t like violating (as some do) boundaries. I had a therapist for two years (wife recommended) who was great. She just let me talk. It really helped over the long term.
Really interesting. Maybe for him “the gloves had to come off”. Did he know what he was doing and maybe didn’t care anymore?
His suggestions … first, I get that he was helpful and has positive aspects and impact on your life, his suggestions would have rankled me.
I’m always interested in hearing people’s experience with therapists because it’s so private. Therapists can’t talk, and patients don’t want to share much outside therapy. I know a lot in a very general way regarding some of my wife’s patients. Of course I haven’t met them, don’t know their names, and don’t really care to know. She treats some people I know through a charity but we never talk about those people – and I don’t want to know, not that she’d tell me.
I also know my wife’s approach because I sometimes hear her ‘side’ of the conversation which is 95% listening. Believe me, in real life if she listened 50% to me I’d be ecstatic. I rarely hear her make any kind of suggestion, maybe I’ll hear her ask a question. Anyway she’s Spotnizian (a student of Freud who advanced much of Freud’s better insights) and therefore Freudian –
BTW there were several reasons Freud believed that patients should lay down on a couch. Reason one was the patient is ‘relaxed’ and has access to a different part of his brain (my words/formulation) that when lying down people are reflective and not as invested so can reflect more dispassionately. But second, and possibly more valuable, is that the patient doesn’t see the reaction, no matter how subtle, of the therapist. It’s a phenomenon called “Transference” and therapists need to me mindful of that continually for their own part as a professional.
So your therapist giving suggestions on where you should spend your hard-saved dollars tipping his hand , trying to ‘guide’ you into more justified and worthy causes (in his mind) tells me he’s basically a fraud. To spend therapeutic capital on things so trivial, like instead of organizing a community watch you should help the ‘underprivileged’ is alarmingly unprofessional to me. So, like a cop who puts in years of honorable service but starts taking bribes. He’s now a fraud. His knowledge, intentions, or past deeds saving people from burning buildings are noted, but meaningless for purposes going forward.
He’s lost a good client. It’s hard to get good long-standing clients who are relatively sane. His loss.
And that’s the crux of the matter to me. I told my cousin he’s being brainwashed, much to his utter astonishment that it would be he, and not I, who is the (more) brainwashed one!
And to my friend Neil, who has a handicapped parking permit even though his handicap is a technicality, and he believes in every government program that any Democrat ever proposed, but he doesn’t take medicare because it’s too much paperwork and it doesn’t pay.
Describing him that way you’d wonder why we’d be friends, but these descriptions, damning as they are, do not entirely sum up this man. Just like descriptions (even if somewhat true) of Trump also do not sum him up – and should not.
And don’t get the idea this guy is some kind of elite. He’s down-to-earth, fun-loving person.
So throwing down the gauntlet is more about I will no longer put up with insanity. Insanity is viral and much more destructive than Covid. I’m trying to be a friend, and also I must honor myself.
Brilliant. Why aren’t you writing for National Review? Don’t answer that…
But brilliant.
Good therapist. Sounds reasonable.
Bad therapist. Don’t read King Lear anytime soon…
Really bad therapist. What yours did.
Hey, this is what I do when avoiding playing violin (it’s difficult to be simultaneously judgmental and not as skillful as 10- year olds on you tube) and… avoiding that by
writing a screenplay.
I was never trying to ‘make it’ playing violin or my musical pursuits in general. I’ve recorded and produced (with help) 4 full-length records. But with my screenplay I have hopes.
Now the screenplay is much more in my talent portfolio. It’s also great that writing isn’t performance. I don’t have to write the exact words in the exact tone, strung together and falling into a specific rhythm.
But with a screenplay, I can, at every turn, at any moment, in a word, a line, a scene, or the story itself, I can magically go back and change, alter, refine, re-structure so that when it’s released, in it’s final form, it’s close to the optimal. Every element, tone, pitch rhythm can be crafted, planted, inserted, deleted. I can use my judgement to amend and edit.
To do that with violin? Just playing a Suzuki Book three standards is more difficult. Playing violin is more akin to sitting down at a typewriter, an old fashioned one, and tapping out a letter from beginning to end without a typo, a misplaced comma, a double space, all at a certain constant speed and rhythm. Every time you make a mistake, or just make too many – you have to rip the paper from the roller and start again.
So, I’m taking a break, from violin by writing a screenplay, and taking a break from the screenplay here.
At some point any one of you may be subjected to an unsolicited offer to vet small portions of my screenplay. I will spare you all, in consolation, from my violin-playing. (unless it’s recorded -there’s an element of craft in recording but even then, not like writing0
The only reason I could ever write a good – or great – it has to be great or forget it – screenplay is because I have learned a lot about psychology, theater and drama, comedy and life.
And here, on sites like this but especially this conversation – really -, gives me insight and ability and inspiration.
PS I’ve written weird comments like this many time and deleted them. Not this one. But it’s not a screenplay, I don’t have to go back and make it perfect.
Screenplays. On long flights, I like to outline movie plots in my mind. Lack of talent discourages me from ever trying to transfer these screenplays to paper, but there is one movie plot I would love to see on the screen — although we would probably have to live in an alternative universe to get this one made.
Set in West Africa in the 1700s, the movie begins with a classic action episode as warriors from one tribe emerge from the forest and descend on their peaceful neighbors, violently overpowering them.
As the victors begin their standard tribal warfare practice of killing the fighting-age males among the losers and enslaving the women and boys, the son of the warrior chief intervenes. He has heard that, on the coast, they can trade the defeated tribe for white man’s goods — cloth, metal articles, rum. Chief agrees to let his son take the now-enslaved losers to the coast and trade them for valuables, after extracting a promise to kill them all if anything goes wrong along the way.
The movie then becomes a fairly standard tale of the difficulties faced by the victorious warriors in escorting the unwilling enslaved losers through unfamiliar territories, facing all the usual surprises & challenges of wild animals, raging rivers, and hostile tribes. Ultimately, they reach the coast and the chief’s son successfully trades the surviving losers with an English sea captain. While the captain sets sail for the French slave plantations in the Caribbean, the victors set off for home with their loot.
The final scene in the movie is set 5 years later, on the same coast. This time, it is the chief’s son who has been enslaved along with his warriors by a stronger tribe. The same English captain slaps the irons on the chief’s son, and sets off for the Spanish slave plantations of South America.
I’m stealing this for my screenplay set in the future. There are two characters who could say this line. So concise and covers everything.
And the job of the therapist is to have the patient become aware that these internal dialogues are just that. And they do this by reflecting and being blank. Accepting, listening, absorbing as another human being. Granting respect. Who has that for an hour in their lives? People are daily disrespected for a myriad of things. We are misunderstood constantly. We are forced to conform, agree, go along in an artificial and random world. It manifests insanity. Therapy is absolutely valid – if it’s professional.
We are anthropological creatures.
We have instincts and predilections we can’t change overnight by rule of law.
They are, in effect, forcing humans to not be human. We have been human HUMAN as has existed for 200,000 years and doing things a certain way. They are still doing this is a ‘certain way’ today across the globe. The majority of humans around the world are living in a family structure of mother, children, father protector/provider social norms enforcing family and tribal unity. The men have more influence in some realms and the women have more in others. It has self stabilized over tens of thousands of years. We are in year 2021, our civilization can be traced back only about 6,000 years. It’s Ying/Yang. It has settled naturally. All the treaties have been agreed to.
They want to re-invent that 200,000 year-old equipoise for their new ideas…. based on nothing?
Gavin
Thank you!
Yeah. I wouldn’t want to be charged with pitching that to Hollywood execs…
But I take personal umbrage at the idea that you don’t have talent. It’s not talent. That’s a myth (of course -that’s what people who lack talent say) but seriously, if you can write that as a comment of 500 words, you can put it all in screenplay form.
But no, you are so right, that idea won’t get produced, even by Ben Shapiro’s new venture – especially not, come to think of it.
BUT – just jamming with ideas – maybe you have character who wrote this exact screenplay and is pitching it in Hollywood.
Obviously no one’s interested. Everyone’s afraid. Can you imagine the distain, the discomfort? The screenwriter is oblivious to this aspect, and thinks it’s because he lacks talent -just jamming -He tries to recruit various actors etc, as the story goes on we hear more of the idea, which his best friend and black actor he’s trying to sign on for his project, is trying to explain to him why it’s so toxic to Hollywood.
It could be very ‘Larry David”‘
But otherwise…
Question: what are your favorite movies right now?
It is so good to hear that I am not the only one dealing with friends and family members whose idea of Truth is whatever newly manufactured Big COVID Lies being slung our way.
Often I try to calmly tell people that it is absurd to war masks, as what a person is doing when they wear a mask is they are substituting the very small threat COVID poses to anyone in good health under the age of 50 with a very real threat of developing a nasty case of bacterial pneumonia. Also people get acne, and staph infections in their nasal passages from mask wearing.
Now people are lining up in droves to get the vaccine.
Again I try to tell people clamly that the Pfizer vaccine is known to resemble in many ways the earlier mRNA vax developed for a different corona infection. (Think it might have been SARS.) The animals in the clinical trials did great with the actual injections. But then it was discovered these vaccinated animals ended up with an enhanced susceptibility to any corona virus other than the infection the vaccine was concerned with. The animals went on to develop a serious version of the next corona virus they encountered and then they died.
Because of this, the vaccine was never released. Also because of this, the Pfizer people didn’t go the route of animal trials for their COVID vaccines except for a paltry 48 animals, and I imagine that they rigged the parameters of the clinical trials to allow them to state the animals did great.
This graphic reveals exactly how I feel about the vaccination situation:
It is the graphic posted today 2/21/21 with the bridge photograph:
https://ricochet.com/groups/serious-political-memes/
Every word of your comment Franco was so well done.
Sorry to “snip” it but it is only one comment above this one.
The teenagers in our society understand what you were saying inside their souls. There have been SIX TIMES the number of HS aged people committing suicide as have died of COVID.
Many people who think about baby and children’s brain development wonder what exactly is going on with having babies and children forced to not see people’s faces for going on a year now. People who were in the past victims of pedophiles will explain that a good part of what their captors did to them was to force them to wear a mask!
A friend of mine Canada went blind six months after having a baby. She has had to struggle with raising that child as a single mom. She was doing okay, especially once the little boy entered kindergarten. Then right as the child was about to finish his year in kindergarten, the school system was shut down.
For first grade, The Canadian government expected her to sit in front of a computer screen she couldn’t see and home school her child. Of course she tried to do this, but she received no extra assistance. However social service people apparently knew what a losing battle she was having because in January they showed up to let her know that she was failing in her task as a home schooling parent. (They knew this since the teacher using ZOOM understood her kid was falling behind.) They were in the process of taking hr kid away from her, but school re-opened! So they could no longer point a finger at hr for her failures, since the point was moot. Otherwise she would have lost her child to the system, due to COVID.
This is just one of the many repercussions of the fake pandemic. Meanwhile our billionaire class experienced a whopping 27% increase in their wealth.
I’m rather late to this party and I confess not having read all the comments yet but here’s my two cents anyhow. My approach is to be like a porcupine: lefties know to steer clear of me when it comes to political talk because anyone who tries to realign my moral compass or instruct me on the virtues of leftism is going to get stuck by the quills. I’ve had to open more than one can o’ whoop-ass. Surprisingly, most of them have backed off and simply avoided those topics, while still maintaining a good relationship otherwise.
I can think of one family member in particular who I see a couple of times a year. We can enjoy a good hike in the woods and a beer or two afterwards and, miraculously, politics never comes up any more even though this person is practically a communist. A couple of times, cultural topics tangential to politics have come up but were swiftly batted down using the Left’s own tools: phrases such as “a teachable moment” and “That statement makes you sound sexist.”
I don’t like the idea of Xing out family. Friends are fine, but I think the point of family, is you don’t choose them and you are all different but you have to try to work to get along with them . However, I’m fortunate that I haven’t had to X any family members out. Most of my family are conservative and the ones who are on the left, aren’t the types to throw a turd down in the middle of dinner (by turd I mean, everyone is having a nice conversation and enjoying themselves and then some jerk has to bring up a contentious topic that they KNOW will cause an argument). There are some in my husband’s family that do that but luckily they are outnumbered and get clobbered. As for friends, I ditched Facebook, and Whatsapp a while ago. My conservative friends didn’t really post on Facebook and the only ones who did are my childhood friends who I was on a Whatsapp thread with, who are more like family than anything. We have so much history I’d have a hard time ditching them. But a few of them are insane neurotics that I couldn’t take it anymore and their conversations online were tedious. Not all of them on the thread are like that but the neurotics suck all the air out of the room.
Being disconnected is great in one way but I also miss out on stuff. It’s kind of funny cause a friend of mine had to call me to tell me another friend of mine had her baby (like how you would do it in the old days). So, now I’m the friend who lives up in the mountains, away from civilization, that has to be sent messages about big events. But I still like them. They are good people but their posts on Facebook are crazy, but if you talk to them in real life we have a good time. So better to just not see the online personae, and just go with the real deal. Also, my friends learned a LONG time ago that I am a lot more informed about things than they are, so they don’t really get into debates with me. Most of them just default to the conventional wisdom and don’t question it, which is annoying and I never understand why none of them have any curiosity about things.
But Xing people out of your life who aren’t family and just give you grief is perfectly fine. Life is too short.
That’s been pretty much my approach through the last20 years, although I’ve moderated my passion and tone. There was a time when I could have in-depth discussions with people. That was when they were liberal (in the stricter sense of the word. They were near impossible to convince, but they’d budge a little and at least seemed interested in getting another perspective. But the left did a lot of demonizing and cutting off debate combined with a self-satisfied righteousness that any zealot Puritan would only exhibit occasionally.
I suspect they know. There’s a little part of them that knows they are wrong and they are running from it. Doing everything they can to dismiss it. Trying to find something in our arguments that’s patently absurd so as to bolster their own tenuous positions.
But once the corporate media went all in when they were directly challenged by Trump, they pulled out all the stops and they knowingly and deliberately propagandandized their audience and worked overtime to squash any counter narrative that emerged. This with the aid of operatives in the intel community who were already in bed with corporate media. The result was/is a large portion of the US population living in a virtual world created by the media. This pandemic is in force also to keep transmission (of reality) down and to punish the middle class who are not dependent on government like teachers etc. It’s also a result of consolidation of social media and walling off and censoring alternate voices.
The biggest thing I’ve learned recently is how susceptible we all are to propaganda techniques and how little any one person actually knows, we all rely on some ‘authority’ to tell us. When an ordinary person hears the same thing over and over, or similar things, from different directions (it can be basically the same source) like on a late night talk show, a news item, a post on Twitter and Facebook validated by “all” of their friends and associates, with little or no counter-narrative , or the counter narrative is ALSO distorted and mocked, it becomes a virtual “fact” and no discussion can be had.
My latest approach, and I fully accept it might not be the best, is to challenge their sanity. I actually don’t think these people (like my cousin) are sane. Literally.
The first question I ask is basically, how do you know. Then I go down that rabbit hole. Often it’s a dead end, but my approach is not arguing the content but the sources and what interest they might have in reporting this version of the news. If I can just get them to start – start, questioning on that level.
And this is why Fox news must die. My friend Neil watches occasionally to ‘get the other side’. Well, to a very small extent they are, but I would say they are controlled opposition, their stance towards Trump was only that they didn’t attack him unfairly but they really didn’t defend him other than the partisans like Hannity, who are fine for us, but he serves as the perfect scapegoat because he comes off (naturally in this environment) as a hyper-partisan. But the benefit to the corporate left (another phrase that stings them) is they set up a fake dichotomy, so people like my friend (and a lot of Republicans) think they are getting another side when it’s really pretty much the same side with a different twist.
All pretty much the same with me. I stopped looking at FB because I would lose respect for people – fine people, talented smart, funny, creative, but moronic with politics. Stupid virtue-signal declarations.
The quote is relevant to my theory that they either kinda know, or they don’t want to know. Your friends would rather not have a debate because they intuitively know, or know from history of debating you, that they will at some point become uncomfortable and possibly question their belief. Having and holding and nurturing these beliefs is important to these people because they use them to define who they are. In short, I’m a good person therefore I’m a Democrat and believe Black Lives Matter and whatever one needs to agree with to be a ‘good’ person. If I stop believing, or start to question, that means I’m like a Republican , that I don’t care enough, and then I won’t be considered a good person. Moreover, people who think like this are the least capable of being independent and defending their ideas. Because that’s why they instinctively agree with the herd. They don’t want to stand out, and when challenged they aren’t capable of defending themselves and they know it. Therefore, any debate they have with you is risking their status as a ‘good person’.
Franco: “BUT – just jamming with ideas – maybe you have character who wrote this exact screenplay and is pitching it in Hollywood.”
I doff my metaphorical hat to you, Franco. You are demonstrating the difference between those who have real talent and the rest of us who don’t. Where my unwritten movie script was a shameless rip-off of “City Slickers” with African slaves instead of New Mexican cattle, your idea of following the hapless script-writer trying to get the movie made could become a comedic masterpiece!
Some scenes almost write themselves, as when the script-writer is meeting with a pop diva, trying to get her interested in taking the lead female role in the movie:
Diva: “What do you mean, my character does not wear a bra?”
Writer: “Well, we are trying to be as historically accurate as possible. And very respectful to African history & traditions. Equatorial Africans in the 1700s had not invented the bra”.
Diva: “But I want to look good! Young girls in the ghetto look up to me, you know!”
Writer: “Don’t worry, you will look very good — because tribal women in those days did not wear tops either.”
Diva: “What!!! Who do you think I am? Madonna?”
Give it a shot, Franco! It could be fun.
“You promised there would be no nudity”
“Well, there’s not really, nudity would be if you took off your skirt. Africans in 1700 didn’t consider being topless nudity.”
She’s very skeptical.
He continues,”Look at it this way, it’s the difference between Playboy and National Geographic. National Geographic isn’t a porn magazine.
“Tell that to my little brother.”
I know at least a couple people who are legally sane, but not in complete touch with reality. One has paranoid hallucinations, and the other has grandiose delusions. These are not the type of people referred to below. The following refers to sane, well-adjusted, and otherwise mentally and cognitively healthy people.
Scott Adams, many whose opinions I find wrong in many details but others generally surprising in their thrust, says that essentially the Press (the media and social media) is the actual government, and the legal government follows, even is forced to follow, what has been predetermined and programmed in to the public’s consciousness. His view is that the Press present an idea or an event, and then convince the public that this is valid, is happening, and is already done (thinking past the sale) and then once this position is accepted by the public, the legal government enacts these ideas into law (essentially rubber stamping them), presenting them as fulfilling the natural views and expectations of the public.
He also says that people can be persuaded that that which is obviously false in true; such that he and those similarly trained, can hold a pen in front of your eyes, and convince you (persuade you, is his euphemism) that he is not holding a pen in front of your eyes, to the point that you don’t even see the pen, and you will swear that there is none.
Adams explains that he had studied this extensively and is a “licensed hypnotist” and can persuade at least some of the people of anything all of the time.
This process explains why both sides of the political scale believe the other side to not be sane. When there are two mutually-exclusive views of reality, only one at the most can be correct. Some are hypnotized (or persuaded) to believe that which is not true and the others are presumably not hypnotized at all. But perhaps in some cases, neither side is correct, and the truth is a third view, that is only known by those doing the persuading.
Right after Trump’s election in 2016, as the NeverTrumpers were trying to gaslight us into sudden friendship, I wrote a piece over there (over *there*) entitled *There Will Be No Reconciliation*.
Same now but double.
Can you post it here?
I vaguely remember that post. But that was my primary focus over there. It started as me having given up convincing Democrats of anything, absolutely anything, pre-DJT, I went there and fixated on what was wrong on ‘my side’,. Trying to enlighten the establishment idiots. Strangely I was very allied with social conservatives (which I’m probably not exactly) because SoCons were all anti-establishment, and some of the more ‘establishment’ (in those days) Republicans were actually Trump-friendly while some of the SoCons were appalled. Many of the SoCons came around and I respect them greatly for that.
I always knew the establishment types relied on yelling “squirrel” to whip the SoCon base into shape. An example was Chris Wallace grilling Newt in a primary debate about his conduct at the end of his second marriage. Establishment types could eliminate any threat by harping on morality of a candidate they weren’t comfortable with. Then I realized how much some conservatives were using the Office of the President as proxy for their failures to stop the cultural decline, and as a cheap substitute wanted to elect some moral icon to stand in for their virtues, and to try to use a guy like Romney to shame-cudgel the electorate into liking Republicans again. Well that became quite obvious.
My only focus now politically is to vanquish the conniving traitors once and for all. Double down? Let’s triple-down and take no prisoners!
Back in 2016 they were misguided (and moronic -which continues) but now they’ve done the unthinkable. It’s the equivalent of the scene in The Godfather when Kay tells Michael (in the 1950’s) that her miscarriage was actually an abortion. And I believe most of us have that same a cold anger and sense of betrayal that Micheal felt.
Actually that analogy just came to me, and who is the unborn baby? Our America. Also it’s been revealed how massively hypocritical and petty they are.
Great comment. I agree entirel. I like Scott Adams but I see the same holes , but his meta-analysis is spot on.
The paragraph quoted is an excellent summation of the phenomenon which I also have come to see, in part helped by Adams himself.
I’ve contended for years now that the Democratic Party is an arm of the media, rather than -a so many on our side have backwards -that the media is doing the Democrats’ bidding. The Democrats are doing the globalist corporate media’s bidding.
What we also don’t understand completely enough is that the “news” is just the giant corporate PR division of these truly giant global corporations. That is, if you were a huge multi-national corporation selling your cartoon movies worldwide, owned TV and radio stations, magazines and newspapers across the country beholden to other global corporate advertising – to include the Pharmaceutical industry as Advertiser #1, why wouldn’t you pick a side and promote that side? Tacitly align with them.
If you were a political party, why wouldn’t you try to accommodate the media? The Republicans tried but they couldn’t, their hands were tied – and that’s how we got the shrugs from Bush II, Republicans took on the media at their own risk. And the media is naturally aligned with Democrats . They thrive on social decay and licentiousness. Collectivism is so much easier for the media than individualism. Having people stay home, order pizza and watch their shows is naturally what they would want. Then sell them pills for their ailments, along with unhealthy food and drink (Coke, Pepsi and Budweiser) It’s easier to entertain stupid people than smart people, so naturally they are for continues failure of public schools, it all naturally aligns with Democrats. Fundamentally media – meaning all the shows, movies, music , the entire cultural zeitgeist that the media promotes and celebrates, is competing with religion and ‘church’ for eyeballs and attention. Church and entertainment are natural enemies and always have been. So Republicans having so many religious people in their ranks were never going to get the media on their side, while the media and Democrat/socialism was always the perfect mate for the media.
Alas, I cannot. I certainly would if I could.