Whackos!

Greetings good citizen!

It is not often we get to visit both sides of an argument in the same post, even if those two sides are only not ‘directly’ related.

We begin with:

What the three men have in common, [Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich] aside from wielding more influence than they can handle or deserve, is that their serial misbehavior went unchecked for years. In fact, it was rationalized as mere exuberance, frequently excused in “exceptional” people, when it actually demonstrated something else – ruling class impunity.

Ask yourself: Is it possible that these were isolated lapses in judgment? In other words, was this the only time Dominique Strauss-Kahn went after the help, or the only instance of Arnold Schwarzenegger cheating on his wife and exploiting those beneath him? Not too likely. And it’s surely not the only time Gingrich has excused his own bad behavior as a side effect of patriotism – while simultaneously trashing the basic humanity of a political opponent.

But perhaps more importantly:

If these are patterns, why are millions so fascinated, often even seduced, by people whose behavior actually points to pathology? Perhaps we are wired to be attracted by psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, people so focused on their own central role in whatever takes place that the rest of us are sucked into their reality.

Never one to pass up a ‘teaching moment’, you don’t suppose there could be a reason for these obviously disturbed individual’s behavior?

The common thread the article studiously avoids is how all (intentional) ‘public figures’ are ‘pathological liars’. Worse, they are, er, ‘hired’ to both disseminate and defend lies, requiring a certain, er, ‘moral flexibility’ that most people are ill equipped to deal with.

If we take our current set of circumstances, your basic ‘puppet government’ scenario, you’d be correct to observe that most players are indeed accomplished ‘actors’.

The ‘psycho’ part comes from the fact that this is not ‘acting’ in the strictest sense where the player knows the outcome ahead of time, something that can’t help but effect the actor’s overall mental performance/health.

Which is to point out that doing other than what your conscience dictates will, by necessity, fuck you up in the head!

This is not speculation but fact.

However, if we take the original premise and turn it on it’s head (from is the world ‘run’ by psychopaths to is the world ‘filled with psychopaths’) then what does that give us here?

“My mom has told me directly that I’m not going to get into heaven,” Grace Haddad, 16, said. “At first it was really upsetting, but it’s what she honestly believes.”

Thousands of people around the country have spent the last few days taking to the streets and saying final goodbyes before Saturday, Judgment Day, when they expect to be absorbed into heaven in a process known as the rapture. Nonbelievers, they hold, will be left behind to perish along with the world over the next five months.

It will be great fun come Monday when we can rag on the asses of those who are less ‘holier than thou’ because they were ‘left behind’.

Will the next five months be a time of ‘great upheaval’…probably but I seriously doubt ‘spirit in the sky’ has anything to do with it.

Men are ‘evil’ enough without the great Satan!

Then we come to Ivory Towers and the disturbing fact that those inside are still too far up to witness actual circumstances on the ground…

Manufacturing, once America’s greatest strength, seemed to be in terminal decline. But that may be changing. Manufacturing is one of the bright spots of a generally disappointing recovery, and there are signs — preliminary, but hopeful, nonetheless — that a sustained comeback may be under way.

Understand good citizen there is and always will be a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between ‘Made in the USA’ and ‘Assembled in the USA.’

For those of you who fail to appreciate the distinction, the ‘money’ ISN’T in ‘turning the wrenches’; the money is in the actual fabrication of the parts!

Quite a weekend ahead, let’s see how things turn out.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner