January 23, 2020

Twitter responds

https://twitter.com/bentzysu/status/1220345374830997504

January 23, 2020

Trump better be careful.

Bloomberg is the kind of guy who will double, triple down (not in an obvious, crude, stupid way, like a Tweet, but in a more creative way). That's the one thing they do have in common. Bloomberg has exactly zero fear of Trump.

More than any other candidate, Bloomberg should be the person Trump least wants to engage with directly.

January 21, 2020

Dr. Jerrold Post, in his new book "Dangerous Charisma" believes that Trump's devout followers

have psyches injured in a particular way that makes them crave an authoritarian "Daddy" that tells them he can make all their problems go away. Once they locate their Leader, they experience a sense of devotion that transcends common sense or even rational self-interest.

January 20, 2020

This post has been on my mind since you wrote it.

Last night I had a dream about your metaphor of eyeglasses being taken apart and your answer, "It ceases being eyeglasses when I say so."

This morning I was thinking about the koan MU. A student asks Master Zhaozhao, "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" Master Zhaozhao answered, "Mu."

This could be off base, but my answer this morning was, "Mu means what I say it means."

Students get stuck on this koan. Maybe we are trying to figure out what Mu means to everyone but "ourselves"; to Zhaozhao, or to his student, or to our teachers, or to someone else who has written commentary on this koan.

Of course, there's probably more to it, but is that one way of looking at Mu?

This opens a can of worms in a way, because who is the "me" that decides what Mu means?

January 19, 2020

There are individuals who want exactly this.

Nihilists, accelerationists, etc. I agree, it's very dangerous. Some mental health professionals have likened Trump supporters to cult-members, and we have examples throughout history of cultists choosing death over life. The Christchurch shooter wrote about accelerationism in his manifesto. Freudian analysts call this drive "Thanatos."

That quote is from "The Age of Thanatos: Environmental Consequences of the Trump Presidency" by Lise Van Susteren and H. Steven Moffic in "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," edited by Dr. Bandy X Lee. (p. 419)

We are at odds here with some people who are willing to die and who expect to die in a fight for something that is difficult to understand, and to objective observers looks pretty ridiculous. That's always a terrifying scenario.

I wish there were more discussions about this. It's a difficult concept for some, maybe most, people to come to grips with. I don't say it's an 'epidemic" but it's out there. As an aside, I also wonder about this nihilistic drive being the same force that kicks in where you see genocidal behavior, where people who not long before lived side by side in peace are suddenly murdering each other.

January 19, 2020

Deeply upsetting that the CIA is now dragged into this mess.

How does it get any more serious than this?

Maybe it's time to organize something dramatic, like stopping all discretionary spending--or some other economically impactful activity--for a set period of time and threatening to do it again if there's not immediate change.

They have shut down a branch of government. Our institutions are on the verge of becoming adversarial to the citizens. Our leaders don't fear us any more.

January 19, 2020

Dr. Jerrold Post's new book "Dangerous Charisma" has an interesting way of looking at this.

He argues that the charismatic leader and the (narcissistically-injured) followers need or even "create" each other. Trump needs constant reinforcement for his damaged ego, and his audience needs a reassuring father figure to tell them everything is okay and "I can fix it all." They feed off each other. I've been saying it's like two parasites locked in a kiss.

"Dangerous Charisma" is good but "Dangerous Case" is better IMO. There is an essay by Post in the updated and expanded "Dangerous Case" in which he lays out his analogy.

January 18, 2020

"Trump and his Generals" - Harvey advocates larger strike against Assad

(p. 112)

Derek Harvey, the retired colonel who oversaw the Middle East at the NSC, pushed for a consequential strike against Assad rather than just the pinprick of eliminating a fraction of Assad's air force, which was one of the options on the table. Harvey advocated for taking out a larger target set of Assad's air force and helicopter fleet as this would dramatically curtain the dictator's ability to bomb his population at will.

Bannon confronted Harvey outside of the Situation Room and told the retired colonel, "We don't want you fucking neocons starting a war."

Mattis called McMaster, scolding him, "You let this get too far down the road."

Just a FWIW.

EDIT: "Trump and his Generals" is by Peter Bergen.

January 18, 2020

Paragraph about Rich Higgins in "Trump and his Generals"

(p. 151)

Talking about his dismissal:

The first to go was Rich Higgins, the director for strategic planning at the NSC, who had circulated a bizarre memo rife with conspiracy theories about Trump's purported "deep state" enemies in the US government whom he characterized as Marxists. In Higgins's telling, these Marxists were allied to Islamists in a conspiracy that also included the European Union and the UN. The Higgins memo concluded, "This is a form of population control by certain business cartels in league with cultural Marxists/corporatists/Islamists who will leverage Islamic terrorism threats to justify the creation of a police state." This was not the kind of sober thinking that typically came out of the strategic planning shop at the NSC. McMaster's deputy Rick Waddell gave Higgins his marching orders on July 21.

McMaster wanted to cleanse the White House of nut jobs, it seems like.

EDIT: "Trump and his Generals" is by Peter Bergen.

January 14, 2020

"I saw daddy fall down"

In “The Recorded Sayings of Layman Pang” there’s this story:

One day Layman Pang and his daughter Ling Zhao were selling bamboo baskets. Coming down off a bridge Mr. Pang stumbled and fell.

When Ling Zhao saw this she ran to her father’s side and threw herself onto the ground.

“What are you doing?” cried the Layman.

“I saw Daddy fall down, so I’m helping,” replied Ling Zhao.

“Luckily no one was looking,” remarked the Layman.

This story always touched me greatly, but I could never understand why Mr. Pang disapproves his daughter.

Then one day I heard a teacher reflect on this story and as he came to this exact point his voice grew soft. I thought he was slightly choked up. He said, “Mr. Pang is not disapproving Ling Zhao. That’s not what’s happening here. He's not embarrassed by what Ling Zhao has done."

That teacher’s teacher used to say, “If the left hand catches fire, the right hand doesn’t have to think about swatting out the flames.”

And the incomparable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche always said, “You sneeze first and wipe your nose afterwards.”

Still, I don’t understand why Mr. Pang said what he said to his daughter. But they are great adepts, so surely they understand. Yet, I cannot penetrate it.

Being stuck in the relative, if I had been Mr. Pang I would probably have burst into sloppy tears of gratitude and hugged my daughter.

They say the student should exceed the teacher by half. That being the case, Mr. and Mrs. Pang were extraordinary masters.

Nine bows to Ling Zhao!