I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.
I am one of those fanatics on the alt-right and the alt-left, the ones who make online forums so vicious, the ones who cancel and call out, the minority of online posters who fill the air with hate. I’m one of those radicals whose rage is intertwined with psychological fragility, whose anger at real wrongs is corrupted by my existential panic about myself.
To know anything about me you have to understand the chaos at the core of my innermost being. I was raised without coherent moral frameworks. I was raised amid social fragmentation and division, the permanent flux of liquid modernity.
Adults in my life have not been trustworthy. Friends have not been trustworthy. Women reject me. I passed through school unseen. You have no idea how ill equipped I am to deal with my pain. I was raised in that coddling way that protects you from every risk except real life.
When I was younger my eyes pleaded: Tell me what adulthood and manhood are supposed to look like! All you said was, “You can be anything you want to be!” How does that help? You told me I was special, but the world goes on as if I don’t exist.
I yearn for order. Blunt simplicities. Politics provides the Manichaean binaries I can’t find anywhere else, and so I make everything political. Own the libs! Smash the racist right! A war of pure good and pure evil.
I crave the single narrative that will make everything clear: Everything is race. Everything is class. Everything is moral rot caused by godlessness. They say that fundamentalism is rigid and authoritarian. I say to them: Yes! I want fundamentalism. Please wrap me in that rigidity. Otherwise, I have no coherent self.
Catastrophizing is my mind-set. Catastrophizing is pure: Society is totally corrupt. The “system” is totally rotten. I am terrified by ambiguity and ambivalence, the idea that the glass might be only half full. I seize on the extreme example of anything and take it to be the typical case. In this way I create my truth. An immigrant committed murders, so immigrants are murderers.
People are not defined by individual traits but by group ones. Individual persons are too complicated, but groups are abstract and easy to stereotype. Every human being gets reduced to some category, preferably the cunning ones I despise: the libs, white males.
I need leaders and spokesmen who will never show uncertainty. I want leaders who tell simple blame stories. It’s the bankers! It’s the immigrants! I want intellectual put-down artists who will crush the other side and let me vicariously enjoy their triumphs on YouTube again and again.
My moral system is simple, too. Up is evil and down is good. People above me on the status hierarchy are venal, while those of us in my group are victims of their corruption. The existence of any hierarchy itself is prima facie proof of injustice.
From the abstract vantage point of my computer screen, I see a world in which my opponents are elite oppressors and my kind are oppressed. They have their exclusive cliques and I am disdained. And here we get to the ultimate injustice: Why are they recognized while I am not? This is the molten core from which my indignation flows. The status quo does not respect me, and therefore I despise it.
So my politics is not really about issues, it’s epic wars for recognition. I don’t deal with the complexities of economics or foreign affairs. I seize upon the minor missteps made by my opponents in order to discredit their kind. You stumbled? I delight in crushing you! Owning the libs spares me the terrifying ambiguity of actually getting to know one.
I’ve lost faith in reason. Communication is for condemnation and arousal. Forgiveness has become foreign to me. Sometimes you have to be vicious for justice. If I afflict the comfortable I have served justice. I don’t have to worry about comforting the afflicted. If I attack faraway wrongdoers I don’t have to worry about tutoring a child.
Online war is a force that gives life meaning. Hatred gives me that delicious simulacrum of power. Did you really think you could raise me on gourmet coffee and yoga pants and I wouldn’t find a way to rebel against your relativism and materialism? Didn’t you observe the eternal pattern — that if you try to flatten a man to the bourgeois he will rebel by becoming a fanatic?
And yet … somehow it’s not working. Somehow politics doesn’t fill my soul, bring me peace or end my existential anxiety. I have helped create a harsh world in which vulnerability is impossible and without vulnerability there can be no relationship. Relationship is the thing that I long for the most and that I make impossible. I have cut myself off from the only thing that can save me.
I am indignant. I am superior. I read Dostoyevsky’s “Notes From the Underground.” I am alone.
- David Brooks (my favorite conservative)
If David Brooks is serious about his need to "lament" he ought to watch that climate debate on cnn again. And remember this basic truism by Trump. "They are not after me. They are after you. I am just standing in their way"...that so called debate said more about the possible direction of this country than David Brooks ever thought possible
"I am indignant. I am superior."
Funny how some people are self appointed authorities in identifying traits which define them...........if only they would look in the mirror.
1. I asked you a couple of times to please not print entire articles because it violates copyright rules(not my rules but those that define this industry). Links to the source of the article too.
2. I have asked you 7 times to respond on a completely different issue..........and you continue to ignore my request for a response.
Lack of complying could be characterized as......................indignant? Seen as.............superior?
Not asking anything special from you joj............just that you follow the same rules as everybody else........please.
Trump Hates America
Started by joj - July 24, 2019, 6:46 a.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/35195/
Identity ‘fusion’ with political leader
I can't copy paste articles from the NY Times and the links can't be opened by people who don't subscribe.
If I was told before, I forgot. Early onset dementia...
So I won't post anything from that newspaper anymore. (The Times, the WSJ and Bloomberg are banned) Got it.
As to your request for a response, I sent you an email response several requests ago.
I confess to being guilty of many of the flaws pointed out by Brooks. But I am certainly not superior.
Thanks very much for your response. Before responding, do know that I consider you a valuable poster here and appreciate your views. The fact that you make good market posts too scores big in my book and although it appears that I am picking on you, I am trying to be fair.
1. Please follow the instructions defining protocol defined earlier. You CAN cut out portions of articles, even large portions to push it, just pick out the important parts. We are small and would not be sued for copyright infringement, as nobody would even notice us but I actually had warned Tim about this just before you and I don;t own the forum, so it's probably best we go this way.
2. You should always post the links because some of us can get the entire article and the NYT(which has some good stuff even with their bias on Trump and climate change-I do read some of their stuff) allows non subscribers to access a number of free articles. In all cases, regardless its always helpful for the rest of us when you provide a source/link to information/data in a discussion in the age of fake news and manufactured data.
3. I don't want you to not post anything from that newspaper or the WSJ or Bloomberg. I understand the limitations and have been forced several times to seek alternate sources because of the pay wall but you can sometimes capture a title and link which would be fine. Again, post portions of the pay walled article and the link but not the entire article.
4. Thanks for responding here for the first time to my question............so it can be resolved now. You did in fact respond to my email and I appreciate it. I overlooked it, so sorry about that because I try to be very diligent in responding.
I appreciate the nice things that you said, which reinforces my faith in you being somebody that doesn't just come to disrupt or troll. They can appreciate and respect others that disagree with them if those others do it respectfully.
With regards to standing by your accusation of my Obama bashing. I challenge you to show it, which is why I chased you around about this. People get these impressions of other people in their heads based on false assumptions. You are also convinced that I'm not neutral. I totally understand why you think that.
I know that I have recently spent a tremendous amount of time attacking some extreme liberal ideologies here. We can safely say that if there's one thing that defines metmike, it's his position on climate change. My views are 100% scientific on the science.............but I share what the political motives are for the other side to commit blatant scientific fraud. So I vehemently attack that political side for being the charlatans that they are............selling a bogus Green New Deal that could never work and a Climate Accord during the current climate optimum. Anybody reading my stuff, as the moderator would think "no way is that moderator neutral"
However, the main reason that I am the moderator is to show the truth on topics I have done objective research on.
In real life I am a practicing environmentalist devoted to helping those less fortunate/poor and making the world a better place(with actions). My dad grew up in the inner city of Detroit and was active in the civil rights movement, raising us as democrats with ethical principles that once defined that party. I was a democrat the first half of my life and even voted for Obama in 2008.
It is true though now that I am biased against democrats. Not because I have changed. The party has. It's the party of hate and manufacturing facts/creating propaganda to get power. You must do exactly what we say to save the planet............even as they do the complete opposite in their personal lives(In my life, I practice every word preached).
Which is why your comment about me and Obama bashing is just not right. I have defended him a couple of times and any stories that I have told about him, mainly relate to his role in the Climate Accord(he worked out the agreement with China)..........and they have never called him a name(like I have done to Al Gore and Bill Nye).
Last month, I showed you an article about him buying a house right on the ocean, which is funny for somebody having his position about the sea level increase.
I think that Obama has a good heart and was a gifted charismatic communicator. His policies on health care and other issues were sincerely intended to help the poor. He promoted peace with the Muslim world. His position on gun violence/control also had the best interest in heart. He was very charitable with US assistance of money/donations/resources to poor countries.
Those are the good things. I did not vote for him again in 2012 and his extreme anti science position on the fake climate crisis would have been way more than enough by then even though the positives above were still valid.
In fact, Obama spent way more time bashing me and calling me names. Calling people like me science and climate deniers, calling us flat earthers, which seemed to be his unique term for us.
But you won't find posts here of me bashing Obama's integrity(yet)..............despite my stratospheric disagreement with him on climate change and his key role in helping to obliterate authentic climate science and making people dumb for a political agenda for decades to come which hurts this atmospheric scientist deeply.
Oh yeah, did you notice............that I sometimes defend Trump too (-:
And its sometimes for the opposite reason to compliment Obama. Trump actually is the president that stands for authentic science...........climate science, biology, agronomy, energy science, economic principles, (meteorology recently)
And fairness/ethical principles/laws(Russia, southern border, China, race) where the MSM makes stuff up and I have the empirical evidence to show its made up.
Personally, I like Obama and greatly dislike Trump. But I don't let my peronsal opinion affect the way that I communicate stuff on Trump who needs all the help that he can get debunking what is often bogus stuff attacking him.
The reason he need s this is that, because Trump is a mean person, he is subjected to constant unfair attacks, often with fake news by the MSM and dems..................that gets cheered by people who don't care if its true or not...........TRUMP DESERVES IT because he's mean(as well as other big personality flaws).
He will probably not win in 2020(though I will vote for him despite not liking him) because his platform is light years better than the other sides economy killing anti science, anti US everything platform.
Actions speak louder than words. Here are mine with regards to my treatment of Mr. Conservative on this same issue......before any of this discussion began with you. Sorry to use you as an example on this again Tim but you've always, 100% of the time responded with understanding and acceptance.
By metmike - July 21, 2019, 7 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/34963/
Tim,
I don't consider this one of your better posts.
It's nothing but an Obama bashing post for the sake of bashing Obama from a person that obviously hates Obama.
Also, it's best with posts to include the link, along with the title/source, then, below that a few key points..........not the entire article.
I certainly get very long winded with my own post, using my own words............ but please try to avoid putting entire articles from other sources.