THE CYBER POLICE STATE

Trump on his hackable Android 

which he uses to government business at dinner parties.

The most “American” aspect to this unfolding scandal about Trump and the espionage coming from the Russia is the selling of ads for the Rachel Maddow Show — as well as forcing MSNBC watchers onto paid platforms.  Like the Washington Post and New York Times “pay walls,” the first beneficiary of the story of our own danger is booming sales.”

Put that aside.

Senate hearings about the crazy unendingness makes it clear that we’re paying for our own childish neglect of the issues of the cyber world, a revolution of technology (among others) that is as life-changing as the industrial revolution.  The internet is a millennial railroad, an airport that lands on your table, a harvesting combine that reduces a whole crew to one college kid earning summer money.  It was just too subtle to see without re-focusing.  There are two schools of thought:  if you can find the same motives and foibles, it’s the sameold sameold.  The other one is that this is quite different and we need to stretch to get our heads around it.

I was particularly impressed by the Senate Intelligence Committee testimony, though I could only bring up the second half on YouTube.  I normally watch a lot of intense police procedural movies — this felt the same.  It was adult, controlled, technical but accessible.  Nothing else got done at this house except cat feeding so they’d stay out from in front of my screen.

TRUMP with his old Android he uses 

to do government business at dinner parties.

Even the schools who are teaching keyboarding and coding, thinking they are giving their kids the ability to use computers, are not providing the thinking skills, analysis and insight they need to REALLY operate on computers.  (Trump evidently cannot use a keyboard computer.)  What computers can do — besides providing vid games and ordering clothes — is only activated and effective if the person brings a context that is broad and deep.  But we seem to be locked into villages of about a hundred people who hate change, which is the way our biology is programmed.  It takes some effort and even some help to escape that.  All the truly sophisticated testifiers are saying that we just had the wrong focus, weren’t thinking big enough.  That includes the Russians.

This might be a clue:  the trash roll-off manager, a woman I respect, thinks global warming is an invented issue, not real, and her “proof” is that long cycles of global warming and thawing happen all the time and they are natural throughout the history of the planet.  Therefore it is silly to try to interfere.  I quite agree that planetary temperature cycles are natural, recurring, and dynamic, but what I finally realized is that she thinks it’s like the weather cycles that I see happening — like recurrence of what happened in the Sixties which I witnessed.

What she doesn’t grasp is that the global warming (climate change) that I see demonstrated in pictures and data is FAR more extreme, maybe not survivable by most humans.  And our efforts (though effective to some degree) are focused on greenhouse gases (which is good) instead of preparing for the unthinkable consequence of losing all our fine coastal cities, which will mean major changes inland to accommodate those people.  Also, changes in the great gyres of current that warm some countries.  It might happen within decades, not centuries.  This political crisis we’re struggling with is very parallel.  

Over the last half century I’ve seen the institutions that I valued and tried to participate in constructively go straight to near-evil, all the time dressed up and smiling.  The UU ministers used to joke (over their laypeople’s heads) about people who would not admit evil existed.  It’s not a blind “spot”, it’s a whole denial of an aspect of every human culture.  Trump has been acting like Putin through his whole life, but no one nailed him for it.  We have seen the Russian enemy and “he” is us, demanding control and respect by force.

I’m glued to Rachel Maddow, but if the profiteering of her thoughts keep escalating, I will have to decide whether to pay or not.  What puzzles me is that in the comments — when I don’t block them — how many people, usually female, sneer at her and hope something bad will happen to her.  Evidently our reaction, partly competitive, is being so terrified by the news that we try to kill the messenger who says the cops are coming.  If the goal of Russia was to take America down a few pegs, the same is true of these curdled watchers.  In fact, that seems to be the driving goal of, well, one-third of Americans.  “I demand respect!  You think you’re so good!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3CFwkoqxIs

This vid discusses whether Trump has Alzheimers.  I’ve been convinced of the diagnosis from the beginning.  I’ve worked in neurology wards that included people with Alzheimers.  It’s a distinctive affliction — not like florid psychosis.  If Trump admitted it, he might plead innocent due to insanity, but except at the beginning, the capacity for self-reflection is gone.  (Assuming Trump ever had any accurate idea of himself, which is appears he never did.)  But what about his staff and family?  So self-involved that they didn’t notice?  Or just tending the goose to get the golden eggs as long as they could?

I can understand Putin deciding Trump was an idiot who could be managed.  The intel people are saying that Putin himself was amazed at how easy it was, and yet how impossible it was to predict what would happen next.  I can also understand that Trump’s daughter wants to be there in case of something wild happening.  She is Ivanka’s daughter and Ivanka is no fool.  Those women KNOW that Trump is losing his mind and they must be preparing for it.  But I cannot understand why one-third of American citizens would vote for an obviously crazy man and still defend him as he is gradually revealed as also a criminal man.

And yet the greatest threat is the cloud of consequences to our lives as we take advantage of this situation (just as we did with 9/11) to become more defensive, rigid and regulation ensnared.  Trump’s fancy flourishes of signing (on an empty desk) have given permission for a lot of people to be hurt, for programs to be destroyed, for invasions of our lives to increase.  Already.

I was impressed by the expert testifying to the senate committee (I’ve got to learn all these names) who said that the identification and access cards swinging from lanyards on the necks of half the people in the room did NOT have a true computer chip on them — only a picture of a chip, ineffective.  A couple of senators hurried to shut him up.  Others were scribbling quickly, probably notes to get real chips ASAP.  We settle for the appearance of security — not real security, which is constant human insight and action.  “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

This site helps you to guard your info at borders.  How long before a traffic stop will mean your handheld is plugged into the main computer for download?  When you cross into Canada now, they run your id through their computer to see if you have a record.  Where do you think TruthFinder got their program?  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/31/us-border-phone-computer-searches-how-to-protect?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=219834&subid=10790770&CMP=GT_US_collection

IS TRUMP A NUT CASE?

TRUMP, undisguised.

Dealing with Trump is at least giving us a lot to work with while considering mental health, a subject desperately in need of review for a number of reasons:  the rising tide of Alzheimer’s, recreational use of deranging drugs, interference of cultural concepts with more formal scientific concepts, competing claims about cures, and the enormous new knowledge about neurology.  Then there is the persisting phenomenon of people who protect those who think they are chickens because the protectors need the eggs.  This is sometimes called enabling, or co-dependence.

Lately the new term has been “reverse narcissism” which is feeding the narcissist a steady stream of praise and reassurance.  Characteristically, the narcissist is the one with the power, prestige, and charisma, and then the “tender” tries to appear humble or even secret, traditionally “the power behind the throne.”  In our culture they are gender-role assigned, women meant to be the co-dependent because in the past only men could earn a living — a gender assignment going back to hunting mastodons — or provide protection likewise prehistoric.  In modern times we sometimes see “folie å deux” where symbiotic, interdependent relationships share a delusion that is hard to assign to one or the other.  Which is the primary narcissist between the Duke and Duchess of Windsor?

I’ll come back to this.  First it has become clear that Trump has Alzheimers at a fairly advanced stage.  The average length of time from first diagnosis to death by brain dysfunction is about eight years.  One of the most obvious signs is disconnection and fabulizing to cover up failure to comprehend or remember.  Watching vids of Trump, even edited, shows these signs.  If you are interested in this aspect, use Google, but probably if you are interested it’s because you know someone with it or worry about yourself.  Both scientific and narrative material abounds.  Alzheimers is the 8th most prevalent cause of death in the US.

Second, what Alzheimer’s does by its destruction of the ability to reflect is remove what’s called “executive function.”  Wikipedia is handy.  “Executive functions (collectively referred to as executive function and cognitive control) are a set of cognitive processes – including attentional control, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, as well as reasoning, problem solving, and planning – that are necessary for the cognitive control.”  In short, the stuff the Executive Branch of the US government (the President) is supposed to do.  By now it’s clear that Trump is simply unable to do these things.  It’s not a matter of temperament or strategy:  he can NOT be presidential, he can NOT perform presidential duties.  He is being stage-managed into an illusion.

In addition, his baseline personality is released from restraint by the Alzheimers.  Persons with benign and friendly personalities remain that way.  This is where the narcissism diagnosis comes in.  Narcissism is a personality syndrome badly named, since it is NOT about being in love with oneself because one is beautiful.  It is rather being totally absorbed in oneself but needing constant reassurance from outside oneself, completely unaware of the reality of others.  The result is lashing out, vindictive revenge, rewards and punishments meant to control, and other refusals to face reality.  This is not cruelty, enjoying the pain of others, but rather amorality, inability to realize that others can be in pain and mocking them when they are.  (Sorry, Sen. Schumer.  If you can’t cry for the debasement of America at this point, what CAN a person cry for?)

So, psychotic, amoral, sociopathic — who approves?  Bannon.  Does he have Alzheimer’s?  No sign that he does except that he’s a slob.  He declares himself to be Leninist, a revolutionary who wants to smash government, which is conceived as like the dictatorship of the Russian Tsar.  Lenin (which is an alias) was from a gifted, privileged, educated family that became revolutionary because of resisting Tsarist control.  This has to do with the struggle of an emerging middle class or proletariat.  I don’t know what Bannon’s personal story is.  In this relationship with Trump he stands somewhere between co-dependent and manipulator.  There’s enough evidence to describe him as a sociopath (one who doesn’t care for society) but also a psychopath (one who injures himself or others without regard for the consequences because of delusion).

We have assigned roles to deal with such people: psychiatrists, who are medical doctors authorized to prescribe meds, and psychologists, who use the research in the field of psychology.  There are also psychoanalysts, who try to understand a person’s thinking in order to find mistaken ideas, unhelpful beliefs, and the like.  (They might be either psychiatrists or psychologists.  The first would treat Alzheimer’s patients.  The second might more likely support and comfort the families of the patients.)  Over the years these functions have become rather gender-assigned in the same way that doctors and nurses are.  MD psychiatrists tend to be men and clinical psychologists are often women.

A curious criteria for psychosis that I ran across was that the client must be in distress himself.  Trump doesn’t seem to be suffering overtly, though many feel he is insecure and grasping at straws.

Because there was an attempt to impeach or otherwise remove Goldwater from the presidential race an ethical rule was devised.  (From ever-useful Wikipedia.) “The Goldwater rule is the informal name given to of Section 7.3 in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) code of ethics^[1] which states it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not examined in person and obtained consent from to discuss their mental health in public statements.^[2] It is named after presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.^[3]

“The issue arose in 1964 when Fact published the article "The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater."^[3][4] The magazine polled psychiatrists about American Senator Barry Goldwater and whether he was fit to be president.^[5][6] In Goldwater v. Ginzburg Goldwater filed a libel suit in response to the article, and he won $75,000 in damages.”

This is what is putting the brakes on the 25th Amendment, which was also a 1964 response to a problem, specifically the death, resignation, impeachment, or otherwise removal of a president.  In a society of laws, it’s ambiguous but useful.  In a sub-society of lawyers (the US Congress) it is a recipe for paralysis.  I don’t know what $75,000 would be in equivalent 2017 dollars.

When one googles these issues, it gradually becomes clear that the medical doctors are more willing to say that Trump is demented and unable to perform his duties.  Partly they are helped by video evidence which demonstrates his behavior.  Partly they are helped by our consciousness of genetics, and the fact that his father had Alzheimers.  But they have to consider their code, though many doctors these days brush codes aside; for instance, when they help torture.

But the clinical psychologists, who tend to be women whose practices are consoling, supporting, and guiding people in distress, trying to understand how they see the world, seem to want to believe that Trump is “crazy like a fox,” merely pretending to be Mortimer Snerd in order to cover his real motives and abilities.  Of course, if one is conscious of his close relationship with Bannon, this is not reassuring because those motives might not be benign.  Bannon has said he is out to destroy the standing order (he seems to ee the small percentage of rich folks controlling the world at the expense of the middle class as a modern version of the Tsar) and it appears that Trump is his instrument, lacking both conscience and awareness.

One suspects that the American subconscious so involved in “Game of Thrones” is particularly susceptible to all this melodrama, especially if they think it is aimed out outsiders.  It may be approaching spring, but winter is coming in the minds of many.

DELUSIONS

Our current politics stimulates my paranoia in ways that would be very helpful to a “House of Cards” type of writer’s task.  

One fantasy is that the act of nominating every wealthy fox to be in charge of his favorite henhouse is deliberate, driving the subtle international corporations — who have been covertly running the henhouses or at least the hen-feed monopolies — out into the open where we can see them and blast them.  Only the truly clever, maybe the wolves, understand that to be known and in charge is to be vulnerable.  Accountable.  Trump certainly hasn’t figured that out.  Probably Putin has.  Trump has not figured out that Putin is only friendly if it’s useful.

Perhaps the point of letting things get this far — I mean, what were the Repubs thinking? — is to drive Trump out onto thin ice where the pressure will force him into a breakdown.  He seems to think that if he becomes president, he will be immune, but in fact the consequences become much bigger because the offences of things like sedition are much more serious, even capital crimes.  He seems to think that forcing his young son to be present and compliant will make people think the boy is not a “retard” as Trump calls him in unguarded moments, but now we’ve all had a chance to see this suffering kid and draw our own conclusions.  What I’m saying is that pretences are more dangerous than reality.

It’s clear that the Republican party will be the object of ridicule for a long time.  It’s also clear that the Dems have become the party of Ouroboros, chasing their own tails like puppies.  Easily distracted, each with a personal toy.  If the third party was “none-of-the-above” they have successfully elected their candidate, evidently have become a majority by turning away.

Trump is a numbers kinda guy — he’s still under the illusion that IQ scores mean intelligence and brags that his cabinet has higher IQ scores than any other cabinet.  Clearly he doesn’t know many Mensa members or he would realize that there’s a lot more to being “smart” than a high score on a paper and pencil test.

Hereditary Alzheimers, which began earlier than seventy, Trump’s age.  His father died of Alzheimers.  This article is pretty clear.  http://www.theimproper.com/142684/donald-trumps-family-history-alzheimers-campaign-issue/  Again, pretence is more dangerous than reality, because in the case of disease it prevents whatever treatment there is.  One of the most obvious symptoms of Alzheimers is fabulizing, inventing great castles in the air to distract from the lack of a simple shelter.

If you asked people in this small town before the election, they shook with rage at Obama and “Hilary.”  But their issues were never national or global or even local — they were personal, each different but each deeply felt.  On some abstract level they were terribly threatened by having to give up individual survival ideas for group survival ideas.  

The last citizens to have a strong grip on the group ethos, working together for a common good and all that, were the WWII people.  We are feeling the loss of that generation, but familiar military uniforms still make us feel a little safer.  We try not to see these shriveled old men in their wheelchairs, but no one can avoid smart phones.  At least George Herbert Walker Bush is now honest about Cheney and Rumsfeld.  We will be burying the last of this generation soon.

There’s part of me that compares this moment with the American Revolution — doesn’t Trump remind you of King George III?  The 1700’s were a turning of mass political revolutions into a reality around the Atlantic nations.  Part of me wants it to be like the Great Liberation of the 1970’s, an emergence from industrial lockstep into a world of new possibility for individuals.  But maybe what we’re looking at is a backlash against that moment of release, from the parent generation who saw their kids on a runaway and vowed to get control again.

What kind of name can we give the ocean of awareness that suddenly illustrated on pocket screens what the African, Asian, and Islamic worlds were doing, fighting their suffering with war that only increased the suffering — besides destroying the great world treasures.  Their world is turning to rubble.  If you ask Trump, so is ours.

In this real-life chess game, some men cannot be knocked off the board.  Sure, they left the bureaucracy peacefully, but they did not leave the world stage.  Obama will live in Washington, DC, only blocks from Ivanka who shepherds her father through his memory gaps and delusional tweets.  Gore lives in SF and Nashville, but he has not left the media stage.  In fact, this electoral college befuddlement links him forever to Trump.

If Trump thinks he is safe in the hands of the Republicans, he doesn’t understand the shattered box of rocks that is the organization.  Not surprising since he never really cared about the party, only his own aggrandizement, so — returning to my point — who REALLY made it possible for Trump to be a candidate at all and what benefit did they get from it.  The most obvious is that he can be steered every which way without ever figuring out what’s going on.  And he can easily be snuffed.

Over the years, mostly after 1961 and esp after 1982, I kept running into a specific type of “manager”.  First in school systems, then in the institutional art world like museums, then in the national humane organizations, again in small UU congregations, and finally in city government.  The type seemed to be created by and dwell in small bureaucracies, the people who had to make policies turn into actual deeds.  People higher up would tell them to “make it so” but not explain how that would work, nor give them tools and budgets to be effective.  They were the foremen, the head nurses, the sergeants of the system.

At the same time the elite insisted on at least the appearance of compassion, efficiency, and nothing that might cause them to be sued.  More and more daily life became enmeshed in rules, oversight, and technicalities — triggering resentment.  I remember guest preaching in a small old-fashioned church where a big computer technician from another group stood toe-to-toe and beak-to-beak with me to shout how much he despised ministers.  I remember keeping bear spray in my desk at the City of Portland because contractors went ballistic.  I remember the boss I had in another department of the city who made so much trouble with her rules (“I forbid you to ever make mistakes.”) that one of the commissioners looked into the possibility of forcing her to take Valium.  I remember the man at the Valier Town Council meeting who said he refused to recognize any state or federal law and didn’t have to.

I remember the principal who had been an army supply sergeant.  He said he wanted me to force the kids to learn.  I said, “You’re advocating rape while I’m trying to seduce them into learning.”  He said,  “Rape is right.  I want you to rape them.”  

In other words, “Grab them by the pussy.”

Fat chance.  This was a reservation school.  They knew a lot about being grabbed and simply disappeared.

“House of Cards” was too subtle and cerebral for most people.  “Game of Thrones” is more appealing.  Watch us sow the whirlwind.  Europe should remember this — the “Thirty Years’ War,” the “War of the Roses.”  All the various clearances because land is wealth.  Turf wars fueled by rules.

That was then.  The water is rising.  Washington DC was built in a swamp, and not a metaphorical one.  Architects should be drawing up plans for a new White House on much higher ground.