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Below are the 3 most recent journal entries recorded in
ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES' InsaneJournal:
| Monday, October 7th, 2019 | |
| 3:22 pm | In My Great And Unmatched Wisdom... The words from Our Supreme Leader's tweet today*, as a response to those who criticize him for arranging a genocide of the Kurds by the Turks via having the US troops desert their long-term partners in the fight against ISIS: As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (Ive done before!), he wrote. Bolds are mine. Cue eerie music. Then re-check the diagnostic criteria for a narcissistic personality disorder. Trump hasn't destroyed Turkey's economy before, not even when "economy" is capitalized. And his reasons for removing the remaining US troops from Syria right now are such clear evidence of his utter inability to understand any longer-term chains of cause-and-effect in world politics**: I held off this fight for almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home, Mr. Trump wrote. WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN. Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out. Besides, While the U.S. move is a gift to Erdogan's government, it will be seen as a stark betrayal by the Kurds who have fought alongside U.S. forces for years to defeat ISIS. The Kurds, former U.S. officials and even some senior Republican lawmakers warned Monday that the U.S. pullout from the region could give ISIS room to rebuild, and send a message that the U.S. is willing to abandon close allies when the political winds change.Giving ISIS room to rebuild would affect the US and its citizens in the longer-run. So would letting dictators more and more space on the international playing field***. And the flow of refugees would continue from war-torn regions, affecting countries geographically quite far from them and causing instability inside their societies. Sigh. Why am I even bothering to write about the actions of someone who is not motivated by the kinds of general issues others would find important? Perhaps those who voted for him, fully knowing what he is like, have similar impossible-to-fathom motivations, like this:  -------- * At first everyone thought that particular tweet was a parody. But it's from Trump's feed. Then other speculations arose: Maybe the tweet is by an underling who is so frightened by Trump's current mental state and the dangers it causes that she or he is inserting bits which in a sane world would mean that physicians would be sent to the White House to gauge the mental health of the president. I have no inside knowledge about that tweet, even given my great and unmatched wisdom, but it's not impossible that the veil has been torn off and that we can now see how a narcissist really thinks. Also, it could be an underling. Or a hack, but that is less likely, given that everything else sounds like your usual vituperative Trump. (As an utter aside, how do I get dried paint out of my hair without cutting it? I decided to paint the insides of a tall closet by standing inside it, in the darkness, and then I seem to have decided to lean my tired head against the closet wall. The wide streak of blue is not unbecoming, but I probably should remove it. ** Trump is incapable of being bothered by the deaths and suffering his decision will cause to non-Americans. That's because he is incapable of feeling generalized empathy. *** Which reminds me: Happy birthday, Vladimir Putin! Yes, his birthday is today which may, of course, be a pure coincidence. |
| Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019 | |
| 4:55 pm | The New Coalition of the Willing: Against Reproductive Rights The United States has created another "coalition of the willing," though this time it's not about occupying Iraq but about occupying (or keeping the occupying forces in) the bodies of women and girls. This coalition-building took place more than a week ago at the United Nations General Assembly in New York where the US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spoke against reproductive rights on behalf of the US and eighteen other countries: "We do not support references to ambiguous terms and expressions such as 'sexual and reproductive health and rights' in U.N. documents, because they can undermine the critical role of the family and promote practices like abortion in circumstances that do not enjoy international consensus and which can be misinterpreted by U.N. agencies," Azar said. The bolds are mine. The central point of Azar's speech is that the nineteen countries in this new coalition of the willing do not believe in reproductive rights or even sex education. They believe in "the family" as the alternative solution, I guess. "Family" is one of those words like "freedom" or "fairness" which can mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean (1). In this context it clearly means the traditional patriarchal family in which the father/husband rules and makes most of the final decisions. Thus, Azar advocates that the right to make decisions about women's and girls' bodies should belong to others inside their families. Nine of the nineteen countries in the coalition are predominantly Muslim countries ( Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Mali), and five others are predominantly Roman Catholic countries (Poland, Brazil, Guatemala, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo). Neither Islam nor Roman Catholicism is especially famous for its egalitarian views about women's roles and rights (2). The coalition also includes three countries which rose from the ashes of the era of the Soviet Union like rather sooty phoenixes: Russia, Hungary and Belarus. (3) Now what do those three share? I think it's dictatorship (4). Belarus is an old dictatorship, Putin runs Russia pretty much like a dictator, and Orban tries to be the dictator of Hungary. The message of this post is that countries which are against reproductive rights tend to be hierarchical ones, and that those hierarchies tend toward patriarchy. That's the company the US today keeps. -------- (1) And "family" is not a living, breathing human being. It's a social institution with many good uses. But when we give the "family" rights and a role to play, we are not spelling out who the decision-makers inside the family might be. Take a young married couple, a man and a woman with no children yet. Should she want an abortion, Azar's family ideology suggests that he should have the power to stop her from having one. (2) All three Abrahamic religions are far too easily used as a justification for the subjugation of women, especially when the holy books are read literally, what with them being created to reflect the social norms which prevailed some thousands of years ago. A fundamentalist reading of any of those religions is bad news for women, and terrible news if that fundamentalist reading is state-sanctioned. (3) Poland could belong in that grouping, too, though mostly I see the roots of Poland's dislike of liberated women in its Catholicism. (4) Do you notice how complicated things get here? Brazil might better fit this group, too, given its new autocratic right-wing leader. And the good ole USA! Trump wants to be a dictator, he does. On the other hand, this coalition would have been created by any Republican administrator. |
| 4:55 pm | In The Year Of the Whistle-Blower. Or How The Game Is Played. 1. I've been glued to my seat in this imaginary movie theater/cinema, clutching my bag of imaginary popcorn, mesmerized by the Story Of The Whistle-Blower which is the title of the film playing on the world screen. It's convenient to treat the whole story as a fictional tale, one written, produced and directed by Donald Trump. Then we don't have to face reality, which, however, will face us: The still-most-powerful country on this planet is run by a narcissist who sees nothing wrong in asking Ukraine to get him information on Biden's son that might help him in the 2020 elections (should Biden be his opponent then), and to do that asking by at least implicitly holding back the military aid the US (i.e., we, the people) has promised Ukraine in case that help isn't forthcoming*. A narcissist such as Trump sees nothing wrong in any of that. To him the interests of the country and his own interests are identical**, and that merging gives him the permission to openly (and legally!) pursue his own interests in all aspects of the job. It's not the case that Trump engages in all sorts of impeachable offenses fully aware of what might be wrong, or even criminal, in his acts. This is because inside his own head he cannot commit a wrong. It's simply not possible. Given that, all criticisms of him are fake news created by crooked people who are out to get him, as in "presidential harassment" or in "the single greatest witch-hunt in American history". Trump's many weirdly petulant tweets can also be interpreted from the narcissism angle. For instance, on September 24 he tweeted: Such an important day at the United Nations, so much work and so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage. So bad for our Country!But those tweets are not really weird, coming from a narcissist. Rather, they are quite logical. That tweet, for instance, expresses the narcissistic injury Trump felt because he didn't get the public accolades for his UN speech he felt he deserved. That is what hurt him, enough to go on Twitter about it. You may by now be tired about all the posts I have written concerning Trump's narcissism. I believe understanding it is crucial for anyone who wants to, say, predict what Trump might do next. Still, I will pipe down on that topic in the future. But I will never stop pointing out that millions of American voters decided that a narcissist running the country would be a great idea. 2. The august New York Times has chosen to treat the identity of the whistle-blower as a crossword puzzle. They give us the clues, we can try to figure out who that person is. Such fun, and a great scoop for the Times, right? I find that a serious breach of journalistic ethics. It might take me a few hours to narrow down the list of possible subjects to a few names, but it won't take anywhere near that long for those inside the White House to nail the correct person. 3. And what about the reactions from the Republicans in the Congress? I was talking to a friend about the tribalism in American politics and made my usual comparison to the tribalism of the fans of various sports teams. The fans of Red Sox, say, hate the NY Yankees and want to see them suffer, and vice versa. But I got confused and compared US politics to a game between the Red Sox (baseball) and the Patriots (American football)! Which turned out to be one of those light bulb moments, because the two parties, indeed, play different political games, in my sincere opinion. The current crop of Congressional Republicans play a game of win-at-any-cost and a game of ignore-the-rules-and-shoot-the-umpire, while many Congressional Democrats seem to be playing the game of can-I-find-the-stadium. -------- * "A nice little country you have there. It would be too bad if something happened to it." ** He is not the first ruler to think so, of course. Apres moi, le deluge. |