Politics – Page 2

On Trump: The Tasaroff Doctrine Trumps the Goldwater Rule

For those who are concerned about the appropriateness of using psychiatric diagnostic tools to assess the mental fitness and dangerousness of President Trump the following:

It apparently is totally legitimate, even legally required, for mental health professionals to warn targeted people and society at large for the dangers a troubled person or group of persons might exhibit in their words, actions and plans. Such a warning is not a psychiatric diagnosis and therefore does not break the APA’s Goldwater Rule [1] against professionals making a distant diagnosis of a public figure. A very important footnote to the introduction of the recently published anthology “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” [2] reads as follows:

“Assessing dangerousness requires a different standard from diagnosing so as to formulate a course of treatment. Dangerousness is about the situation, not the individual; it is more about the effects and the degree of impairment than on the specific cause of illness and it does not require a full examination but takes into account whatever information is available. Also, it requires that the qualified professional err on the side of safety, and it may entail breaking other, ordinarily binding rules to favor urgent action.”[3]

The legal duty to warn others was initially encoded in an influential court case and is known as the Tarasoff Doctrine.[4] The plaintiffs in the case were the parents of a murdered female student who found out that the murderer, who was a fellow student and her ex-boyfriend, had confessed to his therapist that he intended to kill her. The parents sued the university for having failed to warn her of the possible danger she might have been in. “The court ruled that when a therapist determines, or should have determined, that a patient presents a serious danger of violence to another, the therapist has a “duty to protect” that other person.”[5]

Though some mental health professionals have deliberately decided to break the Goldwater Rule and make very precise statements about Trump’s mental health, many others abide by the rule but still feel compelled by the Tasaroff Doctrine to sound the alarm loud and clearly and warn the world that Trump is truly a danger to minorities, domestic peace and and is too close to the nuclear button, which he might push when cornered by his critics, political opponents or the legal system.

For the sake of the civilizational process and project and for the sake of the good fight against authoritarian conservatism bordering on an American variation of fascism, mental health professionals and other academics will have to share their insights with the public, and not merely to inform them but more importantly to increase the pressure on the political system to take care of this problem by either impeachment, invoking Article 25 or outright institutionalization. Their insights might also lead to diminishing the amount of people strangely mesmerized by the self-aggrandizing serial liar now occupying the White House.

Originally posted on Facebook, October 27, 2017.

[1]. A. The Goldwater Rule. B. “On Trump: Diagnosing 301.81 and the Goldwater Rule“. Alpheus. 21 Feb 2017.

[2]. Lee, Bandy, M.D. (Ed.). 2017. “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President“. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

[3]. Lee, Bandy. 2017. “Introduction” to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”, p. 14.

[4]. Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California.

[5]. Simone, Simone & Fulero, Solomon M., PhD, JD. 2005. “Tarasoff and the Duty to Protect”. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, Vol. 11 / Issues 1-2.

On Trump: Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post” by Ron Rosenbaum

I consider Ron Rosenbaum as one of America’s best and most entertaining journalistic writers. For me memorable articles include the ones on Watergate, the CIA mole-hunt and a few articles about Yale’s semi-secret senior society Skull and Bones.[1]

He also wrote a fascinating study, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil, about the many serious but diverse theories trying to get a grip on this most disturbing dictator.[2] Because of this expertise he was apparently asked many times to weigh in on the Trump-Hitler comparison debate, which he resisted till just after the inauguration.

Now Trump and his minions are in the driver’s seat, attempting to pose as respectable participants in American politics, when their views come out of a playbook written in German. Now is the time for a much closer inspection of the tactics and strategy that brought off this spectacular distortion of American values.[3]

Besides being vintage Rosenbaum, the article will be of interest for journalists as it focuses on the fate of a German opposition newspaper which was forced to stop its presses in early 1933 just after Hitler became chancellor.

And I remembered the Munich Post, defending Weimar Germany. I reflected on how fragile democratic institutions could be in the face of organized hatred. Hitler had been tricky about his plans until he got the position and the power to enact them. Trump had been tricky, neither accepting nor rejecting the endorsement of KKK leader David Duke. David Duke! The KKK! In this century! He claimed he didn’t know who he was. He couldn’t be disqualified because of someone he didn’t know. That’s where we all went wrong, thinking he was stupid and outrageous, not canny and savvy and able to play the media like Paganini. The election demonstrated the weakness of a weak democracy, where basic liberties could be abolished by demagoguery and voter suppression.

Originally posted on Facebook, February 20, 2107.

[1]. Articles collected in: Rosenbaum, Ron. Travels With Dr. Death: And other Unusual Investigations (New York: Penguin, 1991) and The Secret Parts of Fortune: Three Decades of Intensive Investigations and Edgy Enthusiasms (New York: Random House, 2000).

[2]. Rosenbaum, Ron. Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil. (New York: Random House, 1998).

[3]. Rosenbaum, Ron. “Against Normalization: The Lesson of the ‘Munich Post’ “. Los Angeles Review of Books. Feb 2017.

On Trump: “Trump’s New World Order”

It is interesting to see how delusional and divided the far right is in the US.

First of all I consider the far right that faction of the conservative movement which is authoritarian. This is the faction composed of people who have become intolerant of certain social and cultural differences and tend to exaggerate dangers, both real and imagined. Many found in Donald Trump their strong man to restore law and order, kick out the illegals, protect the homeland and get the jobs back from parasitic foreign countries.[1]

These authoritarian conservatives are not the same as the moderate status quo conservatives who have been quite outspoken against Trump during the primaries, then became somewhat supportive or silent during the election, and now some of whom have regained their oppositional voice like Senator McCain. The other conservative faction is the libertarian one. Overall they were opposed to Trump as he did not seem to understand the US Constitution nor the libertarian concept of freedom. Libertarian Senator Rand Paul recently made an inside quip about the Trump cabinet: “Haven’t seen this many billionaires since I staked out Bilderbergs with Alex Jones”.[2] Both factions lost adherents to the authoritarian Trump as conservatives succumbed to his mendacious fear-mongering and empty boasts to set things straight again.

Besides moderate and libertarian conservative opposition to Trump it looks like that within the far right itself there are some recent voices expressing second thoughts about him. For example Aaron and Melissa Dykes, who used to work for the arch-conspiricist and ardent Trump supporter Alex Jones, created a video attacking Trump from the farther right as a tool of hidden forces which, through Trump’s cabinet picks, are promoting a ‘New World Order’, which “started under Bush, was continued by Obama, and now it has been exponentially ramped up by Trump”, especially by his national security team. Trump might not be totally aware of that and for support the Dykes repeat the now well-known quote by Steve Bannon that Trump is a “blunt instrument for us. I don’t know whether he really gets it or not.”[3]

The whole video is a sample of sloppy conspiricist thinking at its best. They pick up facts and perspectives which might by themselves be worthy of deeper investigation (even the conclusion has merit, see below), but then fit them in a far-fetched narrative in which, for example, Hillary Clinton played the willing role of a “villain”, making intentionally stupid mistakes like her “deplorables” comment to make Trump look more heroic in this “stage play that was our last election”.

The interesting aspect for me here is that the Dykes do come to a conclusion in their video which has certain merits and that is that it has some congruence with more thoughtful criticisms of both Trump and Clinton coming from the progressive and socialist left. All of them agree that Bush, Romney, Obama, Clinton and Trump are all part of an establishment which is shaped and driven by deeper political and economic forces which they hardly challenge or, if challenged, only do so verbally. Many politicians, social scientists, journalists and whistleblowers have seen different smaller and bigger parts of this complex and have given it different names like the military-industrial complex, the power elite, the oligarchy, the Deep State, etc. Nobody really knows how this complex functions and perpetuates itself, but I think it is far more fractious, diverse and improvisational than most conspiricists believe, especially the grand conspiricists who think all politics and history is one big theater enacting an already determined script like the Dykes seem to believe in.

Meanwhile one can move even further to the right and enter the anti-Semitic corner from which Alex Jones and the Dykes are criticized for covering up the Jewish component of the international power elite and therefore running “Kosher Approved Fake ‘Truth’ Sites” peddling in fantasies, phony narratives and implausible conspiracies.[4]

A more personal reason to bring this video into focus has to do with the criticism I received from long-time friends and acquaintances for my opposition to Trump as they assumed that I, as a (former) conspiracy theorist of very limited reputation, should have seen the great and unprecedented opportunity of Trump taking on ‘The Conspiracy’ and maybe delivering it a knock out blow. Some might not have known that I had shifted from a spiritualist libertarianism to an evolutionist progressivism, which transformed conspiricism into a more scientific critique of power relations. Nevertheless, even if I had abided with conspiricism, I would have seen early on that Trump was not a bona fide conspiracy theorist and that he was quite ignorant, except for his own real estate lobbying sphere, about the structure, composition and practices of exploitation and domination of the current US power elite. Trying to pass off Richard Haass, the president of the most internationalist and influential corporate elite think thank The Council on Foreign Relations–reviled by both the far left and far right–, as your favorite foreign policy advisor is an almost one-strike-out faux pas only a political novice could make. And by letting Bilderberg Steering Committee member and CIA-connected Peter Thiel on your transition team and then hire Skull & Bones (1985) member and foreclosure king Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary you have already lost the game. Right wing conspiricist Glenn Beck–rooted in the works of whistleblower historian Carroll Quigley, former FBI agent W. Cleon Skousen and nephew Joel Skousen–saw also quickly Trump’s danger and called him a “narcissistic psychopath”, though he later turned around and supported Trump.

In short, I do share with conspiricists concerns about power and secrecy, but will investigate those phenomena guided by scientific principles rather than revelation, ideology, axiomatic conspiricism or wishful thinking.

As far as the video is concerned, I hope it will wake up conspiricist Trump supporters who then might consider to enter a temporary coalition with moderate conservatives and liberals to deal with the present and acute danger Trump poses through impeachment.

Originally posted on Facebook, February 18, 2017.

[1]. Schuller, Govert. “On Trump: Intolerance and Authoritarianism“. Alpheus. 20 Feb 2017. [Warning: Alpheus is an independent, critical website]

[2]. Watson, Steve. “Rand Paul Is Unhappy About Trump’s ‘Bilderberg’ Cabinet“. Infowars. 23 Dec 2016. [Warning: Infowars is a right wing, conspiricist fake news website]

[3]. Dykes, Aaron and Melissa. “Trump’s New World Order“. Truthstream Media. 5 Feb 2017. [Warning: Truthstream Media is a right wing, conspiricist website]

[4]. Rogers, Lee. “An Expose on Other Alex Jones-Style Kosher Approved Fake “Truth” Sites“. The Daily Slave. 28 Oct 2014. Reposted on The Daily Stormer. [Warning: The Daily Slave and The Daily Stormer are right wing, conspiricist websites]

On Trump: US Lying Its Way to War (again)?

The recent January 29, 2017 missile test by Iran is not in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions as many members of congress and certain media claim. The 2015 Iran nuclear agreement has no binding provisions about missile tests. Before the day of implementation of the agreement on January 2016 the Iranians were bound by UN Resolution 1929 (2010) which did forbid the development of missiles and the conducting of tests. But this resolution was rescinded in the 2015 nuclear deal as embodied in UN Resolution 2231 (2015) and a quite different phrasing now covers Iranian missile tests.

Whether congressmen and the White House know this and deliberately lie is an important question as their allegations and reaction with sanctions is a definite step towards conflict and the world will have to be extremely vigilant that the US is not creating conditions again to go to war on false premises.

There are democratic senators siding now with the White House and they will have to be challenged. On February 2 a bi-partisan group of twenty-two senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee signed a letter to the White House making the claim that,

If it is confirmed that Iran tested a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon, Iran will have again violated both the letter and spirit of its obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015) not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.[1]

The Democratic Senators signing the letter were Ben Cardin (Md.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Chris Coons (Del.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Robert Menendez (N.J.), Bob Casey (Penn.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), and Ron Wyden (Ore.).

That the senators are in error can be established by contrasting the paragraphs in the two relevant UN resolutions covering Iranian missile tests.

UN Resolution 1929 (2010), article 9 (p. 5), spells it out as follows:

[The Security Council] Decides that Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology, and that States shall take all necessary measures to prevent the transfer of technology or technical assistance to Iran related to such activities.[2]

UN Resolution 2231 (2015) in Annex B (p. 99):

Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology, until the date eight years after the JCPOA Adoption Day or until the date on which the IAEA submits a report confirming the Broader Conclusion, whichever is earlier.[3]

Nuclear non-proliferation expert Daniel Joyner recently pointed out that the legally binding, prohibitive language of Resolution 1929–“Iran shall not undertake”– had changed to the “invitational yet legally nonbinding phrase” of Resolution 2231–“Iran is called upon”.[4]

His conclusion of the analysis of 2231 is that,

Iran’s ballistic missile tests cannot accurately be said to violate UN Security Council resolutions. The most that could be said about them is that they are not in harmony with the UN Security Council’s legally nonbinding exhortation in Resolution 2231.

Fortunately many media and experts are on board with this analysis and see the Trump administration as dealing in dangerous “threat inflation” and “an eagerness to stir up tensions with Iran over relatively innocuous issues”.[7] Members of congress will have to be challenged on these points and further research into the ideological, political and commercial forces resulting in these incorrect and dangerous positions will have to be engaged in.

According to Joseph Kishore in a WSWS article, the bi-partisan playbook, if you will, by which the Iranian problem is perceived in Washington is formulated by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.[6] Iran is an immanent strategic threat to the economic world order as it holds a unique geostrategic position in the middle east directly adjacent to very important shipping lanes and is developing missile capacities which could hit Israel, Egypt and other US allies.[5]

But assessing Iran as a military threat and dissatisfaction with the nuclear deal are not sufficient reasons to engage in making false allegations about the legality of its missile tests and some verbal sable rattling by the White House. As being defensive and diplomatic might be the wiser attitude here, the US becoming aggressive and mendacious will compel people to question underlying motivations, which might well be for the west to solidify its hegemonic position in the middle east for the sake of global corporate interests, i.e. imperialism.

Or, as Kishore stated, “The initial actions of the Trump administration make clear that the US is preparing a major escalation of military aggression in Central Asia and the Middle East. Fifteen years of the “war on terror” under Bush and Obama—including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the US-backed civil war in Syria, and the Saudi bombardment of Yemen—have killed over one million people. American imperialism, however, has failed to secure its aim of establishing unrivaled domination over the oil-rich region. Now, under Trump, a new and even bloodier chapter is opening”.[6]

Is the US driven by classic imperialist motives and the aim is economic advantage, or is it driven by opposed civilizational dynamics aiming at subjugation as presidential strategic advisor Steve Bannon seems to think? Or is the latter merely a rationalization for the former?

Originally posted on Facebook, February 5, 2017.

[1]. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Cardin, Corker Lead 20 Bipartisan Colleagues in Iran Letter to President Trump“. Press Release. 2 Feb 2017.

[2]. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929 (2010).

[3]. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015).

[4]. Joyner, Daniel. “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Launches Do Not Violate UN Security Council Resolutions“. 11 Mar 2016. Arms Control Law. Blog.

[5]. Cordesman, Anthony. “Iran, Mattis, and the Real Threat to U.S. Strategic Interests in the Middle East“. Center for Strategic and International Studies. Commentary. 10 Jan 2017.

[6]. Kishore, Joseph . “Democrats back Trump administration’s new sanctions against Iran“. World Socialist Web Site. 4 Feb 2017.

[7]. Glaser, John. “Trump Administration Begins Threat Inflation on Iran“. The Libertarian Institute. 2 Jan 2017.

Breitbart’s Yiannopoulos’ Sexist Nonsense

Alt-right ideologue and vocal Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos just wrote a gem of a sexist piece for Breitbart asking for a cap of 5-10% for females to enter STEM studies (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). He is concerned that if female participation would be above that level society would be “giving in to ideology and social engineering, rather than looking at what the numbers say and respecting women’s choices.”[1]

The problem with Mr Yiannopoulos is that some of the facts and numbers he presents to back up his proposal are pulled out of thin air. One paragraph crucial to his overall thesis is the following:

“In Norway and Sweden, some of the most progressive, female-friendly places in the world, the number of women studying maths and science collapses to single figures. What this tells us is that, given every opportunity to choose, women stubbornly refuse to study the subjects feminists would like them to.”[1]

When checking this claim I found an article stating that in Norway “only a third of those who study mathematics, natural sciences or technological fields are women.”[2] And at the postgraduate level the following occurs in Sweden: ” … if one compares the percentage of women and the number of men who have left academia five years after the award of a doctoral degree, one sees that in all disciplines except social sciences, contrary to stereotypes, more men are likely to leave academia than women …”[3]

To spell it out: “One third” is at least a whopping 330% more than Yiannopoulos’ “single figures” as far as Swedish females studying math and science is concerned, and staying in academia more than men can hardly be equated with Yiannopoulos’ claim of females “stubbornly refuse to study”. Ergo, Yiannopoulos just makes things up to bolster his sexist policy proposal.

This manner of making a case, which can only be characterized as ‘conclusion-based writing skewered towards sexism’, is very troubling and should be exposed as such. It’s fine for this writer to have opinions, but he has to have some decency to respect the facts, which, as shown in an analysis of a speech he recently gave at the University of Pittsburgh, he does not have.[4] When unsupported premises start to be treated as facts, then arguing becomes almost futile. And that’s exactly the toxic MO of Breitbart and Trump.

The long-term effect of this prejudiced mindset is to further delay the in my opinion necessary adoption in the US of best and most socially just practices from European social democracies. Instead, what the US will be experiencing during the trump administration is a, hopefully temporary, counter-spurt in the overall civilizational process towards impulse control and empathy.

Meanwhile, as of February 2017, because of making controversial statements generally interpreted as favoring pedophilia, Yiannopoulos was disinvited from appearing at a conservative conference, lost a book deal with a prominent publisher and resigned from Breitbart.

[1]. Yiannopoulos, Milo. “Here’s Why There Ought to Be a Cap on Women Studying Science and Maths“. Breitbart. 15 Jun 2015.

[2]. Armundsen, Bard. “Women and men still study completely different university subjects“. ScienceNordic. 26 Aug 2015.

[3]. Kamerlin, Shina. “Where are the female science professors? A personal perspective“. F1000Research 5:1224. 6 Jun 2016.

[4]. Goddard, Audrey. “I fact checked Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech and it was nonsense“. The Tab. 4 Aug 2015.

On Trump: Why We Should not Normalize Trump

In December 2016 I found online a list of 76 proven lies by Trump and read them all. The list is named “Donald Trump’s Bullshitopedia: An Ever Expanding Catalog Of Lies”.[1] The list is a good reminder that Trump is a pathological liar. I am not just saying that to bash Trump, but to make the case that we have to move into larger theoretical frameworks to start understanding both Trump and his followers and what they are doing to this country and the world. So far I have scouted a few contenders, two of which complement each other:

1) Understanding Trump’s behavior within the theory of psychopathology.[2] Trump arguably suffers from what psychologists call ‘the dark triad’ of of narcissism (self-aggrandizing, self-serving), machiavellianism (calculated manipulation) and psychopathy (lack of impulse control and and lack of empathy).[3] Such persons are very hard to handle. Either you evade them as much as possible or suck up to them and play along. Not many people have the skill to stand up to them, stay fair and firm, gain respect and guide them into constructive attitudes and ideas.[4]

2) Understanding Trump within the theoretical framework of ponerology, i.e. the use of evil for political ends.[5] Trump is a psychologically deviant person who has aggressively taken over and pathologized a political machine–the Republican Party–and bamboozled and spellbound a significant part of the American electorate with blatant lies, undeliverable promises and fear mongering. Then he manipulated both the GOP and Americans to get himself into the White House thereby extending the reach and power of a pathocracy which might have started with the Bush II administration.[6] This process of ‘ponerization’ is enabled by more or less normal persons accepting and adjusting to a psychopath instead of standing up to him.[7]

What these two frameworks have in common is the idea that normal people might cave in by either stepping aside or getting spellbound. With these theoretical frameworks in mind the following set of sharp observations from the Bullshitopedia article will give such frameworks flesh and and relevance:

The fact that Trump still manages to attract supporters who are willing to look past his shameless mendacity, and worse, to revere him as a quasi-savior, is a frightening testament to the decline of American democracy. These are people who not only submit blissfully to being lied to, they embrace a philosophy of bigotry, division, fear, and the authoritarian strains of fascism. They have abandoned whatever tendencies they may have had toward freedom, in favor of a despot who reeks of false and unattainable promises of security and prosperity. It is the behavior of cultists who have surrendered to mindless discipleship and have lost the ability to discern fantasy from reality. It’s a learned response that has been ingrained from watching way too much Fox News.[1]

What caught my eye in this quote–and this has been noted before–was the observation that

It is the behavior of cultists who have surrendered to mindless discipleship and have lost the ability to discern fantasy from reality.

This very well accords with the observation in ponerology that when

… a group has succumbed to pathological influence its members soon lose the ability to distinguish normal human behavior from pathological. This atrophy of critical faculties in relation to such individuals becomes an opening to their activities. It can also be used to identify potentially dangerous groups.[7]

That some will try to normalize Trump is understandable as the rise of a pathocrat to the office of president of the USA is for some too horrific to contemplate. It is only normal to want to cover over the fact that a psychologically deviant personality sits in the Oval Room. The only hope in December 2106 was that the US Electoral College would have had the intellectual fortitude and authentic conscience to assess Trump as unfit for the job because of his psychopathology and massive conflicts of interest, and reject him. Unfortunately did this not happen, though impeachment is still possible.

Originally posted on Facebook, December 5, 2016.

[1]. “Donald Trump’s Bullshitopedia: An Ever Expanding Catalog Of Lies“. News Corpse. 29 Nov 2015. According to the compiler this list is based on the file on Donald Trump maintained by PolitiFact. The Huffington Post compiled a list with “The First 100 Lies: The Trump Team’s Flurry Of Falsehoods” enumerating the lies coming from Trump and his spokespersons since his inauguration.

Originally posted on Facebook, February 2017.

[2]. Schuller, G. “On Trump: Diagnosing 301.81 and the Goldwater Rule“. Alpheus. 21 Feb 2017.

[3]. Whitbourne, Susan Krauss, Ph.D. “Shedding Light on Psychology’s Dark Triad: A dirty dozen test to detect narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy“. Psychology Today. 26 Jan 2013.

[4]. Barker, Eric. “How to Deal With a Narcissist: 5 Secrets Backed by Research“. Observer. 28 Jan 2016.

[5]. Ponerology is a psychological research program of psychopathological processes on a social scale in organizations and politics. See: Lobaczewski, Andrew. Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes. Red Pill Press, 2006 [1998]. You can read online a very fine introduction.

[6]. Schuller, G. “On Trump: The Aspiring Pathocrat” Alpheus. 24 Feb 2017.

[7]. “The Genesis of Evil“. Political Ponerology Web Site.

On Trump: Elias, Civilization and Trump

Last summer I read the phenomenal study The Civilizing Process by the eminent sociologist Norbert Elias.[1] some of his findings can be applied to understand the rise of authoritarianism in the West as embodied in the political career of President Trump. This article will present some of the theoretical underpinnings of Elias’ work, then apply them to the US Anno 2016-17, and end with some observations derived from the psychologist Julian Jaynes.

On a theoretical level there are two dualities Elias explicitly tries to overcome.

1) The duality between an alleged independent individual and an independent society standing over and against the individual as if it’s a thing. He makes the case that a) society is nothing more than the pattern of human relations, and that b) humans are, as far as their personality structures are concerned, the product and carriers of these relations.

2) The duality between a-historical psychology and a-psychological history. Elias makes the case that a) personality structures have a history inherently correlated with societal developments, and that b) historical developments are often the product of changing personality structures.

The empirical material to back up his theories are derived from the history of the West from the 12th till the 20th century, where he sees a civilizing process happening in the development of trend-setting upper class exemplars, going from knightly warriors to aristocratic courtiers to bourgeois entrepreneurs to highly educated professionals, who all displayed their own peculiar psychologies in the way their personalities were structured by an inter-connected set of a) subconscious ingrained, b) half-conscious habitual and c) conscious deliberate modes of impulse controls formative of their social behavior, speech acts and feelings of shame and pride, in short, their sense of self.

The arc of development was from relative low impulse control with its attendant violence and insensitivity towards others to increased impulse control, less violence and increased social sensitivity towards people further away in one’s chains of interconnections. At the same time, and reciprocally causal, the structure of society changes from relatively decentralized, conflictuous and arbitrary, to a centralization of political power and taxation, monopolization of violence, pacification of towns and rural areas, and increased interdependence.

The main point of Elias is that the changes in society and changes in personality structures are two sides of the same coin; that the processes of socio-genesis and psycho-genesis are to be conceptualized as one process, which he named the ‘civilizing process’ by which individuals are configured by their social relations from birth on, and subsequently also become the carriers of these configurations which they then pass on. At the same time this process is not just repetitive, but changes slowly over the centuries in spurts and counter-spurts towards increased impulse control, rationality, experientiality and sensitivity.

But the process is not without tensions and conflicts, though their nature also changes in the civilization process going from more inter-personal tensions and their resolution through violence, towards more intra-personal conflict, i.e. tension within one’s own mind-space between natural impulses and internalized control mechanisms. Unfortunately for many people this inner tension might lead to unsatisfactory lives and for some even to break-down, institutionalization, or suicide. At the same time ever larger parts of a population can live a more secure, fulfilling and civilized life.

And then there is the danger of collective regressions or civilizational ‘counter-spurts’ when substantial parts of the population, for whatever reason, deliberately reject both outer and inner impulse-control mechanisms and start railing against elites, regulations, taxes, political correctness, feminism, environmentalism and outsiders. Instead they start to extol nationalism, militarism, authoritarianism, political violence, repressive security measures and censorship. When such a counter-spurt gets politically organized we are dealing with authoritarianism, and here in the US with a soft, Amero-fascist variant in the form of Trumpism. For a deeper understanding of this phenomenon one has to turn to a budding academic research program under the name of political ponerology, or the “science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes”, about which I will report later more.[3]

Regarding ‘sense of self’ I think that most people are acculturated into one kind of ‘sense of self’ or another, one more individualized, the other more collective, but still ‘sense of self’ nevertheless.

What comes into play too is the differentiation between a) philosophical concepts of self; b) social-scientific concepts of self; c) religious concepts of self and d) ordinary ‘popular’ concepts of self which might be more implicit and tacit.

My now preferred concept of self is to bring out this semi-private, imagined, inner mind-space-time construct in which an analog ‘I’ moves around in an imagined duplicate of the world and also projects a metaphor ‘me’ into different hypothetical scenarios and spaces, all the while trying to reconcile its different parts by fitting them into our life-story narrative, and with the whole infused with self-conscious emotions of remembered and expected feelings of shame, pride, duty, repugnance, pleasure and pain.

According to Jaynes this sense of self rose out of the ‘bicameral mind’ some-when between 2,000 and 1,000 BCE in the Middle East and is still spreading through the world and qualitatively changing, which brings me back to Elias who seems to have caught sight of its changes in the West from the Middle Ages into modernity.

Naperville, 16 Oct 2016
Initially posted on Facebook

[1]. Elias, Norbert. 2000 (1939). The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. rev. edn, Oxford: Blackwell.

[2]. Jaynes, Julian 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

[3]. Schuller, Govert. “On Trump: The Aspiring Pathocrat“. Alpheus. 24 Feb 2017.

On Trump: The Splitting of the Libertarian Movement

It looks to me that the libertarian movement, like the GOP and the Tea Party, is falling apart over the Trump phenomenon. One faction sees Trump as someone who is ignorant of, even a danger to, libertarian and constitutional principles and therefore should not be followed, while another faction thinks Trump will restore a coveted free market, repeal trade agreements, and will take on the statist establishment.

Maybe the most important libertarian voice to have turned against Trump is of the grand old man of libertarian politics, Ron Paul, and he doesn’t mince words:

“Trump’s notoriety comes from his aggressive nature and his personal attacks on individuals as well as groups, along with his bold proposals to violate civil liberties. He never abdicates ideological position, but portrays himself as a strong efficient boss for the people. He forcefully promotes an authoritarian type of government. Trump is a bully, not a physical bully, a verbal bully and that is combined with the overblown fears generated by the possibility of violent attacks against us. In reality Trump, in spite of his bombast is a fraud.”[1]

Besides Paul also libertarian luminaries like Jacob Hornberger, founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, and Ludwig von Mises scholar Dr. Richard Ebeling sound the alarm about Trump. In a recorded conversation both men could agree that of the remaining Republican candidates Trump poses the biggest danger to freedom because of his arrogance, authoritarianism, playing to the lowest common denominator, and strongman inclinations.[2]

Former New Mexico governor and leader of the Libertarian Party Gary Johnson is also opposed to Trump. He thinks some of Trump’s positions are “just whacked—just nuts. Holy cow! It’s crazy!”[3] His party’s chairman compared Trump’s positions with theirs and does not see much in common.[4]

Another anti-Trump libertarian worth mentioning is radio talk show host Glenn Beck. He quoted medical professionals who think that Trump is a “pathological narcissistic sociopath” and warned that “Donald Trump or anyone that is a big government progressive with narcissistic tendencies who will preach populism and nationalism in a time of economic and social unrest is a dangerous road to go down.”[5]

Then there is a growing group of pro-Trump libertarians, many of whom have come out since Ron Paul dropped out of the presidential race. For example the editors of LewRockwell.com, Walter Block and Donald Miller, have started Libertarians for Trump based on their assessment that Trump is the “the most congruent with our perspective”.[6] The Tea Party movement seems to back Trump through Sarah Palin’s incoherent endorsement and by other TP founders.[7] And conspiricist-in-chief Alex Jones is also on board based on alleged insider rumors fed to him by former Trump confidante and political strategist Roger Stone and author and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi. Jones now thinks that “Trump is for real”, meaning Trump is aware of the New World Order cabal and will oppose it “above ground” once in office as Jones has done for years “underground”.[8]

And then there are the dissidents in the different organizations. For example, founders of RonPaul.org have officially distanced themselves from Ron Paul and see Trump as “the only rational choice left in the presidential race for those of us who hold liberty dear.”[9] And some prominent Tea Party members have turned against Trump calling him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.[10]

All in all, the Trump phenomenon is not only polarizing the country, but more interestingly, all major conservative movements and parties with the possible effect of outright schisms. The reason why this is happening is in my opinion that libertarian and status quo conservatives with a medium to high authoritarian disposition are increasingly perceiving both real and imaginary threats such that their intolerance levels are increasing and become attracted to an authoritarian, fascist-lite conservative like Trump.[11]

It looks to me that their need for a bullying strongman to take on the political establishment trumps their sense of individualistic liberty and personal responsibility, and that they are ready to “walk away” from most of the thousand and one little and big deals which keeps this country together.

Naperville, 31 Mar 2016.
Originally posted on Facebook.

[1]. Paul, Ron. “Donald Trump: The Establishment Candidate“. Liberty Report. 18 Dec 2015.

[2]. Hornberger, Jacob & Richard Ebeling. “Libertarian Angle: Why People Are Supporting Trump“. The Future of Freedom Foundation. 22 Mar 2016.

[3]. Gillespie, Nick. “Exclusive: Gary Johnson Running For President, Call Trump’s Plans “Just Whacked – Just Nuts!“. Reason Magazine. 6 Jan 2016.

[4]. Libertarian Party. Press release. “Libertarians versus Donald Trump“.

[5]. Beck, Glen. Facebook. 26 Jan 2016.

[6]. Block, Walter. “Libertarians for Trump“. LewRockwell.com. 15 Mar 2016.

[7]. Miller, S.A. “Donald Trump enjoys support of tea party movement that refuses to fully embrace him“. The Washington Times. 22 Nov 2015.

[8]. Jones, Alex. “Breaking: New Trump Scandal, Devastating Info Released“. Info Wars. 18 Mar 2016.

[9]. Tim Martin, Esther Anderson, Jeff Hale. “RonPaul.com Founders Endorse Donald Trump for President“. RonPaul.com. 29 feb 2016.

[10]. “Tea Party leader: Trump a wolf in sheep’s clothing“. The Hill. 4 Mar 2016.

[11]. Schuller, Govert. “On Trump: Intolerance and Authoritarianism“. Alpheus. 20 Feb 2017.

On Trump: Intolerance and Authoritarianism

To make some sense of the chaos in the Republican Party during the primaries and to partially answer the question why conservatives are flocking to Trump to the extent that he won the 2016 US general election, the following:

Political scientist and expert on political authoritarianism Karen Stenner sees three different kinds of conservatism which will be at loggerheads about certain issues and under certain circumstances. The three, with their main representatives now in the US, are: authoritarian conservatism (Trump); status quo conservatism (Romney); and libertarian conservatism (Ron Paul).

Her research focuses on the dynamics which propel people into the authoritarian camp. Her hypothesis can be formalized as follows:

I = A x T.

Intolerance = Authoritarianism x Threat

One’s level of Intolerance is equal to the product of one’s Authoritarian predisposition and one’s experience or perception of real or imagined Threats.

In her own words:

The impact of authoritarianism on intolerance of difference is conditional upon levels of collective (particularly “normative”) threat, such that this relatively stable and enduring predisposition yields more or less intolerant attitudes and behavior depending upon (the experience or perception of) threatening or reassuring conditions.

Her tripartite differentiation of conservatisms together with the idea that intolerance increases with threat perception, might explain the current chaos in the Republican Party. And it’s quite simple.

Because of increased threat perceptions by conservatives, many of the status quo and libertarian conservatives with a higher than average authoritarian disposition are drifting into the authoritarian camp because that faction reflects better their new level of intolerance. Meanwhile those conservatives with a lower authoritarian disposition, especially the libertarians, are fighting back and denounce the leader of the authoritarian camp.

The threats Stenner identifies which trigger intolerance are big divisions in public opinions regarding political matters and political leaders perceived as untrustworthy. Again, in her own words:

Nothing aggravates authoritarians more than feeling that leaders are unworthy of trust and respect, and/or that beliefs are not shared across the community (“normative threat”). And nothing lets down their defenses more than confidence in political leaders and widespread public consensus (“normative reassurance”).

The big question is whether the perceived threats are real and if such threats justify an authoritarian answer, but that’s for another post.

Stenner, Karen. 2009. “Three Kinds of ‘Conservatism'”. Psychological Inquiry, 20: 142–159.

Originally posted on Facebook, March 7, 2016.

On Trump: Trump Positively Mentions Arch-elitist Richard Haass. Why?

In March 2016 Trump mentioned Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass as an “excellent” foreign policy adviser.[1] This created some consternation in some libertarian and conspiricist conservative circles. What is the big deal here?

Why would Trump name the quintessential establishment figure Haass as an excellent (potential) adviser on foreign policy? He probably knows he would alienate, or at least startle, his anti-establishment, anti-status quo followers (let alone the conspiricists and nativists) by mentioning such an elitist policy planner.

I think he is, as usual, opportunistic and is tactically dealing with the increasingly strong head-wind from the establishment–like the very recent denouncement of him by 106 Republican foreign policy advisers–by signaling he might take their advise.[3] Reading some of the reactions it looks like the ploy doesn’t work and Trump is still left to his own skewered wits to formulate an intelligible and intelligent foreign policy beyond the few inane ideas he has presented so far.

For a little deeper background the following;

Chris Rossini, who writes for the Ron Paul Liberty Report, overstated the relationship between Trump and Haass, when he alleged that Haass is now Trump’s foreign policy adviser, which would turn Trump into a hypocritical flip-flopper on his views and use of the establishment.[2] The fact is that Haass does brief presidential candidates, so their August ’15 meeting is not that relevant, and after being mentioned by Trump, Haass put a more than arms-length space between him and Trump.

According to Reuters:

“A spokeswoman for Haass, Iva Zoric, said that he briefed Trump on foreign policy in August 2015. In a tweet late on Thursday, Haass wrote: “I do not endorse candidates. What I have done is offered to brief all candidates, & have briefed several, D(emocrat) & R(epublican) alike.”[1]

More important is that Trump mentioned him at all, and in glowing terms, during the debate last Friday as someone to listen to on foreign policy questions. Trump said:

“I think Richard Haass is excellent. I have a lot of respect for him.”

The importance is that Haass, as pointed out, is president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most influential, bi-partisan, corporate foreign policy think tank in existence. It was the major architect of the post-WWII global (read imperialist) political and economic order when it devised in the 1940s institutions like the UN, IMF and World Bank (and later the WTO). The CFR usually promotes, if not designs, international ‘free’ trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, TPP, etc.

Its roots go back to the Versailles peace conference after WWI at which the American delegation tried to impose some of its policy preferences on the other victors, but were not entirely successful.

It is also hugely influential in the yearly, high-security Bilderberg conferences (with Haass in attendance), starting in the 1950s and still going strong, in which the Western European and North American elites hash out their differences.

The CFR was also the architect of the Trilateral Commission (of which Haass is a member) and G7 ‘summitry’ since the 1970s. The TC coordinates corporate policy preferences between North America, Europe and Japan, with some of the Asian Tigers now also joining. Its initial greatest ‘coup’ was the creation of the Carter administration, which started the implementation of the neoliberal agenda usually associated with Reagan and Thatcher.

In short, and in more political scientific terms, the CFR is the long term policy planning think tank of the Atlantic power elite, and its president has quite some influence by directing that policy planning process.

Either Trump is trying to cozy up to Haass to get access to the brain power of the CFR; or just wants to signal he is more moderate than he looks like; or has no idea who Haass actually is and what crucial position he has in the foreign policy establishment. With Trump we just don’t know.

Originally posted on Facebook, March 6, 2016.

[1]. Warren Strobel, Jonathan Landay and Phil Stewart. “Foreign policy thinkers praised by Trump have divergent views“. Reuters. 4 Mar 2016.

[2]. Rossini, Chris. “Trump Already Surrounding Himself with Establishment Men“. Ron Paul Liberty Report. 6 Mar 2016.

[3]. Staff. “Open Letter on Donald Trump from GOP National Security Leaders“. War on the Rocks. 2 Mar 2016.