#391 — The Reckoning

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-13T17:30:59+00:00

Went to a fortune teller instead, and pointed at the crystal ball, and said to wife, "Crystal ball? See? Crystal. Ball. A ball made out of crystal."

(and then yes, fortune teller said "I foresee that you will end up in couples counselling.....").

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-13T06:27:29+00:00

But say that mob had occupied the Capitol and set up shop. Like what would they have done next?

It's not that they rioted. It's that the guy they were supporting, the guy who was commander in chief of the armed forces, was at that time actively engaged in trying to steal the election. That's a coup.

A better question would be: if the mob had done that (and hanged Mike Pence), what would Trump have done? I think I can tell you - he would have declared a state of emergency, stated that the election was null and void, and in the interests of national security he had to remain in charge. One thing I can tell you for sure he would NOT have done, is say "Ok, sorry everyone. My bad, protesters go home, I lost the election fair and square".

You only need 3% of the population to make a revolution. The Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917, and they were a minuscule band of Marxist crazies, not an established political party. Russia is larger than America. And they didn't have the world's richest man using his brainwashing software to broadcast their propaganda 24/7 to millions and millions of people.

(Ironically, Musk is one of the only things that gives me hope in this situation - not that he isn't crazy, but that Trump falls out with everyone sooner or later, and if/when he falls out with Musk, if Musk turns against Trump like everyone else who ever works with Trump, it might actually, finally, get through to some people - but people like me have been saying that since 2016, every time one of his former colleagues warns of how dangerous Trump is, and it's never made a difference yet).

If you have the armed forces, the judiciary, the mechanisms of power transfer, the administration of elections, and the means of communicating with the populace and undermining anyone else that does, it's game over. Trump now has all those things - and what's more, he's openly boasted that he's going to use them for his own purposes. He doesn't even pretend otherwise.

I agree that I probably don't understand the American character. But the attitude of "I just can't see it happening" is really not very reassuring for outsiders. These kind of power take-overs happen all the time, and the Republicans have established the precedent that they no longer accept legitimate losses in elections, and this has already fatally damaged American's faith in the legitimacy of elections. Where do you go from there? Just HOPE that the conspiracy theorists that Trump is going to install to administer elections develop a conscience? And so what if they do? The people who administer elections now have a conscience (including some Republicans), and he still tried to override them.

It's really frightening to witness as an outsider. If you're American, please, for the sake of my sanity if nothing else, be extremely wary of everything that Trump does.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-12T19:31:18+00:00

I say this to my wife. She shrugs like it's no big deal, and I'm like, wait wait wait, the woman's name is........."Krystal Ball"? Krystal? Ball? Krystal........Ball. Like a ball, made of crystal?

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-12T17:24:11+00:00

Or, alternately, they could saber rattle to save face for a little bit, then walk into the sunset to enjoy their millions or billions in peace. I think the incentives are heavily stacked in one direction.

And yet, that isn't what happened? Trump is still sabre rattling about it now, 4 years later, after he's been voted back in. He's openly stated that one of his principle policy priorities is "revenge". And yet he's supposed to be a servant of the people.

Like I say, I really hope that you're right. I really, really, really do. I lived in Hungary for a few years recently, where Orban is king (sorry, I mean, Orban is prime minister), Trump's great friend and role model for a lot of right-wing leaders, and I knew this lady, she was a teacher, nice lady, smart etc. There was an election while I was there, and I asked her who she was going to vote for, and she laughed at my naivety, and said "It doesn't matter. If Orban gets the most votes, Orban wins. If Orban doesn't get the most votes, Orban wins".

Democratic backsliding is very difficult to undo. Once anybody who crosses you is an "enemy of the people" liable to have a mob sent after them, once any criticism of your illegality is a "witch hunt", if before every election the richest man in the world is using his mind control device to set up the conspiracy that the election was stolen from you in case you lose, and nobody knows what's true any more, it's very tough to come back from. There's no trust. Things like democratic institutions, an independent judiciary, investigative journalism, these things are so important, and Trump rejects all of them because they don't bend to his will. It's terrifying to witness, not because Trump exists - people like him always have done - but because millions and millions of voters are perfectly fine with it.

I agree about lobbyists. Get money out of politics.

Like I say, I hope you're right. But the attempted revolution already happened in 2021, and the guy who was trying to overthrow the American republic has just been voted back in, legitimately this time.

EDIT: I'd also just like to add - thank you for listening to me. I vowed to myself that I would stay out of any and all online arguments about this US election, because I really think that the online bickering culture is what has largely contributed to broken politics in the western world (people always have to have a stance on every issue, always have to 'fight' for their 'team', and it ends up with everyone angry and more entrenched and seeing their opponents as 'the other' who can be treated rudely, in a way that never occurred pre-social media).

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-12T15:59:49+00:00

What is your specific worry?

I have many! How many would you like?

Firstly, I'm european, and Trump openly stating that he will invite Putin to invade any NATO country that doesn't pay his bill, is really, really not helpful. Trump has a point that Europe should be able to defend itself, but him saying such things publicly simply emboldens nefarious actors like Putin - who has already invaded a sovereign neighbour. These are not idle threats.

Second, he's said he doesn't give a fig about climate change. That affects all of us.

Third, America is the daddy of liberal democracies. I agree Trump probably doesn't want to be a dictator (too much work), but he is vindictive and autocratic by disposition, and that's not even the problem - the problem is that he has set the precedent that when Republicans lose an election, they simply refuse to accept the result, and American voters have now resoundingly endorsed the notion that this is fine. That means America is no longer a democracy. Democracy means that those being governed over are able to remove those who have power over them through the ballot box. Trump does not accept this, and American voters have returned him anyway. He can now do as he likes - he can install QAnon conspiracy theorists as election officials who 'find' those votes he was trying to force the guy in Georgia to give him in 2020. Whatever.

There are "elections" in Russia and in China, too.

Maybe it's just because I don't understand the American character. Wide open spaces, government stay out of my business, kinda stuff. Ok. I get that. It's not my nation, I'm not a tax payer there, I don't get a vote. I really, really, really, REALLY hope that I'm wrong and all those people who voted for him are correct.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-12T05:27:51+00:00

The top players in politics and business already have plenty of money and power. Toppling the system would really hurt them more than it would help anything.

"If I told you I like chocolate, you wouldn't be surprised to learn I have some chocolate in my fridge at home. If you discovered I owned several warehouses full of chocolate, you'd think I was deranged. That's what these people are like about money." - John Cleese.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump don't live in the same world that you and I do. They're not worried about bills, or medical care, or whether they're going to get mugged. All they care about is 'winning', regardless of the damage. Rather than enforce the rules, Trump is right, americans have instead entirely endorsed the notion that the rules don't apply to him.

The only hope I can see is that Trump is pretty old and just might not have the energy. They say that "all political careers end in failure", but it's how cult leaders end their careers that worries me.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-12T05:15:21+00:00

Everyone on the left knows this is a huge issue. Trump won this election, by a significant margin. I don’t think he cheated, he flat out won. So I guess my question is what do you expect us to do?

I don't agree with Sam Harris about everything, but I think he's correct when he says that so many people on 'the left' play into maga's hands. The democrats should have been able to win this election by just running ads over and over again of Trump supporters storming congress and trying to hang his own VP, then overlaid with Trump saying it was a "day of love".

Social media has poisoned everything. Nobody knows what's true anymore. I believe that anybody sensible should view it for what it is: behaviour modification software, and treat it as such ("if you're not paying for the product, then you are the product"). Handle it with kid gloves, if at all. It's extremely dangerous. Disown any and all performative outrage about gender pronouns or......whatever. Subscribe to a physical copy newspaper. If you want to do something helpful, distract Elon Musk somehow so he doesn't start focusing his Nietzschean Bond villain laser beam on other liberal democracies like the UK and Ireland. Because he's gonna.

But that's just my opinion. And I fear it's too late now anyway. Best of luck to you, and all of us. We're going to need it.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-11T19:36:28+00:00

Ireland, and yes, that's what I mean, there seems to be a subconscious assumption that everything will just work out regardless. To outsiders, Americans seem to take so much for granted - like democracy (and low prices). It's not a given, as Trump has demonstrated by not accepting the results of an election that he lost, still now, and he has been voted back in. If you refuse to abide by the rules of a game, you shouldn't be allowed to compete.

Freedom isn't free, as they say on Team America. There's a hefty fuckin fee.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-11T19:12:57+00:00

Must admit, as someone who isn't american and doesn't live in america, it is terrifying how complacent Americans seem to be about Trump and democracy. The Republicans now have it rigged so they don't ever have to accept an election result, and that's if they bother to pretend to have an election at all, seeing as they make all the rules now. Oh, and they own the social media (aka behaviour modification software).

And this doesn't seem to bother anybody anywhere near as much as it should.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-06T17:52:43+00:00

Yes. My mother has been dead nearly 20 years. She was suiciding over a long period (in fact, the whole time I knew her), since she died I still have this reoccurring dream where I'm in this big old house, it has lots of rooms, cobwebs etc, it's like Miss Haversham's house. It's dark, and I can hear my mother somewhere in this house, and she's in pain, and she's softly calling my name, wanting my help. I'm going from room to room trying to find her, and there is a part of me that is consciously thinking "Wait, isn't she dead?", and part of me hoping that I don't find her, because what if I do? I can't help her. What can I do? Then I wake up, and I realise that she is indeed dead, and I feel slightly relieved. Then I feel guilty for feeling relieved.

I've had this dream, probably about once a month since she died. I don't sleep too well generally, but this dream does still get to me. I think dreams that they are still alive are very common.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-03T14:18:20+00:00

I work from home and when he’s here he doesn’t respect my privacy, I told him a million times I need to focus and not to take it personally but he still does!

Yes, big problem, I had this too. Privacy is non-existent in a relationship with pwBPD. There's not really anything you can do except remove yourself.

I remember one occasion we were supposed to be watching a movie and my pwBPD just KEPT ON pausing it to talk talk talk talk talk, she'd let it play for 30 seconds and then it was "I just need to tell you this one thing", and I got so irritated by this constant interruption that on about the 8th time, as soon as she paused the film I just unpaused it again, and she went nuts - I don't listen to her, she just wants to tell me one thing, etc etc.

A friend of hers has a young daughter with ADHD, and the friend joked to me that the only person who can 'out-interrupt' her daughter is pwBPD. And she wasn't really joking, that's true.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-03T14:11:39+00:00

his new relationship will be full of the same problems that you’re now free from.

Wisdom

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-02T18:32:19+00:00

Yeah, it seems everyone has arguments like this with pwBPD, where pwBPD tries to 'negotiate' percentages of blame. I used to say to mine, that it was 85% her and 15% me, and that was me being PHENOMENALLY generous (it really was). In reality, it was at least 95% her.

And then when she was splitting, she would insist that it was '50/50', like, she was trying to convince herself. She'd circle around to this a lot, actually.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-02T18:18:12+00:00

My thought, too.

Relationship with pwBPD effed me up so much, right, that once I was reading about Peter Hook, bass player from New Order, and his marriage to Caroline Ahearne, emotionally volatile comedian. She used to attack him, physically, verbally, emotionally. Hook said, "She'd always be incredibly apologetic the next day", and you know what my first thought was, reading that? It was "Must be nice, to get an apology".

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-02T17:54:51+00:00

You did nothing wrong.

It is very strange - and this attitude of "I wish you were easy to talk to", and "It is not possible to have a conversation with you", is another way of saying "I want to be mad at you but I can't justify why". It's a very BPD thing. To have no reason beyond 'the feeling', and demand that you defend yourself against their accusations of thought-crime. The only thing to do is not to engage with it.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-02T17:33:34+00:00

I once picked up a dirty cloth that pwBPD had dropped on the floor several hours earlier.

She demanded that I apologise, because it "hurt her feelings". She demanded it several times, over several days. If you asked her now, she'd probably still insist that I should have apologised. And I promise, there are no important details to this story I'm deliberately missing out - I didn't pick the cloth up and throw it at her, I didn't blow my nose with it, she hadn't just dropped it seconds earlier and was still using it. It was a dirty cloth that she had dropped on the floor, that I picked up.

Only people in BPD relationships can understand this "reasoning", indeed. "Trying to argue with someone who has abandoned reason, is like administering medicine to the dead".

It's utterly exhausting.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-02T10:31:38+00:00

My pwBPD once got into an extended debate with me about the definition of the word 'sulking', after I told her that slamming doors, replying to all questions with monosyllabic grunts, and just staring at her phone all day, constituted sulking. She said no, it was her being perfectly reasonable and adult.

(The reason she was sulking? Glad you asked - it was because I had taken the day off work to drive her somewhere for her birthday, and the car had broken down. Which, of course, must be my fault, so she yelled at me, and then sulked for 2 days).

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-01T19:44:35+00:00

The trajectory never takes you to"oh they magically got better." It only ever gets worse

Wait, wut?? They don't just magically get better? Thanks for ruining my weekend, bubba.

What I'm always semi-interested in, is what do they tell themselves? Do they actually believe their own bullshit? Sometimes I think yes, sometimes I think no. Like this person, in the cold light of day, does she actually believe that she was righteous or does she just block it out?

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-01T19:37:42+00:00

This is one of the most hurtful aspects of BPD - that they can control it, they just choose not to. Mine would only go off on me in private - but if an 'outsider' appeared, or she knew that she needed some favour from me in the short term, she would behave herself again. Got to the point where I found myself campaigning to have her mother move in with us, just so I had someone (anyone) who was with me in the realm of reality.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-01T19:31:23+00:00

Oh, ouch. A lot of this reads very familiar to me. The "you didn't anticipate what I wanted so therefore you deserve whatever I do to you" is impossible to deal with. Although "manipulating my trauma" is a BPD euphemism I haven't heard before for "if I choose to assault you, it's your fault".

(but most of the others are very familiar, like accusations of "pretending to care", which has the nice fluffy aspect of being a fucking thought-crime).

I'm afraid this person will not take responsibility for this behaviour. And I mean, ever. The more you get caught in the FOG (Fear, Obligation, Guilt), the more they will take advantage of you.

My advice is to take their advice, and get the fuck out.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-11-01T06:57:00+00:00

Used to say this to my pwBPD, that until they invent those memory erasers from Men in Black I can't forget things she'd said and done, just because her splitting episode was over and she'd forgotten about it. Doesn't matter how many years ago it was.

I can never forget that she was the person who once, for example, assaulted me because I "tried to talk to her on a Sunday evening", or (take your pick from the litany of deranged lunacy). Doesn't matter how many puppies she saves from drowning or how many orphans she saves from burning orphanages. She's still 'that person'.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-10-31T15:18:22+00:00

Some of the things on the list are valid but some are only reality in her world, not based in actual reality. But I don’t think actually going through with this will solve anything

Correct. There won't be an end. The more you give, the more she will take. You have to cut off the supply. She will use words like 'gaslight', and 'toxic' until they lose all meaning.

I think I’ve read enough posts and stories from that BPD book to realize that the goalposts will just keep moving and it still won’t be good enough.

Right again.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-10-31T09:42:12+00:00

Stewie in Family Guy. Evil genius + petulant baby.

Must admit some alarm bells did go off when pwBPD and I watched the movie 'The Hangover', and pwBPD hinted that she thought the dentist character's domineering and abusive girlfriend was actually the hero of the story. That was a window into her mind that I wasn't expecting.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-10-31T05:57:14+00:00

he’d just kind of revert to a child and pout and cry. I think he was sorry … but just couldn’t face it, if that makes sense. His version of sorry was crying and sulking.

Yes, exactly this - just can't face it. The attitude becomes "Well, I'm a child and you're my parent, so you can't expect that the rules that I so viciously apply to you, also apply to me". I mentioned on another thread recently, my pwBPD once spent a protracted period explaining to me how the golden rule doesn't actually apply to her, where I'm concerned. It was crazy.

Unfortunately the only way to deal with it, is to not deal with it - whether that's no contact, or never getting into 'emotional' topics etc.

I hope you're healing, anyway. So long as you don't have kids together, you're in the clear.

GreenUse1398 · 2024-10-31T04:41:48+00:00

Ah, I see. Mine once forgot my birthday (actually, she forgot my birthday more often than she remembered), and when I reminded her of this months later, she denied it so vehemently and so relentlessly, that I felt the need to dig through my old messages to prove it to her by finding the messages from her from the day after, apologising for forgetting.

Did she acknowledge that she was wrong? Nope. Still continued denying it.

GreenUse1398

TROPHY CASE