Posted on 09/29/2010 3:55:47 AM PDT by Scanian
A young client, Jenny, came to see me this week in tears. She was outside her house when suddenly, a speeding Prius hit her cat. The driver slowed down, observed Jenny's horrified eyes, and then hightailed it out of there.
There's good news: the cat survived. But Jenny's belief in the goodness of people -- particularly hybrid-drivers -- did not.
I have my own tales to tell from my week in Berkeley. I was walking gingerly through a crosswalk (I have bad knees) when an impatient driver shot me the bird. His car was graced with a Coexist bumper sticker.
One more: I was meeting a friend at a cafe, and we needed another chair. A man, sitting alone and surfing the net, had his legs strewn on an extra chair. When I asked him nicely to borrow it, he refused. The guy was wearing a Free Tibet t-shirt.
I imagine that all of these people consider themselves noble and righteous. They support aggrieved nations, world unity, and a greener world. Apparently, this absolves them from having to actually be nice people. As long as they talk the talk, they don't have to walk the walk.
This phenomenon is not confined to Berkeley; each day we see the same hypocrisy on full display. Nancy Pelosi prays at mass, magnanimously spreads our (not her) wealth around, all the while cavalierly tarring opponents as Nazis. Obama views himself as gifted while he casually disses the Prime Minister of Israel. And most people on the Left suffer from Palin Derangement Syndrome, which allows for hideous, no-holds-barred utterances toward this good-hearted woman.
The examples are endless. Of course, conservatives can be hypocrites, too. But we on the right don't delude ourselves into believing that our voting patterns allow us to be dirty, rotten scoundrels.
Consequently, the Democratic Party is where we see people considering themselves virtuous while treating other living and breathing humans with utter disregard, if not downright abuse. Decades of moral relativism and secular humanism have transformed the Golden Rule for Progressives into this: I demand that you treat me well, and as long as I champion liberal issues, I'll treat you any damn way I want to.
How can people so easily let themselves off the hook? Is it denial? Yes, but that wouldn't fully explain things. Is it delusion, which means not only denying reality, but creating a completely new reality? Hmm...getting warmer here.
Are we seeing dissociation, where a person disconnects from himself and becomes, temporarily, a different personality? This phenomenon occurs only in the most disturbed. But I wouldn't rule this out among some of the more rabid and unglued.
But I think the best explanation for the behavior of Obama, Pelosi, et al. lay in a conversation that I had with an old flame, Peter, many years ago. We'd been dating for a few months when I was ready to have the conversation. I sat him down and told him I cared a lot about him. Did he see a future between us?
He looked at me as though I were from another galaxy. Then he uttered something that I have never forgotten. He said, "A relationship? I'm not capable of a relationship."
At first I shrugged it off to commitment-phobia. After all, Peter was an ardent progressive -- the first in line for any demonstration. He avidly read books by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.
But the more I got to know Peter, the more I realized that his self-appraisal was spot-on. While superficially engaging, there was a hollowness about him, a brokenness, even. He was unable to connect to me, to anyone, in a meaningful way. There just was no there there.
That conversation with Peter, though years ago, has always remained front and center in my mind. It has helped me to understand why some people look fully formed from the outside but are vacant inside.
The Peters of the world may not be withholding love or affection or even simple kindness. They may just be incapable of it. They are missing an essential ingredient to being a good and whole human being, and that is empathy, or putting oneself in another person's shoes.
Perhaps the reasons are genetic. Maybe it has to do with copious pot and alcohol use or overuse of prescription drugs. In places like Berkeley, it may be inbreeding. Mental illness, character defects, bad upbringing -- the culprits are endless.
In the realm of romance, the Peters (the Peter Pans?) are simply frustrating and disappointing. But when the empty shells of the world grab the reins of power, that is another story entirely; it can spell catastrophe.
And that's why we have been watching, spellbound, like my client Jenny, as a disaster movie unfolds before our horrified eyes. And this is why we must propel the intact and unbroken among us into office this November.
Does Mono Jojoy track back to obama?? from facebook...
Operation Sodoma
Colombian authorities announced the death of Mono Jojoy on September 23, 2010. According to President Juan Manuel Santos the FARC commander was killed in an operation that began in the early hours of September 21 in the department of Meta, 120 miles south of the capital Bogotá. Mono Jojoy suffered from chronic diabetes that caused severe infections of his feet. Special boots were ordered and the order was intercepted by intelligence. The boots were implanted with GPS devices and Mono Jojoy was tracked to his forested mountain hideout. 57 aircraft, jetfighter and helicopters, attacked the complex with fifty bombs, preparing the way for the Colombian ground troops, who took over the camp with little opposition.[citation needed]
[edit] Aftermath
On September 25, 2010 experts in Colombia are trying to crack the codes to 15 computers and almost 100 USB memories belonging to Colombia’s largest rebel group. One of the laptops is believed to have belonged to its military leader, Mono Jojoy, who was killed in the attack. Its screen was reportedly shattered by bullets, but its hard disc was still intact. The computers are being examined by 40 experts from the police criminal investigation unit in the capital, Bogota. About 10,000 extra police officers have been deployed to Colombia’s main cities to prevent retaliatory attacks by the Farc. In the FARC’s first public statement since the death of military leader “Mono Jojoy,” the guerrilla group says it is “calling for a chance at peace, not for surrender,” reports EFE. A
Outstanding!
Walking, talking, and voting dead souls.
Hell will be filled with leftists.
LLS
Eh, I’ll stick with “it’s Satan”.
Excellent post! I did my time in Berkeley in the early 1970s, while working as a technician. The “hipper than thou” attitude was in full regalia then, as it is now. And it’s still infuriating, typically displayed by people who lose themselves in a cause instead of actually cultivating a responsible personality for themselves.
This gives them an unshakable sense of moral superiority over those of us less “enlightened.” And best of all, a kind of “get out of jail free” card that absolves them of any societal obligations such as being polite, honoring the perspectives of others, or even obeying basic traffic laws.
And having self-annointed themselves as social elites, they have every right to insert themselves into local, regional, or even national politics with an absolute conviction of their right to do so. No matter how much of a disaster their personal lives may be, they truly think that only THEY have the answers for we proles. And we should heed their advice. Lest they become very, very angry.
Lost in a haze of perpetual adolescence, these people are almost uniformly unhappy, despite their self-delusion of their importance in the universe. And they continue on a path of self-gratification thinking it will ultimately pay off in happiness and contentment. It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so sad.
Yes, indeed, Berkeley was a bastion of higher learning for me. But it had nothing to do with UC. Living and working there for six years was an education I’ll never forget.
I work right outside the DC area - and I see those little hybirds fly down the road w/ Obama stickers on them...
I have seen them cut there way into traffic w/out a turn signal - pushy people...but yes - i guess that they think they are on the side of progressive movements - that resolves them from treating otehrs with respect...
...they do not lead as an example to follow - that’s for sure!
All it takes is one conversation with a liberal “friend” in which they tell you that yes, your loved one and countless others should have been allowed to die, because it was absurd wasting all that medical care on them just because they were “lucky” enough to have insurance.
These are very selfish, angry people.
Oddly enough I was almost mowed down in a crosswalk in Rosslyn this morning by a woman in a Prius. I had a walk signal, but she still scowled at me when I stared at her.
I don't know how she does it. Having an Irish temper I'd have either moved or already left a trail of broken noses and a couple jaw bones in my wake. I suspect one of the main causes for the behavior she describes is a lack of the strap in these peoples' upbringing. That deficiency can be remedied.
I grew up in the North Bay area, and remember, as a child (in the 70s), loathing hippies. My mother was fascinated by the hippy movement, thereby giving me plenty of contact with them. It took many years before I determined why I so instinctively hated hippies: they spend their lives pretending they are something they are not. The phoniness that surrounds them is palpable. They also pretend that the world and humanity are different than what they are.
I remember back when there was an operation that captured computers from FARC operatives in Ecuador that had references to Obama’s election on them.
Everytime I see an Obama sticker on someones car, I politely roll down my window, honk, and when the person opens their window I put a big smile on my face and say, “Hey, I see some idiot put an Obama sticker on your car.”
Then I drive off.
They have been able to send their children to expensive private schools because their tuition is covered by assistance programs. Only one of them works, and that one makes high-end electronic audio equipment at a company that sells to ‘the rich’. In summary, they have a fairly nice lifestyle, only one of them works, their children can go to private school, and they can slam ‘the rich’ whose money supports the private schools they go to and buys the audio equipment one of them makes.
They're oblivious, but righteous.
I love it! Just be careful. You never know who is crazy enough to pull out a weapon etc.
Doesn't this fit the definition of a sociopath?
She's lucky he was honest.
Oh, that’s funny!
You are far more gutsy than I!
That should have set off alarms right there.
I lived there, too, in the late 60s. Blessedly protected by being tucked within the music department at the U and focused on my studies, it still took me many years to clear my brain of the infection I picked up there.
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