Billmon:
[A] warm glass of milk and a few choruses of Hail to the Chief ought to make Mr. Grumpy feel better.
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October 24, 2006
WB: Everything He Knows He Learned in Kindergarten
Comments
I want to say something, but I better had not, cause it wouldn’t be nice, and it would be against the law…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 24 2006 4:43 utc | 1
Any grifter worth his name knows there is a natural grace period built into every con. There’s a given period to hook your mark easily, while his trust is still extended. After that honeymoon stretch, your mask starts to show; they can smell your greed and contempt and fear. You’d best just walk away, then and there. Try the next rube in line.
Sir Staydacorz here knows he is years past his ‘walk away’ moment, yet he hasn’t permission of his masters to go. Now it dawns on him that he was their mark, and he bit real hard.
It’s sad, and it’s creepy. It’s Peter Pan in a three piece suit.
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Posted by: Antifa | Oct 24 2006 8:21 utc | 2
Bush is such a bad politician, he can’t control his facial expressions. When he is secretly pleased, afraid, greedy, obstreperous, lying, uncomfortable, drunk or under some other influence, narcissistically basking in false praise or bonhomie, uncertain, confused (almost always by logical matters which he can’t figure out) it shows on his face. I guess that list represents the gamut of his emotional states. This is not just lack of deceptive skills or political savvy – it shows a peculiar kind of aloneness, where own feelings are always somewhat masked, never put on display, that is, never shared (with the exception of reactions to direct positive overt feedback such as praise or laughter), and where the smooth, unconscious, and largely irrepressible response by mirroring or sharing others emotion’s or epistemic states (if we want to be fancy about it!) is blocked or simply non-existent.
One of the tricks a good pol must learn, or be gifted with, is the exploitation and partial control of one’s own true empathy and sincerity. The second is understanding and sharing other’s feelings, partly, naturally, to use them.
I watched on TV yesterday the first long part of a doc. on the life of Chirac (second part is tonite) and I was amazed, absolutely flabbergasted at how good he was, although I shouldn’t have been because I met him once at an agriculture fair and he chaarmed me utterly.
Bush controls his hands somewhat. As for the rest of his body, as far as I can see, the propagandists usually don’t let it be shown, except in ‘informal’ settings where the whole body moves, such as bike rides or cutting brush, or when he is happy and triumphant, which comes over, unfortunately, as cockiness. So I have no information about Bush’s feet! Feet and legs ‘leak’ more – they are far harder to control.
Some psychologists would mistakenly, and typically, relate all this to ‘emotional closed off-ness’, to autism spectrum disorder. That isn’t right, but I can’t explain that in one or two sentences. In my view, it is indicative of a very unhappy childhood, stressing the very, and core cognitive problems – perception, or what is loosely termed ‘intelligence’ – of unknown type / origin, though in the case of Bush one could make guesses, based on what is known of his life history.
Posted by: Noirette | Oct 24 2006 13:45 utc | 4