How do you KNOW this, Longenecker? When Old Wounds Meet Political Clout.
By John Longenecker (07/09/06)
I get this question a lot. The questions are mostly friendly and genuine. Even if they aren’t, I answer them.
Last edition of Good For The Country, I got some interesting treats, two of which went like this: one was that question, and which asked me for citation and source, and the other was a few lines of that edition making the Quote Of The Day on another’s website and which made it to a headline at Technorati.com
The Quote Of The Day was: Anti-gun people are anti-liberty people. There is no such thing as a righteous, good faith anti-gun position. Good people cannot endorse gun control.
Thank you very much. Sorry to be so absolute, but it’s true. Let me answer both.
In that piece, I’d written that liberals and leftists are angry; their older, deeper anger is based on old wounds they never got over, while the rest of us got over them and live life working without a net. My statement was that throughout psychology, it is generally understood that impaired persons — impaired by their anger, which motivates how they see things — know what they are doing.
They do.
Only profoundly impaired persons - the gravely disabled psychotics - hardly know much of anything, as they are profoundly separated from reality as a feature of their disease, the entire disease and the perceptions which impel them to flee reality. Our genuine compassion is reserved for these persons, and not for the lesser impaired.
Let me answer as I answered them.
I can cite sources and general doctrine, but here’s one that bypasses the shoptalk and furnishes a more digestible truth: the purpose of psychotherapy of the everyday client depends on one thing: his actually being in touch with reality – even if erecting a reality-distortion device for ego safety – and therefore knowing what he is doing. It’s not that he’s entirely out of touch, but indifferent to the consequences of their choices except in relation to what he’s doing for himself: avoiding one reality. This splashes over into other realities (such as relationships) if there is any connection - in his mind - conscious or not.
Here, the key word is indifferent. You see this indifference when one has an affair, when one drinks. They just don’t care. You could call it selfishness, but it’s more than that: their choices just freeze people out as they focus on one prime goal. We’ll come back to this later.
Defense mechanisms – the subject I was talking about – makes the individual’s own comfort the first priority, namely staving off anxiety with a reality distortion device, such as isolation, intellectualism, projection, denial, ascetism or other device.
This makes a slight course correction in the daily routine so that the client can function more or less and can also steer around the iceberg he’s trying so hard to avoid. That iceberg constantly reappears without warning, and would be an ego-disaster for the client. Oh, he knows it’s an iceberg, but doesn’t admit it to himself, if you know what I mean. But he sure spends a great deal of psychic energy in avoiding it. Often - very often - we, as a society, get sucked into that steering to avoid it.
Now for the truth that permeates psychology and which answers the question of how I know: general, busy office psychotherapy depends on the working through process and the client’s ability to follow where the therapist is leading him/her. It is a journey of self-discovery. You know that it depends on the client’s cooperation. Onward, over time, there comes some breakthrough as the patient comes to accept his own deception, and then comes closer to coping better with reality through a better understanding of himself. Of course, one comes to realize that he/she knew what they were doing all along.
Or psychotherapy – such as cognitive therapy - would never work. Therapy would not work if the client did not come to see how he/she knew all along what he was doing.
And most important: why.
Additionally, such therapy works even better when based on a values system of personal responsibility, that is, owning your own actions. Constant blaming of others is a dead-end for most clients who could go on for years stubbornly fighting their therapist. Notice how it is also a reality problem in politics?
I’ve always believed that defense mechanisms and personal anxiety are a great threat to our sovereignty when they enter the political arena. Do what you want in your own home and mess up your relationships all you like, but don’t bring it to work. To me, it means that such impaired persons are no longer dealing in good faith, because they are pre-occupied with staving off their own anxiety first, and they often misread the political issue as a threat due entirely to their own reality distortion device.
You can say that gun grabbers and other politicos are becoming increasingly hostile and transparent, yes, but I say that they are actually dealing with us in bad faith – and that they know precisely what they are doing. Their obsession with control is a feature of their impairment so they don’t get hurt all over again. This is the irrationality they exhibit, that others will hurt them all over again.
The result is that this impaired view is destroying the nation for personal reasons. It is they who are hurting people.
When old wounds meet political clout.
Where indifference figures in this is in the fact that avoiding anxiety is the first priority in the routine of the impaired person. As I wrote that motivation influences perception, we know that where someone has a very unhappy – I mean a very painful - home life, one may grow up to be bitter about marriage in general and even believe it’s a fraud. This reaction could be to anything, from bullying to young love relationships to simply being ignored and unloved. (Being ignored as a child is a biggie, as being unloved = anger.)
Stifling that anxiety from reappearing – even the anxiety over the anxiety, you might say – eclipses all other motivation, including patriotism. These are the But-monkeys.
Thanks to three generations of broken homes, indifference to the homes of others is a real threat to our sovereignty. You can now see how Conservatives sense a real connection to no-fault divorce, chicanery, promiscuity, rotten values and others societal trends ruining the nation.
Today, the question of ‘How’s it hurting you?’ takes on new meaning.
It can now be answered.
When old wounds meet political clout.
I may seem to write a lot about gun control as a threat to our liberty, but what I really write about is the larger mission - where gun control is just another on the list of things to create dependency on agencies.
Dependency on agencies is a rotten goal, and distinctly un-American. Yet, the impaired believe it will make them feel better by rectifying old injustices. Not smart to trust officials bent on such old wounds and who are operating on a reality distortion device from long ago which exaggerates the crime.
Because, for the most part, a lot of us went through the same damned thing.
For officials, this transfer of sovereignty and cooperation with insane control such as Real ID Cards and RFID Chips - concepts allegedly based on fighting crime and terrorism – is just another day at the office in the indifference of politics. It’s a return on investment for them in control in their quest to find the ultimate article in soothing their own personal pain.
But not for all officials.
The government does not want to take your guns.
Only some officials do, while other officials stand up for your rights and fight them. Remember this.
This is why we are not against government. We never were. We are - as all of us are - against official misconduct.
As I love to say, officials were not hired to do their job their way, they were hired to do their job our way.
It’s time to give our friends in government a hand and support, even when you are not their constituent.
That includes our police. (They’re not all against us, you know.)
It would be good for the country.
I address other liberty issues on MP3 in my selected Talkradio appearances available at http://www.GoodForTheCountry.com/
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