Unimaginable.
No one could have those qualities. 

Wait a second.  I am beginning to get a sense of someone…Nah! Can’t be.

Dan


On Feb 3, 2024, at 11:07 PM, Jack Neggerman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


Can you imagine anyone with these below traits and qualities?

Amoral, lawless, career criminal, pathological narcissism, sociopath, horribly litigious, scores of unpaid bills, loses extreme amounts of other peoples’ money, devoid of empathy, temperamentally unfit, unqualified, sexually assaultive, deep belief it is OK to denigrate others, easily turns on friends, very effective con, fraudulent, reckless, extreme liar, behaves like a mob boss, incapable of ever owning any fault, invariably projects undesirable traits on to others, extremely entitled, comfortable in violating others, dangerously vindictive, 
 
Denies hundred percent of mistakes, very sore loser, makes people believe the demonstrably inaccurate, very effective con, bully, fraudulent, only cares about self, no patience, no integrity, doesn’t read, numerous failures, idolizes dictators, corrupt, extremely divisive, a scammer, a cheat, successfully evades consequences, bent on revenge, incapable of tolerating loss, deep insecurity under supersized ego, profoundly selfish, gluttonous greed, acts as if not subject to the Law, early adolescent level of psychological development, often a loser, cringe worthy self-aggrandizement, laughingstock, plays victim card perfectly when needed, a figure from the past.  Also has a variety of strengths.
​​​​​Imagine a combination of all of these traits and qualities:
 
Does this create a picture of anyone you can imagine?




On Feb 3, 2024, at 9:19 PM, Dan Bloom <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Phil:

The French philosopher Alain Badiou called Wagner the first rockstar and compared him to David Bowie.  Badiou said the performances of Wagner at his Festspielhaus (his own opera house) were like rock concerts.  Fanatics came from around the world to attend.  Women were known to faint when they heard the first chord of Tristan und Isolde.

Dan

On Feb 3, 2024, at 9:09 PM, Dan Bloom <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Just let me know if you need the context for that event in the Ring of the Nibelungen.   I call it an “event” and not an aria because it is a pivot point in the drama and because it is way beyond the simple beauty of the performance.

That band in the video also did a heavy metal rendition of one of the movements of Brahms’s  Deutsche Requiem. 

Dan

On Feb 3, 2024, at 8:56 PM, Philip Brownell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Will do. And I’ll send it to George, my translation Ukraine, because he plays heavy metal guitar. 


Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 3, 2024, at 6:28 PM, Dan Bloom <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Try this as an entry point:


On Feb 3, 2024, at 7:08 PM, Philip Brownell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Ah. I will have to listen. One of those things I never got around to. A deficiency I’m sure. 
Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 3, 2024, at 5:03 PM, Dan Bloom <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I never danced t Wagner 
Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 3, 2024, at 6:31 PM, Philip Brownell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

?
No to what? 

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 3, 2024, at 3:54 PM, Dan Bloom <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Actually, no. :)



On Feb 3, 2024, at 5:32 PM, Peter Philippson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Have you tried dancing to Wagner?

P

On Sat, 3 Feb 2024 at 22:25, Dan Bloom <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Peter.

You make a good point about fascism.  Trump’s rallies use  Village People songs.  Loathsome fascists used better music.  Wagner?  LOL

Dan

On Feb 3, 2024, at 4:53 PM, Peter Philippson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Dan,

But why Phil's flatulence now?  Why does he buy the definition from those who would force Americans to be 'good Christians' in their mould?

And notice Phil's line 'AND, I did not expect the resistance of the established government system that helped turn the guy into the very worst version of himself'.  If you recall, the resistance was to stop Trump doing really crazy stuff, but now those who did that are to blame for how Trump is now.  Myths in the making.

My guess is that the fear is that this collective madness that both the Republican Party and the religious fundamentalists (Christian, Jewish and Moslem) have shown themselves vulnerable to, even those as kind in other ways as Phil, will in the end bury both the Republicans and the Christian Right.  So desperation is justified.  If we can just say that gender uncertainty is as bad as insurrection, that being old like Biden is as bad as being slightly less old and crazy, and keep on pretending that Trump had a plan beyond staying in power, maybe we can convince people.  If not, maybe the same arguments can move the deluded into civil war.

The joke is that what is being supported isn't even fascism.  Fascists build lots of workers' houses, made the trains run on time, invented the Volkswagen, motorways and national parks.  These want to legislate what bathrooms people can use!

Peter

On Sat, 3 Feb 2024 at 21:38, Dan Bloom <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Wow.

So you bought the line the “swamp.” I am shocked, not surprised.

Trump has directly said he will remove from the civil service everyone he thinks has or will be disloyal to him.  He has said he’d pardon the insurrectionists and other criminals found guilty by courts of law.   He said he will direct the justice department to hunt down democrats. (By the way, he has no authority to do that.  Just ask Wm Barr. Or read the constitution.)  He said he’d consider ordering the military to invade Mexico  — and into American cities.  I don’t know which would be worse....   

His claim to be a dictator for one day was not irony. I believe he lacks the cognitive sophistication to understand irony.   Do I think he REALLY meant he would declare himself a dictator. Not for a minute.  I heard that as flatulence from an autocrat.  Or the preening of someone who stares in the mirror and tell himself he is a "stable genius” who aces  cognitive exams.  Yet who are his models?  Oban.  Putin.  

We all have lots of problems.  We as a culture have devalued if not marginalized critical thinking and free expression of ideas.  Ideologues of the right and the left threaten to bury us under their orthodoxies. 

Trumps supporters. Their cultish devotion to him is difficult to explain.  Do a search on YouTube for “Trump” and “Wrestlemania.”  You’ll see crowds cheering him on.  

I return to “swamp.” I don’t believe it exists. It is a creation of people who have been against the power of the federal government since the New Deal.  Or even further back, it was a product of populist nativism that was anti-immigrant and anti-all-minorities. “America First”?  That was a reaction to a sense that those in power — the  swamp — want to drag us into wars.

Swamp?  It is always them and never us. 

Dan

On Feb 3, 2024, at 1:59 PM, Philip Brownell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

As far as Maher’s observation goes, I think it is directed at the swamp. Let’s take it away from science. Do I think that Taylor Swift is a sinister agent of the left to sway voters?  No. That verges on the delusional. Do I think that Trump means to be a dictator and will wipe out our entire constitutional government because he says that on day one he will be a dictator?  No. People don’t understand his idiomatic expression and never have. The swamp is this split out society that did not get this way because of Trump; it’s been developing since at least Nixon. And Trump emerged from that. It’s partly a product of declining quality of education, the emergence of a “screen culture” where people cannot tolerate complexity and have no patience. Quick and simple. Text instead of email. Forced choice alternatives between this and that. Data driven “reality” that cannot understand the feel of the moment. So a complex adaptive system makes no sense and it must be that Trump/Biden is either all good or all bad. 

I have been re-evaluating a lot of things in the last few years. I was supportive of Trump because I thought he would be an iconoclast who could go to Washington and break up the stuck and dysfunctional aspects of our government. I was naive. I did not expect—suspect—the power of the resisting bureaucracy. It was not a peaceful transfer of power. It was a stealthy subterfuge. And that is the ground upon which Trump supporters have become stubbornly loyal. And now they view Trump’s legal problems as just more of the same. So as the indictments were brought Trump’s ratings went up. And that kind of narrative, whether a person believes it or not is part of the current split, part of the swamp. The swamp is both left and right. 

Phil
Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 3, 2024, at 11:29 AM, Philip Brownell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dan
One difference. That which emerges is not identical to that from which it emerges. The swamp gas is not the swamp. They are indeed in a sub- and supervenient relationship, and so Trump emerged from and is of a complex adapting field, and he now exerts a downward influence over it. But the field is still self adapting. There is a Haley. There are more people in the country who will not vote for Trump than who will (no matter what). There is the separation of powers in the government. The system is in turmoil, not dead. 

And what I think would be wise is to examine the swamp more than the swamp gas. 

Phil
Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 3, 2024, at 10:37 AM, Peter Philippson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


Thanks Dan.

I think there are arguments to be had about all those points, but the main thing is the totally dumb attempt to provide a spurious parity between actions that weaken the democratic and legal bonds that hold a nation together or that sustain our capacity to live comfortably on our planet, and the gender thing which only really affects those involved.

Peter

On Sat, 3 Feb 2024 at 16:17, Dan Bloom <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I agree Peter.

His emergence is of a field in which he has been a provocateur. 

We know in emergence theory that  emergent events exert downward non-linear “causation" on that from which they are emergent.   This is a sub- and supervenient relationship.  

Trump is both the swamp gas emergent of the swamp and the swamp itself. :)

I agree with Maher, by the way.  Both sides deny the science that is inconvenient to them. But his characterization of gender issues is uninformed.   Does he really know nothing about them? Seems he does. 

Dan

On Feb 3, 2024, at 10:56 AM, Peter Philippson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

No, he was the enabler, but he would have been nobody without people who said 'Well he isn't presidential, but he fulfills our/God's purpose.'  Now who would have said that?!

By the way, field theory doesn't say that an individual isn't very powerful at times.

Peter

On Sat, 3 Feb 2024 at 00:26, Philip Brownell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Ya know. He alone, all by himself pulled the entire country apart. Where is your field theory right now Peter?  It’s just not that simple. 
Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 2, 2024, at 4:50 PM, Peter Philippson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


Weasel, weasel, weasel...

You are a distinterested social experimenter who supported the guy who as we predicted pulled apart the social fabric of your country IN THE NAME OF CONSERVATISM.

Peter

On Fri, 2 Feb 2024, 22:56 Philip Brownell, <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I’m not desperate Peter. Desperation not in the equation. I’m just quoting Bill Maher as a kind of social experiment/ Rorschach test. You know what might a person say to this? And there you are. 

Phil 
Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 2, 2024, at 3:48 PM, Peter Philippson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


You must be desperate Phil.

On the one hand there are people trying to turn America into a fascist theocracy, invading the seats of power and threatening to kill those they disagree with, threatening democracy, achieving the legal a system, or denying climate emergencies while parts of America burns. On the other hand there are some people whose proprioceptive sense of themselves is of a different gender to their outer physical appearance. I know, let's find a form of weasel words that makes them as bad as each other.

Desperate indeed!

Peter

On Fri, 2 Feb 2024, 15:46 Philip Brownell, <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Bill Maher: "When historians look back in a hundred years, if we're still here, I don't think they're going to divide the country like we do into these two camps. They're going to say: As a people, they were obnoxious. It happens in different forms on both sides. As a people, they didn't believe in science. On the right, they think global warming is a hoax or whatever nonsense they believe about that. And on the left, they think men can have babies. That's what they'll say. They'll say, ‘As a people, they just lost their s--t.’


______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L,and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L,and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.


-- 
Peter (Philippson)
[log in to unmask]
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.

______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.


-- 
Peter (Philippson)
[log in to unmask]
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.

______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.


-- 
Peter (Philippson)
[log in to unmask]
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.

______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.


-- 
Peter (Philippson)
[log in to unmask]
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.

______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.

______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.


______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.

______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.