Why Would I Post This Here?

Very simple, I periodically watch all types of crime shows which have a twist in characters entangled in all kinds of mischief--did it for many years. But it is one thing to post what I know, totally another--you don't have to go beyond the first case in the video--when a very famous FBI profiler Candice Delong explains to you what I am trying to convey for a long, almost Delong (yeah, I know--dad's joke) time. 

So, while Candice talks about deadly types in real everyday life, listen to what she says about narcissists--they are insecure. Narcissism and insecurity, complex of inferiority are the two sides of the same coin. It is not a theorem--it is an axiom. Lying becomes their MO and narcissists eventually drift into the alternative reality. Trump personally is not a deadly type, but his narcissism is severe, if not in its severest form. Bad news--huge swaths of West's elites (especially in the US) are afflicted by this social and mental disease, and let me quote incomparable Michael Brenner again:

Americanism provides a Unified Field Theory of self-identity, collective enterprise, and the Republic’s enduring meaning. When one element is felt to be in jeopardy, the integrity of the whole edifice becomes vulnerable. In the past, American mythology energized the country in ways that helped it to thrive. Today, it is a dangerous hallucinogen that traps Americans in a time warp more and more distant from reality. There is a muted reflection of this strained condition in the evident truth that Americans have become an insecure people. They grow increasingly anxious about who they are, what they are worth and what life will be like down the road.

Remember Alexis De Tocqueville?

All free nations are vain-glorious, but national pride is not displayed by all in the same manner. The Americans in their intercourse with strangers appear impatient of the smallest censure and insatiable of praise. The most slender eulogium is acceptable to them; the most exalted seldom contents them; they unceasingly harass you to extort praise, and if you resist their entreaties they fall to praising themselves. It would seem as if, doubting their own merit, they wished to have it constantly exhibited before their eyes. Their vanity is not only greedy, but restless and jealous; it will grant nothing, whilst it demands everything, but is ready to beg and to quarrel at the same time. If I say to an American that the country he lives in is a fine one, “Ay,” he replies, “there is not its fellow in the world.” If I applaud the freedom which its inhabitants enjoy, he answers, “Freedom is a fine thing, but few nations are worthy to enjoy it.” If I remark the purity of morals which distinguishes the United States, “I can imagine,” says he, “that a stranger, who has been struck by the corruption of all other nations, is astonished at the difference.” At length I leave him to the contemplation of himself; but he returns to the charge, and does not desist till he has got me to repeat all I had just been saying. It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it. 

See the pattern? Trump is the product of the American elite whose lust for praise and flattery eventually drove the country into the ground. Trump is just the more extreme case. An insecure man, who is merely a symptom, running an insecure country ... into the ground. And don't even start me on Machiavelli and why these types get to power. Somebody noted in the discussion boards (astutely) that Trump got himself into the dick measuring contest with Putin. He lost already by the virtue of trying to compare to Putin. We all saw the "parade", didn't we?

History Repeats Itself...

 ... as you all know, first as tragedy and then as farce. This is how institutional collapse looks like. 

Internal rancour has gripped the US NGO National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout responsible for fermenting political discontent in countries regarded as adversaries by Washington. It’s perhaps best known for helping to foment the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, a country that its founder Carl Gershman labelled “the biggest prize.” The debacle has resulted in two senior officials being fired and a “civil war” erupting between older neoconservatives and younger management – which the former accuses of being too “woke” – according to documents obtained by The Grayzone. The scandal was sparked after then newly-appointed NED vice-president for communications broke ranks by engaging with journalists the organisation had previously shunned. Leslie Aun took exception to the Grayzone’s portrayal of the organization as CIA proxy, and initiated a call with the outlet’s Max Blumenthal and Alex Rubinstein, which it published in May 2023.

Max Blumenthal talks about it in a very direct manner:

You can read a comprehensive selection of the #NEDFiles obtained exclusively by The Grayzone here: https://thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/NED-Master-Files.pdf I think many will be shocked that Congress allocates $200 million a year to an unstable, politically partisan organization with obviously inept leadership

My request is--show me ANY US organization which is not inept and not partisan. None exists. Be that NGOs or government. It is one massive clusterfuck. It is intellectual collapse as a consequence of a severe systemic crisis which cannot be treated therapeutically anymore. What is left is coping, such as yesterday's piece by CIA guy who teaches now at Georgetown. I want to repeat again a critical and astute definition by one of the best American minds about this whole clusterfuck: 

Americanism provides a Unified Field Theory of self-identity, collective enterprise, and the Republic’s enduring meaning. When one element is felt to be in jeopardy, the integrity of the whole edifice becomes vulnerable. In the past, American mythology energized the country in ways that helped it to thrive. Today, it is a dangerous hallucinogen that traps Americans in a time warp more and more distant from reality. There is a muted reflection of this strained condition in the evident truth that Americans have become an insecure people. They grow increasingly anxious about who they are, what they are worth and what life will be like down the road. This is an individual and collective phenomenon. They are related insofar as self-identity and self-esteem are bound up with the civic religion of Americanism. To a considerable degree, it’s been like this since the very beginning. 

Once insecurities are exposed, no more so than ineptness in warfare, intelligence and foreign relation, the whole thing collapses.