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?

A Delusional VP.

VP Mike Pence is a colorless "born-again" Christian Zionist with degree in Law and a man who in real meritocracy would not be entrusted with mowing a lawn or tending beets or potatoes. But we live in the world where alternative reality is being sold wholesale and it does sell, at least on some of the occasions. The fact that Mike Pence is an idiot be damned. Yet, he sells this alt-reality non stop. His latest? Even Goebbelsonian NYT cannot take it:

In a series of tweets Friday defending President Donald Trump’s decision to authorize the drone strike that killed Iran’s top intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Vice President Mike Pence reeled off a list of some of Soleimani’s most notorious attacks and machinations. Pence described “an evil man” who had threatened American national security interests for decades. In one of his tweets, Pence claimed that Soleimani helped 10 of the men who would go on to carry out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks cross through Iran and enter Afghanistan. That does not match established historical accounts of Soleimani or public U.S. intelligence about the hijackers.

First, can we finally settle on the obvious fact that US top political echelon in the last 30 or so years simply does not operate in facts. I am not talking about knowledge of the outside world of which there is pretty little precious in there. But even mentally challenged people CAN and often do recognize simple facts. You know, boiling water is hot, if you slam your hand with a hammer it will hurt like hell, do not cross the street in a front of the oncoming traffic and Iran has nothing to do with 911 and, in fact, immediately offered help to the United States in investigation. But never mind, for Mr. Pence, whose qualifications, with the exception of sucking up and being loyal to Israel, are that of the low level bureaucrat who has zero experiences with actual warfare, intelligence and statecraft, facts do not matter and he goes to interpret reality the way he wants. Even NYT is forced to state:

How Pence arrived at this number and this account is unclear. Why Soleimani, leader of a hard-line Shiite Muslim military apparatus, would have come to the aid of members of al-Qaida, a Sunni extremist group with strong ties to Saudi Arabia, is also unclear.

The problem with this statement is in the fact that this is not the only thing which is unclear--pretty much, at this stage, it is unclear if there are any sane people left in D.C. who actually are professionals and can calculate their steps beyond the first one. The consequences of Soleimani's assassination are already felt--but that is just a warm up from some random Shiite groups. Iran is going to take her time contemplating how to hit back, and she will. I will abstain now from going too deep in that issue, Bernhard of Moon of Alabama, as well as Andrei Raevsky and Scott Ritter already made their contributions, so I am not going to ponder this issue. Also of note is an excellent epitaph of sorts from Colonel Lang. I will, however, say this: this bunch of nutjobs in D.C. have no idea what they just unleashed and I don't believe anymore for a second that Trump does this for the sake of some sophisticated multi-dimensional plan of extracting the US from the Middle East. I don't buy this for a second. There is no plan which benefits the United States. Israel? Sure, but not the US, especially since any real war with Iran will shake the United States to its foundation which will make Vietnam look like a vacation. If they do not understand this in the White House and reside in the alternative reality, which second in command in the United States just demonstrated--we may have bigger problem than already a major shift in geopolitical balance since yesterday.