The Witch and the Pendulum

The Dark Side of Mom and Dad often is a domestic screaming match between a Manipulative, Vindictive Bitch and a Murderous, Vicious Bastard.  Heard often against the clicking of an over worked air conditioner floating in trailer parks, and gated communities as well.  Aggregated it represents itself in politics in just about everywhere.  Here, in God’s Country, it is the core difference of the angry side of the Democratic and Republican Parties, and replicated within in many a contentious fragment.

The Bright of the Mom-Dad dichotomy is the Nurture and Protection of the Family with a dramatic variant of the Knight, Nurse and Infant.  Kissing babies is a political must.  And everything a politician does is “for the children”.

So swings the Pendulum between the light and dark, between mom and dad from extreme to extreme.  Sometimes there is more than one pendulum swinging and from different directions.  That’s called LIFE.'

Pardon the mixed metaphors but there are True Believers of each slice riding upon the blades hurling bolts of bullshit and veracity at each other, with the throwing oft more valuable than hitting.  That’s called propaganda (as in propagating the faith).  In Transactional Analysis, it is called Stamp Collecting, Games and Scripts, all of which are useful in political analysis.

While there appears to be swings of the blade each decade, the current swipe and America has taken about fifty years to reach full force, starting in the Grey Flannel Days of the Fifties, triggered by the Sixties, tripped out by the Seventies, indulged in the Eighties, and beginning with Orange Juice the counter attack began against the Psychedelic, Tie died, Daddy Hating Progressive Left by the Commie/Mommy hating, Retro Fixated Isolationist Straight and Narrow. 

Then there are the neighbors, bill collectors, employers, and busy bodies whose purpose in life is to make your life a benefit to theirs, by adding or subtracting.  Meddlers from afar have included the French, the British, and the Russians.  The United States used to be called a Republic until the United Kingdom sold the idea that the UK and US were democracies…Republican was not an Irish option. 

Since then the People’s Democratic Republics have been undermining the Republic in the name of something that is not in the Constitution.  This time, the Tsar has returned without the Democracy defect and seeking to drive the US from foreign soils, water and air that threatens Mother Russia.

The Left has been abandoned by Russia, and the underlying purpose of Progressivism to undermine the US, has been shifted to the Straight and Narrow.  It is time for the rest of us to get off the swing and get down to work.

The Muscle Hypothess for Trump

 

 

 

 

 

The issue is where is Donald to get the muscle to either stage a "counter coup" or "to clean out the mess". 

 The Game Plan: Putin Trump

 

 One starts after Election Day, the other after Inauguration Day.  The Presidency does not have the powers to do what he has promised to do.  While some agencies and some military and law enforcement may, like the FBI in NYC, act regardless of law, most will not. 

 

That presents Breibart, Putin and Donald Inc a shortfall in muscle needed to trigger these events and to purge the government of the enemies of making America Great Again, last tried in Prides Purge in  1648 and which the Constitution anticipated in Article I, Section 6:

 

Russian Green Men PMC

They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

 

Prides Purge of Parliament in 1648 to the Rump Parliament

 

As for the WingNut Conspiracy, these items have come to light:

 

 

If you didn't know it the war is already on?

 

 

The only source of firepower not tangled up with legal constraints or hesitancy is from "private" military companies of which there are many run by Russia and many that are equal opportunity mercenaries. 

 

The Best of the PMCs - Executive Solutions from South Africa

 

 

This is a hypothesis not a prediction

 

Gordon

 

 

 

Flipping the Bird instead of COIN

Flipping Birds at Counter Insurgency, Flipping Bass Ackwards.

By Gordon S Fowkes,

LTC USA RET, KCTJ, M.Ed.

ST Bartholemew's Massacre of French Calvinits, 1572

Now is the time for Bass Wholes on both sides of the Aisle to bay at the winds and microphones of how “nation building is not a military job” or how “remotely piloted vehicles” with pin point precision is a war crime, unlike carpet bombing of Japan and Germany which were not.   Now is also the time when virgin pundits describe that which never happened in Vietnam, or those whose scope of understanding of the nuances of mortal combat are confused with Four Quarters or Nine Innings. War is not a game, nor is it an election, nor a debate.  War Sucks, but somebody has to do it. 

And it better be done right.

War is not a continuation of politics by other means, it is politics with other means just as an airstrike is no different from a traffic ticket aimed at reducing the speed of the action. Whatever it takes to feed and protect the family is what the fighting is all about, as is all the rest of survival of the adaptive, fit or not.

And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  That sad tale is how the best equipped, best trained, best led, and best supported military force of the US, was bested by a hollow point between the ears, by a bloated bureaucracy bent on self-aggrandizement and career enhancement.  The latter a sham foisted on those in field grades with eyes on the stars whose chosen slots were shot down by those without branch or insignia.

US MP and German Police on Traffic Duty during Occupation

But enough for the platitudes.  We screwed up, again as we had in the villages and towns of other ancient civilizations. We assumed (ass out of you and me) that our fantasies of what was sacred and absolute truth, were as imaginary as are those of our enemies are towards their own.  

Muslims have this nutty idea that Islam is the central truth of the universe, despite that they aren’t even a (Circle One, or more):

• American, Texan, Southern Californian, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, French, Italian, Russian, Chechen, and/or _________________. 

The fundamental motivation of the Rescuer is to convert the Victim and fight villainy, insanity, and heresy.  Nation building is rescuing and converting the helpless and stupid to worship the ground we walk on.

 Civil Affairs (and Military Governance) works to grease the gears that might not mesh, and fix shot up places get to their own feet.  Regardless of what kind of shoes they wear.  The flip side of CAMG is to flip the other guy’s feet. These include Special Forces and Special Operations.  Psychological Operations supports both stand and flip.

THE SHOGUN AND THE EMPEROR

The term counter insurgency became the fad by means obscure to me, as it anoints the counter insurgent with a righteousness not bestowed upon the insurgent.  And, to make it even clearer, what is an insurgent?  The Taliban was the effective government in place in Afghanistan when the US took sides with the Northern Alliance and invaded.  That was a surge against the Taliban, but not an insurgency? The term has a political definition not relevant to military operations. 

Nevertheless, the logical lines of operation (LLO) in the counter insurgency (COIN) as originally spelled out in the Army/Marine Corps manual on Counter Insurgency applies in fact to all of war for or against those whose contributions to success or failure make a difference.  

LLO or LLE or whatever dissected the body politic into functions of a society including governance. Or as it is done by ISIS in reverse to topple and repeat on those toppled.

From one of the manuals LLO are directed at:

• 1.     Civil Security
• 2.     Civil Control
• 3.     Security Forces
• 4.     Governance
• 5.     Essential Services
• 6.     Economy and Infrastructure
• 7.     Advertising and Public Relations

As one who is retired from the City of Houston (Building Inspections) and member of many a society for the preservation of the good, and disruption of the bad, this is a fairly standard list of logical lines of reelection, election or selection to the higher and mighty.  At present, REMFCOM appears to have decided that local governance is not one of interest to the infantry including those on boots who must travel the routes through those local governances with unpronounceable names.

Just as it is in local elections, the efforts of one side to enhance their version of the LLO, must be destroyed, disrupted and/or discredited by actions against the other’s LLO, and to enhance the other’s own.   This is precisely what the Taliban and ISIS are doing, and have been doing for decades, in one version or another.

There are, therefore, four variants of LLO depending upon which side one is on:

• 1.     Making your own,
• 2.     Wrecking someone else’s,
• 3.     Defending one’s own,
• 4.     Wrecking the wreckers.

This bears some resemblance to the Tactical Imperatives of combat.

Stability Operations therefore have the same four modes. As such there is Stabilization and Destabilization already under Special Operations Command, as it was under the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.  And therein, lie many a good example of what not to do and what to do.

The Hanging of French Protestants during wars of religion

The Cold War was a religious war in all but name.  The present religious wars are like the political wars of the religion, as the two differ only in name.

 Bloody Awful ISIS is!

Liars, Advertisers, and True Believers

The Truth about Liars, Advertisers and True Believers

I hated it when my father said that all facts are just someone’s opinion.  It was damning as he was a renowned Chemist and decorated artillery officer from WW2 in the Pacific.  His nickname in the 31^st Infantry Division (Dixie) was “Fearless Fred”.

If facts are opinions, so is the truth.    In order to manage getting through the day, one must make decisions on other’s opinions based on opinions that one would like to treat is if they were true facts.  . What we do is to assign a level of confidence in the accuracy, relevance and reliability to the “opinions” we want to treat as “facts”.  After all, doesn’t one and one make two?  One apple and one banana make two fruits if one is from San Francisco. 

But, one can’t get of bed without knowing where the floor is. Or where the car keys are.

Fig_01

When dealing with other people, however, we treat their opinions based on the “truthiness” of that person and/or their opinions. It helps to know when they are diverging from the real truth (whatever one accepts as such).  Such divergence can be categorized as lies which the liar knows is false. There are True Believers who believe the false as true but also lie to themselves as well. Being wrong is not a measure of belief or lie, just being wrong as the facts don’t support the truth (or the other way around).   

Fig_02

Deep down, the liar and the true believer know that the truth they speak of are not true facts, at some level of awareness.  Deep down.  The instinctive cover up is to raise the volume, intensity, and assertion to cover the falsity subject to false attribution as true.  This is especially true when dealing with Virtues and Vices asserted or assigned.  When the volume goes up, they reverse.

I call it, the Law of the Inverse Attribution Reflex which just so happens to work out as an acronym. L.I.A.R.  The braggart brags of his own weakest virtue, and blames other with his own worst vices. 

Fig_03

The True Believer believes in the falsity, but subconsciously doubts.  The Liar knows he is lying.

 

Fig_04

Back in the Sixties, there was the Pam Am auto race from Canada to the Mexican border.  It was not about speed, but upon gas consumption which was touted in the ads for cars of the guzzling Sixties.  The virtue of those old cars was size, glamor and comfort, not safety. Today’s cars are hard to tell apart compared to the Sixties.

Fig_05

In the days before seat belts one could be belted through the windshield on collision.  And, steel cars were more easily reparable even if the driver wasn’t.

 

Fig_06

Then there were the cigarette ads that touted how low the tar in the lungs would be by smoking the Right Brand

 

Fig_07

   And clearly it was sexy. There was a style in how one smoked that would be a personal trade mark.

 

Fig_08

Now we know that gas guzzling and smoking are negative while the comfortable gas guzzler and the sexy smoker are positives.  Both are tweaked in the pitch.  Going out on a date to the drive in movies back then was as roomy as a motel room.  Then came air conditioned inside movie theaters and no foreplay room in the front nor rear. 

Now, as then, one can enhance one’s image and social impact with the display of socially significant toys, trinkets, clothes, big boobs, and hard abs.  In Los Angeles one is what one wears on the wrist and what one drives.  In San Francisco it is how, what and where one eats.  In New York it is what one wears, drinks, as well as how fast one seems to be.  In Texas and Chicago all serious business is done behind closed doors, where it belongs.  If you don’t know who or what, you don’t have the clearance to know.

And everywhere it is what comes out of one’s mouth that marks one’s turf. Sort of a dog walk and whiz.   

 

Fig_09

The dog knows what he is doing, and why.  That’s not always the case with us higher animals.

 

Fig_10

Who knows?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3No8Oy3438

 

Fig_11

It helps to know what role the players are playing, plus the knowledge that the role will switch for a payoff.  Lucy gets a win which she wants, while Linus gets a dump which why he went for Lucy’s predictable switch with the football.

A knight and a murderer often use the same tactics, techniques and procedures so which color the other is doesn’t really alter the truth.  Which is why the Drama Triangle is really a circle.

 

Fig_12

The switch between victim, rescuer and prosecutor can be done in a single sentence, and in the current election especially so.  From the darker side of American demagoguery:

 

Fig_13

It boils down to what’s the tar and what’s so cool that it is hot.  The most impressive mix these days is the ad for the latest drug which pictures a picture of health while reading off a list of all the really sick stuff that could happen.  Music in the background.  The mind easily slides past cognitive dissonance without as much as a hiccup. 

 Cialis, and the four hours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMSv0GtzCDk

or “stifficade”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w208VXxwZzI

True Believers don’t lie just because they have up and down mixed up, it’s what they believe that separates them from Liars. Liars know which way is up, but they profit from calling it down. True Believers switch sides because the buzz or payoffs are greater, while the Liar lies when it is to his calculated advantage. It is hard to tell one from the other absent objective data of the subjects at hand.

Coca-Cola includes extracts from Coca leaves for cocaine, and Kola nuts for the caffeine. In 1903, the cocaine was removed from the Coca leaves for making Coca-Cola.  This goes to the everlasting snide commentary about “the Real Thing” that Coke has no coke in it anymore.  Coke was originally sold in drug stores then over drug store counters the last of which disappeared by the Sixties.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDSnjjdGh5M

 

 

Fig_14

Taking the Coke out of Coke is about Power, not Truth.  The word “truth” when stressed with unnecessary trappings, wrappings, bells and whistles are fairly good lie indicators. 

 

Fig_15

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But it doesn’t cure getting out of the rut, grind, routine and dirty diapers. Or the in-laws.  

It takes no brains to see the link between the erection and vitality side to the core of biological survival. Feed and Breed, Paid and Laid, Dinner and a Date, Food and Family.  Decoding transactions (messages, propaganda, etc.) can be done with connecting the Tools, Rules, and Roles to Food and Family and back again: 

Fig_16

The Rules (Sociological) fall into two groups: Social Status and relations with the Physical World. The arm and hand signals work better than another damn acronym.



Sociological Rules

 

Fig_17

Smoking a sexy cigarette (body) in a sexy manner saves Face and hopefully Fame and maybe fortune which would be applied at the Biological level, which in turn delivers Fame as a successful breeder which enhances one’s Face and possibly fortune to buy a set of wheels to cover the Distance over the Ground in less Time.  Smoking while driving a sexy set of wheels was a definitive statement of savoir faire.

Fig_18

In drinking, driving and smoking were (are) at the core of the attractiveness of who gets bred.  The core of politics goes to the successful survival of the bred.  As in Family and the preservation of what was once called a “bloodline”.   The biological center of survival is the interaction of who controls the bloodline as coded in the DNA of the bred. 

The male and female sides of any given species, or part thereof, are addressed in two distinctive strategies.  The male seeks to control the bloodline by excluding any but him.  The female seeks to control the quality of the bloodline through selection of the right male.   A dominant theme in natural selection is competition between males for the female to select the winner.  An alternate (horses and lions) only one male gets to breed, the Stallion and the Simba while the lesser competitive lurk or wander. 

Fig_19

Biological survival of any given bloodline in humans is delicate compared to other animals by the dangers of in-breeding.  Consequently, and instinctively, the female seeks to enrich the bloodline of her part of the brood by adultery.  In response by the male bloodline is to kill the adulterous, as in stoning. If the male doesn’t suffice, another will.  Rape is the reverse of selective breeding by female selection, hence men comprise six sigma of all rapists.  And adultery is a necessary element in preventing in-breeding.  And arranged marriages relied more on issues the smitten could not. 

 

Fig_20

Even though arranged marriages are largely out of flavor today, save in certain sub-continents, the deep investment in who gets to swap whose genes for whom extends to issues other than gene swapping. It goes to deep sense of who “we” are from nuclear family to family of nations.  “They” are the enemy of the purity and essence of vital bodily fluids, so sayeth Sterling Hayden in the role of General Jack Ripper in the movie classic “Dr. Strangelove, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb”. 

Closing scene with Vera Lynn’s “We’ll meet again”, a truly beautiful song. Note the reference to breeding and a mine shaft gap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFkryh6hC-k

 

Fig_21

In this movie, Sterling Hayden plays the role of a True Believer, albeit crazy.  He orders his B-52 Squadron to bomb Russia using a loop hole in the law.  Post this, and double-double checks were made in SAC.  His purpose was to leverage the Murderous side of protecting the Family in accordance with rules (Fate) to break the Body of the Soviets and make them lose Face and Fame. 

 

Fig_22

Elmer Gantry was a liar, Leon Trotsky was a True Believer.   Stalin had Trotsky murdered in Mexico City so much a threat he was to Stalin, a liar.

Gantry plays the (Battering Bastard) aka Murderous parent to cow those seeking a replacement for the Battering Daddy and Manipulative Mother (Bitch) as if disruptive (Brats).   This theme of replicating dysfunctional parenting is very much at the core of True Believer motives.  Themes such as these are found in ISIS, North Korea, and were fundamental in the Soviet Union, Red China under Mao, and Germany under Hitler.

War, however, is serious shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSbPqin3L6E

 

(to be continued)

Gordon S Fowkes

 

 

 

Inverse ISIS Adversity

Inverse ISIS Adversity

Horrible as ISIS psychological operations are, they also open a number of windows on their deepest fears.  The key to understanding this is the Law of the Inverse Attribution Reflex aka LIAR.  The LIAR brags of his weakest virtue and blames others with his strongest vice. 

“The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it.  They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an axe.”  104. Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind.

The massacre and torture of women, children, and any who don’t bow at the right angle is an exemplar of the deepest fears that women, children and non-conformists pose to the faithful.  The same gimmick was used by the Nazi’s against Jews who they accused of being both inferior and a clear and present danger to the Volk.  Folks, it’s one or the other, Inferiors cannot be a danger to those who are superior.  The constant refrain of the Super Race was overcompensation for a deep feeling of inferiority.  

From Wilson's Favorite Flic - Birth of a Nation

The constant rampage against unbelievers by ISIS et al, is in fact a deep fear of the power of unauthorized thought.  If, as a thousand years of Muslim protection of those “Of the Book” (Books of Abraham) showed, that those “of the Book” did not threaten the continued existence of Muslim polities. Why now? 

The constant use of Gitmo Orange is testimony of the devastating threat that Gitmo posed to the terrorist that is presented. If not, some other color would be used, if any.  The necessity of continued use of Gitmo Orange also shows the tricky and resourceful of their greatest fear…orange.

The Soviet Massacre of the bourgeoisie paved the way for the apparatchik who took over the same dachas, wheels, and sycophants. One the revolution is attained, it must be conserved.  The counter-revolutionary is the image of the revolutionary on the flip side of the cycle. Absent any connection with the real world, the cycle goes in circles and nowhere else.

LIAR works within normal parameters, as defined by one standard deviation above and one below the mean. That is Two Sigma. A more precise measurement is readily available for the reader’s verification by taking everyone the reader meets at family gatherings (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Party Day, wedding and funerals) and rank order all in accordance with any useful variable.  The middle two thirds is normal.

LIAR is also a guide for the formation of tactics, techniques, procedures as well as strategies to unleash the power of the weakness against the powerfully weak.  Instead of making super mensch out of ISIS terror, it is to delegitimize fear of the weak as power.  Humor works by making the terrorist a joke, preferably within their own ranks, as such assaults the sense of self-worth.   

The Victim to Victimizer is a cycle tied to Karpman’s concept of the Drama Triangle of victim, rescuer and prosecutor.

This, however requires a villain, whose villainy justifies counter villain extraordinary measures.