Insanity in every corner in these times of needless war

We have reached unprecedented levels of dysfunction on both the political right and the political left. I agree with each of these conclusions by Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept:

1. New wars will always strengthen Trump: as they do for every leader. 2. Democrats’ jingoistic rhetoric has left them no ability – or desire – to oppose Trump’s wars. 3. In wartime, US television instantly converts into state media. 4. Trump’s bombing is illegal, but presidents are now omnipotent. 5. How can those who view Trump as an Inept Fascist now trust him to wage war? 6. Like all good conspiracy theories, no evidence can kill the Kremlin-controls-Trump tale. 7. The fraud of humanitarianism works every time for (and on) American elites. 8. Support for Trump’s Bombing Shows Two Toxic U.S. Conceits: “Do Something” and “Look Strong” 9. Obama’s refusal to bomb Assad hovers over everything. 10. None of this disproves, obviously, that Hillary Clinton was also a dangerous hawk.

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More Quotes . . .

A good quote is a novel in a sentence or two. That's good payback for impatient people like me, who struggle to sit still long enough to read entire novels. I make a point of collecting engaging quotes wherever I read them, though, and I've published more than 100 groups of quotes over the years here at DI. This group includes quotes originated by two of my friends, Andy Wahl and Dale Irwin.  Here's the latest batch from my collection: “If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.” ― Carl Sagan

When you add it all up, it’s not uncommon for a single child to cost a normal, middle-class family something like $1.1 million, from birth through the undergrad years. To get some perspective, the median price of a home in 2008 was $180,100. It is commonly said that buying a house is the biggest purchase most Americans will ever make. Having a baby is like buying six houses. Except that they don’t increase in value, you can’t sell them and after 16 years they’ll probably say they hate you.
Jonathan Last - Wall Street Journal http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203917304574413792994350108 “Do the next right thing.” - Dale Irwin (Kansas City Attorney).
Psychological discernment is not as difficult as one might think: Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear soon become convinced that mortals cannot keep a secret. He whose lips are sealed talks with his fingertips; disclosure oozes out of his every pore.
- Sigmund Freud "Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria," (1901-5), VI, 148 "Knowledge is learning something new every day. Wisdom is letting go of something every day." - ZEN PROVERB
You can look the other way once, and it's no big deal, except it makes it easier for you to compromise the next time, and pretty soon that's all you're doing; compromising, because that's the way you think things are done. You know those guys I busted? You think they were the bad guys? Because they weren't, they weren't bad guys. They were just like you and me. Except they compromised... Once.
Jack Bauer - From the opening episode of "24," Season One. “Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.” ― Nikola Tesla "I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you." - Paulo Coelho "Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." Henry David Thoreau "Adventure is just bad planning." Roald Amundsen

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Blue Lies Take Center Stage in the Era of Trump

Donald Trump tells numerous easily disprovable lies: an average of 3 false or misleading claims per day for the first 100 days of his presidency. But his followers don't seem to care. I'm not surprised that this technique of telling numerous bald lies works. I've long thought of these utterances as "tribal truths," and I've seen it all my life, especially in the areas of politics and religion. Today I learned another term for this phenomenon: "Blue Lies."

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Americans Need Less Self-Esteem

From Eric Barker's blog: "Research shows self-esteem doesn’t cause all those good things. It’s just a side effect of healthy behavior. So artificially boosting it doesn’t work." From Kristin Neff's Book Self-Compassion:

In one influential review of the self-esteem literature, it was concluded that high self-esteem actually did not improve academic achievement or job performance or leadership skills or prevent children from smoking, drinking, or taking drugs. If anything, high self-esteem appears to be the consequence rather than the cause of healthy behaviors.

What does raising self-esteem do? It probably increases narcissism. So what do we need instead of self-esteem? Self-compassion. Stop lying to yourself that you’re so awesome. Instead, focus on forgiving yourself when you’re not. In my upcoming book I talk about why self-compassion beats self-esteem.

So why does compassion succeed where self-esteem fails? Because self-esteem is always either delusional or contingent, neither of which lead to good things. To always feel like you’re awesome you need to either divorce yourself from reality or be on a treadmill of constantly proving your value. At some point you won’t measure up, which then craters your self-esteem. Not to mention relentlessly proving yourself is exhausting and unsettling. Self-compassion lets you see the facts and accept that you’re not perfect. As famed psychologist Albert Ellis once said, “Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it’s conditional.” People with self-compassion don’t feel the need to constantly prove themselves, and research shows they are less likely to feel like a “loser.”

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