It’s been an empty day. I was listening to an interview of a jury member from the Paul Manafort trial, following the guilty verdict. Watching and listening to this woman, her mind seemed as a puzzle. Her eyes and face were in a continuous, jittery motion. She was expressing her sense of honesty about what she ‘knew’, in the integrity of herself, while in a narrow box of court reality.
Her face kept moving in and out of doubt, as if she lived and thought in a continuous movement between honest integrity and ignorance. There was an integrity of belief. I didn’t feel there was depth or consciousness. I would want to know more of her learning process and dialogue with belief; which is the psychological birth place of values and their distortions.
She supports what Donald Trump (DT) appears to stand for; more of feeling based reasoning with a small capacity to alter her feelings when evidence is shown. I don’t understand her psyche, but she concluded that the evidence presented to her was overwhelming, that Paul Manafort’s actions were criminal. She found him guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt.
She has no say in the sentencing of his crimes; the ‘judge’ gave him 47 months in a federal prison. (I’m wondering about the conditions in which he will serve his sentence) That’s four years for stealing and manipulating reason for the explicit purpose of personal gain of hundreds. . . of millions. . . of dollars, conned from public wealth. He is a pathological liar and a crook without any ethical sense. Too bad he wasn’t caught with marijuana or third strike shoplifting. What did that ‘black” man get? How about the guy who couldn’t afford a lawyer?
What’s appalling is his unwillingness to show respect, to example any sense of integrity, as he interacts within the community. Nothing exists outside his own interests. He is a sociopath. It appears his only regret is having been caught. That he could be given a full pardon by DT . . . I’m confused. What is the purpose of having laws if they are not being enforced? What justice can be brought to the social order?
The discrepancy of meaning, value, and action, is almost baffling, except when one enters the domain of money and power; as opposed to “people” crimes. They are not of the same universe. Manafort is a victim, a pathological narcissist, an egocentric soul, so is DT. Then look at the numbers, the proportion of ‘crooks’ found and not prosecuted; a reflection of this pathology of the distortions of wealth and power, of their “me”.
Is this a pathological kind of corruption of meaning, rationalizing as a means of negating reason, in the process of dominating with wealth and power?
Are governing and domination the same thing? Is corruption of truth and the distortion of rational process a requirement for the skills and character of leadership? Don’t question daddy.
Is it the nature of rulership to corrupt reality in order to dominate?
This offense on truth is the distortion of reality in order to dominate others.
It is called “the Con”.
“The Con” is the tool of domination.
Its power is ownership.
The laws of wealth are “the Con”, of self validation. It is the core of power’s agency. It is understood by those who gain, hold, and master the tool of wealth in power’s manipulations through the “reality” of ownership.
I find this an extreme revelation. It arises from a kind of nonlinear deconstruction of what I have been taught, told and instructed to trust, to believe i.e. the principles of integrity. However, the “principles” of rhetoric do not match the reality of application in experience. All the moral propaganda is grouped into “the Con” of ownership of wealth in leadership, distorting truth in order to validate their use, entitlement and possession of power i.e. their “Con”.
The dialogue of wealth and power is a continuing rationalization of “reality”.
The rationalizations of power are the distortions of the ego’s quest and drive to dominate through ownership and control. Truth, principle, and law are distorted to accommodate the pathological appetites of narcissism in the quest for control.
Politics is all about the distance between meaning and purpose, rhetoric and practice. Politics is the distance between truth and reality, the illusion, practice, and promise in the control of the quest of self interest in ownership, power, rhetoric, truth, speech and meaning.
There exists two worlds, one is where we breath and eat, fight and cry, the other is where we pretend we are doing what we believe we know and should impose on our experience with others.