Who's Afraid Of Lil Wayne?
This is a video of Lil Wayne's deposition about some nonsense that is beside the point here.
Big surprise: Lil Wayne doesn't take the proceedings seriously. I know, I had to make sure it was really him, too.
I'm no judge, but he looks like he's in contempt, certainly contemptuous, and at 2:45 makes some serious threats against the lawyer: "you know he [the judge] can't protect you in the real world?"
Watch that part, empathize with the lawyer. How did you feel? Did you feel intimidated?
Note that no one reigns him in, no one stands up to
him, no one ends the interview, no one demands nothing. Part of this is deposition theatrics, but even the attorney's demeanor changes, he starts acting the way a person who doesn't want to show he's intimidated starts acting. He gets flustered, he pauses, he backs up. Wayne is 5'4" and by all accounts has chronic bronchitis, but everyone is intimidated by him. Why?
II.
If you met Lil Wayne in a dark alley and he said, "He can't protect you," you would probably wonder who this maniac was talking about and run. But if you were a lawyer at a deposition, you'd be way less scared, and that's because not only are you in a safe environment, but it's your environment, your "frame"-- you have all the power, and he has no power except some assorted Constitutional rights which we all know don't apply to black people anyway. (NB: "black people" is code for "rappers.") If you follow this, then the question simply is, why would you be scared at all? What exists inside you that still surfaces even in the safety of infinite power?
"He might slap you with a bag of weed." There is that.
The first fear is an instinctual one: the lawyer could physically fight back if he had to, but when he looks into those cold eyes, he has a sense that there are no limits, everything is on the table-- from insults to decapitation, anything could happen. That's the fear of the uncanny, which we experience outside of a horror movie when we face: masks, artificial faces, psychopaths, and even ordinary objects which we are told are uncanny (mirrors, basement freezers.) "I don't know what he's capable of" means "I know very well what he's capable of, and it's everything."
That's the kind of fear that fits a street fight, but it has no place in a court; he may want to decapitate you, but he won't be able to. So why are you afraid?
III.
The interesting thing about being taught that violence is wrong is that of all the lessons we were taught-- no means no, all men are created equal, a bird in the hand is something something-- that lesson actually stuck, it became part of our core identity. Most "normal" people aren't afraid of the consequences of violence (pain) as much as of the violence itself. Fighting itself is bad. The lawyer isn't afraid of getting hurt, he is afraid of there being a fight. Wayne may be the aggressor but the voice inside asks, "what did you do to provoke him? Why didn't you stay away from him?" This fear is so primary that the lawyer backs down from Wayne for Wayne's sake, not to avoid getting hit but so Wayne doesn't have to hit him. Wayne is feared not because he's good at winning fights but because he's good at starting fights, and its oddly been indoctrinated in us that it is everyone else's job not to provoke fights with those you know will fight, even if you're in the right.
I want to point out how this dichotomy is very much predicated on a difference between people, not a sameness, and it's felt to be part of the hardware, not the software. There's you, who "knows better", and there's him, who "fights", and that's just the way it is. And since you "know better" it's your responsibility to not let this get out of hand. Pro-gun proponents can be seen as the logical consequence of this position: ok, I'll accept your societal commandment not to fight, but I want to preserve my right not to have to back down, either. The sad, logical retort to this, and I'm going to term it the "liberal" position not because I'm slamming liberals but because it comes from a place of compassion, though, when I write this out explicitly, is really just a kind of kind of classism: "it's best just to back down from them... because that's they way thems are."
There's your analogy for America's ((silently) passive-) (loudly lamented (but secretly feared)) aggressive post Cold War approach to all other countries. The nested parentheses aren't because I'm a terrible writer, but because those kind of modifications and redoublings are how we unconsciously justify doing things we know we shouldn't-- we modify our positions not to do something but after we have done them. Narcissism can be confusing, the hint is that it operates outside of time.
If you think this fear/foreign policy explains our reticence to attack other countries, you've misunderstood: it just means we don't like being in fights, it doesn't mean we don't like other people being in fights for us. Hence: "allies in the region"; volunteer army; UN Peacekeepers; "adverserial legal system"; talking heads yelling at each other on TV. That's how we work. Chechnyans are violent; Americans are violent by proxy.
But the specific point is the premise upon which this all rests: guy A may be afraid of guy B, but he is more deeply afraid of the existence of a fight; and the only reason he'd be more afraid of "the fight" is if he felt on some level that fighting was wrong, and he could only have learned that from somewhere, was taught it.
To get people to be more afraid of fighting, even in self-defense, than the physical pain of an assault takes a lot of years of training, good thing we jump on it early.
First off: associate getting hit with guilt. Even if it's not your fault, it
is still felt like it's your fault, and this
can be verified by every woman in a domestic relationship, which is why they stay. This isn't
innate, we learn this: your parents hit you only when you do something "wrong"; parents separate their fighting kids, "both of you go to your rooms!"; a schoolyard fight is never judged according to fault, the
school punishes both people equally; "zero tolerance" says the
institution that cares nothing about justice, only the preservation of
power. "Nothing gives you the right to hit another person!" Nothing? Seriously?
The only people who learn that getting hit isn't synonymous with guilt are those who get hit inconsistently, randomly-- having older brothers, abusive parents, constant fights with other kids in the neighborhood, etc.
You'll observe a certain characteristic true of all bullying: the victim
never fights back at all. He takes his beating, as if to show that he can take it, his strength is in not being broken. Why not at least throw a few weak punches? This is why the terrible father's
typical advice to his bullied son, over the protestations of his useless wife-- "stand up for yourself! Just punch him back, and he won't
bother you again!"-- is absolutely correct yet impossible to execute. The problem
isn't that the kid is afraid of the bully only, he's (more)
afraid of the system-- that he'll get in trouble if he fights back, or that he doesn't trust that system to protect him if he fights
back and the bully escalates. The parents and school raised the kid to instinctively be ruled by the system, and now suddenly they are
advising him to rebel? The bully's doesn't have this fear, he has already opted out of the system. And so the victim, after getting beat up, hears how it was his fault: "You know he's a jerk, why did you go near him? Just stay away from him." (6)
This is why, on the day that the victim does, finally, "fight back", it isn't by squaring off and throwing an uppercut-- it's overly violent, vicious, excessive, and that's not because he needs to overcome the bully but the bully and the system that in effect was protecting the bully, the system that controls the way he sees the world.
It's very difficult/impossible to
raise a kid to be in the system, yet teach him also to fight
against that system "sometimes." That was one of the problems with OWS, you can't shut down Wall Street if you have two credit cards in your back pocket. The only way to do this is if you try, on purpose, to raise your kid to be a little bit sociopathic. I realize that this seems like strange advice coming from a psychiatrist, but I'm not a very good psychiatrist. Also, I drink.
The only way to make kids understand that there are
legitimate times when they must operate outside the prevailing system
is by teaching them that there are even higher systems. (1) I don't
specifically mean religion, but some kind of higher ethical duty; for lack of a better term I'll call it a strong superego; which says, without needing to explicitly define every case, "there's a right and a wrong, and you know what it is." (2)
IV.
Somewhat off topic: why do so many "nice" (read: white) teenage girls get horned up over Lil Wayne? "Rebellion against the father?" Assuming she even lived with a father, most fathers aren't rebellion worthy, there are very few staid, formal men with fixed rules requiring breaking. The likely explanation is more instinctual: extremes in appearance signify "the man underneath"-- a secret vulnerability, a tenderness, that will be given only to the one person who "sees" it (never mind a million other girls are seeing it). This is an idea that young women instinctively believe in, that the "ugly" (though to them it's hot) exterior is a mask that must necessarily cover a beautiful interior, in the same way that a "good" young girl, aware that how she looks and acts is a put on hiding her own secret "darkness" (specifically: unlike every other girl in the world, she likes penis), so she assumes that what's on the outside must be the opposite of the inside, until you're over 40 and then inside=outside=soot. Teen boys, with their own identity confusion, meet the girls half way ("you don't know the real me... my secret darkness..." A man with one side tough and one side tender is pretty
much a female fantasy, i.e. it no longer exists, except in rappers
(rappers is code for black people) and serial killers (and s2 of Dexter is the male version of this adolescent fantasy acted out with knives.)
V.
What's
makes this video an example of the consequences of American (=debt based capitalism) parenting is that the lawyer
has the advantage of years as a lawyer--AS the system, with all its
power-- and yet has that momentary lapse back into a childhood position of
scared kid facing a bully. Think Narcissus: nothing before age 26 made that kind of a kid strong, he never earned his power-- he went through the motions, gravity carried him towards the power that was literally handed to him upon graduation, and he believed in it because he had no reason not to. But in that moment with Wayne, we see that his identity as
lawyer is put on, a role, which lies on top of the kind of person who
still gets intimidated by physical strength, by bullies-- i.e., a kid who was raised in Nicetown, America by otherwise good parents, completely free of any tests that would teach him what kind of a man he was. "I'm a good student." Oh, you should tell Wayne that.
That power of being a lawyer isn't inherent in being a lawyer, it only exists if everyone else believes you have it, and Wayne chose not to believe it, so the lawyer didn't have it.
The whole fight is taking place inside both men's heads, which is why Wayne is winning. So how could the lawyer get over his fear, what would he have to do to not be intimidated?
Flip the question: how is it possible for someone with no
power (Wayne) to be able to scare those with more power? The answer is
to do what Wayne does instinctively: make the fight into a different
kind of fight. He doesn't accept his "role" as defendant, as someone
at the mercy of the court's rules. Wayne doesn't just not let himself
be intimidated by the lawyer, he doesn't see him as a lawyer, as an
agent of a larger, massively powerful structure that could crush him
into oblivion. He sees him as a bad of soot he could easily punch. And because the lawyer's power was given to him by the court-- the lawyer doesn't see it as really who he is (he doesn't believe in roles, but identity)-- it is, essentially, paper mache, and Wayne's blows right through it. Wayne makes him doubt himself and his power, and so he responds as a powerless man.
If that seems too theoretical to you, think about it this way: the reason the lawyer chuckles, pauses, his inflection changes, and he asks silly questions (3) isn't just because he is intimidated, but also because the lawyer doesn't want to appear intimidated of Wayne. As if to show he's a man, he tries to meet Wayne halfway, on his terms, he defers to Wayne's power but tries to laugh it off. He tries to pretend that, as a man, he's not afraid of Wayne. That's why it fails. As a man, he is afraid of Wayne, but as a lawyer, he has nothing to fear. Where's the shame in getting beat up by Lil Wayne (never mind the pain)? But that's the lawyer's instinct: not to be seen as weak.
What the lawyer should have done is take control of the context, retreat deeper into the role of agent of the court with all the power. "It doesn't matter if you can beat me up, it doesn't matter if you don't recognize the strength of the court, it exists, and I have it." In other words, to take his physical weakness as a given but irrelevant: so you can beat me up, so what? (4)
-----
1. Note that the message to overthrow a prevailing system, e.g. the government, is in the Declaration Of Independence (following Locke) not just as a right but as an obligation; and it is only able to do this by appealing to "fundamental" rights, "natural law." The point here isn't to argue whether there is a natural laws, only to show a higher system was explicitly codified to facilitate being (from the system's perspective) "sociopathic."
2. The danger, of course, is in the balance between defining and not defining, i.e. if this higher system or superego is not well defined enough, does not possess its own rigid rules or internal logic, then one runs the risk of creating an Enslaved God-- a narcissistic excuse for breaking the lower order rules because it benefits you. ("Stealing is wrong, but in this case...")3. Either this lawyer isn't very good, or he really was intimidated. Protip: never ask "do you recall..." because a legitimate answer is "no." It should have been straight facts ("did you... is this...?") This is a deposition, not a trial, so as long as this lawyer gets all the facts out and forces Wayne to admit to whatever it is this case is about, he can move for summary judgment and that's the game. But instead of focusing on facts and forcing Wayne to declare his position relative to those facts, he's meandered into the nebulous world of "identity", and has inadvertently made Wayne look interesting, legitimate, authentic-- Wayne is just being Wayne, after all-- thereby helping Wayne's case. You will observe how many comments on the video are pro-Wayne, even though Wayne is unimaginably hatable in this (and all other) videos.
And, continuing from "I am an agent of the court, I have all the power" it is his responsibility to ask the judge to deal with Wayne-- in not doing so, he showed considerable weakness. If you want a TV analogy, here's two: when they depict a psychiatric hospital, the doctor says, "please give the patient this injection" and then the big orderlies/techs have to do the nasty business of restraint, but this doesn't make the doctor appear weak, it makes him appear even more powerful. In this analogy, the judge is the orderly. Second example: the woman who manages to get a gun during the scuffle and points it at the nasty serial killer, only to panic, "stop right there or I'll shoot! I mean it!"-- which serves only to reveal that she is not going to shoot, not intentionally; so as long as the murderer makes no sudden moves he can calmly walk up to her and take the gun, using her ambivalence and fear against her. In this analogy, the judge is the gun. Shoot, stupid.(5)
4. Strategy: Wayne would have lost all his ground if the lawyer had been a woman.
5. The rule for ambivalence (as distinct from questions/decisions/problems) is that it is never resolved by thought, only by action, and that the action chosen is irrelevant.
6. You'll also observe something that you learned completely backwards. If a bully beats you up, it's even worse if you tell on him, if you're a tattle tale, it reveals you to be less of a man (or kid.) But think about this for a second: where did you learn that you'd be less of a man? From the bully. In other words, that threat is entirely for the bully's benefit, it in no way reflects anyone else's reality, yet you bought into it completely. Why? And the answer is that, in the bully's system, in the bully's "frame", telling is a sign of weakness, worse than getting beat up; and since you have agreed to operate in his system, since you have agreed to operate by his rules (say, a fist fight you could never win), in those rules if you don't tell, you at least retain your dignity. Which of course you don't, the whole thing is madness-- to anyone not inside that system. I take this diversion to show you the immense power of "the system" on: how you act, what you want, what you value, what you fear. If narcissism can be spun into something positive-- let's call it stoicism-- the lesson is that your fears and desires have nothing to do with the object before you and everything to do with the "system" you've chosen to be in. (I'd make a pornography reference here, but I'll save it for the book.) My advice to everyone smaller than me (the higher order system) is to always fight back and always defend your neighbors, regardless of the cost.
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October 5, 2012 11:20 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Great post. I had a comment, but decided I would have to watch the vid to make sure to be accurate.
My first thought: the lawyer is in a world of constructed statuses, and believes in this world. The lawyer is 'lawyer.' The interviewee is 'celebrity.' The 'lawyer' believes the 'celebrity' is a super duper guy. The 'lawyer' tucks his tail and gets humped.
Now, watching, I see this more clearly. This is a stupid interview (stupid meaning 'dumb and ridiculous,' not 'freaky' as the woman in the bday party).
I would only talk to my own minor children this way. Under certain circumstances. Mostly to annoy them with a reminder of my power so they would be discouraged from me pulling the power thing in the future.
No one interviews anyone this way unless you are trying to be some imagined, desirable competent person.
Like a lot of rookie therapists. They get all precise-and-perfect sounding. Clients recognize this immediately.
So, I think the most ridiculous aspect of this interview is the lawyer trying to be super-lawyer, and buying into the world of image, gets the smack-down from a person who is extremely comfortable in the world of image, partly because his world of image has melded with his world of who he actually is: he is high, and a celebrity, he has grown up knowing he cannot tuck tail or he will get humped, and he really doesn't have that much to fear: outcomes are either going to be minor or an eventuality, so why tuck tail and get humped?
Also, a final observation: this bullying issue is similar for the threat-of-lawsuit gambit - which I have seen played out a couple times lately - I will be tentative and say there could be a relationship between the threat-of-lawsuit and narcissism.
Score: 36 (40 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 12:10 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Although it sounds like medsvstheraphy is a dick to his/her kids, s/he almost makes a really good point about Wayne being more comfortable in 'the world of image'. Lil Wayne joined his first record label at nine. He left school at 14 to go pro, and released his first album at 15. He went platinum at 17. He's absolutely comfortable with the camera and the audio recording because he's probably being recorded more often than not. The lawyer and the judge, though, don't have that experience. Lil Wayne makes a point of indicating the difference in status by asking the lawyer's name from him and the judge. "You knew me before I walked in here. I've been here half an hour and still don't remember you." The lawyer and quite probably the judge too know that this is going on c-span and youtube at least, if not the evening news/HuffPo, but since they don't already have mass-established identities, they have to play it safe. Better to be the bumbling but very lawyerly lawyer, the understated but present judge, than to try to showboat and blow it. If you ask the orderlies to restrain the nutjob, and they refuse because they're afraid of getting heavy *on camera*, the nutjob isn't going to attack the orderlies, but he has less to fear because everybody already knows he's a nutjob. If the other nutjobs and your kids see the video of the system not backing you up, of you not even having the power the system gave you, you better learn to like poutine and move to Canadia. The part of the interaction you missed, Alone, is the camera.
(But you're right about this act not working on a woman, especially a grandmotherly one.)
Score: 21 (33 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 12:30 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"He can't protect you in the real world"
The lawyer was doing a horrible job of questioning Wayne and needed the judge to step in several times to help move the process along. Wayne's comment wasn't a threat of violence so much as reminding the lawyer that outside of the courthouse ie "real world", there would be no judge or arbitrator to step in and help him deal with adversity and/or his own incompetence.
The lawyer definitely took it as a threat of violence, and Lil Wayne seemed happy to use his persona (scary black guy) and play along but the core message wasn't "I'm going to punch you in the face". It was "When you find out your wife has been getting her jollies from your couch-dwelling jock brother because he knows more positions then just missionary, Judge Stevens isn't going to fix it".
Score: 19 (37 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 1:31 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Interesting to me that Wayne's threat is veiled. So he is playing by the rules of the system somewhat, even if he's gaming it. What if he had made a sudden move, quickly stood up out of his chair with a lunge? What if he had just said, "if I had you outside of this courtroom I would beat your ass until you couldn't tell it from your face?"
He knows what would have happened. So in some ways he was acquiescing to the power. The lawyer just didn't know how to take advantage of that.
Score: 27 (31 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 2:39 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"I don't specifically mean religion"
Why do people spend their whole lives being mad at God for not existing?
Score: -8 (46 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 4:08 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
"The lawyer just didn't know how to take advantage of that."
Yeah, a worthier opponent could turn that sort of bluster into something mortifying for Wayne. The most effective response would have not only called him on the emptiness of the threat but done so in a way that drew attention to what that hollowness said about Wayne in the role he was trying to invoke. You can imagine the actual words, but the message is, "Actually, I believe in my role as a lawyer; indeed, moreso than either of us believe in yours as a man."
For TLP, you generally can't be held in contempt of court unless you're in court, not just at a deposition. Some jurisdictions may have exceptions, but I don't think California (where this happened) does.
Score: 11 (15 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 4:23 PM | Posted by : | Reply
In the Napolean of Notting Hill, the protagonist defends his little neighborhood against eminent domain-wielding fat cats, by literally fighting them.
"Oh, you kings, you kings!" cried out Adam, in a burst of scorn. "How humane you are, how tender, how considerate! You will make war for a frontier, or the imports of a foreign harbour; you will shed blood for the precise duty on lace, or the salute to an admiral. But for the things that make life itself worthy or miserable—how humane you are! I say here, and I know well what I speak of, there were never any necessary wars but the religious wars. There were never any just wars but the religious wars. There were never any humane wars but the religious wars. For these men were fighting for something that claimed, at least, to be the happiness of a man, the virtue of a man. A Crusader thought, at least, that Islam hurt the soul of every man, king or tinker, that it could really capture. I think Buck and Barker and these rich vultures hurt the soul of every man, hurt every inch of the ground, hurt every brick of the houses, that they can really capture. Do you think I have no right to fight for Notting Hill, you whose English Government has so often fought for tomfooleries? If, as your rich friends say, there are no gods, and the skies are dark above us, what should a man fight for, but the place where he had the Eden of childhood and the short heaven of first love? If no temples and no scriptures are sacred, what is sacred if a man's own youth is not sacred?"
It's a fantasy, but the fantastic thing is not that there was a lunatic who fought for something silly, but that the fat cats fought him in the streets. And within the story, the fact that they fought is recognized by the protagonist as a victory even greater than that won in battle.
"Do you not see that it is the glory of our achievement that we have infected the other cities with the idealism of Notting Hill? It is we who have created not only our own side, but both sides of this controversy. O too humble fools, why should you wish to destroy your enemies? You have done something more to them. You have created your enemies."
The other (too) fantastic thing is that the bullies are not backed by the awful power of the state, as the bullied child suspects they often are.
You are too charitable when you say the lawyer backs down so Mr. Wayne doesn't have to hit him. The idea that that is the appropriate and mature response is probably part of it, but also there is the part that says "I'm not getting smacked/embarrassed over this, it's not my job." When this happens in a courtroom it's mildly amusing. It is less so in Mr. Wayne's real world as one coward at a time chaos prevails over cosmos, because fighting is never the right thing to do. Which is really a shame because when the entity whose job it is to fight gets involved, nobody wins, least of all the Mr. Waynes, and it still won't be justice.
Score: 7 (15 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 4:31 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Great post. Lots to think about.
I'll also point out one irony. Wayne is the one who sued Quincy Jones III. His lawsuit is the reason he was being deposed. I found it funny that he's trying to work against the system while he was the one who turned towards the system in the first place.
Score: 34 (36 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 4:46 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I didn't interpret Wayne threatening to come across the conference table. Saying "in the real world" implies the threat is next week when the attorney is walking to his car from his office.
Score: 12 (20 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 5:28 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Jim said it well. While the points about power struggle and society's paralyzing view of fighting=bad is valid, equally valid is the impossible-to-ignore fact that Lil Wayne is crazy and isn't bound by any internal sense of what is right and wrong. So while the lawyer may have been safe in the court, he certainly isn't safe outside. And that's exactly what Lil Wayne was alluding to. "I'm going to get you outside of this courtroom. You're safe for now."
It's not that he can beat the lawyer up, it's that his demeanor suggests he will kill, and he's got plenty of time, money, useful idiots etc. to pull it off. That IS scary and would throw most people off, wouldn't it?
Score: 15 (25 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 5:43 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Does analysis change if you note that Wayne is the plaintiff in a civil action? He's an ass, yes... but he's the one requesting the system step in and do right by him. The attorney asking questions is defending the guy (Quincy Jones, III) who allegedly wronged Wayne. To Wayne, the attorney is a proxy for Jones rather than for the System.
Maybe that doesn't change the overall argument with regard to fear of fighting versus fear of injury, but it can change the recourse the attorney feels he has. In other words, the attorney is not representing the system; he is representing the guy who made Wayne look like an ass.
Here are two alternative reasons why this attorney could act the way he did that don't have anything to do with a fear of fighting:
1) he thinks his client is in the wrong and he does not feel that he has the support of the system (genuine fear of injury),
2) Lil Wayne is feeding into whatever persona he was portrayed with in the documentary (strategy).
I never saw the documentary at issue, but while Wayne is suing over music rights, his public complaints are also over the "scandalous portrayal". If the music rights were not given then maybe the only recourse is to make Wayne look like an ass and hope for a jury that will refuse to support that kind of a person.
Also, Wayne's got crazy eyes... and lots of money. What's to say he won't (pay someone to) do something to this attorney in a year? Other than the fact he is not doing anything to Jones besides sue him a couple of times.
Despite the alternative reasons for the attorneys actions, if the attorney sets Wayne off and Wayne gets violent what happens? The best case scenario is that the attorney takes a beating and doesn't fight back.
Imagine if Wayne jumps across the table and the attorney beats the hell out of him? Wayne is dejected, loses the respect of his fans, but still has lots of money. Wayne can sue the guy, bring him up in front of the ethics committee, blah blah blah. Basically Wayne makes the guy's life a mess. That assumes Wayne has a career after losing a fight to an attorney. With no career Wayne hires a couple of guys with less than he has to shoot the attorney.
If the attorney fights back, then Wayne can really wail on him. Wayne's image is at stake. He beats the attorney to a pulp, spends a few years in prison, gets out, and goes triple platinum.
Yes, this is basically what the LP is saying went on in the attorney's head, i.e. he's more afraid of the eventual result of being in a fight than the injury from a fight. The difference is, the LP says this is a way of thinking internalized as kids rather than the way society is structured for adults too.
Score: 5 (15 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 6:43 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I dunno, what I see is that these are two guys trading on image, and thus it was all about us watching on the camera, not about whether or not Wayne was scaring the lawyer. He was trading on celebrity fame and trying to give the image in court to remind jurors who might later read the transcript will be reminded of Wayne. While a good lawyer would probably want a judge to reign that in, the problem is that if he comes off as not likeable, it might help Wayne, who is just being Wayne. It might even give more credibility to his case, as it would sound like what we imagine Wayne to sound like.
Not about the lawyer or the bully, it's about media perception. The lawyer wasn't bullied, he was played.
Score: 0 (8 votes cast)
October 5, 2012 10:58 PM | Posted by : | Reply
This is the wimpiest and least competent lawyer I have ever heard. I don't think he's intimidated by the defendant so much as inexperienced in ever questioning a witness. Or, at least, the defendant has more experience in being questioned.
I didn't pick up on the intimidation you describe; what I heard was someone who had chosen plan A and when it failed, had no plan B, so he just keeps going with A even though it will be unfruitful.
Score: 7 (9 votes cast)
October 6, 2012 4:38 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Hmmm....I wanted to see how I'd read a fresh TLP post while drunk. And now I respond as such. Yay.
So I'm reminded of middle school and my first fight. A girl beat the shit out of me with a bat beside a highway bridge and after knocking the wind out of me a couple times and some random person shouting at us, leading me to stumbling away to the side of the high way crying on the ground hiding on the side of cars speeding past me 10 feet away at 60mph, my mom had little else to say besides "well, take a day off and I'll go down to the school friday but you need to fight back". So breakfast of the next time I'm in school I went to your extreme and pulled her down by her hair and and kicked her face in till she was crushed and bloodied nad the obese school-mall-cop tackled me down.
School policy dictated that since we were nearly done with middle school I just be sent to reform for the remainder of it all and she transferred or something. Reform is fun because everyone is either idiots or pregnant or both so by virtue of being willing to read any book I was the smartest of them all. Shame is relative I guess.
But knowing that sort of actual pain and fear *not just the threat) helped a bit later because any threat later on was binary. “Hey, I get your pseudo-threat here but are you gonna actually punch me? NO? Yes? Ok, let’s get on with it or not.” I think that flips most soley-verbal bullies off a bit. Physical bullies still liked to fight but that’s just a story on how being taller than others and having abusive older brothers helps in knowing weak points.
ANYWAY! I’m unimportant and so is that story. The moment Wayne started staring at his nails talking about some random stupid party and the lawyer didn’t immediately interrupt with “I didn’t ask about what stupid bitchs’ party you were at” he lost. I’ve seen students talk to teachers like this (also I’m Mexican in america and so is everyone I knew before I turned 18 so that minority status might…”I don’t know”). Teachers would either cut that kid off half-way and send him to detention or end up buckling like the lawyer and breakdown crying half way through the semester. We all knew what kind of teacher was which within the first class. Racism mean minorities hold any form of authority as suspect.
Score: 21 (27 votes cast)
October 6, 2012 4:55 AM | Posted by : | Reply
" The problem isn't that the kid is afraid of the bully only, he's (more) afraid of the system-- that he'll get in trouble if he fights back, or that he doesn't trust that system to protect him if he fights back and the bully escalates. "
This right here is why I spent eight years as the butt of the school district. It's not that I couldn't have fought back; it's that Fighting Meant Punishment. And it didn't matter who started it. And the meatheads who were picking on me didn't care if they got punished, and I did. And next week the meathead is back in the hallway and so are you.
The lesson to teach your kids in how to deal with bullies is not that they should work with the system, but that the system doesn't care about them. Most of the system sees itself as zookeepers, and as long as the monkeys are quiet they figure they're doing their job well.
Score: 28 (28 votes cast)
October 6, 2012 5:00 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
vandal says: "But knowing that sort of actual pain and fear *not just the threat) helped a bit later because any threat later on was binary."
TLP says: "how is it possible for someone with no power (Wayne) to be able to scare those with more power? The answer is to do what Wayne does instinctively: make the fight into a different kind of fight."
These two statements fit together. Not only does Wayne make it into his kind of fight, he makes it into a kind of fight that he's lost. He already knows how bad it can get and how bad it can hurt, and he knows that it'll suck but he'll get over it. The lawyer? No clue. And, more than that, he's more scared of finding out than of backing down.
That said, neither the lawyer nor the judge are likely to ever see Wayne again. But that judge will see that lawyer again, most likely, and if the lawyer starts some shit then that judge will remember the lawyer as The Guy Who Starts Shit. And, see TLP's post for what our society thinks of Guys Who Start Shit.
Score: 5 (9 votes cast)
October 6, 2012 9:36 AM | Posted by : | Reply
This sort of explains why bullying is so much more frequent in the US compared to Europe.
Score: -3 (11 votes cast)
October 6, 2012 9:43 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Wow TLP. Sounding more and more like the old, grumpy white guy with each new post. What next, black kids ball in your well manicured lawn?
The whole post can be summed up with your partial sentence, "empathize with the lawyer." NOT OWS, or Lil Wayne or Rage against the machine or whatever is the flavor of the weeks post.
Yes. Because the predominately white legal system doesn't pick fights (nor the power structure behind it). No. No. And especially not with members of the black community. Lawyers are blind, justice league fighters. Sure the one in this video is especially inept but otherwise a do gooder. Part of the do gooder system that is being destroyed by... narcissistic parenting. Do I get a prize?
Is your theory seriously using as freight the idea that an inner city black male DOESN'T understand the lawyer represents a powerful system that could crush him?
That if the lawyer was better, a woman or you that his contempt for the system would check itself before it wrecked itself?
As to the offensive veiled threat... This reminds me of the media and therefor most of the "publics" outrage over Obama's pastor, Wright. Whose sermons just flustered conservatives right out of their sunday best. You don't get it, because it's not for you.
Oh, thats right, that phrase ONLY applies to well off whites who comment on blogs, endlessly. Kind of like the legal system. Kind of like America. Its just for them. But at least your honest that you have a vested interest in NOT seeing yourself or your system as the bully. No. You can't possibly be the bully not even by proxy. No way.
And now the army of clones will tell me how I just proved TLP's uniquely deep thoughts true.
Score: -20 (50 votes cast)
October 6, 2012 4:01 PM | Posted by : | Reply
The following post does not have relevance to the above article. However some interesting recent medical studies on the atypical antipsychotics and their side effects, and treatments for these areas are listed below.
(1) "Atypical antipsychotics and the neural regulation of food intake and the peripheral metabolism" Karen Teff; Sangwon Kim.
(2)" Role of the histaminergic H1 and H3 receptors in food intake: a mechanism for..[.Pro Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psyhciatry"]
(3)" Novel Insulin sensitizer drug candidate-BGP-15 can prevent metabolic side effects of atypical antipsychotics."
(4) "A potential role for adjunctive vitamin D therapy in the management of weight gain and metabolic side effects of second generation antipsychotics."
(5) "overcoming insulin resistance with ciliary neurotrophic factor."
(6) "The HSP co-inducer BGP-15 can prevent metabolic side effects of the atypical antipsychotics."
(7) "Atypical antipsychotics rapdily and inapproriately switch peripheral fuel utilization to lipids, impairing metabolic flexibility in rodents."
(8) "Olanzapine increases cell miotic activity and oligodendrocyte - lineage cells in the hypothalamus."
Score: -2 (10 votes cast)
October 6, 2012 7:01 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Well, the lawyer has exposed Lil Wayne's lack of right and wrong, without having to say he's mentally ill, all according to scripted legal procedure. Plus, Lil Wayne is black and the system is racist.
The system will probably say the lawyer is the winner.
Score: -4 (6 votes cast)
October 6, 2012 7:21 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
way to completely miss the point.
did you even read the post before commenting? please try again.
Score: 6 (10 votes cast)
October 7, 2012 12:34 AM | Posted by : | Reply
People are afraid to fight back because the Police will ride on in in their cars and arrest them. Because, most of the time, the police are buddies of the people doing the bullying.
A college kid when I was in college shot and killed someone he didn't know who broke down his door after midnight and beat him up. After doing that, the man stole a keg of beer(that some sluts had told him was theirs). When the college kid who had his house broken into and had been beaten up pointed a loaded gun at the thug and said drop the keg, the thug preceded to leave the house WITH THE KEG. Cause, much like the "proud grandmother" who makes a grab for a town-hall shooters gun, he can't possibly imagine anyone daring to fight back against the police's special little boy.
The bullet punched a hole right through his heart and the thug died on the lawn.
The whole town fell into howling rage. The thug's dad said "my son is a hero" and it was taken seriously. The college kids friends all said "I could see why he was scared by NOTHING JUSTIFIES TOUCHING ONE OF THE POLICES SPECIAL LITTLE BOYS." And so one and so fourth.
The lawyer in the video is concerned that he may die on a lawn with a hole in his heart. And even if the whole town falls into lunatic raving about "how he was a hero", he will still be dead.
Yes, yes, I agree that it is the college kids and Lil Wayne's OBLIGATION to only use the absolute minimum level of violence to protect themselves. Sure they will still be arrested and put in jail by the police.... but YOU WILL FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT. And that's what they should all be aiming for. DOES IT MAKE YOU HAPPY?
Score: 3 (7 votes cast)
October 7, 2012 12:39 AM | Posted by : | Reply
And yes, the college kid was immediately charged with, I believe, 2nd degree murder. I think it might have been 1st degree in keeping with whether someone has actually committed a crime of not having no effect on them being charged with it.
The police rambled about how he "wasn't really beaten up". And all sorts of other things.
And, to answer any and all retarded nonsense defending the police. DO YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THUG HAD BROKEN DOWN SOMEONE'S DOOR AND BEATEN THEM UP?
No?
CORRECT.
So why wasn't he in jail?
You know why.
Score: 9 (11 votes cast)
October 7, 2012 2:59 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Hmm...I agree. But there's something I think is ignored a bit in both you and TLP about Wayne, black people, awkward lawyers and white people.
This fight, a physical fight between Wayne and that lawyer, is physically impossible in this universe and not just on the lawyers part. Wayne would never fight the white lawyer out of fear from the judge. Or a cop.
I remember in high school there were maybe 2 white boys out of the mix of mostly mexicans and blacks. They were mostly teased and made fun of but never a hand laid on them. Sure they were probably threatened more than the average student but were in 0 fights whereas most of us were in at least one or two at some point. Why? You punch a white kid and you aren't sent to detention, you're sent to reform or sued by white parents or some more extreme retaliation. Two mexican kids punching each other is whatever. A black and mexican kid fighting is a race issue but whatever. A white and black kind fighting is 9 o'clock news. So just don't bother. It's not worth it.
But if a white person gets in your face, threatens you, something (I don't know why, he's crazy or some shit). As a poor whatever you have to not look like a punk and take the risk and get sent wherethehellever. Or look like a punk and the illusion is broken. So you threaten them first so they won't bother and it won't have to escalate to the fight. We all know white people never get in fights, we all know they're more afraid of getting in them than actually being hit, all black gang members saw Fight Club and wondered "what? white people need a club to fight? and they want to cause they feel pussified? I'll take notes and mention it at the next jump". Most sensible minorities would rather punch their grandma instead of a white guy.
Score: 13 (21 votes cast)
October 7, 2012 11:31 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"He can't save you in the real world."
"Well it's a good thing we're in Neverland, Wayne. Answer the question."
Score: 17 (19 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 4:32 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Not (particularly) related to this post, but to this blog in general:
I think I had a minor epiphany today, and it felt like the sort of thing Alone is always talking about, so I figured I'd share. A friend who's in med school has been doing a rotation in the ghetto, and is horrified by conditions there. They asked "Why don't they riot? Like, just go downtown and start taking hostages?"
The first obvious answer is experience--better police methods, strong evidence (from L.A., Giuliani-era New York, etc.) that we won't put up with that shit anymore.
But the "new" thought I had was that we've put a fuck-ton of work into making them believe they've "got a chance", *and they're buying it*. Everything from the UNCF to the stupid Foundation for a Better Tomorrow (and if that doesn't sound like a super-villain's outfit...) billboards is aimed not at helping 'hood peeps, or getting us to help them, but at convincing them that *they might be helped*. It's making them buy into the "there are no poor people in America, only temporarily inconvenienced millionaires" game. Consider the focus on rags-to-riches stories in the media, and who they're usually about.
To put it another way, Cromer (British governor of Egypt) famously said he could keep the country perfectly peaceful if he could hang one man of his choice each year. I think we're trying to do it by giving one man at random a million dollars--or suggesting we might.
(I think the most direct link to one of Alone's pieces is to the one on Social Securiry disability payments.)
Thoughts?
Score: 2 (12 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 5:09 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Great post!
De Ming
http://richerthanyourboss.com/the-super-psychologist-eguide/
Score: -5 (7 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 5:49 AM | Posted by : | Reply
"I'm no judge"
Sweet Butt-chugging Jesus, thank god you aren't. You'd be a terrible one, not only because you're a sloppy thinker, but you're an exquisitely deluded victim of the perverse psychological contours of human behavior which only you can divine from the ether. Let's call it TLP's burden. The burden of profound bullshit.
Nobody in that clip is intimidated by Lil Wayne, especially not the attorney deposing him. In fact, his threats and obfuscation play right in the case the defendants will make -- that Lil Wayne is untrustworthy, forgetful, and lacks credibility, thus he makes petty threats.
Lil Wayne's threats aren't the immediate "I'll fuck you up," variety, as you're absurdly suggesting, he's quite simply and quite literally saying that if he wishes to do harm to Mr. Ross, it would be done outside this venue, beyond the protection of the law, under terms of time and place preferable to him. That you fail to grasp this simple concept-- instead highlighting that Lil Wayne is a wheezy twerp-- shows how truly idiotic you can be. This isn't even over-thinking on your part, it's ant-thinking.
The fear of violence isn't based on the socialized stigma toward fighting being worse than any pain suffered, it's that victims of violence aren't even guaranteed the luxury of licking their wounds, as they could well be dead. Particularly when the aggressor has comitted gun crimes and frequently raps about gunfights as LW has.
You'll observe a certain characteristic true of all bullying: the victim never fights back at all.
This is 100% false and something you pulled out of your ass. Bullied kids often DO fight back, which is itself often the intent of the bully-- to provoke an exchange. Victims are deliberately chosen because they're meek and/or weak, so while their efforts usually fail, your "characteristic true of all bullying" is patent bullshit. Sometimes bullies get their faces fucked up because their victims fight back with righteous pent-up fury.
Somewhat off topic: why do so many "nice" (read: white) teenage girls get horned up over Lil Wayne?
Because he's a showman and a music superstar, dumbass. He's preselected by women and he entertains. That he makes violent threats which his own tiny ass can't rightly guarantee is a peacocking behavior that is part of our evolutionary psychology -- persona plumage functioning as a selective disadvantage that one is nevertheless able to bear, demonstrating one's genes' survival fitness.
Stop troweling the Internet for video clips to shoehorn into your hobbyhorse shit-show, it's embarrassing, and you're at a point where you're just making up whatever shit sounds good to you. It's not original insight, it's not critical examination, it's just dumb.
Score: 16 (48 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 7:38 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I read this comment wondering how someone could so badly misunderstand a clearly written piece, and then I saw the Game stuff. That explains it.
Score: 1 (23 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 9:21 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
You know, you made some good points - I myself did a little bit of a frowny face when Alone said, "You'll observe a certain characteristic true of all bullying: the victim never fights back at all..." - but I think you could have added a lot more to the conversation if your comment had been more supported and less combative.
Not that you're under any obligation to add to the conversation, of course. But as a random, anonymous person on the internet, I'd just like to say that I would have enjoyed mulling over the two different approaches to the subject matter.
So (if you care about such things), consider this, like, half an up-vote.
Score: 4 (16 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 2:17 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Some additional studies and articles from the internet relating breakthroughs in treating and curing diabetes I and diabetes II. Does not have any relevance to the present article but I got to post them somewhere, since there is plenty of comment space on this site.
(1) Stop Diabetes with Insulin tablets? Science Daily (Sept 19, 2012)-quote: "Could a capsule of insulin crystals a day stop the development of type 1 diabetes? THere are indications that this could be the case."
(2)"Breakthrough for Type 2 diabetes treatments: Therapy involves the Blockade of signalling by VEGF-B protein." (Sept 27, 2012) Science Daily.
(3) VEGF-B Drug candidate may be diabetes research breakthrough".
(4) Once a week diabetes drug effective in CLinical Study - MK-3012. Huffington Post.
I believe the (3) article on the VEGF blockade drug is from Science News and its a pretty good article that extensively investigates this new line of anti diabetic treatment.
Score: -4 (8 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 2:28 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
What the hell?! Don't feed the fucking trolls and if you must please without that much of asslicking.
The bullying thing may be debatable, the rest is just a collection of undefendable theses and empty statements with lack of anything vaguely resembling an argument.
Score: -8 (20 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 5:27 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Eipa, because you or TLP may disagree with me, I'm therefore trolling? Get a grip. To my knowledge, TLP rarely if ever responds to comments so there's simply no point to "trolling" him.
There is, however, value in pointing out that his glaringly poor arguments are consistently loaded with baseless assertions, false assumptions, and needless filibustering -- i.e. bullshit. I occasionally agree with some of the conclusions he draws, but even in those instances he makes these same flagrant errors because he's intellectually lazy, preferring his own guesswork to facts or logic.
You may not value having TLP called out in such a manner, but I believe others do. TLP's an adult, and can handle harsh criticism, otherwise he wouldn't have a public blog. He doesn't need sycophants to helicopter in to defend him and label his critics trolls and to admonish other commenters when they second such criticism.
The bullying thing isn't debatable --if it were, you'd be debating it. You know it's bullshit and that TLP simply declared a universal sociological truth which he has zero basis for because that's just what he does when it's convenient to his point. This goes unchallenged because he can count on most of his readership accepting it or at least giving him a pass, as you are now.
Which begs the question, why are you?
Score: 23 (29 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 5:35 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Have some of Alone's posts been removed from here and/or Partial Objects? I could swear there was one on stereotype threat but both the search feature and Google are failing me.
Score: 1 (3 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 6:16 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Christina, thanks for the input. While I generally agree with your sentiment, and appreciate your good faith critique, I have to tell you that I don't believe one can effectively argue against the sort of whatever-goes bullshit of TLP without being somewhat combative.
My point is, there's no use in contriving polite euphemisms for the bullshit spoken by a grandiose bullshitter -- particularly when he has insulted any thinking person by making a claim he has zero basis for yet expecting it to be taken as universally-accepted truth.
One should always point out when another is bullshitting, why it's bullshit, and work within that reality.
It's better for me because I don't have to pretend that TLP is doing something he's not, it's better for TLP because he knows some are willing to expose it in unflinching terms, and it's better for you because you know where I stand.
Plenty of others have taken the time to hold TLP's hand and walk him through their tepid expositions on why his arguments don't make sense, and that's great, but he generally laughs it off and continues doing what he does. I think his arguments have become progressively worse as a result.
Such efforts don't impress him because he ultimately doesn't really respect anyone who acquiesces to his bullshit especially if it's by going out of their way to avoid calling it bullshit.
Score: 14 (26 votes cast)
October 8, 2012 9:59 PM | Posted by : | Reply
After all of the ass kissing and blow job offering to Alone, I am convinced that Revanch-and other personas-is/are/were the dude trying to challenge those who cannot think for themselves and are just swallowing this blog (pun intended) as they would any other authority from those narcissistic pasts. Do the work yourselves is the lesson. THINK. FOR. YOURSELVES. Maybe you agree, maybe not.
If you're defending someone you've never met so vehemently, maybe you should really be asking if you really are doing anything yourself.
But what do I know? I'm just a cokehead/benzo-loving/alchie, formerly lawyer who can't sleep either.
Score: 3 (13 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 5:26 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Good grief, is a courteous comment agreeing with the message by disagreeing with how it was delivered considered to be "ass-licking" now?
Score: 8 (10 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 5:54 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Damn it, that should read "...agreeing with the message *BUT* disagreeing with how it was delivered..."
Score: 3 (3 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 7:24 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
One should always point out when another is bullshitting, why it's bullshit, and work within that reality.
I certainly agree with this philosophy!
However, I think we might have different definitions of the word "bullshit" and who can be defined as a "bullshitter."
I don't generally attach intent to bullshit concepts. Plenty of things are bullshit; cold reading, astrology, alien abduction, 9/11 conspiracy theories (basically most of the things featured on Penn & Teller's Bullshit!). But it seems to rarely be the case that the people perpetrating the bullshit know they're bullshitting. Most cold reading audiences, astrologers, alien abductees, and 9/11 conspiracy theorists honestly believe that their world view is the correct one. When they talk about their bullshit, they honestly believe that they're spreading truth.
However, when we talk about the generator of the bullshit, the person who uses manipulative techniques to deliver their bullshit, the "bullshitter," if you will, we start talking about malicious intent. John Edwards intentionally uses cold reading to manipulate emotionally vulnerable people into giving him money. He's a bullshitter - his use of the technique demonstrates that he knows he's a bullshitter - therefore when you point at him and accuse, "bullshitter" he secretly acknowledges that you're right. Same thing for those Loose Change bullshitters.
But when you talk about their fans, who repeat the bullshit, but don't know it's bullshit, we get into something else. When you talk about astrologers, or Whitley Strieber, or commenters on 9/11 conspiracy boards, merely invoking the word "bullshit" isn't effective, because they don't know they're bullshitting. They're victims of their own intellectual blindness, not bullshitters.
I don't think Alone is a bullshitter. I find it incredibly unlikely that he would take the time to write these 3000 word posts all the while knowing or even secretly suspecting that his ideas are bullshit. It seems more likely that he fully believes in what he writes, so your approach of (if you'll permit me some oversimplification) - "I call bullshit! You and I both know that what you're writing is bullshit!" - is doing very little to persuade Alone or his fans that his work is bullshit.
So I think you're do yourself a bit of a disservice in your approach. When somebody is bullshitting, be it with intent or out of honest misguided belief, nothing is more devastating to their bullshit than clearly, calmly demonstrating that they are factually (or logically) incorrect.
Not giving a believer in bullshit the opportunity or excuse to become emotionally defensive is key to defeating bullshit. Anything that distracts them from the facts or logic you're using hurts your ultimate goal of forcing them to absorb and acknowledge that their thinking is bullshit.
These thoughts are a reflection of my life experience. Since it's more or less the opposite of my technique, I'm interested in where you've had success with this approach:
I have to tell you that I don't believe one can effectively argue against the sort of whatever-goes bullshit of TLP without being somewhat combative.
I'm not being sarcastic, I'm honestly interested in when combativeness is more effective than persuasion. I suppose it might simply be gender politics at work (you are male, correct?), and/or you might believe that Alone is a John Edwards-style bullshitter. Either way, I'd be interested to hear about it.
Score: 11 (15 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 8:46 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
having a different opinion than this user = not thinking for yourself, believing everything you read and having the desire to lick the crotch area of the blog writer.
In short your comment is completely worthless, this blog has been up for several years, don't you think that by now it's possible to just agree with the author?
Score: 1 (7 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 8:50 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Look, I don't quite agree that the entire thing is about "bullying" -- remember, this is a videotape that is intended by both sides to be entered into evidence and viewed by the jury. It's not any different than any other unrehersed media piece. Was Romney being a bully by being beligerent to Obama? Not really, they were playing to an audience that would ultimately decide their fates. So Lil Wayne is using his persona to project that he's just being real, and thus is believable and truthful. He's not being a bully so much as using his reputation as a musical bully (in other words, rapping about being a badass and gang life) to establish credibility. The lawyer seems to be trying not to be seen as a tough beligerent lawyer, probably for fear of being seen to badger or lead the witness both of which would make his case more difficult.
Bullies in general trade on the fact that the people they pick on cannot fight back well, so they risk little while pretending to be tough. It happens differently depending on where the bullying takes place. In rich white-bread areas, fighting back is forbidden, in poor areas, it's not, but they pick the ones who don't know how to fight back.
Score: 3 (3 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 8:57 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
rotfl mad care in this post! Be sure to have a fit for the next TLP post (that you will avidly read before crying all over your keyboard as you furiously type a rant against the blog)
Score: -1 (5 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 9:06 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Because he's a showman and a music superstar, dumbass. He's preselected by women and he entertains. That he makes violent threats which his own tiny ass can't rightly guarantee is a peacocking behavior that is part of our evolutionary psychology -- persona plumage functioning as a selective disadvantage that one "is nevertheless able to bear, demonstrating one's genes' survival fitness.Because he's a showman and a music superstar, dumbass. He's preselected by women and he entertains. That he makes violent threats which his own tiny ass can't rightly guarantee is a peacocking behavior that is part of our evolutionary psychology -- persona plumage functioning as a selective disadvantage that one is nevertheless able to bear, demonstrating one's genes' survival fitness."
aaahahahaha oh my god is this nigga serious.... thanks for your human insight into the human soul man, seriously I feel a better human being now that I know it's all about preselection and genetical fitness marker, hey why you don't quote some more PUA blog stuff to make it more clear thanks in advance, I already feel like I know more about the misteries of the human soul (human soul= blah blah blah pea cocking alpha HB10+ preselection marker)
the author has on many occasion stated that he doesn't believe in evolutionary psychology; now, he can be wrong, but you expect him to explain human behavior from an asperger pick up artist wannabe perspective? Instead of arguing his ideas- who are in contrast to your PUA dogma- you just repeat the same ideas that are all over the internet (seriously who doesn't know about that bullshit about fitness and evolutionary psychology you posted) as a self evident proof of their validity
Score: -1 (21 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 9:07 AM | Posted by : | Reply
damn my previous post quoted the post I was replying to in its entirety
Score: -5 (5 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 10:56 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
8:46, I didn't understand a thing you were trying to say except you didn't like what I had to say.
To which I say, GOOD. And fuck you. You took action, which is more than all the bitches offering this voice a snowball.
But I couldn't sleep again last night, so take my comment for the residue of insanity it admittedly is.
Score: -3 (3 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 3:03 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Christina, the examples you list I would consider hucksters in addition to being bullshitters. It's a distinction with a difference. I don't think TLP has achieved huckster status as of yet.
I find it incredibly unlikely that he would take the time to write these 3000 word posts all the while knowing or even secretly suspecting that his ideas are bullshit.
Why? This seems overly generous on you part. Plus, you're assuming he cares. I'm not sure he does. He has built a decent following on disjointed, meandering, and solipsistic bullshit dressed up with second-rate witticisms and sounds-good judgments. In so doing, he casually disregards salient facts and contradictory evidence, but that's alright, because he's not writing for people who place value on those things. He's writing for people who seek license to ignore them. In nearly every post, he grants that license.
Take the first line of this post "...about some nonsense that's beside the point here."
How is it beside the point? Because he says so. Because his point really has nothing to do with the video or the context from which it originates. He's got an idea, and he'll be damned if he can't lash this sucker down to his narrative in some way. He cultivates content that takes well to his trusty ol' inquisitive-yet-declarative interpretation treatment --the artistry we call bullshit. It doesn't have to ring true, it just has to ring through.
Bear in mind, from a purely logistical perspective, writing 3000 words of bullshit is a lot easier than 3000 words of careful critical examination and analysis. That's why "bullshitting," is a time-honored last-minute high school essay completion strategy. It's easier, and frankly, much more fun, particularly for smart people like TLP. On top of this, he typically takes more than a week to publish a post. A thrice-monthly publishing schedule affords plenty of time to craft some grade-A bullshit. Easier than the rigors of a priest's homily, even.
I'm honestly interested in when combativeness is more effective than persuasion.
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, and I agree there's the gender component you mentioned. Combative persuasion is best employed against somebody whom you think is too proud to concede when they're wrong (and that you're right) in any immediate time frame or even at all. But like a bullet that fragments inside its target, a stinging rebuke leaves something behind that a polite rebuttal which operates within one party's fiction won't.
That's not to say one should go out of his way to be an asshole. I highlighted TLP's "I'm no judge..." disqualifier for ridicule because it so clearly revealed TLP's shortcomings as a thinker. Were he to actually possess the intellect and temperament of a civil officer entrusted with such power and responsibilities, he probably also would have bothered to discover the basic contextual facts of the video he was commenting on. Namely:
A.) This wasn't in a court of law, and though a judge was present at the deposition, he has no power to hold Lil Wayne in contempt for being a jackass. If he did, you can bet that the questioning attorney would've appealed to him.
B.) Lil Wayne is the plaintiff in this case, seeking a favorable judgment, thus giving him plenty of incentive to not fuck it up. That he fucked it up speaks to his low character and weak impulse control, but it doesn't speak to anything else TLP went on to extrapolate from it.
But hey, that shit's really boring. Wouldn't you rather read a sweeping contrarian cultural critique that challenges quaint establishment notions like 'avoid violence' by deliberately conflating them with axioms -- 'violence is always wrong' -- that aren't actually taught? All in five neat passages.
The Last Psychiatrist is to the truth what Cecilia Gimenez is to a 19th century fresco -- it's fun to laugh at, but it really is an unfortunate, inexcusable mess.
Score: 12 (22 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 7:10 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"If you think this fear/foreign policy explains our reticence to attack other countries"
What are you talking about? We attack other nations with far more regularity than any other nation in the world. In the last 20 years: Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Afghanistan again, Iraq again, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Pakistan, Iran (covert ops) -- what other nation has a list *anything* like this?
Score: 14 (14 votes cast)
October 9, 2012 7:57 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Gene, that was the other glaring instance of total bullshit that I noticed too but didn't focus on because my own response was going long. He just pulls this shit out of his ass because it's so rare that anyone calls him out on it, and it's so convenient to his thesis. Bravo for pointing it out.
Yeah, we're really 'reticent' except, you know, for the last 70 years or so. Reticent I tells ya!
Like I said, he's painting his interpretation of the truth, facts be damned.
Score: 6 (10 votes cast)
October 10, 2012 9:56 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
But that is just a fraction of the countries the USA COULD have attacked.
Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, China, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Russia (and the whole USSR block), Cuba, Sudan, Nigeria, South Africa, Paraguay, Kenia, Egypt, Phillipines, Indonesia, Mexico... You see, the USA have a reason to attack any country in the world. And you know why? Because the USA is the BULLY, not the bullied. They tell what to do and harass the other countries.
They'll act when they think the bullied is throwing enough tantrums. That's the big stick.
Victims of bullying rarely reply to the bullies, and that's because they know (or believe, or were lead to believe) that the bullies are stronger. That's a form of CONTROL. And it's already so violent that the bullied wouldn't like violence a step further (like physical violence).
Score: 0 (6 votes cast)
October 10, 2012 10:43 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
At the risk of sounding like a sycophant, I don't think you can accuse TLP of being sympathetic to omnidirectional belligerence. See here, for instance, or the weird parentheses-laden description of USG foreign policy in this piece. This whole post is written for his audience. Obviously the USG is not reticent about war, it is the people in whose name the USG acts that are reticent, though not enough to do anything about it. They are reasonable, non-violent people, who trust the USG to do what is necessary to keep extremists from doing what they do.
Another thought that occurred to me while thinking about that little foreign policy aside. Let's do some algebra. Put, say, Ahmadinejad in for Lil' Wayne, the USG in for the judge, and Israel in for the lawyer. The power relationships are pretty much unchanged.
Score: 1 (9 votes cast)
October 10, 2012 11:19 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I don't think you can accuse TLP of being sympathetic to omnidirectional belligerence."
Gabe, he didn't do that; he didn't even hint at sympathy. He simply pointed out that TLP said something objectively false that he made up to bolster his weak thesis.
The USG is not detached from its people, and they are not "powerless" to do anything about decisions of foreign policy and war. That's just foolishly dumb. And you're wrong to give plenary absolution to all Americans as "reasonable, non-violent people." This just isn't the case, and the USG's actions reflect the significant undercurrent of aggression and belligerence that exists in this country. YOU are probably nonviolent and reasonable, but you really have no basis to extend that to the country as a whole. We did, after all, launch an unprovoked attack on a country which had nothing to do with an unjustified attack on us. That was unreasonable, violent and carried the blessing of a majority of Americans.
Putting your nonsense of "power relationships," aside, the US is not at all analogous to the impartial judge in a civil suit. We're clearly on the side of Israel in this dispute, so your algebra doesn't work at all. Iran isn't stupidly holding out hope that we'll rule against Israel. We're the bailif who is beyond judicial command.
Score: 7 (11 votes cast)
October 10, 2012 7:52 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I dunno about this learned fear of violence thing.
Every animal avoids violence pretty much. Winning a fight with a couple of scratches will kill you in the jungle. And it's a waste of energy in colder climates where you gotta get fat enough to hibernate.
Nothing wins against brown bears, but they love fish. They can and do eat the humans that are all over the lakes, but the only bear gonna do that is a hungry one, with winter coming on, that needs to take on some calories with winter coming on.
They don't don't fight other bears much. It's not worth it.
Bears don't get bullied in school.
Score: 8 (8 votes cast)
October 10, 2012 11:37 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I'm going to be dumb and take you seriously.
Bears don't get bullied because if one bear doesn't like another bear, they fight until one of them runs away or dies. Other than that they pretty much ignore each other unless they're opposite sexes and horny.
Score: 2 (4 votes cast)
October 11, 2012 4:17 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Interesting how the topic of Lil Wayne can transform to one on bears.
James
superpsychologist.wordpress.com
Score: 4 (8 votes cast)
October 11, 2012 8:03 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
You know, it occurs to me, absent any direct evidence, that neither of us should be making assumptions about why Alone is writing these pieces, and whether he is or is not intentionally bullshitting. Both of us are applying our anecdotal experiences on long-form writing, and we have differing life experiences.
For example, I don't consider writing bullshit to be logistically easier than researched consideration. I've always found it much easier and faster to write when I had something straightforward (or highly opinionated) to write about. Also, it's easier to write when I'm passionately interested in a subject, and it's hard to be passionately interested in bullshit. I'd have a very difficult time writing 3000 words of what I knew to be bullshit. It'd be a lot easier to just write what I think or believe and not spend the time meandering around the ideas and confabulating the bullshit.
Which isn't to say that what I write might not be objectively bullshit. We all have our intellectual and emotional blind spots, after all, and Alone is no exception. Just that it wouldn't be my intent to write bullshit.
I apply that intent to Alone, but there's certainly no direct evidence of his intent to not write bullshit. He might be getting some kind of malevolent pleasure out of writing bullshit and watching people absorb it.
And I can't say that this entire article is objectively wholesale bullshit, since I touched on my life. A little bit, anyway. I've had concealed weapons licenses and carried firearms my entire adult life. I've spent many hours in hobbyist firearm training groups. While I might be deluding myself, I'm pretty sure that I could kill somebody who's physically threatening me and still sleep like a baby. It almost happened, once, and I was ready. Lucky for both of us, he decided to retreat rather than get shot.
But let me tell you this: While I'm prepared to do it, I sure don't want to shoot anybody who's trying to hurt me, because the social implications of winning the fight are positively disastrous. My job - gone. My life savings - in a lawyer's pocket. My freedom (if i have the wrong jury) - over. I wouldn't miss the kind of friends who would shun me for defending myself, but there would be other kinds of social censure - a lot of it.
I don't have any guilt tied up in my fear of fighting, as Alone hypothesizes, but I do care about my lifestyle being materially impacted after a fight. I am afraid of "the system" punishing me for participating in the fight. More precisely, it's not wanting to deal with the "hassle" - the notion that living well is the best revenge - but it's still fear of the system.
Combative persuasion is best employed against somebody whom you think is too proud to concede when they're wrong (and that you're right) in any immediate time frame or even at all. But like a bullet that fragments inside its target, a stinging rebuke leaves something behind that a polite rebuttal which operates within one party's fiction won't.
I think our timing on this differs. You used it coming out of the gate in your first comment. In the past I haven't delivered stinging rebukes until after I've seen the other party absorb the incontrovertible evidence I've (admittedly, sometimes gleefully) presented, and then deflect within a "face-saving" distraction, e.g., "we'll have to agree to disagree" or "that's my opinion and you have to respect it." I won't say something personally insulting like, "neither of us respect your opinion because it's based on willful stupidity," until we've gotten to that point.
Score: 6 (14 votes cast)
October 11, 2012 1:50 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Take this analysis, apply it to Obama's future debates with Romney. Obama needs to appear attentive and as though he's in control. Thus, instead of trying to debate Romney head on, or instead of criticizing himself for doing badly in the debates, he should make a joke about his earlier mistakes and poor performance, thus showing that he's powerful enough to laugh off a drop in the polls. He needs to reinforce the idea that he is the president and his opponent is nowhere near his level of expertise.
Amidoinitrite?
Score: 0 (4 votes cast)
October 12, 2012 8:40 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Is this post related to one from two years ago about "When was the last time you got your ass kicked?" https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/09/when_was_the_last_time_you_got.html
Score: 5 (5 votes cast)
October 13, 2012 9:29 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
TLP suggests that avoidance of violence is a *learned behaviure*.
One mechanism he suggests for this is authorities response to school bullying (as part of a larger picture).
My 'bears don't get bullied in school' comment was meant to show that bears avoided violence without socialization, i.e. avoidance of violence is an inate, genetic behaviur in most animals.
Some animals (Lil Wayne, fighting dogs) learn to prefer violence, an example of environment overriding the genetic, but I am saying that they, not the lawer, are the aberation.
TLP's later points hinge on the assumption that the lawer is avoiding confrontation because he believes he has less power, whereas my evidence suggests he is avoiding confrontation because that it what normally functioning animals do.
Here is a video of a bear abandoning a chance at food to avoid a confrontation with a house cat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57VbE0J9niw
Also, bears rarely fight, and almost never fight to the death. The only reason a bear usually kills another bear is when a male kills a cub to put the female back into heat, or the female kills a male to protect her cub. Where males conflict over something, the issue will be resolved by posturing, with the more dominant male often backing off because he has less to gain, like our lawer.
To restate, TLPs later, wider points are based on a false premise, which is why the bear analogy matters.
Score: 2 (8 votes cast)
October 13, 2012 11:19 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
""...with the more dominant male often backing off because he has less to gain, like our lawer. ""
Your Ethology is mixed up (even though you are right in the end), but I want to point out the error in your Psychology, because it's easier to understand/explain.
1) Ignoring the underlying abberation in the lawyer: he has been trained by society (ie: emasculated) to be "non-confrontational". That does not mean he avoids confrontation because it could harm him; it means he avoids confrontation because, since day one, he has been taught that Social Priority Number One is "keep your head down, and don't rock the boat".
Why? Because Authority says so.
"Because submissive animals who don't will get eaten/killed."
The secret here is that neither LW (cat) or the lawyer (bear) are dominant animals, one is just better at fronting than the other one, and the other one bought it. Saying that one is "more dominant" than the other is an illusion and a trap; don't buy into it.
LW = Submissive
Lawyer = Submissive
Sub + Sub = The only reason this happened.
Dom + Sub = Stable social heirarchy.
Dom + Dom = Mutual deference.
Fact of the matter is, neither one of them had anything to gain. But only a Dominant animal would have known that, ergo...
Score: 4 (6 votes cast)
October 14, 2012 3:18 AM | Posted by : | Reply
"The point here isn't to argue whether there is a natural laws, only to show a higher system was explicitly codified to facilitate being (from the system's perspective) "sociopathic." "
From this I take it to mean that if you fight or do anything against the system, the system labels you a sociopath for the sole purpose of maintaining some sort of control over you. Am I understanding this correctly?
Score: 3 (3 votes cast)
October 14, 2012 11:01 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"the book" - I hope that was not a joke.
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
October 15, 2012 11:42 PM | Posted by : | Reply
It's boring and stupid to have to read Gabe Ruth's pretentious comments in which he feigns wizardry over all intellectual matters and all worldly facts. Even worse is when he plays at being the only one who "gets" what TLP writes about, beyond the obvious eterna-claim of narcissism everywhere.
I'd prefer to read the silly, pratfall-laden hacking of the TLP-wannabe goofs who ape TLP in their posted comments.
Score: -1 (3 votes cast)
October 15, 2012 11:46 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Cristina says,
"Plenty of things are bullshit;"
Yes, you'd know, as a seasoned practitioner.
Score: -4 (8 votes cast)
October 16, 2012 11:37 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I failed to get across the fact that I don't believe the average American voter's self-conception as a reasonable, non-violent person is an accurate picture of reality. It is people who think they are this way, and yet continue to vote for Hugde or Gudge, that (I think ;) TLP is trying to reach (or is just making fun of). Did you read the piece I linked to? I'd say that's pretty close to sympathy not only for the idea that 9/11 was blowback, but that it was justifiable blowback, and the only way you can think that is believing USG foreign policy is demented.
What an honestly reasonable, non-violent people would have done after 9/11 was adjust airline procedures and demand that the Taliban hand over the perpetrators. After that, reasonable people may differ (regardless of the Taliban's response), but they certainly wouldn't opt for a 10 year occupation and the invasion of another country in the region. There is a certain amount of tension between reasonableness and non-violence in that particular situation, but again, both characteristics would dictate against what was done.
On my algebra, I admit it breaks down in the broader context of a civil suit. But limit it to this scene with only 3 actors. Who do you think the judge is more partial to? Who do you think has more reason to be afraid, Iran or Israel? Yet who acts more paranoid? Israel is roughly as justified in fearing a nuclear Iran as the lawyer is in fearing Lil' Wayne will have some thugs visit his house. Ie, not very. If those fears are reasonable, everything is already lost so what are you doing in court? Get a gun and some canned food.
Score: 1 (3 votes cast)
October 16, 2012 3:21 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"Constitutional rights which we all know don't apply to black people anyway"
Wrong. Constitutional rights don't apply to poor people. Lil Wayne could bring a team of lawyers to the show if he wanted. The lawyer would have sneered in disgust at a poor black man. The judge would have level set the room with a calm threat of force. Money makes all the difference.
Score: 8 (8 votes cast)
October 19, 2012 8:41 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
"you know he [the judge] can't protect you in the real world?"
Lil' Wayne was doing a valuable service: pointing out that the legal system, the courts, the lawyer's playground isn't the real world.
It's not the real world, even though it operates within and through it; it's an artificial construct (useful and beneficial to some, but I digress.)
And perhaps that is an important contributing factor to the lawyer's palpable discomfort.
Score: 5 (5 votes cast)
October 19, 2012 8:45 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Oh, and I meant to say: we should thank Lil Wayne for reminding us of one of the key distinctions between the legal system and the real world.
Score: 0 (2 votes cast)
October 19, 2012 9:05 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
"It's not that he can beat the lawyer up, it's that his demeanor suggests he will kill, and he's got plenty of time, money, useful idiots etc. to pull it off."
I'm confused. Were you describing Lil Wayne, or the legal system? Your description fits both.
Score: 5 (7 votes cast)
October 19, 2012 9:19 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
"I remember in high school there were maybe 2 white boys out of the mix of mostly mexicans and blacks. They were mostly teased and made fun of but never a hand laid on them. Sure they were probably threatened more than the average student but were in 0 fights whereas most of us were in at least one or two at some point. Why? You punch a white kid and you aren't sent to detention, you're sent to reform or sued by white parents or some more extreme retaliation. "
That's interesting, but I recall in my High School (where the ethnic mix was more even) several 'white' boys being stabbed (non-fatally) by 'non-white' (what are now politely referred to as Hispanic) students in the C hall restrooms. This was quite a long time ago.
Perhaps one of our experiences was an anomaly?
Score: 2 (6 votes cast)
October 19, 2012 5:10 PM | Posted by : | Reply
All of which is very interesting, but in my view irrelevent. Remember, ALL of this is being filmed, and everyone in the room will win or lose based on what is on the videotape when it's shown. I think that fact alone changes the entire dynamic of the interactions taking place. The judge isn't the guy in charge, the people who will judge based (at least partly) on this videotape are in charge. If the lawyer looks bad on the tape, he loses, if Wayne looks bad on the tape, he loses. So each one of them is playing to a camera and an audience -- and trying to make their case look good to the audience who will see the video and judge the case based on the video. Whatever else is going on, don't forget the camera, because no one else has. While Wayne might be trying to bully him, he might be trying to do so to win points with the jury. While the lawyer may very well NOT want to fight back, he might also not want to fight back because the jury would think less of him (unprofessional, badgering the witness, whatever) if he did. If Lawyer gets too pushy, he's not going to win.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
October 19, 2012 7:13 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
you're missing the point, like all of his critics do.
he's writing bullshit, intentionally, and in a (partly) self-parodying way.
it's deliberate and ironic self-satire. this should be fairly clear after a close reading of a good sample of his writing.
it's post-modern, yo.
so stop bashing him for writing "bullshit" as though this were some great insight that he is full of it.
he is full of it; that's the whole point.
Score: 7 (9 votes cast)
October 22, 2012 3:34 PM | Posted by : | Reply
**always fight back and always defend your neighbors, regardless of the cost.**
Good advice, always a good read from TLP. Ok, rather, that's the best quote I've read in a while.
Score: -1 (3 votes cast)
October 24, 2012 5:01 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
on second thought, this rendering of TLP's writing is a bit simplistic. he isn't *just* writing bullshit, *all the time*, it's just an important component of his writing. he has plenty of stuff to say that is straight up and also worth listening to, though.
Score: 0 (2 votes cast)
October 24, 2012 3:04 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
An interesting example of wanting someone else to do our fighting for us. You see, we vote for a president, so if he gets directly involved it's one less degree of separation and plausible deniability for us. (And it doesn't matter if you voted for the other guy, if you voted Red or Blue since WW2 you have given your assent to the elite consensus on foreign policy, and you are not the kind of person that will smash a fluorescent light bulb and wave it around like a light saber in the service of doing the right thing.
Also, this (at best) completely inconsequential policy preference is characterized as banking left. Now either Dave Weigel has one of the most bizarre political compasses that I've ever seen, or he is incapable of distinguishing his own preferences from what leftism is.
Score: 0 (2 votes cast)
October 25, 2012 1:09 AM | Posted by : | Reply
It's interesting (to me, at least) how many steps there are in Doc's moving from the question ("How did the lawyer screw up, and why?") to "Here's what he (and anyone else in that situation) should do."
My Dad and his brothers, way back when, were short Jews. I mean real short. They still are. As kids living in a St, Louis slum in the 20's, they were commonly beaten up by Irish toughs.
One day, Pop and his brothers carried baseball bats along with their school books. When attacked, they beat the crap out of the Irish. Problem over.
I guess they started with Doc's conclusion, and had no need to reason it out.
Many years later, as our neighborhood integrated, fun-loving black teenagers would form a line stretching across the street, daring anyone to try to drive through. Without a word and without a second's delay, Pop dropped the Chevy into first gear, popped the clutch, and roared down the street at them. They scattered at the last moment. I am certain that he would not have stopped; and would have said, "They asked for it." Yet, I never detected an ounce of psychopathy in him. He was among the gentlest and kindest men I've known. Maybe it was the "higher" rules that Doc mentioned that enabled him to bracket violence. "Mess with my family, and get no mercy."
We've become a nation of Hamlets---yacking instead of swinging for the knees. Popping pills when we ought to be popping clutches.
Score: 3 (11 votes cast)
October 27, 2012 5:26 PM | Posted by : | Reply
....aaaaaaand Lance arrives to tell us how we all should use Mossad techniques in every one of life's little situations, because everyone knows that categorically Jews are great people who are mightily misunderstood and Irish are drunken violent louts.
Meanwhile, we could talk to a lot of Palestinians who could reverse Lance's dad's & uncles' experiences quite handily.
So, what was the point of Lance mentioning Irish vs Jew? Any point at all?
Maybe failed attempt at humor?
Score: 0 (8 votes cast)
October 27, 2012 6:09 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"Somewhat off topic: why do so many "nice" (read: white) teenage girls get horned up over Lil Wayne? "Rebellion against the father?" Assuming she even lived with a father, most fathers aren't rebellion worthy, there are very few staid, formal men with fixed rules requiring breaking. The likely explanation is more instinctual: extremes in appearance signify "the man underneath"-- a secret vulnerability, a tenderness, that will be given only to the one person who "sees" it"
Total wrong. the white girl is attracted to lil wayne because he is a rockstar. if he was not a rockstar, out of sight, out of mind. additionally, he has intrigue factor because he is from a different culture. If he was a french white guy, same deal. It is curiousity, plain and simple.
You give away your age easily. Post Gen-x, people don't think about race like you do. If someone is of another race, it is not a big deal. The media and movies makes you think race is still a big deal because these things are run by post gen-x people who wish to hold on to the past and their power structure.
Score: -2 (6 votes cast)
October 27, 2012 6:15 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"The media and movies makes you think race is still a big deal because these things are run by post gen-x people who wish to hold on to the past and their power structure."
I meant these things are run by people who are Gen-x and older who wish to hold on to the past and their power structure.
Post Gen-x people are subjected to Gen-x, baby boom view of the world, their context, their past.
Score: -1 (3 votes cast)
October 28, 2012 1:04 AM | Posted by : | Reply
One reads the Oozing Puddle of Pus searching in vain for a point.
The Oozing Puddle asks rhetorical questions? The Oozing Puddle will receive answers more sentient than the questions.
Possibly ethnicities were mentioned because the ethnicities existed. One strives for accuracy when recounting events.
The misnamed "Mossad" techniques antedated the Mossad, who at any rate were never known for using bats as a weapon of choice. If you're going to try to sound educated, Oozie, get an education first. We offer this advice free of charge.
The reference to Palestinians is merely bizarre and suggests that the Oozing One is a quart low on Thorazine. Yes, long term use will discolor your teeth, but we suspect that they already are a fine mahogany hue. Stock up now for the holidays.
I believe we have given more attention to the Oozer's comments than either the Oozer or his oozings warrant, but we are a caring people, and so we care.
Score: -3 (5 votes cast)
December 13, 2012 2:42 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Anyone else hear echoes of Thoreau in this TLP post?
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
December 13, 2012 4:30 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
one can hear echoes of Thoreau in many of TLP's posts.
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
December 18, 2012 12:58 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I love you. How do I sign up to email digest / notifications? On your homepage, there's every kind of syndication but email, and I despise syndication like RSS / Google's RSS, etc.
Seriously. This is one of the articles, along with the Hipsters Part I and II that are so cool I want to meet you IRL and just listen while you drop science on my head for hours at a time. I'm considering getting a fake psychiatric problem just to get counseling w/ you, whomever you are.
Score: -1 (1 votes cast)
December 18, 2012 12:58 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I love you. How do I sign up to email digest / notifications? On your homepage, there's every kind of syndication but email, and I despise syndication like RSS / Google's RSS, etc.
Seriously. This is one of the articles, along with the Hipsters Part I and II that are so cool I want to meet you IRL and just listen while you drop science on my head for hours at a time. I'm considering getting a fake psychiatric problem just to get counseling w/ you, whomever you are.
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
December 27, 2012 1:16 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I was bullied too, though not as badly. My problem as a parent is that my sons are more outgoing and athletic than I was. I have no problem telling them to fight back physically if they are abused, damn the consequences. But I hesitate for fear that they are the bullies, and instead of enabling defense I am making the problem worse for other children. They fight each other and then lie about the causes, how would I know if they were victim or perpetrator if the same happened at school?
Score: 0 (2 votes cast)
January 15, 2013 12:54 PM | Posted by : | Reply
the video has been removed so i can't see what you're talking about. i love lil wayne. i'm not sure why he's hate-able and how that's some kind of given...maybe it's a "white thing." i think he's hilarious and talented. he's not saying anything of deep value to me, but i like his voice and he makes me laugh and i don't see what the problem is...
in other news, i love standing up to bullies, even if they beat my ass, which they often do. and they will totally mess with you again anytime they feel like it if they win, so there goes that.
it's important to hit people sometimes. i will teach my son this. real life is not court. real life can also be someone waiting outside your job with a tire iron.
Score: 4 (6 votes cast)
January 15, 2013 12:57 PM | Posted by : | Reply
also, why isn't wayne not recognizing the lawyer's power not seen as "a little bit sociopathic", which you advocate for?
this sounds a little like the rantings of a scared white person. take some boxing lessons.
Score: 3 (5 votes cast)
January 15, 2013 12:59 PM | Posted by : | Reply
i definitely believe in fighting back. i believe in losing. i believe that people know right from wrong without religion and rules. and i don't believe in anarchy.
Score: 0 (4 votes cast)
January 25, 2013 3:57 AM | Posted by : | Reply
The real question is why no one stepped up and kicked that little nigger in the teeth with a pair of steel-toed combat boots.
Score: -2 (10 votes cast)
January 30, 2013 8:19 AM | Posted by : | Reply
And then Lil Wayne lost. This is a separate issue but it occurs to me that you can't try to use the system "as it was intended" and then decide to rebel against it. This is where a lack of self control fails you every time and while Wayne may be consoling himself by thinking that "he was still the strongest one in the deposition" etc...he still lost.
http://www.tmz.com/2012/11/05/lil-wayne-loses-lawsuit-quincy-jones-iii-documentary-judgement/
Score: 6 (8 votes cast)
January 30, 2013 8:20 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Actually it's an analysis of scared white people and what they're scared of.
Score: 5 (5 votes cast)
March 23, 2013 9:27 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"Create your own system or be enslaved by another man's" - William goddamn Blake.
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
March 23, 2013 9:35 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Create your own system or be enslaved by Lil Wayne?
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
May 10, 2013 11:50 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I worked as a correctional officer for five years. One day, I was walking the upper level of HD2 locking the men into their rooms for lockdown. When i got to U16, a strong, young male inmate looked at me challengingly and said, "I'm not going in there." I look down and no other officer is anywhere to be seen. Inmate of course knows this too. I am standing at the top of the stairs. I am, to be clear, a 43 year old woman, strong for my gender and age, but no match for this young man. He is expecting negotiation, negotiation that will end in me giving him what he wants: Moving him. This negotiation will occur, in his mind, because I am physically afraid of laying hands on him. He assumes that I will appear to listen to him judiciously and then do the "right thing" because deep down I am afraid. He figures that this way we both win. I save face and he gets what he wants. I have to hold onto the illusion that my authority means anything at all and he needs another place to live. SO what do I do? I shrug, get on my radio, and call, "SIGNAL 8 HD2." Within seconds large and fearless male officers are running up the stairs and IM is screaming, NOOOOOOOO! I DIDN"T DO ANYTHING!" I win.
Score: 2 (8 votes cast)
May 27, 2013 7:32 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I read this post some (long) time ago, but I never bothered watching the video. Now I did. Come on, man, Lil Wayne isn't intimidating to anyone. The lawyer seems amused, not intimidated.
Good points in the post though, about the psychology of violence in a civilized society and all. But I tell ya dat dere Lil Wayne character wasn't the best illustration to the article.
Score: 5 (7 votes cast)
June 4, 2013 1:56 AM | Posted by : | Reply
He's talking about the race war silly goose. All dat typing and completely missing the point. The point wasn't a personal physical altercation between that faggot attorney and lil Wayne. He was just saying the judge ain't gonna be there to over-rule acts of God when the lights go out.
Score: -1 (5 votes cast)
June 4, 2013 10:37 AM | Posted by : | Reply
It's about the ability of the threat of physical violence to obfuscate or even annihilate the trappings of authority. In the end, authority prevails because the majority allows it to. And there is no race war, silly goose. There's a class war. Of course those in positions of real power are happy for you to believe it's a race war. And to go even further, it's really about the consolidation of power and how one lifetime is never enough to shake that consolidation, so most of us are serfs. Happyish serfs until our masters put the squeeze on us.
Score: 7 (7 votes cast)
June 4, 2013 2:41 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
There's no race war yet - there will be.
I've found that females do not have a sense of the hostility/aggression and unconscious/subconscious signals between men. Take my word for it (or not).
Puts gun control into perspective too.
Score: -4 (6 votes cast)
June 5, 2013 7:39 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Race war, really!? Get outta here, did you even read the article?
But then again everyone should feel free to read in anything into everything anytime just to make it fit into their own little obscure worldview. I give you that. And you're into 'race war' i take it. And what's up with the name calling? Silly goose, what kind of redneck-wanker-twat eejit uses that expression, LOL
Score: 2 (6 votes cast)
June 5, 2013 11:21 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Race war, really. It happens from time to time. Open a history book.
Score: -3 (5 votes cast)
July 8, 2013 1:55 PM | Posted by : | Reply
This is great news if that means the state gets to take care of those bullies by throwing them in jail once I become an adult which is the lesson being taught. All this time I thought I'd have to harbor emotions and feelings from those guys and what do you know, they end up in the worst place possible! I get to call a number and have them reported just as I did with my teacher. It's unfortunate that someone may have to suffer first before intervention is possible yet no system is perfect nor never was meant to be.
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
March 8, 2014 5:20 AM | Posted by : | Reply
It's funny that this article seems to suggest that our acceptance of a system that benefits the bullies is something learned from the bullies themselves. I remember when I was growing up, I was usually reprimanded by my teachers for telling on bullies (and of course, it was my mother who told me to fight back). I suppose the teachers have simply been indoctrinated as well?
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
March 9, 2014 10:54 AM | Posted by : | Reply
New to your site TLP and am now your most initially-reluctant "instant" fan. Congrats. Not to ride your cock too much, but you have a way with words and logic that I can't help but envy immensely. That being said, I have a question about the above. If I understand correctly, you would dub the coup d'etat of a "system" that no longer serves a beneficial purpose as "obligation." In essence, "think outside the box" (but different than the traditional cliche sense). Question: Once outside the box, is it better to adopt the principles of a previously erected box (i.e. religion) or to construct a box tuned specifically to your own personal concoction of beliefs, experiences and biases (presuming this box also includes all the rigidity in structure as the former)?
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
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