I was "the mean mom" in my kids' social circles - can't manipulate me, can't guilt me, no means no, etc. I pointed out to each child the "crazy maker" within their friend group. (It was less of an issue with my son, big issue with the girls.) Without fail the young teen would insist their friend was kindness itself, the best, blah blah. Then, by age 14 or 15 (depending on the egregiousness of the crazy making), they would come to me and say, "HOLY COW, you were right!" It taught them very valuable skills - none of the three have fallen for all this empathy shit-show. (Ages 28-38)
There's going to be a lot of howling, and a lot of these broken people will never be able to change - they have definable personality disorders that can never be cured, only managed IF the person gets therapy and works at it (not in their skill sets!). But I don't think there are as many of them as it has seemed, and their "influencing" days will soon end. That photo of the "cruel kids" reminded me of the 80s when life was fun - most people want that.
My wife was always the tough one with our three girls. I didn’t always agree but would never even consider not backing her up. The results speak for themselves: 3 confident, happily married, loving mothers whose own mother is their closest friend. Tough love, properly administered, is usually nothing more than a firm hand on the tiller.
I’m STILL that way, even with my grandchildren. I am a soft, loving, hugging, no yelling, sometimes indulgent Yiayia, but NO means NO. They listen to me. Even my daughter has told me, they listen to you more than they do us.
First time my son spent a full day with grandma (my mom) without parental supervision, we met up around dinner time. He bolted up with enthusiasm "Daddy - guess what we had for lunch - ice-cream!!!". My response was "mom" (y'all know the tone). She smiled. Payback. Boundaries were our job ;-). That is the order of things. Enjoy being grandparent!
Well put with the nautical reference. Sometimes easier said than done, but all that is required is to demonstrate calm amidst the storm. Our children will, by and large, become the examples that we set for them.
Flip out and scream at them every time they spill some juice, and they'll end up dramatic a-holes liable to lose their sh-t at the drop of a hat.
Tell them "No" when they have a bad idea or do something wrong, but them calmly explain why and follow it with a hug and "I love you", and they will become calm, secure, well adjusted people.
I really do think it's as simple as that. Also, I think dad's are typically easier on girls and mom's on boys, just the way it is. Mostly I think moms can see through their daughter's manipulative bulls-it more easily than dads can, and vice versa.
I hate to be that "as a woman..." woman, but I firmly believe we ladies need another tough woman in our lives to tell us to suck it up. Not only do these women check our worst impulses to use tears for manipulation, but they teach us what battles we need to pick instead of demanding redresses for every perceived inconvenience.
I thought this exactly over Maggie Hassan's seemingly crocodile tears at a recent RFK jr confirmation hearing. How can this senator keep milking the public for sympathy after so many years! Ugh, stop with the public performances especially melodrama ;)
Like where are the tears and trauma drama for the children (or anyone) who were horrifically injured or died after getting the fake MRNA shot? The shot that they were bullied into taking by these same people now crying!!!!!!
I’m over it now!
I can’t even listen to them speak now, let along scream wail or cry.
<expletives deleted>. I voted against Hassan (both in the primaries and the general election) the last time she was up for election. Now I'm wondering if impeachment is an option?
I lived in her district for a short while. The Democrats canvassed the area with pamphlets and knocking on doors. I think they continue to keep the seat because they use an approach to put a name on the radar of the voters right before the vote. Best of luck to you!
I have a male gay acquaintance who pulls this and I am one of few who see through it. It pains me to be around him. He a manipulative narcissist and I always end up as the “bad guy.”
Yes, but they also need the men in their life to be firm and point out when they're being ridiculous. And men need that too! So many people have been fake-nice to each other for too long
I agree that women need a good man in their life (father or father figure), but men tend to be softer with women (hence the Daddy's girl stereotype), and women are much better at listening to another woman tell them to toughen up. I don't have a psych degree, just a lot of experience and observation from all walks of life.
I couldn't agree more. I see these young women posting all their grievances on social media, and wonder why nobody in their lives is telling them to stop? My husband is part of a non-profit that used to hold a charity event every year. One of the young women was mad because she didn't understand the rules of the prizes, made a HUGE deal on social media, and ruined the event for good. Once someone corrected her about what really happened, she took down her post. But the damage was done. Anyone over the age of 40 could have told her it was a bad idea.
That photo of “the cruel kids” also purposely cropped out the blacks that are in the original (including one of the organizers of that event). MSM is unrelenting and shameless in their shaping of “the narrative”.
Yes, and taken together, the two pictures reveal a likely other undercurrent: having stuck with the wrong team and losing out on the more attractive powerful winning men.
Reminded me of how "opinion polls" can be used by the PR industry to make everyone *think* everyone else thinks something. But the results are often skewed by how the question was framed, and what the options for answers were.
Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the future... We watch our experts read the entrails of statistical tables and graphs the way the ancients watched their soothsayers read the entrails of a chicken.
Yes to all of this!! The 80's had some weak spots but overall made us tough and common sense - and with great senses of humor LOL My daughter is 23 and has come to me so many times with a "holy cow you were right". Thankfully, she learned quickly and became known as the wise old owl in her crowd. Left her pretty lonely in high school , but fortunately she found her now husband by swimming in the boys' lanes her freshman year bc she had no interest in her female teammates' head games. Funny how life works out!
My mom balanced reason with discipline and consistency. She might feel no initially, but give us a chance (sometimes). Make your case. Give me time to think about it. Iterate no more than once. She would think of reasons to support her reactionary no. Sometimes we prevailed. But, er I mean BUT, we knew once decision was rendered, there was no appeal. Quickly we learned the different magnitudes of NO: no you cannot have a cookie right now. keep pestering me and no becomes NO. NO is persistent and can escalate. No cookies right now becomes no cookies this week, which can become no TV the rest of the week, and so on. Failure to respect NO has consequences.
My son tried the intentional tantrum in a public place ploy once. It didn't work. He was a smart kid. He learned negotiation. He also learned consequences. He hasn't fallen for the weaponized empathy either. He knows real empathy. He knows that fostering weakness and dependence is not empathy. He knows institutionalized ignorance that is required to support this tactic is the real cruelty. It renders people helpless - which is the objective BTW - and that's the worst kind of cruelty.
Now there's a huge difference between a small kids tantrum and a meltdown. The mitigation is pretty much the same. With a tantrum, you can try reason., then guilt: "this is not going to get you what you want. Daddy is very disappointed with this behavior". With Meltdown, there's no point. Meltdown happens when critical mass is reached and once triggered, it runs its course. It is not manipulation, it's a chain reaction event. Once in NYC, in central park after a full day of family activities, we failed to detect imminent meltdown in my 4 year old. The preconditions were clear: fatigue, hunger and cutting a new tooth. I began with my usual explanation: it is time to go back to the hotel and get dinner. Shortly I realized this was meltdown I knew the futility of reason. I picked up the kid, put him over my shoulder and began a determined least-resistance path back to our hotel. You could spot the parents in the crowd vs the non-parents: the non-parents looked at me in horror, the parents moved out of the way with an acknowledging nod. Two police officers on horseback approached, one younger, one older. The younger was giving me that horror look. The older had been there, done that. He waved his partner out of the way and shouted "follow me" and like Moses parting the red sea, a path opened up. By the time we reached the park boundary the fuel was spent, meltdown complete.
Interesting you make a distinction between your girls and boys responses. This gender difference is reflected in society at large, a consequence of the emasculation of society.
Give boys sticks and let them hit something. They’ll work it out. They need help seeing emotional manipulation when they’re young. But once they see it they’re good at recognizing it. And with 2 older sisters, he figured out girl-speak pretty early!
I was the "direct and honest" aunt, adult friend, and tutor in kids' lives. I don't consider teaching discipline, responsibility, self-control, and maturity "mean". I didn't have kids, but beginning at 13, I was a babysitter, tutor, aunt, and mentor to many kids. I'm still in contact with some over 40 years later. I know they appreciated the rules, boundaries, and limitations I shared with them, but more importantly, the opportunity to have an adult who wasn't their parent (but supported them) who listened and guided them.
This is also why they don't truly know what freedom is because they are not self-reliant, therefore they don't know or care when they're losing it. Other casualties in this process are lack of curiosity, inability to be a self-starter and inability to sense external manipulation.
Without self reliance you can not be free. Any society that is not merit based ends up rotting in incompetency/indolence, and devolves to anti-merit. Eventually leading to a situation where their self-esteem and "belonging" derives from "the point of all barrel - "love" and importance by emotional blackmail.
That said, as Gato points out, they are a minority and once everyone sees it for what it is then this type of worldview ends up with the sticking power of Dollar Store masking tape.
Of course, they are a minority, and this has been one of the huge arguments during Covid. To Save the .2% who will die with a cold and old age and/or their chronic conditions, the whole of society must indefinitely mask, self-quarantine, and take this experimental injection.
But the subtext really is "I don't want to get sick, and you have to change in order that I won't feel any discomfort." And anyone who disagrees is called a selfish grandma killer.
Which is more selfish, to not mask for .2% of society that dies to a cold, or to mandate everyone mask for the .2% who may contract a cold and die?
"We're all in this together" was a mantra that was a McDonalds ad during the Covid period. So wait, if I don't sign on to this, that means we "aren't" in this together. If I question the narrative that mean I am "opting out" of society? Or am I stating that I oppose a social contract predicated on many false assertions?
It was not even about saving lives. It was about catering to the fear and paranoia of a subset of the population. A fear and paranoia pushed and propagated by those in charge, all for the purpose of expanding their control.
Was one of MANY tools and techniques which "served to divide the world into Good People and Bad People".
And it worked.
For a while.
Observation: We went shopping in the city last weekend. About a quarter of our fellow shoppers in the grocery stores were masked. Home Depot - not so many - maybe one in ten. And at Industrial Supply - none.
Pi Guy - It kinda did that for me. The people I used to empathize with and think were Good People (mostly environmental groups) became Bad - manipulative - People.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to preserve the environment. I imagine most of us here have never left a McDonalds bag in a parking lot or left one of the masks they forced us to wear on a sidewalk.
I preferred to think of them as the informed/thinking/rational/did their own research ppl & ignorant of the facts/alarmist/gullible/can't see past the end of their nose ppl.
The funny thing is that the self-satisfied, alarmist dupes are so, so certain that they are the critical thinkers who see through the noise and get to the truth... but what they think is the truth is nothing but the noise. They're incapable of enough critical thought to realize they're not capable of critical thought, but they just always seem to agree with the "experts" (funny that!), so they conclude that they must be critical thinkers.
And sadly, it worked so damned well for so many sad lemmings here and worldwide. Those of us who unwaveringly stood for freedom of choice and true science became public enemy #1. I am proud to be an outlaw the likes of Waylon, Johnny, Clapton, Morrison, Rowling, etc!!!
Communists, socialists, fascists, leftists, those who engage in identity politics, all of them are collectivists. We're "comrades," not individuals. Like cells in a person's body, we're unimportant by ourselves; our only value is equal to our value to the larger organism or group.
By means of social engineering, they hope to train us into that "comrade" mindset, where individuality disappears and we all dissolve into one amorphous blob of indistinguishable, interchangeable pieces of the greater whole. If we are in the habit of subjugating ourselves for the perceived collective good, that's exactly what our would-be trainers want.
Individualism is liberty. Collectivism is servitude. The people who push collectivism in any form do not wish us liberty; they wish us servitude (of themselves).
I empathize for the people who’ve fallen for these tactical moves by controllers. But the jig is up. We see it as a tactic and we recognize that emotion without logical foundation is insanity at a point. It is avoidance of truth. Some are very damaged by this tool and we are going to have to consider counter operations.
Add to that the fact that granny died anyhow - because she was isolated and alone with no one to advocate for her when they doped her up with midazolam or remdesivir.
Newsom's lockdowns finished my mother off when they cut off the only thing keeping her going. She wasn't long for the world anyway, but it didn't have to be right then.
I'm so sorry to hear that. During lockdowns, I found myself feeling really grateful that my mom, who had spent her last few months in a nursing home, died 2 years before the craziness started. It would have driven me mad if I had to watch her being caged away during the last part of her life. The cruelty of what you had to endure is just unfathomable.
Jimmy Gleeson - You said it for me, especially "I won't feel any discomfort". That sentiment slops over into the whole climate control issue. People express their discomfort when I point to the obvious lines in the skies and the also obvious differences in our weather patterns due to nexrad manipulation.
THANK YOU! Read a lot. But keep Ike's guidance in mind: "Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you." Dwight D. Eisenhower and Benjamin's: "The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations."
We are called to press on for the prize that truly matters: “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." Be....in the Word.
And ends when trophies are found in Palisades ashes and everyone spiritually healthy reminds the world that ... trophies don't matter. They're not "for everyone" but no one takes anything with them. Ashes to ashes. Perspective. Seek excellence and enjoy the world you steward, you ARE COMMANDED, to steward. But hold materialism loosely. And incentivize toward the wins, not the bad behaviors {hello commission for giving mortgages to the unqualified and most risky, so you can get paid and sell the note to Wall Street by Monday?}. This was one BIG SHORT and the movie is over. OVER.
I used to feel sorry for the mentally ill. But then these people began to run rough shod over sane people’s rights, put men into women’s sports, and began to mutilate children. Not one of those capricious monsters felt empathy for anyone whose only desire is to live in peace not fear. Now I want all these unstable bullies, who can’t accept reality, put into hospitals so all of us can live in a sane world.
They ENFORCE “affirming” gender identity/identities and thus DENY patients psychotherapeutic care. Reminiscent of protocols and one shot fits all… Especially the shot fit the vulnerable.
Bad news: even when I was in medical school (graduated 51 years ago), the stats were in--no matter what kind of therapy you get, 1/3 get better, 1/3 stay the same, and 1/3 get worse. Medications are vastly better now, but society's handling of mentally ill--like by denying that there's any such thing as mental illness--has gotten much worse than the meds have gotten better. So it's a net negative from > 50 years ago.
We can thank Thomas Szasz, author of "The Myth Of Mental Illness" and other tomes telling us that the emperor's clothes are beautiful; and the MSM who have unwittingly [I repeat myself] abetted his form of destructive delusions.
The social media under-35s are, IMO, useful for the people who really make money from perceived conflict, but not themselves agents. I don't think the TikTok girl is intentionally taking place in a long con, or a con of any kind. She's just trying to get attention in the way her generation has been conditioned to do, because she doesn't want any of the normal stuff that we wanted when we were her age (fun with friends, sex, interesting college classes or a decent-paying job, etc.).
Young people genuinely do feel distress and have serious problems--have a look at Branchflower's NBER work on this, as well as national health statistics on neurologic disorders. Various unscrupulous people and bad actors are using this distress and these problems, telling them it's Trump making them unhappy, or selling them cross-sex hormones, or providing endless scrolling and ads with which they can anesthetize themselves. The difference between a 22-year-old today and a 22-year-old when I was 22 is not political views, but an inability to make eye contact, a disordered sense of self and sexuality, a host of autoimmune disorders, etc.
These kids are not why the government does bad things with our money. They're the sideshow, and the victims of decades of bad medicine, chemical overload, and electronic addictions.
Agreed and 30 years of the Great ☠️poisoning AND Marxist capture of K through 12 education…well preschool through year 20 really. UNESCO is pitching transgender kids and advocating for emotional social learning. ESL is child abuse along the lines of MK ultra. Drag queen story hour, and the like are to provoke a crisis in the child. Trauma based mind control, and an idiot ideology that seeks to create and reinforce mental illness, cluster B disorders especially It’s Maoist cultural revolution 2.0 political warfare inciting sociopolitical destabilization everywhere The color revolution woke Mind virus can be transfected. Astroturfing SJWs, and if they succeed they get thrown under the bus. Just like the red guard.
Right. And I was just thinking how annoyed I was with all the empathy manipulation in the covidian con crap— and how dangerous it was. So many people ended up taking multiple jabs of gene junk. I do care about other people, but when I'm urged to care by some random bus stop sign or TV ad or parrot-person-useful-idiot, all my inner alarm bells go off.
There is something else going on, sadly, and it’s called borderline personality disorder. These people are wired differently. They are hypersensitive and hypervigilant. Stressed and anxious all the time. As hunter gatherers that kept some alive. Now it is received as was describe in this post. They misinterpret all the time and are misinterpreted equally. They are walking drama factories. And they can’t stop. It took me years to learn this but only after finding the right researcher did I understand my daughter.
Seventy years ago, they would get married, then sit at home popping valium while they complained to their cluster B neighbors. The advantage of which was that they were out of everyone else's (actual productive people) way.
I think borderline is on the rise, like autism. This is not an act. They really see the world that way. Their experience of life is entirely different, extremely uncomfortable and leads to sky high substance abuse rates.
Living politically on the left will turn one into a borderline. I already had the tendency born into a Cluster B family, and now I am still working to extricate myself from those tendencies (it's taken 12+ years, it is a slog). So you are spot on.
That site could be done better - for starters, it says "Loved One's" - should be just "Loved Ones" - no apostrophe needed. Also, I'm not keen on taking psychodelics to alter my psyche. I'd rather work through it. Thanks anyway.
I’ve extricated myself from my mother and her side of the family due to cluster b: covert narc since I was an infant. I have been scapegoated by them my entire life and what I learned from the psychological abuse, manipulation, betrayals and lies is that there is no love or empathy in them. This is generational, systemic psychological trauma and abuse (in my case and many others). The difference is these people cannot love others, cannot love themselves, have no ability for self observation and self reflection and refuse to take personal responsibility. It is always others’ fault, it is always others that must change for them to be happy. And they don’t realize they are empty inside. Nothing makes them happy. Even on the high spectrum, more sociopathic traits would be that really messing with people is their “entertainment” but is short lived because “happiness, joy” comes from the same place that love does. And that “chip” is completely missing.
Until we realize we all have a "borderline personality disorder" (we all fall short) and there is only one cure, (the price Jesus paid on the cross) can we be healed. How many who profess to be of the Faith read and strive to live by His handbook? Matthew 5:43-44 edited. Be....in the Word.
For me it's an older sister whose behavior has confounded me over the decades. It's never easy. And it almost always feels like a game of manipulation of me or others.
Ok, I'll say it: this girl is pretty cute. A shame she's an unhinged child riddled with brittleness and Adderall-fueled delusions of importance and self-worth. I highly suspect she's also one of those girls who wears very skimpy workout outfits to the gym but then traps guys minding their own business doing their reps into looking at her and shaming them online.
Basically, she's the living meme of "don't stick your dick in the crazy".
Many years ago I saw what I still think is a brilliant bit about being offended. It starts about three minutes in but the whole thing is worth a view. When I saw this, the first thing I did was send it to my three daughters to help them understand the stupidity of all this "I'm offended" crap. Enjoy.
I know! I watched it twice this morning thinking about my teen aged daughters watching it all those years ago. All three told me they thought it was hilarious which I took as a positive sign!
Cats are always in search of reliable servants, er, I mean "caretakers". These people provide a valuable function in Cat Society. I sometimes wonder if certain Cats are behind the Crybully trend in order to increase the population of single, childless, Cat Ladies.
My empathy stopped completely when I realized I was being manipulated by weaponized narcissism. Performance tantrums are expected from a toddler but not from an adult, unless they're being paid for it, like Bernie the Onesie.
Please be mean. I never thought of meanness as a necessity for the world to function but it clearly is. These people have become so sheltered that they claim any sentiment they don’t like is violence. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds which I think is what most of us find to be their most reprehensible quality. It is scary to think that the hypocrisy is in tandem with their narcissism and this group will soon be in charge of our world in about ten more years.
It’s not mean. It’s a kind of paternal love that compels one to engage the world as things really are. It equips a child to survive and flourish in the real world — one that, as we are now witnessing, will tolerate this nonsense for only so long.
The tragedy isn’t so much what these children did to the rest of society but what an enabling society has done to these children. I hope they can grow up but I fear they are permanently infantilized.
There must be some pain exacted for the benefit of health. Whether it is the pain and soreness of exercise, to setting or resetting a bone, or the pain of removing a splinter. All these things must be endured to liberate someone from the cause. The answer is not "being there" for the person in need, but to extract or remove the source of their pain, which can be quite painful.
I was "the mean mom" in my kids' social circles - can't manipulate me, can't guilt me, no means no, etc. I pointed out to each child the "crazy maker" within their friend group. (It was less of an issue with my son, big issue with the girls.) Without fail the young teen would insist their friend was kindness itself, the best, blah blah. Then, by age 14 or 15 (depending on the egregiousness of the crazy making), they would come to me and say, "HOLY COW, you were right!" It taught them very valuable skills - none of the three have fallen for all this empathy shit-show. (Ages 28-38)
There's going to be a lot of howling, and a lot of these broken people will never be able to change - they have definable personality disorders that can never be cured, only managed IF the person gets therapy and works at it (not in their skill sets!). But I don't think there are as many of them as it has seemed, and their "influencing" days will soon end. That photo of the "cruel kids" reminded me of the 80s when life was fun - most people want that.
My wife was always the tough one with our three girls. I didn’t always agree but would never even consider not backing her up. The results speak for themselves: 3 confident, happily married, loving mothers whose own mother is their closest friend. Tough love, properly administered, is usually nothing more than a firm hand on the tiller.
I’m STILL that way, even with my grandchildren. I am a soft, loving, hugging, no yelling, sometimes indulgent Yiayia, but NO means NO. They listen to me. Even my daughter has told me, they listen to you more than they do us.
First time my son spent a full day with grandma (my mom) without parental supervision, we met up around dinner time. He bolted up with enthusiasm "Daddy - guess what we had for lunch - ice-cream!!!". My response was "mom" (y'all know the tone). She smiled. Payback. Boundaries were our job ;-). That is the order of things. Enjoy being grandparent!
Our only job, as grandparents, is to return them safely to their parents. Giving them a time to remember is our prerogative.
Well put with the nautical reference. Sometimes easier said than done, but all that is required is to demonstrate calm amidst the storm. Our children will, by and large, become the examples that we set for them.
Flip out and scream at them every time they spill some juice, and they'll end up dramatic a-holes liable to lose their sh-t at the drop of a hat.
Tell them "No" when they have a bad idea or do something wrong, but them calmly explain why and follow it with a hug and "I love you", and they will become calm, secure, well adjusted people.
I really do think it's as simple as that. Also, I think dad's are typically easier on girls and mom's on boys, just the way it is. Mostly I think moms can see through their daughter's manipulative bulls-it more easily than dads can, and vice versa.
I hate to be that "as a woman..." woman, but I firmly believe we ladies need another tough woman in our lives to tell us to suck it up. Not only do these women check our worst impulses to use tears for manipulation, but they teach us what battles we need to pick instead of demanding redresses for every perceived inconvenience.
I thought this exactly over Maggie Hassan's seemingly crocodile tears at a recent RFK jr confirmation hearing. How can this senator keep milking the public for sympathy after so many years! Ugh, stop with the public performances especially melodrama ;)
Exactly-
Like where are the tears and trauma drama for the children (or anyone) who were horrifically injured or died after getting the fake MRNA shot? The shot that they were bullied into taking by these same people now crying!!!!!!
I’m over it now!
I can’t even listen to them speak now, let along scream wail or cry.
Sorry- move along.
Psyop irony here.
I guess it's like the spoiled kid who's parents caved to the tantrum. Once the kid learns it works, they keep doing it. Until it doesn't.
Regarding hassan, it was true long ago, still true today: "Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.
Heraclitus
<expletives deleted>. I voted against Hassan (both in the primaries and the general election) the last time she was up for election. Now I'm wondering if impeachment is an option?
I lived in her district for a short while. The Democrats canvassed the area with pamphlets and knocking on doors. I think they continue to keep the seat because they use an approach to put a name on the radar of the voters right before the vote. Best of luck to you!
I don't agree that "women" have an impulse of using tears for manipulation. That behavior is taught, and it is not inborn to females.
I have a male gay acquaintance who pulls this and I am one of few who see through it. It pains me to be around him. He a manipulative narcissist and I always end up as the “bad guy.”
Tough job, but somebody's got to so it.
Yes, but they also need the men in their life to be firm and point out when they're being ridiculous. And men need that too! So many people have been fake-nice to each other for too long
I agree that women need a good man in their life (father or father figure), but men tend to be softer with women (hence the Daddy's girl stereotype), and women are much better at listening to another woman tell them to toughen up. I don't have a psych degree, just a lot of experience and observation from all walks of life.
You know what? Men need the same thing ;-)
I couldn't agree more. I see these young women posting all their grievances on social media, and wonder why nobody in their lives is telling them to stop? My husband is part of a non-profit that used to hold a charity event every year. One of the young women was mad because she didn't understand the rules of the prizes, made a HUGE deal on social media, and ruined the event for good. Once someone corrected her about what really happened, she took down her post. But the damage was done. Anyone over the age of 40 could have told her it was a bad idea.
Amen to this.
That photo of “the cruel kids” also purposely cropped out the blacks that are in the original (including one of the organizers of that event). MSM is unrelenting and shameless in their shaping of “the narrative”.
Yes, and taken together, the two pictures reveal a likely other undercurrent: having stuck with the wrong team and losing out on the more attractive powerful winning men.
That's the thing, like many things, it is a small but vocal minority.
Reminded me of how "opinion polls" can be used by the PR industry to make everyone *think* everyone else thinks something. But the results are often skewed by how the question was framed, and what the options for answers were.
Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the future... We watch our experts read the entrails of statistical tables and graphs the way the ancients watched their soothsayers read the entrails of a chicken.
Eric Hoffer
At least the ancients could eat the chicken.
Excellent observation! "An expert is someone who articulates the needs of those in power." Henry A. Kissinger
Yes to all of this!! The 80's had some weak spots but overall made us tough and common sense - and with great senses of humor LOL My daughter is 23 and has come to me so many times with a "holy cow you were right". Thankfully, she learned quickly and became known as the wise old owl in her crowd. Left her pretty lonely in high school , but fortunately she found her now husband by swimming in the boys' lanes her freshman year bc she had no interest in her female teammates' head games. Funny how life works out!
My mom balanced reason with discipline and consistency. She might feel no initially, but give us a chance (sometimes). Make your case. Give me time to think about it. Iterate no more than once. She would think of reasons to support her reactionary no. Sometimes we prevailed. But, er I mean BUT, we knew once decision was rendered, there was no appeal. Quickly we learned the different magnitudes of NO: no you cannot have a cookie right now. keep pestering me and no becomes NO. NO is persistent and can escalate. No cookies right now becomes no cookies this week, which can become no TV the rest of the week, and so on. Failure to respect NO has consequences.
My son tried the intentional tantrum in a public place ploy once. It didn't work. He was a smart kid. He learned negotiation. He also learned consequences. He hasn't fallen for the weaponized empathy either. He knows real empathy. He knows that fostering weakness and dependence is not empathy. He knows institutionalized ignorance that is required to support this tactic is the real cruelty. It renders people helpless - which is the objective BTW - and that's the worst kind of cruelty.
Now there's a huge difference between a small kids tantrum and a meltdown. The mitigation is pretty much the same. With a tantrum, you can try reason., then guilt: "this is not going to get you what you want. Daddy is very disappointed with this behavior". With Meltdown, there's no point. Meltdown happens when critical mass is reached and once triggered, it runs its course. It is not manipulation, it's a chain reaction event. Once in NYC, in central park after a full day of family activities, we failed to detect imminent meltdown in my 4 year old. The preconditions were clear: fatigue, hunger and cutting a new tooth. I began with my usual explanation: it is time to go back to the hotel and get dinner. Shortly I realized this was meltdown I knew the futility of reason. I picked up the kid, put him over my shoulder and began a determined least-resistance path back to our hotel. You could spot the parents in the crowd vs the non-parents: the non-parents looked at me in horror, the parents moved out of the way with an acknowledging nod. Two police officers on horseback approached, one younger, one older. The younger was giving me that horror look. The older had been there, done that. He waved his partner out of the way and shouted "follow me" and like Moses parting the red sea, a path opened up. By the time we reached the park boundary the fuel was spent, meltdown complete.
Well said Good work “mean mom”
I’ve been played like a fiddle countless times but I finally learned …. In the School of Hard Knocks
Wish my mother had been like you and taught me to spot the pervasive, trouble-making, parasitic characteristics of certain people.
It’s so funny how tiresome these manipulators have “suddenly” become.
E g the pink p*ssy hats have lost their shock value and simply look foolish. True feminine power is much more nuanced and effective.
That “cruel kids” photo fulfilled the Iron Law of confession through projection… And more precisely it conforms to Josef Geobell’s propaganda advice:
Accuse your enemies of what you are actually doing
Interesting you make a distinction between your girls and boys responses. This gender difference is reflected in society at large, a consequence of the emasculation of society.
Give boys sticks and let them hit something. They’ll work it out. They need help seeing emotional manipulation when they’re young. But once they see it they’re good at recognizing it. And with 2 older sisters, he figured out girl-speak pretty early!
I was the mean Mom as well
I was the "direct and honest" aunt, adult friend, and tutor in kids' lives. I don't consider teaching discipline, responsibility, self-control, and maturity "mean". I didn't have kids, but beginning at 13, I was a babysitter, tutor, aunt, and mentor to many kids. I'm still in contact with some over 40 years later. I know they appreciated the rules, boundaries, and limitations I shared with them, but more importantly, the opportunity to have an adult who wasn't their parent (but supported them) who listened and guided them.
This is my sister. Wondering how we ended up so different.
It started with… “everybody gets a trophy. “ …
Yes.
This is also why they don't truly know what freedom is because they are not self-reliant, therefore they don't know or care when they're losing it. Other casualties in this process are lack of curiosity, inability to be a self-starter and inability to sense external manipulation.
Without self reliance you can not be free. Any society that is not merit based ends up rotting in incompetency/indolence, and devolves to anti-merit. Eventually leading to a situation where their self-esteem and "belonging" derives from "the point of all barrel - "love" and importance by emotional blackmail.
That said, as Gato points out, they are a minority and once everyone sees it for what it is then this type of worldview ends up with the sticking power of Dollar Store masking tape.
And here we are...
Of course, they are a minority, and this has been one of the huge arguments during Covid. To Save the .2% who will die with a cold and old age and/or their chronic conditions, the whole of society must indefinitely mask, self-quarantine, and take this experimental injection.
But the subtext really is "I don't want to get sick, and you have to change in order that I won't feel any discomfort." And anyone who disagrees is called a selfish grandma killer.
Which is more selfish, to not mask for .2% of society that dies to a cold, or to mandate everyone mask for the .2% who may contract a cold and die?
“You need to be vaxed to protect me” was the most asinine statement of the Branch Covidians
To which I replied: "so you're saying your vax doesn't work"
Second only to your mask protects me.
Even though the box the masks come in states “Will not protect from viruses.”
It was always about the narrative. The masks signified fealty, compliance and submission.
Well there were many.
"We're all in this together" was a mantra that was a McDonalds ad during the Covid period. So wait, if I don't sign on to this, that means we "aren't" in this together. If I question the narrative that mean I am "opting out" of society? Or am I stating that I oppose a social contract predicated on many false assertions?
Well, now, Jimmy's asking too many questions. 😉
It was not even about saving lives. It was about catering to the fear and paranoia of a subset of the population. A fear and paranoia pushed and propagated by those in charge, all for the purpose of expanding their control.
And served to divide the world into Good People and Bad People.
Was one of MANY tools and techniques which "served to divide the world into Good People and Bad People".
And it worked.
For a while.
Observation: We went shopping in the city last weekend. About a quarter of our fellow shoppers in the grocery stores were masked. Home Depot - not so many - maybe one in ten. And at Industrial Supply - none.
Pi Guy - It kinda did that for me. The people I used to empathize with and think were Good People (mostly environmental groups) became Bad - manipulative - People.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to preserve the environment. I imagine most of us here have never left a McDonalds bag in a parking lot or left one of the masks they forced us to wear on a sidewalk.
I preferred to think of them as the informed/thinking/rational/did their own research ppl & ignorant of the facts/alarmist/gullible/can't see past the end of their nose ppl.
I prefer this preference as well.
The funny thing is that the self-satisfied, alarmist dupes are so, so certain that they are the critical thinkers who see through the noise and get to the truth... but what they think is the truth is nothing but the noise. They're incapable of enough critical thought to realize they're not capable of critical thought, but they just always seem to agree with the "experts" (funny that!), so they conclude that they must be critical thinkers.
And sadly, it worked so damned well for so many sad lemmings here and worldwide. Those of us who unwaveringly stood for freedom of choice and true science became public enemy #1. I am proud to be an outlaw the likes of Waylon, Johnny, Clapton, Morrison, Rowling, etc!!!
I don't know how many people I told "it's not my job to keep you safe -- it's yours"
It was collectivist training.
Communists, socialists, fascists, leftists, those who engage in identity politics, all of them are collectivists. We're "comrades," not individuals. Like cells in a person's body, we're unimportant by ourselves; our only value is equal to our value to the larger organism or group.
By means of social engineering, they hope to train us into that "comrade" mindset, where individuality disappears and we all dissolve into one amorphous blob of indistinguishable, interchangeable pieces of the greater whole. If we are in the habit of subjugating ourselves for the perceived collective good, that's exactly what our would-be trainers want.
Individualism is liberty. Collectivism is servitude. The people who push collectivism in any form do not wish us liberty; they wish us servitude (of themselves).
Spot on.
I empathize for the people who’ve fallen for these tactical moves by controllers. But the jig is up. We see it as a tactic and we recognize that emotion without logical foundation is insanity at a point. It is avoidance of truth. Some are very damaged by this tool and we are going to have to consider counter operations.
SherS - well said. I have a niece who is so absorbed by TDS that she doesn't seem to be able to have a rational thought.
It's- as they say - LITERALLY like they have rewired their brain due to obsession with DJT
Add to that the fact that granny died anyhow - because she was isolated and alone with no one to advocate for her when they doped her up with midazolam or remdesivir.
Newsom's lockdowns finished my mother off when they cut off the only thing keeping her going. She wasn't long for the world anyway, but it didn't have to be right then.
I'm so sorry to hear that. During lockdowns, I found myself feeling really grateful that my mom, who had spent her last few months in a nursing home, died 2 years before the craziness started. It would have driven me mad if I had to watch her being caged away during the last part of her life. The cruelty of what you had to endure is just unfathomable.
Jimmy Gleeson - You said it for me, especially "I won't feel any discomfort". That sentiment slops over into the whole climate control issue. People express their discomfort when I point to the obvious lines in the skies and the also obvious differences in our weather patterns due to nexrad manipulation.
Filming oneself having a breakdown is degrading and demeaning
Remember the 1980s version - 'your right to smoke ends where my nose begins'!!
See: the “EU”
You are on a Substack roll today! Sorry though, no trophies. : )
🎯🎯🎯
It’s what I call “toxic empathy”. It’s used as a sword instead of a shield.
Eric seems to agree with you: "Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden."
Eric Hoffer
YOU are the master of timing and appropriateness of quotes.
How do you do it? Serious question.
THANK YOU! Read a lot. But keep Ike's guidance in mind: "Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you." Dwight D. Eisenhower and Benjamin's: "The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations."
Benjamin Disraeli
We are called to press on for the prize that truly matters: “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." Be....in the Word.
Reality breaks everyone, no exceptions. Sooner or later, they will find out that the trophy is just a piece of plastic crap.
🙌 I said that from the beginning. Only winners deserve a trophy. Losers need to learn to get better at whatever they're trying to win.
The lesson of getting better, or learning limitations, is the trophy.
So true! My 27 year old Son gets it. No trophy for doing for showing up and doing what you are supposed to do
And ends when trophies are found in Palisades ashes and everyone spiritually healthy reminds the world that ... trophies don't matter. They're not "for everyone" but no one takes anything with them. Ashes to ashes. Perspective. Seek excellence and enjoy the world you steward, you ARE COMMANDED, to steward. But hold materialism loosely. And incentivize toward the wins, not the bad behaviors {hello commission for giving mortgages to the unqualified and most risky, so you can get paid and sell the note to Wall Street by Monday?}. This was one BIG SHORT and the movie is over. OVER.
Bingo! 🎯 Nailed it. Ta da! 'By George, I think he's got it' 'Good bye, Mr. Spaulding'. Over & out.
Failure is the best motivation.
I used to feel sorry for the mentally ill. But then these people began to run rough shod over sane people’s rights, put men into women’s sports, and began to mutilate children. Not one of those capricious monsters felt empathy for anyone whose only desire is to live in peace not fear. Now I want all these unstable bullies, who can’t accept reality, put into hospitals so all of us can live in a sane world.
I still feel sorry for the mentally ill, but I want them to be treated as MENTALLY ILL.
The American Psychological Association is drive a good deal of this. They embrace DEI.
They ENFORCE “affirming” gender identity/identities and thus DENY patients psychotherapeutic care. Reminiscent of protocols and one shot fits all… Especially the shot fit the vulnerable.
An idea so crazy it just might work!
Bad news: even when I was in medical school (graduated 51 years ago), the stats were in--no matter what kind of therapy you get, 1/3 get better, 1/3 stay the same, and 1/3 get worse. Medications are vastly better now, but society's handling of mentally ill--like by denying that there's any such thing as mental illness--has gotten much worse than the meds have gotten better. So it's a net negative from > 50 years ago.
We can thank Thomas Szasz, author of "The Myth Of Mental Illness" and other tomes telling us that the emperor's clothes are beautiful; and the MSM who have unwittingly [I repeat myself] abetted his form of destructive delusions.
Not optimistic....
I'm reminded every day how in ancient times, the mentally ill were viewed as possessed by a demon.
Somehow that makes more and more sense to me.
Perfect! ….and Amen!
Before Trump I said that re-writing the rules of society to cater to the mentally ill was a terrible idea. The hateful racist that I am….
😹
The social media under-35s are, IMO, useful for the people who really make money from perceived conflict, but not themselves agents. I don't think the TikTok girl is intentionally taking place in a long con, or a con of any kind. She's just trying to get attention in the way her generation has been conditioned to do, because she doesn't want any of the normal stuff that we wanted when we were her age (fun with friends, sex, interesting college classes or a decent-paying job, etc.).
Young people genuinely do feel distress and have serious problems--have a look at Branchflower's NBER work on this, as well as national health statistics on neurologic disorders. Various unscrupulous people and bad actors are using this distress and these problems, telling them it's Trump making them unhappy, or selling them cross-sex hormones, or providing endless scrolling and ads with which they can anesthetize themselves. The difference between a 22-year-old today and a 22-year-old when I was 22 is not political views, but an inability to make eye contact, a disordered sense of self and sexuality, a host of autoimmune disorders, etc.
These kids are not why the government does bad things with our money. They're the sideshow, and the victims of decades of bad medicine, chemical overload, and electronic addictions.
Exactly.
Agreed and 30 years of the Great ☠️poisoning AND Marxist capture of K through 12 education…well preschool through year 20 really. UNESCO is pitching transgender kids and advocating for emotional social learning. ESL is child abuse along the lines of MK ultra. Drag queen story hour, and the like are to provoke a crisis in the child. Trauma based mind control, and an idiot ideology that seeks to create and reinforce mental illness, cluster B disorders especially It’s Maoist cultural revolution 2.0 political warfare inciting sociopolitical destabilization everywhere The color revolution woke Mind virus can be transfected. Astroturfing SJWs, and if they succeed they get thrown under the bus. Just like the red guard.
Look up the PLA paper on:
unrestricted warfare
I’m surprised Becky from Vassar wasn’t wearing a mask.
Right. And I was just thinking how annoyed I was with all the empathy manipulation in the covidian con crap— and how dangerous it was. So many people ended up taking multiple jabs of gene junk. I do care about other people, but when I'm urged to care by some random bus stop sign or TV ad or parrot-person-useful-idiot, all my inner alarm bells go off.
Yes, the harder they pushed, the more resistant I became.
She removed the mask in order to get a better photo. One can't see the empathy behind a mask don'tcha know.
Yes, the vanity also shows in the angle of the photo. Someone who has spent a lot of time posing. The performative gets very wearying.
You would not see her anguished, suffering face then. Just the tears soaking into her mask. Boohoo.
There is something else going on, sadly, and it’s called borderline personality disorder. These people are wired differently. They are hypersensitive and hypervigilant. Stressed and anxious all the time. As hunter gatherers that kept some alive. Now it is received as was describe in this post. They misinterpret all the time and are misinterpreted equally. They are walking drama factories. And they can’t stop. It took me years to learn this but only after finding the right researcher did I understand my daughter.
Seventy years ago, they would get married, then sit at home popping valium while they complained to their cluster B neighbors. The advantage of which was that they were out of everyone else's (actual productive people) way.
Now, they’re in the workforce. Usually HR.
"Keep Your Crazy to Yourself!" has a nice bumper stickery ring to it.
I think borderline is on the rise, like autism. This is not an act. They really see the world that way. Their experience of life is entirely different, extremely uncomfortable and leads to sky high substance abuse rates.
Living politically on the left will turn one into a borderline. I already had the tendency born into a Cluster B family, and now I am still working to extricate myself from those tendencies (it's taken 12+ years, it is a slog). So you are spot on.
Take a look at Tara4bpd.org for an amazing resource. And always strive for resilience rather than any victim or oppressed frame.
That site could be done better - for starters, it says "Loved One's" - should be just "Loved Ones" - no apostrophe needed. Also, I'm not keen on taking psychodelics to alter my psyche. I'd rather work through it. Thanks anyway.
Thank you! Yes, the victim mindset is the foundation for it all.
I’ve extricated myself from my mother and her side of the family due to cluster b: covert narc since I was an infant. I have been scapegoated by them my entire life and what I learned from the psychological abuse, manipulation, betrayals and lies is that there is no love or empathy in them. This is generational, systemic psychological trauma and abuse (in my case and many others). The difference is these people cannot love others, cannot love themselves, have no ability for self observation and self reflection and refuse to take personal responsibility. It is always others’ fault, it is always others that must change for them to be happy. And they don’t realize they are empty inside. Nothing makes them happy. Even on the high spectrum, more sociopathic traits would be that really messing with people is their “entertainment” but is short lived because “happiness, joy” comes from the same place that love does. And that “chip” is completely missing.
LOL!
Until we realize we all have a "borderline personality disorder" (we all fall short) and there is only one cure, (the price Jesus paid on the cross) can we be healed. How many who profess to be of the Faith read and strive to live by His handbook? Matthew 5:43-44 edited. Be....in the Word.
My faith in God is definitely helping massively with my borderline tendencies. It's a slog. Feels like it's so deeply ingrained.
Some are also narcissistic and can only think of themselves… hence having to post their fake tears
Borderline is perceived as narcisissm all the time.
Agreed, however I would say the narcissistic think only of themselves
Just remember, borderlines are made, usually by abuse, not born.
100%
Disagree with your diagnosis. This is plain and simple manipulation. It's passive-aggressive behavior, just like the cat describes.
For me it's an older sister whose behavior has confounded me over the decades. It's never easy. And it almost always feels like a game of manipulation of me or others.
I like this term "performative fragility." Yeah, it was getting pretty boring.
I'm not tough enough to keep up endless "performance fragility". If I was that miserable all the time, I would have already offed myself.
Ok, I'll say it: this girl is pretty cute. A shame she's an unhinged child riddled with brittleness and Adderall-fueled delusions of importance and self-worth. I highly suspect she's also one of those girls who wears very skimpy workout outfits to the gym but then traps guys minding their own business doing their reps into looking at her and shaming them online.
Basically, she's the living meme of "don't stick your dick in the crazy".
The lion of truth is finally starting to roam freely
I’ve been calling it “toxic empathy” for quite a while now
That's good!
Why is it women? Is this the end result of feminism? Pathetic. As JD Vance said, “I don’t care, Margaret.”.
Absolutely the result of radical feminism
Many years ago I saw what I still think is a brilliant bit about being offended. It starts about three minutes in but the whole thing is worth a view. When I saw this, the first thing I did was send it to my three daughters to help them understand the stupidity of all this "I'm offended" crap. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs
It used to be:
Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
Now it's:
Sticks and stones may be dodged when thrown, but words cut right through me.
Thanks, that was great!
I know! I watched it twice this morning thinking about my teen aged daughters watching it all those years ago. All three told me they thought it was hilarious which I took as a positive sign!
My opinion of the tearful young woman did not change one whit.
With apologies to our whiskered host, she’ll make a lovely, childless cat-lady.
Cats are always in search of reliable servants, er, I mean "caretakers". These people provide a valuable function in Cat Society. I sometimes wonder if certain Cats are behind the Crybully trend in order to increase the population of single, childless, Cat Ladies.
My empathy stopped completely when I realized I was being manipulated by weaponized narcissism. Performance tantrums are expected from a toddler but not from an adult, unless they're being paid for it, like Bernie the Onesie.
Please be mean. I never thought of meanness as a necessity for the world to function but it clearly is. These people have become so sheltered that they claim any sentiment they don’t like is violence. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds which I think is what most of us find to be their most reprehensible quality. It is scary to think that the hypocrisy is in tandem with their narcissism and this group will soon be in charge of our world in about ten more years.
It’s not mean. It’s a kind of paternal love that compels one to engage the world as things really are. It equips a child to survive and flourish in the real world — one that, as we are now witnessing, will tolerate this nonsense for only so long.
The tragedy isn’t so much what these children did to the rest of society but what an enabling society has done to these children. I hope they can grow up but I fear they are permanently infantilized.
There must be some pain exacted for the benefit of health. Whether it is the pain and soreness of exercise, to setting or resetting a bone, or the pain of removing a splinter. All these things must be endured to liberate someone from the cause. The answer is not "being there" for the person in need, but to extract or remove the source of their pain, which can be quite painful.
some, perhaps much pain is unavoidable, in which case it cannot be removed and rather must be endured. Good dads are the best guides through that