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Carol Jones's avatar

These are women (I am one and see SO SO many like this) who perceive they have had no power over any aspect of their lives and don't really know how to wield it positively so it comes out in this twisted perversion . This kind of BS is the ONLY real power they have had over anything in their lives. This kind of detrimental (sometimes life threatening -- see the bioweapon known as COVID 19 vax) perverse need for tyrannical control over anyone and anything should be a syndrome in the DSM-5. Just think how much money Pharma could make.

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Jack Gallagher's avatar

While we're never allowed to diagnose anyone from a distance, what you describe rhymes with borderline personality disorder, the principal phenomenon of which is a pronounced lack of a sense of self, producing symptoms that result in desperate attempts to control the lives of others.

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Bill Heath's avatar

I objected loudly and often to the multi-hundred Ivy League psychiatrists who diagnosed Donald Trump with all manner of psychiatric ailments - the ethics of the profession forbid diagnosing a patient one has not met. I agree with Jack Gallagher; the description rhymes with borderline personality disorder. There is a possibility of comorbidity with hystrionic personality disorder. Whatever else she is, she's not a person happy with her life.

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Susan Mercurio's avatar

Ethics? What has ethics got to do with politics?

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Hrothgar Pedersen's avatar

... so you say that and then say "but I'm not diagnosing anyone if I just say 'the description rhymes with such and such disorder'" 🤣 holy shit man

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Jack Gallagher's avatar

I'm actually not trying to be uncharitable. Consider that her actions, clearly having the effect of controlling the choices of others, if not the result of a disorder, might then be attributable to basic ill-intent. Would that not be much worse than if her actions were attributable to a disorder of some kind, in which case she would be less culpable, to the extent such actions might be pathological?

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russell b's avatar

No one gives a fuck what you think. I’d rather have a president with some ball than one that doesn’t know where the fuck he is. It doesn’t take a dr to see that we currently have a brain dead zombie in the White House.

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Bill Heath's avatar

I suspect you misread my words. It appears we are in violent agreement.

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Bootsorourke's avatar

Outwardly, is very similar to sociopathy--the urge to fuck with other people’s lives

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SueB's avatar

They definitely have no power over their size. Their weight. It’s odd. Since they cannot control this aspect of their being, does it make them want to control others? There’s something there. It’s not a coincidence.

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Beeswax's avatar

There are lots of obese people of both sexes, all races, and all political persuasions in the USA. The reasons for it are myriad, from lack of access to fresh food in poor neighborhoods, to lack of education, to preference for culturally specific foods and ways of cooking, to the ubiquity of fast food franchises, to lack of exercise, and so on. Foreign tourists visit the States and comment about how enormous people are here.

There's something off about psychoanalyzing people's political motivations on the basis of their weight. You never saw a fat Trump supporter? Give me a break. People are fat in this country. It's a public health issue.

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Tucker Chisholm's avatar

Agreed. Its not political to be overweight, its just processed food ingredients plus commute times and whatever other factors

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Beeswax's avatar

Exactly. Thank you.

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David Burse's avatar

I am informed that it is White Supremacy to exercise and be physically fit.

https://time.com/6242949/exercise-industry-white-supremacy/

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Stxbuck's avatar

Smalltime bureaucrat syndrome. I suspect someone better in the misanthropic arts-like HL Mencken-has a better name for it.

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Outis's avatar

Kudos. "Smalltime Bureaucrat Syndrome" is actually pretty good though I would concur that an expert polemicist like Mencken might already have come up with a classic.

I didn't find a term as concise as what you propose, but Mencken had many characterizations of the enveloping process, e.g.:

https://fee.org/articles/12-hl-mencken-quotes-on-government-democracy-and-politicians/

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

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Hrothgar Pedersen's avatar

And to think, instead of dog-paddling in Taibbi's comment section, each of us could have actually been reading Mencken or something. Really makes you think

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Outis's avatar

I have learned quite a few interesting things in Taibbi's comment section. Check Bull Hubbard's note above on "Gauleiter", a term I was not familiar with and one that seems to apply quite well to the mischevious bureaucrats (like the subject of Matt's article) and their attempts at election interference.

It's also amusing to swat snarky little twerps with their out-of-place and misguided petulancy; e.g., I just provided some Mencken quotes; you can read Mencken right here.

My background is mostly technical (e.g., PhD in math, etc.). I work to improve my understanding of subjects I did not "get into" as a youth. Practically every very day I find myself thankful that I went to a Jesuit high school and had those three years of ancient Greek and four years of Latin.

I did save my father's early-edition copies of Mencken's "The American Language; An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States", though I admit I haven't gotten to them yet.

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Starry Gordon's avatar

Well, get to them, then.

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Someone From Texas's avatar

It’s always amazed me how public officials can be bought off and paid for with so little cashola. I’ve seen it at the bush-league school board level in business dealings and all the way up to the varsity “big guy” league. Special interests get a massive return on their bribery investments. From hundreds of dollars in contributions for millions in municipal construction contracts to tens of thousands for billions in defense weapons systems. A dime store whore is a dime store whore.

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Bull Hubbard's avatar

"Little Hitler" gauleiters. I forget where that came from . . . I think from Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich."

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Outis's avatar

Wow. Yes. Word of the day!

"Gauleiter"

Shirer's book was in my parents' library; I admit I haven't read it. In my youth, I was drawn more to technical subjects; I work to fill in various lacunae in my background, particularly history and geographical-cultural considerations. So many interesting books to read.

"Gauleiter" perfectly characterizes the often-unelected, or at least way out of their depth, little despots who have been instrumental in weakening our electoral system while declaring their efforts are to the opposite (e.g., the changes in the Pennsylvania election rules that circumvented the state legislature, all the recent shenanigans in Colorado and Wyoming, etc.).

Per your comment, re-titling Elvis Costello's "Two Little Hitlers", can we now we sing "Zwei Kleine Gauleiter"? One can make the latter fit the rhythm of the line reasonably well!

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JPWfEVG's avatar

Remember Gauleiter referred to an appointed true believer Nazi. A party fanatic, being paid off for services rendered to the party, not the state.

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Hrothgar Pedersen's avatar

"As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron."

Rashida Tlaib

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DemonHunter's avatar

They, at least in my observance, tend to eschew deontological evaluations in favor of a consequentialist system. The problem being, getting to a preferred result without considering the precedent it establishes creates unintended consequences.

This is very much a condition of the Democrats. They have a result in mind and disregard the path necessary to do so which results in things like Trump getting 3 SCOTUS appointments and many many federal judgeships. Who would have thought that lowering the cloture vote to a simple majority would ever come back to bite them in the tookus.

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