http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-bitterness25-2009may25,0,4544029.story
The disorder is modeled after post-traumatic stress disorder because it too is a response to a trauma that endures. People with PTSD are left fearful and anxious. Embittered people are left seething for revenge.
"They feel the world has treated them unfairly. It's one step more complex than anger. They're angry plus helpless," says Dr. Michael Linden, a German psychiatrist who named the behavior.
Embittered people are typically good people who have worked hard at something important, such as a job, relationship or activity, Linden says. When something unexpectedly awful happens -- they don't get the promotion, their spouse files for divorce or they fail to make the Olympic team -- a profound sense of injustice overtakes them. Instead of dealing with the loss with the help of family and friends, they cannot let go of the feeling of being victimized. Almost immediately after the traumatic event, they become angry, pessimistic, aggressive, hopeless haters.
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Wow...really?!
Yet again we discover another reason to be deeply suspicious of the pseudo-science called Psychiatry. Another bullshit diagnosis for things that aren't actually beyond the "norm" of human behavior or experience. These guys until very recently classified homosexuals and BDSM practitioners as aberrant sexual deviants suffering of "paraphilias."
And yet we all know homosexuals and more than a few otherwise "normal" people would seem to enjoy the look and feel of rough sex play. How many people have to engage in certain behaviors for the behavior to be accepted as part of the broad range of actions that are possible and normal for human beings?
How does the opinion from a psychiatrist differ from the opinion of the average judgemental asshole? Subjectivity has nothing to do with it?
I have an explanation for bitterness. Reality.
Social injustice is rampant. We are not living in anything like a meritocracy. Who you know - perhaps more importantly, how much your family owns - is the yellow brick road to success in modern western terms. We are living in the era in which average taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill for bank bailouts while their own homes are foreclosed on. We are constantly at war with someone or other all over the planet. We fight over resources because our governments don't make the correct policy choices when it comes to energy. Some of us still don't have single-payer healthcare.
It all leads to suffering. Suffering may cause bitterness when it is so obvious that with but a few political tweaks no one need suffer at all.
Stop the overweening greed of the very few and you shall have your cure.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
My New Goal in Life
"Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be." - Rita Rudner
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If you can't beat 'em, join 'em...
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If you can't beat 'em, join 'em...
Obama Botches It All
Universal Single-payer healthcare? Nothing like it has even been proposed.
Election reform? eh?
Anti-war position? Continual warfare in every theater. Thanks, MoveOn.org
Economic recovery? Only if you are a bankster, Wall Street huckster or a foreign investor. Main Street americans can go fuck themselves.
Prosecution of Bush et al war crimes? LOL! Not in this lifetime...
Isn't that known as 0 for 5?
Yay...
Election reform? eh?
Anti-war position? Continual warfare in every theater. Thanks, MoveOn.org
Economic recovery? Only if you are a bankster, Wall Street huckster or a foreign investor. Main Street americans can go fuck themselves.
Prosecution of Bush et al war crimes? LOL! Not in this lifetime...
Isn't that known as 0 for 5?
Yay...
Universal Healthcare = Mandatory Liability Insurance According to Obama
Another fail, Obama.
We need top to bottom healthcare reform, Obama - not another fucking bill to pay to private interests.
Brilliant move, BTW - you failed to even propose single-payer as a starting point for negotiations. What's left to concede? You gave it all away in your first move.
We need top to bottom healthcare reform, Obama - not another fucking bill to pay to private interests.
Brilliant move, BTW - you failed to even propose single-payer as a starting point for negotiations. What's left to concede? You gave it all away in your first move.
Gasoline Markets Should Be Controlled
Are Wall Street speculators driving up gasoline prices?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/68552.html
Oil and gasoline prices are rising fast as Memorial Day weekend approaches, but not because supplies are tight or demand is high.
U.S. crude-oil inventories are at their highest levels in almost two decades, and demand has fallen to a 10-year low, but crude oil prices have climbed more than 70 percent since mid-January to a six-month high of $62.04 on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, although refiners are operating at less than 85 percent of capacity, which leaves them plenty of room to churn out more gasoline if demand rises during the summer driving season, the price of gasoline at the pump has climbed 28 cents a gallon from a month earlier to $2.33.
This time, Wall Street speculators — some of them recipients of billions of dollars in taxpayers' bailout money — may be to blame.
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Gasoline is too important to the economy and national security to allow its availability and price point to fluctuate according to the vagaries of an easily manipulated market in which foreign players hold sway.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/68552.html
Oil and gasoline prices are rising fast as Memorial Day weekend approaches, but not because supplies are tight or demand is high.
U.S. crude-oil inventories are at their highest levels in almost two decades, and demand has fallen to a 10-year low, but crude oil prices have climbed more than 70 percent since mid-January to a six-month high of $62.04 on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, although refiners are operating at less than 85 percent of capacity, which leaves them plenty of room to churn out more gasoline if demand rises during the summer driving season, the price of gasoline at the pump has climbed 28 cents a gallon from a month earlier to $2.33.
This time, Wall Street speculators — some of them recipients of billions of dollars in taxpayers' bailout money — may be to blame.
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Gasoline is too important to the economy and national security to allow its availability and price point to fluctuate according to the vagaries of an easily manipulated market in which foreign players hold sway.
The Credit Card Reform Bill is Crap!
All smoke and mirrors, folks. Sound and fury signifying almost nothing. Yeah, they scored some incremental points but interests rates basically went unchecked.
Credit card companies can and will continue to hammer people with usurious interest rates. And as they have blithely skipped past the most corrupt aspect of the credit card industry, I give the federal government a "fail" on this one.
Good word to look up sometime: usury.
Credit card companies can and will continue to hammer people with usurious interest rates. And as they have blithely skipped past the most corrupt aspect of the credit card industry, I give the federal government a "fail" on this one.
Good word to look up sometime: usury.
The Two Faces of Obama on Civil Liberties
Obama's civil liberties speech
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/21/obama/
The speech was fairly representative of what Obama typically does: effectively defend some important ideals in a uniquely persuasive way and advocating some policies that promote those ideals (closing Guantanamo, banning torture tactics, limiting the state secrets privilege) while committing to many which plainly violate them (indefinite preventive detention schemes, military commissions, denial of habeas rights to Bagram abductees, concealing torture evidence, blocking judicial review on secrecy grounds). Like all political officials, Obama should be judged based on his actions and decisions, not his words and alleged intentions and motives. Those actions in the civil liberties realm, with some exceptions, have been profoundly at odds with his claimed principles, and this speech hasn't changed that. Only actions will.
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Obama is not impressing me very much of late. I am still thrilled to have him over McCain, but it's getting to a point where that isn't saying very much.
You know, it being Mouseland and all...
Given a choice between being duped by one candidate or being duped by the other, I chose to be duped by the candidate whose policy claims where closest to my own political ideals.
And ultimately, that's turning out to mean almost nothing. That "almost" there is really just a hold out for hope without any real meaning.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/21/obama/
The speech was fairly representative of what Obama typically does: effectively defend some important ideals in a uniquely persuasive way and advocating some policies that promote those ideals (closing Guantanamo, banning torture tactics, limiting the state secrets privilege) while committing to many which plainly violate them (indefinite preventive detention schemes, military commissions, denial of habeas rights to Bagram abductees, concealing torture evidence, blocking judicial review on secrecy grounds). Like all political officials, Obama should be judged based on his actions and decisions, not his words and alleged intentions and motives. Those actions in the civil liberties realm, with some exceptions, have been profoundly at odds with his claimed principles, and this speech hasn't changed that. Only actions will.
------
Obama is not impressing me very much of late. I am still thrilled to have him over McCain, but it's getting to a point where that isn't saying very much.
You know, it being Mouseland and all...
Given a choice between being duped by one candidate or being duped by the other, I chose to be duped by the candidate whose policy claims where closest to my own political ideals.
And ultimately, that's turning out to mean almost nothing. That "almost" there is really just a hold out for hope without any real meaning.
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