Time to Turn

These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.

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Fresh from his criminal act of kidnapping the president of Venezuela and his wife, Trump’s windsock-type attention has swung north, to Greenland. “We need Greenland for national security,” he spouts but, of course, nobody believes him. The US signed a treaty with Denmark in 1951 that allowed them to establish military bases more or less as they saw fit, and to get mining permits. At the peak, the US had eight (8) fully functioning bases in Greenland, including Thule (now Pituffik or something), their most important forward radar base. Seven of them have since been closed and no mining applications have ever been lodged, not least because anything worth mining is secure under about a kilometre of ice.

Here, “national security” is just another bit of Trumpian bullshit, another lie from somebody who has never seen the difference between what he wants to be true, and what is actually true. Most children have a clear grasp of that concept by the time they start school but he missed out, mainly because his father didn’t have much idea of truth and honesty himself, and partly because, for the whole of his life, Trump has been surrounded by an echo chamber of people on the take. These days, he yells: “Don’t tell me what I said yesterday, tell me what I want to hear today,” and they fall over themselves to satisfy him, knowing that the more accurately they guess his moods and suck up, the

closer they get to sticking their greedy fingers in the rivers of black money flowing around him.

In between Venezuela and Greenland, we had the ludicrous and (for sensible US citizens) humiliating experience of The Nobel Peace Prize That Wasn’t. I have long had the gravest doubts about the sense of the Norwegian committee that administers it, going back to the travesty of Kisssinger, the architect of total war on North Vietnam, picking it up but Maria Machado is right down there with the worst. She is a member of one of the immensely wealthy white families who spent decades plundering Venezuela while the vast majority, especially the indigenous people, lived in festering slums. She wants Trump to invade her country so her family and friends can get back the key to the national treasury to pick up their party where Chavez had ended it. She doesn’t have a democratic bone in her body, she is a plutocrat through and through and she couldn’t give a shit about the poor. How many readers recall that young women from Venezuela have won dozens of titles like Miss Universe, Miss International, etc? They had a production line for the blond, pale-skinned daughters of the wealthy, which fed them through a machine and spat them out as ideals for the person who owned Miss Universe, one Donald J Trump. Small world, isn’t it. That meant the brown-skinned, dark-haired indigenous girls from the barrios or the provinces didn’t get a look in, they had to work in the fields while the wealthy practised in their bikinis and stilettos.

But where was I? Oh yes, that prize. She handed it to him and he fell for it. Partly that was his infinitely greedy personality but a lot of it was his dementia: he simply is not capable of comprehending that it isn’t like a building, something you can buy and then you own it. He wants that prize; she gave him hers (stupid woman, 200gm of gold but what does she care, that’s chicken feed for her); it sits on his wall, so therefore it’s his and everybody has to bow down. And now he’s told the Norwegian prime minister that his threats to invade Greenland are largely motivated by not getting that prize. This is the age we live in, this is the world we will hand to our children and grandchildren. However, it may well be that this time, Trump has bitten off more than he can chew. This time, and unlike his attacks on Iran and Venezuela and Nigeria and Somalia and Yemen and Syria and a few others, Europe isn’t applauding.

The Europeans, pathetic bunch of squibs that they are, have rattled around in the cupboard out the back and found an old spine they put there 80 years ago, and are trying it on to see whether it fits any of them but it’s too big. Spines can be scary, you know, but so far they haven’t had a total panic. They’ve sent a few dozen troops and a dog sled to Greenland and told Herr Drumpf that he can’t have it. He, of course, is apoplectic: Nobody, but nobody, tells DJ Trump what he can or cannot have, they’re off script!!!! Tariffs all round, he shrieks on Twitter or whatever it is, anybody who opposes me will wear 25% tariffs. That’s in addition to the 25% for anybody who trades with Iran in any way. International diplomacy reduced to the level of a child throwing a tantrum, hurling things from his play pen, except this over-sized child has his fat little fingers hovering over the Big Red Button that follows him wherever he goes: “We need Greenland for national security so we can either get it the easy way or the hard way but we’re going to get it.”

Meantime in the US, crickets. Nobody, not a single person in the US, is whispering in his ear, “Donny, you can’t actually do things like that, they’re our NATO allies.” What does he care about NATO? He hates NATO, he believes they’ve had a free ride on Uncle Sam’s coat tails and either they start to pay up or it’s all over. Trouble is, they can’t pay up. Their prosperity was built on cheap Russian natural gas but Biden blew up the Nordstream II pipeline so now their economies are grinding to a halt (The Economist this week: “Germany’s economy is so bad even sausage factories are closing”). Also, there’s actually nothing they can do to stop the US landing a couple of divisions and hoisting their flag, as they’ve done so many times before. Unless The Don changes his mind or loses it completely, it looks as though Denmark is going to shrink. Would that be so bad? Probably not good for the Greenlanders who would lose their health service and old age pensions and free education and so on, but what about Europe? Could they remain in bed with somebody who has just stolen their apples? Probably, they’ve had long practice at adjusting their morals to satisfy their greed: Europeans have spent the past 600 years landing in other people’s countries, having a look around and saying: “This is nice, we’ll have it.” Now that it’s being done to them, they don’t like it but they can’t expect their protests to be taken too seriously in their former colonies. However, the real question for Europe is this: Do they need to remain in a subservient role to the US, or has the very idea of a NATO reached its use-by date? That’s a good question: What in fact is the idea of NATO?

NATO, as they say, was intended to keep the Soviets/Russians out, the Germans down and the Americans in. From the very beginning, NATO was an American invention, built and paid for by them for their purpose “containing” the USSR (now Russia) because communism. The selling point was that without a permanent American military presence, the fanatical Soviet hordes would pour across to the Atlantic, crushing the nice, harmless people in Western Europe under their snowy boots. That’s what they said and still say, but there’s no truth in it. In 1945, Stalin wanted a united, neutral and disarmed Germany straddling the centre of Europe. That way, he reasoned, nobody could invade from the West again, freeing them to get on with the serious business of rebuilding after the Nazi invasion. That didn’t happen. The US rearmed West Germany and incorporated it in NATO, manifestly a hostile alliance directed at the USSR, who retaliated with the rickety Warsaw Pact.

Marx, according to the savants in the West, said monolithic communism was determined to destroy capitalism, hence the unremitting hostility of the West toward anything red. That’s not actually true. Marx said that capitalists hated socialists (true) and would always do whatever they could to destroy socialism (also true) so socialists had to be ready to defend their revolutions otherwise the capitalists would pounce (which they have done many times). Classic Marxism said capitalism would eventually destroy itself due to its internal contradictions; socialists had to be ready to take over but he did not say communism had to attack capitalism. In fact, Stalin’s official doctrine was called “Socialism in One Country,” meaning the USSR. This meant he did not support the Chinese Communist Party, which led to decades of hostility, including fighting on the Ussuri River in 1969. There was no such thing as “monolithic communism,” that was simply propaganda to justify Western hatred of the socialist movement.

You would think that when the USSR fell apart and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, all the threats to Western Europe had disappeared, so NATO could have faded away. Not so: it was rejuvenated and spread to the East, to counter the dire Russian threat. This is such utter nonsense: in the 1990s, Russia was a basket case, unable to pay its own army let alone mount an invasion of the West. There was fighting in different parts of the country; the president, Boris Yeltsin, was a totally corrupt and hopeless drunk; the entire state assets were being purloined by a small group (the “oligarchs”); industry crashed; there was mass unemployment; massive inflation and devastation of the working and middle classes … In short, post-Soviet Russia was a tableau from heaven for the vulture capitalists of the West who were slobbering in their sleep over the uncountable wealth they had almost within their hands, but a threat it was not. But then somebody threw a spanner in their plans. In his last days, Yeltsin appointed a young KGB operative as prime minister who agreed not to pursue the Yeltsin clan for their corruption but who then turned on the oligarchs and started to claw back the state assets [1].

To cut it short, Putin spoiled Wall Street’s wet dream of dismembering and looting Russia’s vast natural wealth, that’s why they hate him. He snatched the treasure from under their noses, for which they will hate him for eternity. It has nothing to do with human rights or democracy or any of that tosh (the wealthy hate human rights and democracy as well). The whole thing is money and power, nothing else. The only thing about Trump is that, in his rapidly advancing senile decay, he says out loud what the Western imperialist capitalists have been saying for half a millenium: “Either you let us prey on your country and take what we like, or we will destroy you and then take what we like.”

Also, Trump is threatening white people whereas the rules of civilised imperialism are that you can only do that to what Churchill deemed “lower grade races.”

But back to NATO: the whole thing is a lie. Western Europe is not and never has been in danger of invasion from the East. The purpose of NATO was and still is to keep the barbarians to the East constantly feeling threatened so they spend too much on arms and bankrupt themselves, as happened in 1990. NATO should be dissolved as a threat to international peace. The US should close its bases and go back to its side of the Atlantic. Europe should get rid of its current crop of deadbeat politicians and come to an agreement to work with Russia to build a Eurasian Economic Community with its own reserve currency, and maybe, maybe, we could start to escape what has been called the Hobbesian Trap.

English polymath Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) had a very gloomy view of humans. Unless they are kept on a tight leash, he said, humans turn into the very worst of animals. They need a strong central government (the “Leviathan”) otherwise society collapses into chaos:

… (without strong central authority) there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short (Leviathan, 1651, Ch 13).

The Hobbesian Trap says that, by nature, a state of mutual distrust exists between neighbours in which each fears the other may be about to attack; therefore, a pre-emptive attack makes perfect sense. This notion has been very influential in the relations of the US and USSR, and now the US and China and Russia, leading to the nuclear arms race, Mutually-Assured Destruction (MAD) and a hundred wars and bloody revolutions, Ukraine merely being the latest.

Without having read everything Hobbes wrote (a lot), I’d say he left one crucial point unanswered: Why do humans mistrust each other? There are two reasons. The first is an innate fear of the unknown, either of places or of strangers, better known as xenophobia. In that, we’re no different from practically every other animal on the planet, and clever people amuse themselves making up evolutionary arguments to “explain” it. The solution to xenophobia is to get to know people, and this is easily done within a formal social structure that assumes each party’s good intentions. That, however, is where it breaks down: what happens if the other side don’t have good intentions, if they are lying and concealing their true, evil motives? Discretion says “Don’t trust until you are certain, and even then you can get it wrong,” for which strict rules of engagement are necessary. But why should we doubt their bona fides? They could be lying. Why do we assume that? Because we lie ourselves and we assume other people will do the same. In psychology, that’s called projection, to attribute to another person one’s secret or forbidden motives or emotions. In psychology, projection is unconscious and is seen as a sign of fairly severe personality disturbance. Lying, however, is not projection as lying is fully conscious. It is the insertion of a falsehood at a particular point in a discourse in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth (Harry Frankfurt).

When it comes to politics, Side A is right to assume Side B is lying because Side A lies all the time. Trump says: “We need Greenland for national security.” That’s a lie, he just wants it. “Venezuela is running drugs into the US.” That’s a lie, they just wanted the oil. “Israel has a right to defend itself.” That’s a lie. Under international law, the Gazans had a right of armed resistance but, as the occupying power, Israel is prohibited from any form of reprisal. “Accusing Israel of genocide is antisemitism.” That’s definitely a lie, the state of Israel is not a race that can be vilified, and so on. It’s difficult to trust when the air is thick with flying lies but it doesn’t have to be. Just because humans have always lied doesn’t mean they should continue, especially when the stakes are now so high. Rules of engagement, known as confidence-building measures, are easy to formulate. They are, however, difficult to implement when one side lies habitually. As we now see the West does.

This brings us to the second reason humans mistrust each other. Side A fears Side B wants to dominate them because they want to dominate Side B themselves, and Side A knows Side B will resist because Side A hate being dominated themselves. This is the paradox of domination: in one and the same person at exactly the same time, we have two countervailing urges, to dominate others, and to resist being dominated. This is basic to human life: it is biology, universal among humans and most other animals, but it causes constant chaos because even though dominating is such fun, being oppressed is living death. However, if we choose, we can control our urge to dominate. It’s not like breathing or eating or sleeping, it doesn’t have to be. Before the impulse gets out of control, we have the ability to say: “No, stealing their land is stupid, if everybody steals all the time, where are we? We can’t live in a lawless society.” In fact, we can but lawless life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Trump, however, is different. He sees dominating people as a sign that he’s smarter than everybody else. Remember what he said about paying taxes? He doesn’t pay any, which means he’s smarter than all the people who do. If he can get his name on things, that means he’s superior to people who don’t have their names on things. If he has lots of gold around the place, that says he’s better than the common herd who can’t afford gold. If he could get lots of women, that meant he was better than men who had only one wife. All this is because he has no self-esteem, he is a hollow person. Every time he gets something new or bigger or more expensive, he feels a thrill and he does his silly little wooden marionette dance. Trouble is, the thrill quickly wears off, as thrills do. Then the emptiness creeps in and he can’t stand that, so he has to keep moving, keep reaching for more, keep clambering over people just so he can say: “Look at me, I’m the greatest.” That’s why he stays up all night texting threats to people (33 in 45 minutes at Davos on Tuesday) because inside, he knows he’s not; also, he has no idea how stupid it makes him look.

The age of the flimsy “rules-based international order” is well and truly dead, shot down after it got in their way by the very people who touted it. NATO has been an important part of the deception that we (meaning rich white countries) are the goodies and anybody who opposes us is bad and has to be crushed. We say it is defensive but necessarily, the other side see it as a mortal threat and are compelled to respond. The sooner it is gone, the better. We are only a hair’s breadth from Hobbesian anarchy, where the powerful crush the weak because they enjoy it and nobody can stop them.

Trouble is, our politicians don’t understand any of this, they think they’re doing God’s will or spreading democracy or bringing peace when all they’re doing is spreading chaos through trying to get more and more. Without NATO giving them Dutch courage, Europe would be forced to make its peace with the Slavic nations to their east, whom they have sorely abused for millenia – the very word “slave” comes from Latin sclavus, meaning Slavs, because so many of them were captured and enslaved. This was before Europe’s merchants realised African slaves were easier to transport across the Atlantic.

The real history of the West is endless violence, cruelty, theft and betrayal, all of which is driven by the unquenchable Western urge to dominate the world. Mrs Drumpf’s little boy is only in that job while he delivers for the plutocracy. We should, however, be thankful for one thing: as long as he gets the prize, he doesn’t give a shit who knows he’s a monster. Of course, if he gets away with Greenland, he’ll move on to something bigger. That’s what psychopaths do. Only a united front stops them, and the best united front would be Europe, Russia and China. So keep at it, Donny boy, keep shaking NATO until it falls apart, then people will have to think for a change instead of being told what to do. It’s time to turn.

Reference:

Belton C (2020). Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West. London: Harper Collins.

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My critical works are best approached in this order:

The case against mainstream psychiatry:

McLaren N (2024). Theories in Psychiatry: building a post-positivist psychiatry. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. Amazon (this also covers a range of modern philosophers, showing that their work cannot be extended to account for mental disorder).

Development and justification of the biocognitive model:

McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge. At Amazon.

Clinical application of the biocognitive model:

McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.

Testing the biocognitive model in an unrelated field:

McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.

The whole of this work is copyright but may be copied or retransmitted provided the author is acknowledged.