Job Discussion Forums

[homersimpson]

[dyak]

Exactly.

You can see for yourselves.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

Pathetic is the Reality
Empathy is Important

First, it's important to understand that children don't want to attack others. They'd much rather play, experiment, and feel close and loved. They'd much rather be pleased with other children and feel a sense of belonging at home or at school or day care. When children do feel connected, relaxed, and loved, they are open to friendships and flexible in their play with other children.

It's when children have lost their sense of connection that they feel tense, frightened, or isolated. These are the times when they may lash out at other children, even children they are close to. The aggressive acts aren't premeditated, in fact, they aren't under the child's control at all. When a child loses her sense of connection, strong feelings overtake her behavior. On an ordinary three-year-old's morning, with typically loving and typically harried parents, the child's inner train of thought might go like this:

"Mommy's gone. She doesn't love me--she rushed me out of bed, ordered me around, and rushed me to school. She cooed at the baby, but she got mad at me. What am I going to do? I can't stand myself--my Mommy doesn't like me. Here comes Joey. He looks happy. I can't play! I feel desperate!" At this point, the child may lash out.

When children who are feeling connected are overtaken by feelings of isolation or desperation, they run for the nearest safe person and begin to cry or shriek in fear. They immediately begin to release the terrible feelings, trusting that they are safe from danger, and safe from criticism for expressing their feelings. At these times, children don't hurt anyone. They feel trusting enough to run for help. The crying and trembling and perspiring they do unties the knots of tension and restores their sense that they are OK. The adult who listens and allows the child to "fall apart" without becoming alarmed helps the child remember that there are people who care and can be trusted.

Children will lash out when they can't think, and can't run for help. What's confusing to parents, who are trying to show love and to guide them well, is that children don't seem tolook desperate when they are about to bite, push, or hit. They look like it's what they wanted to do. But children do give subtle signals that they feel too alone to function. If you watch carefully, you may see that a child's face goes impassive--acquiring a blank, passionless look--in the seconds before she lashes out. Fear and isolation take the life out of a child's expression. They don't look mad or frightened because they feel too far away to show anything on their faces. Fear robs children of their abilty to feel compassion, warmth, or trust. Their trusting nature isn't gone. It is covered by a crust of "no one knows me, no one cares about me."

[ChinaMovieMagic]

http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln02_gulf.html

The Emotional Life of Nations
by Lloyd deMause

Chapter 2--The Gulf War as a Mental Disorder

"He's going to get his ass kicked!"
---- George Bush

Not every American president has been able to resist his nation's call for war. Studies have shown the main determinant is the kind of childhood the president has experienced.1 Jimmy Carter was unusual in being able to draw upon his having had fairly loving parents, in particular a mother who encouraged his individuality and independence, a very unusual quality for a parent in the 1920s.2 It is no coincidence that when I once collected all the childhood photos I could find of American presidents I noticed that only those of Jimmy Carter and Dwight Eisenhower (another president who resisted being drawn into war) showed their mothers smiling.

Ronald Reagan's childhood, in contrast, was more like that of most presidents: a nightmare of neglect and abuse, in his case dominated by an obsessively religious mother and a violent, alcoholic father who, he said, used to "kick him with his boot" and "clobber" him and his brother.3 The result, as I have documented in my book, Reagan's America, was a childhood of phobias and fears "to the point of hysteria," buried feelings of rage and severe castration anxieties (the title of his autobiography was Where Is The Rest of Me?). As an adult, Reagan took to carrying a loaded pistol, and once considered suicide, only to be saved by the defensive maneuver of taking up politics and becoming an anti-communist warrior, crusading against imaginary "enemies" who were blamed for the feelings he denied in himself.4

THE PRESIDENTIAL STYLE OF GEORGE BUSH
George Bush's childhood, though not as chaotic as Reagan's, was also full of fear and punishments. Psychohistorian Suzy Kane, interviewing George's brother, Prescott, Jr., discovered that Bush's father often beat him on the buttocks with a belt or a razor strap, the anticipation of which, Prescott, Jr. recalled, made them "quiver" with fear.5 "He took us over his knee and whopped us with his belt," Prescott said. "He had a strong arm, and boy, did we feel it."6 As he admitted to Kane, "We were all scared of him. We were scared to death of Dad when we were younger." Childhood classmates of George described his father as "aloof and distant...formidable and stern...very austere and not a warm person." "Dad was really scary," George himself once admitted.7 As a result, a desperate need to please was George's main trait as a child, and a depressive personality with an overwhelming need to placate became his trademarks as president.

The mood of America as Bush ran for the presidency was also quite depressed, which favored his election over his less depressed opponent. During the Eighties, in what was often misnamed "A Decade of Indulgence," America had had an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity, the latter based mainly on manic spending binges on the military and on financial speculation, both financed by borrowing.8 As will be shown, manic periods such as these usually climax in wars. In 1989, however, America's traditional enemy, the Soviet Union, had collapsed, and a period of unprecedented world peace without any real enemies had "broken out all over," as Newsweek put it.9 Soon after the end of the Evil Empire, both America and Europe were plunged into depression....

...PEACE, PROSPERITY AND POLLUTION
That personal achievement and prosperity often makes individuals feel sinful and unworthy of their success is a commonplace observation of psychotherapy ever since Freud's first case studies of people "ruined by success."18 Yet no one seems to have noticed that feelings of sinfulness are usually prominent in the shared emotional life of nations after long periods of peace, prosperity and social progress, particularly if they are accompanied by more personal and sexual freedom.19

....Many reporters recognized the depressive origins of the national mood and even the guilt that engendered it. The Washington Post said that after eight years of optimism, "America is in...an ugly spasm of guilt, dread and nostalgia. Once more, America is depressed."25 A columnist accurately diagnosed the mood of America in 1990:

America is like a barroom drunk. One minute it brags about its money and muscle, and then for the next hour it bleats into its beer about failure and hopelessness...America's depression is not brought on by plague, flood, famine or war...We are guilty, guilty, guilty...depression, decline, depravity, dysphoria, deconstruction, desuetude, dog days, distrust, drugs, despair..."26

There was only one way that a lengthy economic recession need not be necessary to cure our national depression: an enemy abroad could be created who could be blamed for our "greediness" and then punished instead of punishing ourselves.

...
...Empathy for the innocent dead was totally missing. We didn't even notice the genocide of children was happening. The civilians who died were, of course, not just "collateral damage," since, according to one authority, "the Pentagon has admitted it targeted civilian structures both to demoralize the populace and exacerbate the effects of sanctions."84 As a result, five years later water was polluted, garbage had to be dumped into the streets and hospitals were nearly inoperative. An estimated 1,000,000 to 6,000,000 more Iraqis would eventually die, according to the Atomic Energy Authority again mostly children both from the embargo and from the effects over decades of American use of depleted uranium wastes in the 65,000 uranium-tipped missiles that were fired.85 Those children still alive despite our genocidal efforts were reported by War Watch as being "the most traumatized children of war ever described."86

The war had accomplished our purpose. America held a massive victory parade, and the President told the American people that "the darker side of human nature" had been defeated more accurately, the darker side of our own psyche had been restaged-assuring us that our nation had entered a New World Order.

The sacrificial ritual had been carried out exactly as planned: by a genocide of women and children. The nation had been cleansed of its emotional pollution. The president's popularity rating rose to 91 percent, the highest of any American leader in history. The stock market soared. "Bush...restored America's can-do spirit....It felt good to win."87 The country had been united by slaughter as it had never been by any positive achievement. Editorials across the country congratulated the President on his having "defeated Evil," and speculated on what the New World Order would look like and when it might begin. The victors no longer felt depressed. America's twenty-eighth war-perhaps mankind's millionth-had again restored our potency. We felt as if we had been reborn.

[British]

homersimpson

Just give it a rest you are just like a little boy.

[Professor Moriarty]

Is that per day or per week (or per hour)?

[British]

dyak.

Exactly.

Yes I can see the planes. what is your Question?.

can you end this now you and homersimpson are playing games

[moonraven]

9/11 3,000--a piddling number compared to the estimated 100,000 he has killed SO FAR in Iraq--mostly women, children and elders.

And in Afghanistan?

[James_T_Kirk]

Homer, what's up man? Why are you starting a thread like this? I realize that the San Diego Chargers lost yesterday, but, c'mon, there's always next year!...I wonder whether they will re-sign Drew Brees?

[The Overcoat]

Homer is a cnut, a fcuking cnut!

[homersimpson]

Just trying to expose some lunacy on this Forum. A person makes a claim that the U.S. gov't willfully murdered 3,000+ people on Sept. 11, 2001 and everyone attacks ME? Interesting.

[homersimpson]

Just trying to expose some lunacy on this Forum. A person makes a claim that the U.S. gov't willfully murdered 3,000+ people on Sept. 11, 2001 and everyone attacks ME? Interesting.

P.S. That f*cker should have made that field goal!

[ChinaMovieMagic]

[homersimpson]

[ChinaMovieMagic]

Dear Homer