No Gain without Pain

Back to the Past

In my last post, I talked about sources, and why you should vet them carefully and think about what they say.

There are very few good analysts online. But there are some.

One of the best is Alastair Crooke. In the video conversation above with Daniel Davis especially in the last third, he excels. Among his comments which caught my attention was his opinion on the inability of the “West” to accept change, that is, the decline of American power and implicitly the rise of Russian and China

Declinism

The belief that society is in a state of decay and that to preserve what used to be the status quo you must somehow turn the clock back is called declinism. It is inevitably what Crooke calls “fantasy thinking”

Political Nostalgia:

It involves an idealized memory of a “golden age” (whether a previous economic boom or time of military superiority) while ignoring the issues of those times which led to the current process of change and decline.

Reactionarism (or Restorative Nostalgia):

This is not conservatism per se. It does not seek to just maintain the current status quo, which has deteriorated.

Instead, it is a reactionary movement which seeks to restore a previous political and social order, not actually as it was but as some people like to imagine. In Europe today, the effort it to get the US back into Europe, supporting NATO, and providing the backbone of its military as it once supposedly did, to struggle against Russia.

Cognitive Bias

Human brains are programmed to filter out bad memories and highlight good ones, making history look far more attractive than the complicated present . This tendency is exacerbated by national education systems which tend to glorify a country’s cultural and political history.

(Notice the Photoshop work)

Movements like MAGA in the US or calls for a pre-Trump NATO in Europe are perfect examples of restorative populism—which offer an idealized version of yesterday in form, if not substance, to resolve social anxieties which undermine the status of elites. The elites have a Cold War mentality because it profits them.

Countries like Russia and China, which are recovering from extreme existential threats – WWII and the Great Patriotic War and the collapse of the USSR for Russia; and WWII and the Cultural Revolution for China, look forward not backwards. They do not seek to maintain the status quo but to improve.

Major Depressive Disorder

Psychiatrists who have a disorder for everything see “Declinism” as a characteristic of “Major Depressive Disorder”.

What? Donald Trump depressed? Or Macron? Or Merz? Oh, come on’!

But the Shrinks cite evidence that many people with major depressive disorder look completely normal and even highly positive. They call it “smiling depression” or, in articles, atypical depression or high-functioning depression, saying that that even close friends, family, and coworkers –or in Trump’s case – the public --have no idea of what they are really thinking.

Cheerful, energetic, and highly social exteriors hide childhood trauma, and, in the case of corporate executives and politicians, psychopathy, which I have been writing about.

Psychopaths oddly are particularly prone to depression.

A major public failure, loss of power, financial setbacks, or legal attacks are a kind of “narcissistic mortification” usually aggravated by childhood trauma. People who suffer such problems externalize with deep anger, feeling that the world is failing them, or persecuting them. In their minds they are not ever wrong—others in power are incompetent if not evil and they must constantly strike and take back the power that they think was, or might be stolen from them. Setbacks reinforces their feeling about the decline of the world they live in and their hunger for the world of the Past, that Golden Age.

Fake personae offer protection, and prevent them people from being seen as weak or, worse--twisted.

WYSIWYG? Not ever!

Social “masking” allows such people to seek and find demanding careers and maintain active social lives keep up appearances and convince themselves they are not “losers”, which they fear more than anything else.

They look happy on the outside. But the inside is something else. The only clues are a certain delusionality, impaired executive functioning, compromised decision-making under pressure, and heightened unpredictability.

Keep in mind that while these people can sometimes fool those around them, they fool themselves even more.

In the case of Trump, we see a difficulty in making timely, critical decisions which in some cases could mean relying on someone like Netanyahu, for example. But he’s not going to admit that!

Yes, Bibi know he is the boss

Or they opt for rash, impulsive decisions that present an aggressive or hyper-positive façade.

Whatever they do, it takes a lot of energy and the effort undermines judgment.

Also characteristic is an implicit cognitive bias where the present and future are viewed as inherently hostile, threatened by immigrants, Asians, Russians, liberals, now “communists”.

People like this have a zero-sum mentality, which of course implies conflict, if not war.

Deep down they fear they are losers, as I have said, so they must “win” no matter what – which rules out compromises, or long-term diplomatic alliances or win-win negotiations – or commonsense.

They inevitably miscalculate threats, minimizing them or maximizing them and misinterpreting motives. And over-react. As I mentioned, they tend to lack good judgment.

These people are also incredibly vulnerable. They demand praise for their public image and surround themselves with sycophants.

As Crooke says nothing much will change as long as people like the leaders of Europe and Trump stay in power.

And in electoral “democracies” they will do that until their societies decline and there is real pain as Crooke says.

On the other hand, no pain, no gain. Challenge sometimes brings out the best. We need a leap of faith.

Putin is a polymath….so….some explanation.