The Crumbling of the GOP’s Pretend World of Unremitting Arrogance
There are a few wise sayings we’ve all heard that keep running through my mind as I’m watching tortured Kissing Kevin sitting through rejection after rejection. He’s at 11 as of this writing. That’s a lot of punishment since the brain senses rejection as though it is pain. Confucius said, “To know what you know and what you do not know is knowledge.” I don’t think Confucius had ever met a member of the House of Representatives though because the source of Kissing’s suffering are several congress people who can not actually claim knowledge as power. They’ll have to acquire knowledge first. I suspect it might be difficult for some of those folks to have much knowledge because they seem to be rather arrogant. I had to wonder if I really understood what arrogance is made of so I googled it.
The first hit was Mindtoolsbusiness.com. Their site says, “Arrogant people like to talk about themselves. A lot. They brag about their achievements, skills and abilities, and often ignore those around them. … Consciously or unconsciously, they make others feel less important. They might use condescending language, talk over people, or display body language that shows a lack of interest in others.”¹ All of which gave me pause, to put it mildly.
I watched the Gaetz boy from down there in Florida stand on the floor of the United States Congress and nominate the Manchurian Candidate for Speaker of the House.² Could there be a part of National Security that Little Matty just can not wrap his pretty little head around? And how about Mountain Lauren demonstrating her extensive economic understanding during an interview where she said she thought that the congress not being in session was a good thing because they were not spending money. I watched Texas Louie sidle up to AOC, that girl from New York with the funny name to see if she’d feel sorry for him and make him feel better. She didn’t.
There’s not much for any Who Down in Whoville decked out with an elephant pin on the lapel to feel good about. They should all be ashamed of themselves. Starting with Kissing himself. Maybe this charade of voting is his way of paying penance for reviving the Mar a Lago Monster. If it isn’t, then the gods are surely laughing. If they are, then all the stars of this soap opera represent the, Beep beep, Acme of futility. Do these congressional coyotes really think they can snap their fingers and change the structure of government? Wonder if they’d like to invest in my new invention, battleship brakes? Drift your battleship with exactness. These guys and girls are truly representatives of viral self indulgence. But then all they are really doing is cheering for themselves as though they were triumphantly right about something. I don’t mean the conservative right I mean, “I’m right because I say I’m right so don’t confuse me with facts,” right. But then there has been a rash of those kinds of folks making the news lately.
Back in the age of rotary dial telephones, there was a pastime for many children which was called “Let’s pretend.” It was a great thing for kids. They used their imaginations and simply pretended they were anywhere they could all pretend to be at the moment doing anything they could imagine while being any manner of magical or regular beings. They could pretend to be at any time in all of history: past, present or future; on this world or any other. But that was a child’s pastime. It was not and should not be the pastime of grown-assed adults. Especially grown-assed adults who are pretending to represent the people of the United States. I just have a whole lot of trouble seeing how people who work for a living can be represented by some arrogant self indulgent kid who can’t find his ass with both hands. I get that they invested in the idea that nothing really matters to anyone so a politician can do whatever he/she wants. It has yet to dawn on them so that they’d notice that reality doesn’t care what side of the aisle you sit, reality demands all of us pay attention to things that are real.
Take the Manchurian guy. He’s being made to look the fool by a handful of discontented people reacting to something they do not understand well and have just enough understanding of the issues to be well intentioned but dangerous. Structures are often ugly if the false facade is removed. Falsity fades quickly when it is exposed to the light. Even when the Manchurian
champions other-than-real worlds he knows he’s playing “Let’s pretend” and pretended worlds only last until you have to go home to eat. Reality looks at his pretend world and says, “Ha, let’s see how long you can hold that reality together all by yourself.” Mattie and Margie have not paid attention to the crumbling reality the Manchurian is doing his best to sustain. Mattie is backing no one in particular and Margie is backing Kissing. Margie and Mountain Lauren have come to reported fisticuffs over Kissing or maybe kissing, who knows? All the while Dark Brandon is flying Dr. Jill over his head and having the time of his life. (Just go with the visual and make it nice.)
When you mix in Ronnie, and Sean, and Ginnie, and Clarence, and Greg, and Kari, you have such an unbelievable soap opera that you would boycott anyone who sponsored it. It’s understandable that a soap opera with such a storyline would elicit all kinds of mean tweets and this one is no exception. All of the left leaning talking heads are having a hard time disguising their unmitigated joy at this current spectacle. I can kind of understand why they’re all up in their self righteous gentrified-ery because the entire Republican caucus is showing its ass. After six years of covering the Manchurian’s ass, they’re all distressed to find out they’ve been showing their own. That has to be disconcerting. It would be even more disconcerting if you had been sure you were covering it right all the time you were showing it. That could make one embarrassed.
But then we’re talking about Republicans and arrogance does not allow for remorse. It does allow for an unremitting desire for an unattainable control of everything though.
Mindtoolsbusiness.com goes on to say, “Perhaps the most fundamental difference between arrogance and confidence is that arrogance often masks insecurity. That’s why arrogant people are boastful about their achievements and abilities while tending to demean others.” Boy howdy! There does seem to be an over-abundance of insecurity observable in the Republican caucus. But then that is something that is also observable on Twitter. It’s observable in actions such as sending migrants to the Kamala’s house in the middle of the winter. How does that solve anything? What does voting for Kevin or not voting for Kevin do for anyone? It is observable in a fear of people of color. It’s observable in trying to regulate a woman’s choice to end or continue a pregnancy. At the same time, confidence is observable when Dark invests in electric vehicles for the government. Dark has been around long enough to know that the only constant is change and he even remembers when buggy whips were a necessary part of mass transit.
References
1. Martinuzzi, B. (2019, March 11). Confident or arrogant? How to tell the difference and why it matters. Mind Tools for Business. Retrieved January 12, 2023, from https://mindtoolsbusiness.com/resources/blog/confident-arrogant-difference
2. Slisco, A., Gillespie, N., Nichols, J., & Weingarten, B. (2023, January 6). Matt Gaetz Heckled Over Trump’s Speaker Nomination. Newsweek. Retrieved January 12, 2023, from https://www.newsweek.com/matt-gaetz-heckled-over-trumps-speaker-nomination-1771720
Forging Agreement’s newest on-demand workshop is available on Teachable now. Learn more about the ideas that John introduces in his blogs in the Program Theory On-Demand Workshop!
One way to think about how your mind works is to consider it as a biocomputer. It has an operating system and different types of applications and programs that run when called, in similar fashion to a regular computer. The results of this workshop will give you new ways to consider your own beliefs, emotions, feelings and logical thoughts and how you can choose to modify them to meet your own requirements.
The workshop combines a series of on-demand videos with group discussions. Program Theory is taught by John Worthington and Paul Grenci. Contact @forgingagreement on Facebook or Instagram or email [email protected] for more information!
The most recent online Reality Creation Through the Dyad Workshop has just wrapped up. The Dyad workshop is an exploration into the relationship that exists between two people- any two people. A Dyadic relationship can be with a spouse, significant other, business partner, co-workers, family members, etc. These relationships can be wonderful and challenging all at the same time, but that is the beauty of relationships; traversing the good, the bad and everything in between.
In this interactive workshop, couples/individuals are afforded the opportunity to examine ever so common problems and tried and true solutions that guarantee an ongoing relationship if one is warranted.
This workshop will be happening on a monthly basis and runs over 2 weeks of 4 consecutive evenings. Contact @forgingagreement on Facebook or Instagram or email [email protected] for more information!
If you would like to support John, please consider subscribing to Medium using his referral link. Due to Medium not supporting mobile-based referrals, please use a desktop browser to sign-up. This ensures that a portion of your commission goes straight to John to support his work on this blog. You will get unlimited access to all of John’s blogs, plus unlimited access to thousands of other writers. Thank you!