For real, it is so automatic that there is some kind of emotionally stunted childhood behind every one of these semi-sociopathic blowhards, it has become a game to go find it.
Trump, Tucker Carlson, whoever… you pick the conservative, I’ll tell you what made them this way.
Sullivan’s childhood was one destabilizing episode after another as his dad did what he loved as a coach but made little money and frequently relocated the family.
The original post is about his own childhood. It isn’t about teachers. It’s about his dad.
These guys are all sad. Therapy could have helped them.
Instead, they grow up into these fractured man-boys with underdeveloped emotional range and an obsession with exploiting others for money, power, and recognition.
That’s the Male Republican Boilerplate Bio.
It is not healthy to grow up to be like these guys.
They’re all broken in their own way and they are magnetically attracted to each other because while healthy people look down on their greed, selfishness and exploitation… in the GOP, those character flaws are celebrated.
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Post-script: some folks are serving up names in response to the “give me a name; I’ll tell you how they got this way” comment.
I’ll do my best to hit some of them.
Important note: I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist. My opinions are not diagnoses nor could they be.
If psychs disagree with me about something, they are invariably right and I am invariably wrong.
My experience is personal. I’ve had to learn how to “run the software” that drives some of these types of people to manage them in my own life.
Once you understand how they’re programmed, their behaviors are just outputs.
Anyway, let’s go.
Tucker Carlson:
Accomplished father; wealthy stepmother; handed every advantage: handed his first media job.
Stunted by privilege.
Kids build competence and then confidence.
They do things for themselves and build a healthy sense of competence and self-confidence.
Tucker didn’t have to do things for himself though.
Tucker Carlson didn’t succeed; he merely benefitted.
He is terrified of an even playing field; and by people who have achieved with none of his privilege.
He converts that terror into a rage towards what he is most afraid of: people who did the most with the fewest of his advantages.
eg Serena Williams, Greta Thunberg.
Charlie Kirk: Feral misfit left alone in the Koch Bros’ woods.
Kirk is interesting. The surface-level story is that instead of having normal adolescence and teen years, he spent his entire life since 7th grade neck deep in adult, conservative circles unaccompanied by parents.
Father’s an architect. Worked on the Trump Tower project. Mother is a mental health counselor apparently.
He was literally hanging with the CPAC crowd without his parents as a teenager. He was treated like a prodigy because he could work an audience; was organized; gung ho, etc.
Basically, if you took a story about a child actor who went off the rails or a good kid who fell in with the wrong crowd, that’s Kirk.
He got all this love, affirmation, and encouragement from exploitative, amoral people.
He was groomed.
And his parents were complicit or negligent in that.
Their kid was off running around with the political equivalent of the Gambinos and they just let him…
And then he skipped college and instantly became an even more amoral, manipulative power-weasel…
And the whole time, he was living at home! Until he was 26!
So, the Charlie Kirk story is a kid who had a lot of horsepower and no steering.
So, the shady guys took him in and showed him love and now it’s the only life he knows - and the life he loves.
He’s Chris Moltisanti.
The open question is there is whether his parents were absent/negligent or encouraging/approving.
I would guess given the limited line of sight, they were a little of each: negligent in the influences they allowed; encouraging in clapping for his “successes” in that environment.
Madison Cawthorn:
I’ll keep this short.
He displays the same severely narcissistic behaviors as Trump. Hardcore Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Lies with impunity; exploitative; loves heroic-victim narratives; presents a facade of specialness; grandiose sense of entitlement
That didn’t start after his accident.
IMHO Narcissistic Personality Disorder like Trump’s is a defense mechanism run amok from an emotionally “dangerous” environment.
A volatile, unreliable and/or punitive adult had to be pleased or the kid was emotionally neglected or abused.
They were basically emotional hostages who learned to say whatever kept the captors from hurting them… or made the captors love them.
Cawthorn was homeschooled by an apparently VERY religious mother.
When they moved into a home after Madison’s accident, she had a Bible placed in the wall above every light switch and sealed in with drywall.
Uh, what?
And Madison was homeschooled.
So, put those together. Socially isolated upbringing; super religious homeschooling mother; father who was either inattentive, indifferent or onboard…
…and a Madison who presents the signs of having been in a SERIOUSLY dysfunctional environment at home or somewhere.
Madison is a junior Trump minus the inherited wealth.
Trump had an emotionally abusive father and weak unprotective mother…
And Trump became exploitative of women.
And allegedly so did Madison.
The finished product is the same.
You can do your own math on what the dynamic may have been like in Bibles in the Walls Home & School.
NPD is what happens when a person who is supposed to protect you has to be talked out of hurting you…
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Hot on the heels of me sharing something from Emily Scott Robinson about country music’s refusal to do better, here is another musician you should know.
Per my post about Robinson, I vet my musical recommendations for character.
I saw @joyoladokun open for Jason Isbell this fall. My entire crew were instant fans. She was fantastic.
Find her on streaming platforms. See her live.
And hats off to @JasonIsbell. He showcases diverse, amazing talent on his tours.
2/
Country/Americana are at a crossroads. The culture will either evolve toward new relevance or devolve into the backwards, hickish stereotype that has held it back for decades.
The industry must choose: does it want to be no bigger than a soundtrack for small-minded bigotry?
3/
People think they were told Trump, et al, are already under investigation.
A growing number of ex-DOJers, having thought about it, don’t think it’s possible that a meaningful investigation could possibly be ongoing there in total darkness.
2/
Even if nothing leaked out of the DOJ, the witnesses would leak.
People would get subpoenaed and talk about it. The press would hear SOMETHING.
We’ll see. The point is, given time to think about it, the speech has now amped up experts’ concerns rather than calmed them.
3/
Y’all, this kinda gives me the creeps - and by kinda, I mean entirely.
Cawthorn’s mom wrote all kinds of Bible quotes and messages inside the walls of their house during renovation which are now sealed in along with the lightswitch Bibles.
This feels psychosis-ish.
Okay, I think I understand the lightswitch thing - although it’s very “magical thinking”.
When Cawthorn was in the hospital after his accident, his mother alleges *he* held on by thinking if he could make it to daylight, he’d live another day.
It’s like crypto and NFTs had sex in a Pets Dotcom warehouse and then had a virtual Beanie Baby.
Once in a lifetime opportunity.
Here’s how it works…
1/
For every $5 investment, I will purchase one Guinness. You will own the idea of that unique Guinness. I will then drink that Guinness to protect you from digital piracy.
You retain the rights to the CBU in perpetuity.
For novices, CBUs are Conceptual Beer Units.
2/
Oldthink is “Why don’t I just buy actual beer rather than sending Hoarse money for him to buy beer through the link in his bio?”
Do you even hear yourself?
How much beer have you bought in your lifetime? How much of it is left?
3/