communication, law, mental health, Police, true crime, YouTube

I’m ORDERING you to RELAX right NOW!!!

It’s Friday, and that means it’s PARTY time! Well… not really. Bill and I aren’t big partiers. But there will be a special fest in our little village this weekend. It starts tonight and will consist of live music, a wine stand, AND a beer stand! There will also be a food truck. Hopefully, it will stop raining, so we can enjoy the fun and stay dry.

This week, I’ve been watching more cop videos on YouTube. The ones that end up on YouTube are usually somewhat interesting on some level. Like, the uploaders aren’t going to just put up a video of someone getting a speeding ticket without complaint. Most of the videos that make it to YouTube involve some misbehavior or attitude of some sort.

I have a few favorite body cam channels. I like the ones where there’s a good narrator, even if the narrator is AI. If the AI isn’t super obvious, I don’t mind it that much. I just like a good story, although some of the stories are tragic. Code Blue Cam usually has good body cam videos and a compelling storyline. Their most recent upload is quite the doozy. Just a warning… this video is definitely NSFW, mainly due to the extremely profane language the woman uses as she’s being busted for DUI. I’d share it here, but it’s age restricted.

One of Code Blue Cams less “adult” videos… I offer it just for the sake of an example.

The below video comes from Real World Police, which is another one of my favorite YouTube body cam channels. As I was watching it, I had to pause and ponder…

This dude is very profane, and it’s clear the cops aren’t on his side. They order him to “calm down”.

In the above video, the older man is very upset as he’s speaking to the police officers. He uses a lot of foul language. One of the cops says, “Calm down!” And it occurred to me, when I’m upset and someone orders me to “calm down”, it usually has the opposite effect. I asked my friends on Facebook if they are ever able to calm down when someone orders them to calm down. Almost everyone responded with a resounding “NO!”, including my former shrink– a psychologist with over 50 years of experience. He said, “It doesn’t work for anyone.”

Please note… I’m not talking about speaking to someone calmly and encouraging them to calm down. I’m talking about ORDERING them to calm down. I see this all the time in the cop videos. The police are wrestling someone to the ground, screaming at them to “stop resisting”, “calm down”, “don’t pull away”, and my personal favorite, “RELAX!” Yeah, I’m gonna relax with guys in uniforms with guns, tasers, pepper spray, and handcuffs are screaming at me and my adrenaline is pumping. Not.

I liken the order to “relax” and “calm down” by police as the same as a gynecologist telling someone to relax while they have their fingers in one of their patients’ orifices. I’m sorry if that’s shocking to some readers, but in all seriousness. One of the main reasons I’ve only had two exams done in my 51 years of life is because when I had my first “female” exam, the doctor was awful and ordered me to relax as she was hurting me. When she hurt me, I cried out, and almost fainted. She basically told me to shut up, or she wouldn’t finish the exam. I needed the exam to join the Peace Corps, so I gritted my teeth.

Then, when the OB-GYN from Hell finished the exam, she said “Well, everything looked okay, but I didn’t get the world’s best exam, because you weren’t relaxed.” Duh… I wasn’t sexually active; it was my first time getting an exam; and she was hurting me in a place where the sun doesn’t shine. And then to add insult to injury, she fat shamed me, too. 😉 How relaxing! NOT. As you can see, that experience really had a traumatic effect on me.

Dang… this one was filmed in Fayetteville, Georgia. Bill and I lived there for about sixteen months after our last Germany stint ended in 2009. I liked that town. The house we lived in was on 8 acres and it was super private! The house in this video is owned by Rick Ross, the rapper. There are many mansions in Fayetteville, Georgia.

The woman in the above video– name of Precious– is completely out of touch with reality. She asks the cops to let her walk “sexy” as she’s wearing handcuffs. She claims she’s pregnant with Rick Ross’s twins and is his wife. She also says she’s a model. This video is pretty funny, too, because as I mentioned in the above caption, I used to live in Fayetteville, Georgia, where this video was taken. This brings back some good memories for me. I did enjoy living in Fayetteville, but that was before Trump fucked up small town America.

Anyway, the woman in the video isn’t relaxed, but I give kudos to the Fayetteville Police for handling her professionally. We only had one interaction with them. It was when we brought my now 14 year old Mini Cooper– then brand new– to be inspected by the police before we could register it with Fayette County and get new tags. The cop who dealt with us was very efficient and pleasant. I can see from the many cop videos on YouTube that they aren’t always that good.

Last night, for instance, I saw a video Ring of Fire did about MAGA supporter and former Obama and Trump White House physician, Ronny Jackson, who is an actual emergency room doctor, being cussed at, thrown to the ground, and cuffed. Why? Because he was trying to help a teenaged girl in medical distress at a rodeo. I’ve seen many videos where cops have seemingly endless patience and compassion. And I’ve seen other videos where they aren’t much better than the people they arrest, and in some cases, they’re even worse! I’m not saying I like Ronny Jackson is the greatest doctor, but he’s certainly qualified to help a teenager with hypoglycemia. He shouldn’t be thrown to the ground and cuffed for helping someone.

WHAT?!! Those cops need firing, now!
“You pull away from me, you’re gonna hit the tub!” How relaxing. Then the cops yells at her, while she’s hysterical. Not saying she isn’t deserving of being arrested, but the cop shouldn’t be screaming and cursing at her. It’s understandable, but not helpful.

The above video is also a good example of why our mental health system in the United States needs a complete overhaul. That woman is in need of psychiatric care. It sounds like another cop is being more gentle with her. I can understand that dealing with someone like that is very frustrating, but screaming at people doesn’t calm them down. When they arrive at the police station, you can hear the one cop screaming at her to “calm the fuck down”… but it’s really not effective at all. People who are that “amped up” are not in the frame of mind to calm down. The best you can do is put them in a safe, quiet place and wait for them to simmer down. Barring that, Ativan works pretty well… but again, you kinda need a medical person for that.

It always fascinates me to see people ordering people to relax and calm down. That sort of defies logic, doesn’t it? When people yell at me, it makes me want to respond in kind. I never calm down when someone demands it of me. All that does is piss me off anew. When I was younger, I used to get really upset and hysterical, even to the point of hyperventilating. I haven’t had a good, full-blown anxiety attack in years, though… thank God. It’s not a nice feeling. The woman in the above video, especially, needs some compassion, even though she’s clearly broken the law and needs to answer for that. I suspect she’s mentally ill, and needs care.

One of the cops in this video says she used to be a mental health counselor. I can tell. She handles panicky Ellie very compassionately (at around the 11 minutes mark), although in her case, it didn’t work out too well. She had to get “wrapped” like a burrito.

But I also know that the police, especially in the United States, have a difficult and dangerous, yet very necessary, job. It’s not work that always attracts the best and brightest, nor is the training that great, especially in some areas. It seems like cops are trained to be very authoritative, instead of de-escalating situations. One thing I have noticed over here in Europe is that cops are more interested in non-violent interactions, and they work hard to keep things peaceful, as they also keep the peace. It helps that there aren’t so many guns, here.

I’ll leave you with this old video by Beau (Justin), of Beau of the Fifth Column, who used to train law enforcement. He makes a lot of sense, and the video isn’t distressing or violent. If you watch any of the videos in this post, I highly suggest watching this one, simply because he brings up the state of mind of the person being arrested, which is an important key point that I think a lot of people miss.

Beau (aka Justin King), once again, making a lot of sense.

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narcissists, Trump, Twitter

A deep dive into the narcissist’s “false self”…

Good morning, all. I’ve been awake since about 3:00 am. Bill is on another business trip, and I’m alone here with Noyzi and Arran. Arran woke up at 3:00, needing to pee. Prednisolone makes him have to go to the bathroom a lot. Poor guy didn’t even make it to the grass before he was cocking his leg. When we came back inside, he wanted food. Prednisolone also makes him hungry. I gave him a little snack, and we went back to bed. I tried to sleep and got close to falling into slumber, but then he’d wake me up again. At 5:30, he jumped off the bed, and ran downstairs, demanding his breakfast.

I must say that chemo has affected Arran in a mostly positive way. As long as it keeps him going until Bill can be home again, I don’t mind the side effects. Arran obviously feels a lot better, and that’s what matters to me.

So now to delve into today’s topic. I want to write about the so-called “false self”. You know what that is, right? That’s the fake veneer narcissistic people put on in an effort to fool people into not seeing them for who they really are. If you watch any of the best YouTube narcissism channels, you will hear that term brought up a lot– the “false self”. Basically, it refers to a thick layer of bullshit meant to mislead the masses into thinking the narcissist is a decent person.

Donald Trump is pretty good at creating a false self that fools people. Or, at least he used to be. Lately, as he stares down multiple legal challenges, he seems to be more and more deranged and unhinged. But he says a lot of things… makes a lot of promises. For some reason, many people still believe him, even though he lies constantly, and has a long history of not honoring his promises. Like most narcissists, Trump has a certain charm. He says what some people want to hear, and speaks in a way that doesn’t come across as weak or “woke”. Some people respond to that the way Pavlov’s dogs responded to the sound of the bell.

The crazy thing is, Donald Trump has completely fucked up the Republican Party. The sensible Republicans are being punished for his fuckery. People are now voting blue, not because they agree with Democrats, but because Trump is an autocratic psycho who wants to be a dictator. But a lot of people are blinded by his charisma, and they refuse to see what is plainly in front of their own faces. I don’t understand how people think Trump will do anything for them. He has never done anything for anyone but HIMSELF. And all you have to do is see what he does instead of listening to what he says. What he says is 100 percent the false self at work. He’s not a reliable reporter on his own work.

Farron explains why the Republicans are screwed… this man is the poster child for malignant narcissism.

On a much smaller scale, you can easily see rank and file, garden variety narcissists presenting a false self. I see Ex doing it all the time on Twitter. Watch her on social media, and you’ll see her posting all sorts of crap that is surprisingly “woke” and progressive. It’s almost as if she’s a different person than she was twenty years ago, when I first became aware of her existence, or thirty years ago, when she was married to my husband. If I were to assess her based only on her Twitter posts, I might think she was a rising star in the woke brigade. But because I know a lot more about her than what she presents, I know that she’s presenting a false self. I don’t know her reasons for doing this, to be honest. She seems determined to reach out to perfect strangers and celebrities, the vast majority of whom she will never meet in person. But to people who know her offline, she’s completely different. Or, at least she’s different to the people who have an intimate relationship to her.

Below are two very recent tweets by Ex…

Next, she tweets to her favorite author, apparently “crushed” that she didn’t get to meet her in a major US city close to where she lives:

Wait wait wait… Diana was in …? Oh Damn, how am I so far out of the loop! I’m only four hours away and I’d have been there had I known!!!

😭

Diana, do you have a newsletter or something to which I may subscribe????

And here, she claims to “believe the best about people”. But she called up my mother-in-law at Christmas, as Bill was on his way to stay with her, and told her to think twice about letting him in her house, because she claimed Bill was “dangerous”. She told Bill’s stepmother that he’s a violent pervert who hates women. She told Bill’s kids that he had an affair with me, and that he abandoned them for me. None of that is even remotely true. But to read what she puts out to the masses, you’d think she was the most decent person in New England. Watch what she does, though… don’t listen to what she says or believe what she posts. Her words are mostly lies.

Her claim that she believes the best in people is pure bullshit. But her truth doesn’t fit the false self.

And finally, she posted to a doctor who was tweeting about a child who was sexually abused. Ex wrote this, which I think probably is the truth:

Did they make an arrest? This story is my story. I need to know. My assault was reported to my mother by me and she didn’t believe me. He went free and I was beaten for lying. Please tell me that they made an arrest in your case?

I do believe Ex was abused. She isn’t lying about that. But when she discovered that abuse eventually happened in her house, to her own daughters, she didn’t do anything but stop the car and scream at the perpetrator. Then, some time later, when he thought it had blown over somewhat, she brought up the abuse out of the blue, saying she should have left him on the side of the road. She never told Bill what had happened on her watch. She didn’t think of her daughters’ safety. She knew that if she told Bill what happened, he would take steps to protect his daughters. But her need for control and presenting that facade of being “awesome” was more important than being a good mother and getting help for her kids.

I’m not saying that wasn’t a difficult situation for her to deal with. It was. But she’s constantly behaving as if she’s the most functional person alive. And we know she’s far from being functional. To me, it’s fascinating to watch. I don’t understand narcissism. I know it when I see it, but I don’t understand it. All I can think is that narcissists are basically black holes of people. They are never fulfilled or satisfied. And they can’t share or be truly authentic. It must be a really miserable way to live.

I know… she really isn’t a threat to me anymore. I should probably just move on with my life. Except she has made it plain that she doesn’t ever completely let people go. Aside from that, I find her very interesting to observe. She’s a fascinating character, especially if you know the truth. And given that it’s October, it’s only fitting. This is the spookiest month of the year, right?

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