#i get it !! christians have been extremely nasty to me ! but that is a reflection of their character NOT of their religion !!

[secretlyofthefeywild]

help my father is trying to argue with me abt religion (i am a religious studies major)

[prismatic-bell]

Hi,

This might be a strange question but it's something that's been on my mind recently. Is there any way that gentiles can help Jewish classmates (or any classmates that are religious but not christian) in situations where professors assign homework or exams on holidays? Is that something that we should bring up to professors even if we don't know if anyone in the class celebrates that holiday? Or is there a way that we can support classmates who speak up about needing to given time to celebrate their faith?

I'm sorry if this is awkwardly worded. I just want to know if there's anything I can do in the future to help in those kinds of situations. I don't want to step on any toes, but I also don't want my classmates to feel like they would be on their own if they spoke up. I know it might be difficult to do anything during the pandemic since I don't really know my classmates, so if you have any suggestions as to ways to help after the pandemic that would be great too.

First of all, this is like Allyship 101: “how can I help those who need this help?” So, A+ to you, friend.

The holidays you’re most likely going to run into problems with, at least for Jews (I encourage my siblings from other religions to chime in), will be Pesach and the High Holy Days. Pesach is juuuuuuust before Easter, and I know when I was in college it was quite common to get midterms that week. The High Holy days consist of three days within a ten-day span: Rosh Hashanah, Erev Yom Kippur (which some Jews may refer to as “Kol Nidre,” as this is the main prayer said during that service), and Yom Kippur. You know how there are Christmas and Easter Christians? You never see them in church except on Christmas Eve and Easter morning, but dammit you will always see them on those two days? Yeah, there are Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Jews. Synagogues will overflow capacity trying to accommodate all who want to attend, and in many cases tickets may be required simply because there aren’t enough seats to safely hold all comers My sister’s synagogue has three chapels, and still has to double up services (as in, every prayer service is performed twice) to accommodate all attendees on these holidays.

I’m Reform, meaning there are a lot of mitzvot I don’t follow. Even so, here are just some of the restrictions I face on Yom Kippur:

--I cannot fast due to medical problems, but I am restricted to very small amounts of plain food (I usually have plain rice and a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter on the side for two tiny meals between services; maybe a small amount of plain chicken). Most people fast from both food and water for 25 hours.

--I can’t wear “nice” clothes. This doesn’t mean I don’t dress up--it means I shouldn’t wear anything that would encourage slouching, lounging, relaxing, etc. The focus of Yom Kippur and Erev Yom Kippur is study, reflection, and repentance--not luxury. You are expected to be uncomfortable. That’s the point.i

--There are five prayer services on Yom Kippur. I’m supposed to attend all of them. (I . . . won’t lie, I often skip the family service. It’s a rehash for the little kids about what Yom Kippur actually is, it’s about 45 minutes long, and it’s usually when I take my second meal.) It comprises about six hours’ worth of prayers, while Kol Nidre evening is about another two. Rosh Hashanah isn’t quite that intense; it’s more like four hours. Again, though, I’m Reform--Orthodox Jews may spend the entire twenty-five hours of Yom Kippur praying.

As you can imagine, the day of and the day after these services, I’m wiped. I don’t want to work. I don’t want to cook. I don’t want to do house chores. I want to rest, and I want to eat things that aren’t plain rice.

So what can you do?

First, I recommend a calendar app. My phone very considerately tells me when the holidays are, because the Jewish calendar is lunisolar and the dates change from year to year. You can also just . . . look up a Jewish calendar online. Keep in mind that the Jewish religious day runs from sunset to sunset, not from dawn to dawn. So for example, according to my phone, today was the first day of Chanukkah. In reality, we lit the first candle last night, because 25 Kislev began at 5:20 on 10 December. Almost all modern calendars will mark the first “full” day of the holiday, not its actual start the evening before, so keep that in mind.

Next, you may wish to ask directly on the first day of class if you see something concerning on the syllabus: “what is your policy for accommodation of religious observance?” IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT YOU USE THE WORDS “ACCOMMODATION OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE.” A secular Jew may wish to go home for Pesach even though they don’t believe in the story of the Exodus, and they should be allowed to do that without having to justify it in the same way as all the “well it’s not really about Jesus anymore, it’s a time for family” Christmas-observers, but that phrase up there is a magical phrase that means they are protected from discrimination if they choose to do that. Make the professor tell the entire class what the plan is. If you have an asshole who says they make no exception for religious observance, you can do one of two things: challenge the professor directly (”sir, are you aware that’s against the law?”), or go directly to the dean or principal. Be aware that you may face some backlash from the professor if they’re particularly petty, so keep an organized copy of all assignment rubrics and what you’ve turned in. That way if that backlash comes out in your grade, you can challenge it.

Now let’s say the teacher was thoughtless. I would like to draw a distinction here between “thoughtless” and “malicious” because as an ally, one is much easier to deal with than the other. “Thoughtless” can be approached thus: the prof tells you all the midterm essay will be assigned next Wednesday. You raise your hand and say “Sir? That’s Rosh Hashanah, people might not be here.” Your prof, who was thoughtless, goes “oh. All right, let me see” and looks over his notes and says “then let’s give the assignment next Monday. You’ll have two extra days to work on it, so make good use of them.” That is a good response to a mistake. A malicious response would basically be “too bad, so sad,” and you should go to the dean. Even if there are no Jews in your class, that attitude will 1) dissuade Jews from taking the class in the future and 2) potentially cause a lot of problems for the school, which the dean would really like to avoid.

Finally: if a classmate speaks up and says those words for themselves, and the professor is less than supportive, this is where you’re gonna have to grab onto your ovaries or testicles or whatever your personal body part of great courage is, and get confrontational:

“Professor, we get off automatically for our holiday. She should be allowed to celebrate too.”

Or even, if needed:

“Professor, that is discrimination.”

Keep in mind that last one may net you a very negative reaction if you have to use it. If a professor is nasty enough to go “I don’t give a shit” when presented with the problem in the first place, they may well be nasty enough to yell at you and criticize you in front of the class. Be ready for this, and realize it is not an attack on your character--it’s a reflection of the professor’s. They know they have no argument, so they’ll just try to cow you into silence. Stand your ground. If you are firm in your defense of your classmate, others may step up. Even if they don’t help you in that initial confrontation, they may offer to be witnesses if you take the matter to the dean. Make sure you introduce yourself to your classmate after the fact, and ask if there’s any further support or help they need. Make it clear that you’re happy to help.

Thank you for speaking up and speaking out. Best of luck to you in your studies!

[bountyofbeads]

Trump just looked up to the sky and said “I am the chosen one.” A reminder that he’s completely insane, and unfit for office in every way. #25thAmendmentNow

When I heard Trump proclaim himself "The Chosen One" today my first thought was chosen by who, Putin?

Far-Right Dark Money Interests?

Evangelical Christians?

White Supremacists?

Fox News?

Because he defintely wasn't chosen by America...

#25thAmendmentNow

His Ego Bruised by Denmark, Trump Flashes God Complex: ‘I Am the Chosen One’

His dreams of Greenland conquest dashed, Trump re-imagines himself a messiah

By TIM DICKINSON | Published August 21, 2019 3:55 PM ET | RollingStone |

Posted August 22, 2019 12:29 PM ET |

To mangle Twain, it’s better to remain silent and be thought a malignant narcissist than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

“I am the chosen one,” Donald Trumpdeclared to reporters Wednesday on the White House lawn, looking toward the heavens.

The president was reflecting on his trade war with China, insisting that it should have been launched long ago to curb what he characterized as China’s theft of our wealth and intellectual property. “Somebody had to do it,” Trump insisted.

In another context, one might excuse the quip as mere puffery. But in the case of Trump, the president’s pathological narcissism  appears to metastasizing into a messiah complex.

Earlier Wednesday morning the president tweeted out unhinged praise of his Middle East policies from the self-styled “conservative warrior” Wayne Allyn Root. Root, a Newsmax personality, dwells in the fever swamps, promoting birtherism and conspiracy theories around the death of Seth Rich. In the immediate aftermath of the Las Vegas concert shooting he tweeted, without evidence, that the massacre was “clearly coordinated Muslim terror attack.”

In a Twitter thread, Trump quoted Root at length calling the him “the greatest President for the Jews” and even the “King of Israel.”

The president’s gusher of god-complex grandiosity has followed, predictably, in the wake of an ego-damaging exchange with the Prime Minister of Denmark — who laughed off Trump’s unhinged ambition for the United States to buy Greenland from the Scandinavian nation as “absurd.”

Mette Frederiksen, visiting Greenland this week, told reporters that “of course, Greenland is not for sale,” adding that “thankfully the time where you buy and sell other countries and populations and is over. Let’s leave it there.” Frederiksen added that “jokes aside,” Denmark would like a closer relationship with the United States.

Ever thin skinned, especially when it comes to criticism from powerful women, Trump responded petulantly Tuesday night by tweeting that he’d be cancelling a planned meeting with Frederiksen: SEE TWEET ON TRUMP TIME LINE

On Wednesday Trump made clear just how shaken he’d been by the dashing of his dream of Arctic conquest, calling Frederiksen “nasty” — a outburst of misogyny typically reserved for Hillary Clinton. “I thought it was a very not nice way of saying something,” Trump explained to reporters. “All they had to do is say, no, we’d rather not do that or we’d rather not talk about it.”

“She’s not talking to me, she’s talking to the United States of America,” he added, explaining his umbrage. “They can’t say ‘how absurd.’”

Watching Trump these past 24 hours, swinging between grievance and grandiosity, have been like a playing a game of DSM bingo for “narcissistic personality disorder,” the diagnosis of which requires a match of only five of the following nine character traits:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).

2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.

3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high status people (or institutions).

4. Requires excessive admiration.

5. Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations.

6. Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends.

7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.

9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

For more on the president’s dangerous self regard, read my colleague Alex Morris’ ever-timely feature on Trump’s preening and perilous mental health.

Trump’s Mental Health: Is Pathological Narcissism the Key to Trump’s Behavior?

Diagnosing the president was off-limits to experts – until a textbook case entered the White House

By  ALEX MORRIS | Published April 5, 2017 12:30 PM ET | RollingStone | Posted August 22, 2019 12:35 PM ET|

At 6:35 a.m. on the morning of March 4th, President Donald Trump did what no U.S. president has ever done: He accused his predecessor of spying on him. He did so over Twitter, providing no evidence and – lest anyone miss the point – doubling down on his accusation in tweets at 6:49, 6:52 and 7:02, the last of which referred to Obama as a “Bad (or sick) guy!” Six weeks into his presidency, these unsubstantiated tweets were just one of many times the sitting president had rashly made claims that were (as we soon learned) categorically untrue, but it was the first time since his inauguration that he had so starkly drawn America’s integrity into the fray. And he had done it not behind closed doors with a swift call to the Department of Justice, but instead over social media in a frenzy of ire and grammatical errors. If one hadn’t been asking the question before, it was hard not to wonder: Is the president mentally ill?

It’s now abundantly clear that Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail was not just a “persona” he used to get elected – that he would not, in fact, turn out to be, as he put it, “the most presidential person ever, other than possibly the great Abe Lincoln, all right?” It took all of 24 hours to show us that the Trump we elected was the Trump we would get when, despite the fact that he was president, that he had won, he spent that first full day in office focused not on the problems facing our country but on the problems facing him: his lackluster inauguration attendance and his inability to win the popular vote.

Since Trump first announced his candidacy, his extreme disagreeableness, his loose relationship with the truth and his trigger-happy attacks on those who threatened his dominance were the worrisome qualities that launched a thousand op-eds calling him “unfit for office,” and led to ubiquitous armchair diagnoses of “crazy.” We had never seen a presidential candidate behave in such a way, and his behavior was so abnormal that one couldn’t help but try to fit it into some sort of rubric that would help us understand. “Crazy” kind of did the trick.

And yet, the one group that could weigh in on Trump’s sanity, or possible lack thereof, was sitting the debate out – for an ostensibly good reason. In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson had foreshadowed the 2016 presidential election by suggesting his opponent, Barry Goldwater, was too unstable to be in control of the nuclear codes, even running an ad to that effect that remains one of the most controversial in the history of American politics. In a survey for Fact magazine, more than 2,000 psychiatrists weighed in, many of them seeing pathology in Goldwater’s supposed potty-training woes, in his supposed latent homosexuality and in his Cold War paranoia. This was back in the Freudian days of psychiatry, when any odd-duck characteristic was fair game for psychiatric dissection, before the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders cleaned house and gave a clear set of criteria (none of which includes potty training, by the way) for a limited number of possible disorders. Goldwater lost the election, sued Fact and won his suit. The American Psychiatric Association was so embarrassed that 
it instituted the so-called Goldwater Rule, stating that it is “un
ethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination” of the person under question.

All the same, as Trump’s candidacy snowballed, many in the mental-health community, observing what they believed to be clear signs of pathology, bristled at the limitations of the Goldwater guidelines. “It seems to function as a gag rule,” says Claire Pouncey, a psychiatrist who co-authored a paper in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, which argued that upholding Goldwater “inhibits potentially valuable educational efforts and psychiatric opinions about potentially dangerous public figures.” Many called on the organizations that traffic in the psychological well-being of Americans – like the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers and the American Psychoanalytic Association – to sound an alarm. “A lot of us were working as hard as we could to try to get organizations to speak out during the campaign,” says Lance Dodes, a psychoanalyst and former professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “I mean, there was certainly a sense that somebody had to speak up.” But none of the organizations wanted to violate the Goldwater Rule. And anyway, Dodes continues, “Most of the pollsters said he would not be elected. So even though there was a lot of worry, people reassured themselves that nothing would come of this.”

But of course, something did come of it, and so on February 13th, Dodes and 34 other psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers published a letter in The New York Times stating that “Mr. Trump’s speech and actions make him incapable of safely serving as president.” As Dodes tells me, “This is not a policy matter at all. It is continuous behavior that the whole country can see that indicates specific kinds of limitations, or problems in his mind. So to say that those people who are most expert in human psychology can’t comment on it is nonsensical.” In their letter, the mental health experts did not go so far as to proffer a diagnosis, but the affliction that has gotten the most play in the days since is a form of narcissism so extreme that it affects a person’s ability to function: narcissistic personality disorder.

The most current iteration of the DSM classifies narcissistic personality disorder as: “A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.” A diagnosis would also require five or more of the following traits:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., “Nobody builds walls better than me”; “There’s nobody that respects women more than I do”; “There’s nobody who’s done so much for equality as I have”).

2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love (“I alone can fix it”; “It’s very hard for them to attack me on looks, because I’m so good-looking”). 

3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions (“Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich”).

4. Requires excessive admiration (“They said it was the biggest standing ovation since Peyton Manning had won the Super Bowl”).

5. Has a sense of entitlement (“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy”). 

6. Is interpersonally exploitative (see above).

7. Lacks empathy, is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings
and needs of others (“He’s not a war hero . . . he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured”).

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her (“I’m the president, and you’re not”).

9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes (“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters”).

NPD was first introduced as a personality disorder by the DSM in 1980 and affects up to six percent of the U.S. population. It is not a mood state but rather an ingrained set of traits, a programming of the brain that is thought to arise in childhood as a result of parenting that either puts a child on a pedestal and superficially inflates the ego or, conversely, withholds approval and requires the child to single-handedly build up his or her own ego to survive. Either way, this impedes the development of a realistic sense of self and instead fosters a “false self,” a grandiose narrative of one’s own importance that needs constant support and affirmation – or “narcissistic supply” – to ward off an otherwise prevailing sense of emptiness. Of all personality disorders, NPD is among the least responsive to treatment for the obvious reason that narcissists typically do not, or cannot, admit that they are flawed.

Trump’s childhood seems to suggest a history of “pedestal” parenting. “You are a king,” Fred
 Trump told his middle child, while 
also teaching him that the world
 was an unforgiving place and that 
it was important to “be a killer.” Trump apparently got the message: He reportedly threw rocks 
at a neighbor’s baby and bragged
 about punching a music teacher in
 the face. Other kids from his well-
heeled Queens neighborhood of Jamaica Estates were forbidden from playing with him, and in school
 he got detention so often that it
 was nicknamed “DT,” for “Donny Trump.” When his father found 
his collection of switchblades, he
 sent Donald upstate to New York Military Academy, where he could be controlled while also remaining aggressively alpha male. “I think his father would have fit the category [of narcissistic],” says Michael D’Antonio, author of The Truth About Trump. “I think his mother probably would have. And I even think his paternal grandfather did as well. These are very driven, very ambitious people.”

Viewed through the lens of pathology, Trump’s behavior – from military-school reports that he was too competitive to have close friends to his recent impromptu press conference, where he seemed to revel in the hour and a half he spent center stage, spouting paranoia and insults – can be seen as a constant quest for narcissistic supply. Certainly few have gone after fame (a veritable conveyor belt of narcissistic supply) with such single-mindedness as Trump, constantly upping the ante to gain more exposure. Not content with being the heir apparent of his father’s vast outer-borough fortune, he spent his twenties moving the Trump Organization into the spotlight of Manhattan, where his buildings needed to be the biggest, the grandest, the tallest (in the pursuit of which he skipped floors in the numbering to make them seem higher). Not content to inflict the city with a succession of eyesores bearing his name in outsize letters, he had to buy up more Atlantic City casinos than anyone else, as well as a fleet of 727s (which he also slapped with his name) and the world’s third-biggest yacht (despite professing to not like boats). Meanwhile, to make sure that none of this escaped notice, he sometimes pretended to be his own publicist, peppering the press with unsolicited information about his business conquests and his sexual prowess. “The most florid demonstration of [his narcissism] was around the sex scandal that ended his first marriage,” says D’Antonio. “He just did so many things to call more attention to it that it was hard to not recognize that there’s something very strange going on.” (The White House declined to comment for this article.)

Based on the “Big Five” traits that psychologists consider to be the building blocks of personality – extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism – the stamp of a narcissist is someone who scores extremely high in extroversion but extremely low in agreeableness. From his business entanglements to his preference for the rally format, Trump’s way of putting himself out in the world is not meant to make friends; it’s meant to assert his dominance. The reported fear and trembling among his White House staff aligns well with his long-standing habit of hiring two people for the same job and letting them battle it out for his favor. His tendency to hire women was spun as a sign of enlightenment on the campaign trail, but those who’ve worked with him sensed that it had more to do with finding women less threatening than men (a reason that’s also been posited as to why Ivanka is his favorite child). Trump has a lengthy record of stiffing his workers and dodging his creditors. And nothing could be more disagreeable than the way he’s dealt with detractors over the years, filing hundreds of frivolous lawsuits, sending scathing letters (like the one he sent to New York Times columnist Gail Collins with her photo covered by the words “The face of a dog!”), and, once it was invented, using Twitter as an instrument of malice that could provide immediate narcissistic supply via comments and retweets. In fact, while studies have found that Twitter and other social-media outlets do not actually foster narcissism, they have turned much of the Internet into a narcissist’s playground, providing immediate gratification for someone who needs a public and instantaneous way to build up their false self.

That Americans weren’t put off by this disagreeableness may have come as a surprise, but in a country that has turned its political process into a glorified celebrity marketing campaign, it probably shouldn’t have. America was founded on the principles of individualism and independence, and studies have shown that the most individualistic nations are, predictably, the most narcissistic. But studies have also shown that America has been getting more narcissistic since the Seventies, which saw the publication of Tom Wolfe’s seminal “Me Decade” article and Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism. In 2008, the National Institutes of Health released the most comprehensive study of NPD to date and found that almost one out of 10 Americans in their twenties had displayed behaviors consistent with NPD, versus only one in 30 of those over 65. Another study found narcissistic traits to be rising as quickly as obesity, while yet another showed that almost one-third of high school students in America in 2005 said that they expected to eventually become famous. “If there were no Kardashians, there would be no President Donald Trump,” says Keith Campbell, a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia who co-authored the book The Narcissism Epidemic. “And Trump decided to do it Kardashian-style, with no filter. When Trump and Kanye had that meeting in Trump Tower, I was like, ‘I should just quit. My work here is done.'”


Still, Campbell would not label Trump with NPD. A final DSM criterion for the disease is that it must cause “significant” distress or impairment, which has been a sticking point for many mental-health professionals. “He’s a billionaire who’s president of the United States,” points out Campbell. “He’s functioning pretty highly.”

Others maintain that making diagnoses without a formal interview is not just unethical, but impossible – that the public actions of a public persona may not align with who that person is when they’re alone at home. After Dodes’ op-ed appeared in the Times, Allen Frances, the psychiatrist who wrote the NPD criteria for the DSMIV, followed up with a letter to the editor the very next day, arguing that it was unfair and insulting to the mentally ill to lump them with someone like Trump, and that doing so would give the president a pass he doesn’t deserve. “No one is denying that he is as narcissistic an individual as one is ever likely to encounter,” Frances tells me. “But we tend to equate bad behavior with mental illness, and that makes us less able to deal with the bad behavior on its own terms.”

Others have been less circumspect, implying that if the DSM wouldn’t diagnose someone like Trump with NPD, then maybe it’s the DSM that’s wrong. “It’s just that one pesky impairment thing,” says Josh Miller, Campbell’s colleague and a professor and director of the clinical training program at the University of Georgia who specializes in psychopathy and narcissism. “Maybe the DSM isn’t thinking about this in exactly the right way by ignoring when something causes such widespread problems to those around them.” More specifically, Miller believes that Trump’s wealth could have shielded him from impairment that would otherwise be more pronounced. “He gets to present himself as an incredible businessman despite multiple bankruptcies, despite lots of signs that he is not as astute or as successful as he might be otherwise,” Miller says. “We might know more about his relational functioning if his ex-wives didn’t sign the sort of thing where getting a nice sum of money from a divorce is contingent upon not discussing the person’s behavior. He’s able to keep sycophants around him because of his money. If he was your average politician, it might be that the impairment would be much, much more apparent.”

At the very least, the growing debate over Trump’s mental health raises the question of what having an NPD president would mean. “I hated President Bush, but it never occurred to me or any of my colleagues that he was mentally ill,” says John Gartner, a psychologist who taught in the department of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years and who has been one of the most vocal critics of upholding the Goldwater Rule in this case, going so far as to say that Trump suffers from “malignant narcissism,” a term for the triumvirate of narcissistic, paranoid and antisocial personality disorders (with a little sadism thrown in for good measure) that was invented to describe what was wrong with Hitler. “Even though I disagree with everything he believes in, I would be immensely relieved to have a President Pence,” Gartner says. “Because he’s conservative. Not crazy.”

Of course, having a mental illness, in and of itself, wouldn’t necessarily make Trump unqualified for the presidency. A 2006 study published in the Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease found that 18 of the first 37 presidents met criteria for having a psychiatric disorder, from depression (24 percent) and anxiety (eight percent) to alcoholism (eight percent) and bipolar disorder (eight percent). Ten of them exhibited symptoms while in office, and one of those 10 was arguably our best president, Abraham Lincoln, who suffered from deep depression (though, considering the death of his son and the state of the nation, who could blame him?).

The problem is that, when it comes to leadership, all pathologies are not created equal. Some, like depression, though debilitating, do not typically lead to psychosis or risky decision-making and are mainly unpleasant only for the person suffering them, as well as perhaps for their close friends and family. Others, like alcoholism, can be more dicey: In 1969, Nixon got so sloshed that he ordered a nuclear attack against North Korea (in anticipation of just such an event, his defense secretary had supposedly warned the military not to act on White House orders without approval from either himself or the secretary of state).

When it comes to presidents, and perhaps all politicians, some level of narcissism is par for the course. Based on a 2013 study of U.S. presidents from Washington to George W. Bush, many of our chief executives with narcissistic traits shared what is called “emergent leadership,” or a keen ability to get elected. They can be charming and charismatic. They dominate. They entertain. They project strength and confidence. They’re good at convincing people, at least initially, that they actually are as awesome as they think they are. (Despite what a narcissist might believe, research shows they are usually no better-looking, more intelligent or talented than the average person – though when they are, their narcissism is better tolerated.) In fact, a narcissist’s brash leadership has been shown to be particularly attractive in times of perceived upheaval, which means that it benefits a narcissist to promote ideas of chaos and to identify a common enemy, or, if need be, create one. “They’re going to want attention, and they’re going to get attention by making big public changes and having bold leadership,” says Campbell. “So if things are going well, a narcissistic leader’s probably not what you want. If things aren’t going well, you’re like, ‘Eh, let’s roll the dice. Let’s get this person out there to just make some big changes and shake things up.’ And then we pray to God it works.”

It doesn’t always. Ironically, for a man who ran on the platform to ”Make America Great Again,” narcissists may have a better chance of getting elected when things are going poorly, but they actually appear to perform better when things are going well – and they can take the credit. One of the questions on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which is used to assess narcissistic personality traits, asks respondents to choose between two statements: (1) The thought of ruling the world frightens the hell out of me, and (2) If I ruled the world, it would be a better place. Narcissists obviously tend to pick the latter, but that overconfidence actually works against them: One of the highest predictors of success is conscientiousness, but if you think you’re already the best, then why would you bother to take the time to get better? It’s easier, instead, to point fingers. “Narcissistic people externalize blame,” says Miller. “I mean, Trump’s going to fire [Sean] Spicer, and then it’s going to be the Cabinet. When is he going to say, ‘I should have read that more carefully. I should have taken more time to know what this treaty was’? That is not part of a narcissistic individual’s makeup, to assume responsibility for their own missteps.”

Despite the obvious risks, having a narcissistic president doesn’t always end in disaster. “Democracy’s always based in trying to work through conflict,” says Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton and contributor to Rolling Stone. “And a person who has a dominant personality sometimes can actually be very effective.” LBJ, who scored the highest in that study that ranked the narcissistic tendencies of U.S. presidents, had the aggressiveness necessary to push through the Civil Rights Act, but he also didn’t (or wouldn’t) do an about-face to get the country out of Vietnam. When a group of reporters pressed him for an explanation of this, he reportedly unzipped his pants, pulled out his penis and declared, “This is why.”

Likewise, Andrew Jackson, who ranked third, was considered the nation’s first demagogue – a rabble-rouser who fought at least a dozen duels throughout his life, who contemporaries thought would trash the White House with his unruly mob, and whose “jackass” tendencies were the inspiration for the symbol of the Democratic Party – but he paid off the national debt and pushed the nation’s expansion westward (though his Indian Removal Act led to the deaths of tens of thousands along the Trail of Tears).

“Narcissistic leaders are really good and bad, meaning that they often get a lot done, but they’re also viewed as ethically challenged,” says Campbell. Meanwhile, “nice guy” presidents like Jimmy Carter are well-liked, but they aren’t viewed as particularly potent.

So how might Trump measure up? According to the 2013 study, while run-of-the-mill narcissism conveyed some benefits, NPD traits usually did not, and were furthermore “related to numerous indicators of negative performance: having impeachment resolutions brought up in Congress, facing impeachment proceedings, placing political success over effective policy, and behaving unethically.” Nixon, probably our most unethical president, was ranked second in the study, but even he knew to conduct attacks covertly. His form of narcissism was more adaptive, more Machiavellian. In fact, many narcissists see the world as a chess game in which they must think ahead in order to maintain the advantage they feel they deserve. For this reason, impulsivity is not considered a classic trait of narcissism. Trump’s obvious rashness, then, allows for an unfortunate combination of traits. “The impulsivity and the lack of deliberate forethought about things,” warns Miller, “paired with the overconfidence, are the most troubling parts for me.”

Another problem for narcissists on the more extreme end of the spectrum is that the skills needed to get elected are not, and have never been, identical to the skills needed to govern. “Just because you get a big job doesn’t mean that you can’t have a psychiatric disability that interferes with your ability to confidently perform it,” points out Gartner. Individuals with NPD are notoriously bad at regulating their behavior or tailoring it to the situation at hand. “Every situation feels like a competition to win,” explains Aaron Pincus, a professor of psychology at Penn State who researches pathological narcissism. “Every situation feels like a stage in which to show people that ‘I’m superior, better, and they’re going to admire me for it.'” As former Democratic Congressman Barney Frank describes his impression of Trump, “I have never seen anybody in public life so focused exclusively on the trivial aspects of his own persona. I certainly have never seen anything like it in a person with a lot of responsibility.”

This makes narcissists particularly vulnerable to sycophants, or at least those who feed their narcissistic supply by telling them what they want to hear. Whether Steve Bannon actually is the evil mastermind he’s been made out to be doesn’t change the fact that even Republicans seem wary of Trump’s susceptibility to him. Unelected officials gaining power through a destabilizing characteristic of a mental disorder is the sort of thing our political system was set up to combat. “It’s a sign, actually, of how severely we need functioning parties,” Wilentz says. “Because when they work, they are in fact a check on the emergence of this kind of character. You can’t get where Trump is now in a functioning party system. It took this particular political crisis, which was a political crisis, to produce a president who has this trait. Normally, we can weed them out.”

For many in the mental-health field, the most troubling aspect of Trump’s personality is his loose grasp of fact and fiction. When narcissism veers into NPD, it can lead to delusions, an alternate reality where the narcissist remains on top despite clear evidence to the contrary. “He’s extremely quick, like nanoseconds quick, to discern anything that could conceivably threaten his dominance,” says biographer Gwenda Blair, who wrote The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President. “He’s on it. Anything that he senses – and he has very sharp senses – that could suggest that he is anything except 200 percent total winner, he’s got to stomp it out immediately. So having those reports, for example, that he did not win the popular vote? He can’t take that in. There has to be another explanation. It has to have been stolen. It has to have been some illegal voters. It can’t be the case that he lost. That’s not thinkable.”

But having verifiable facts be “unthinkable” is, Dodes explains, “a serious impairment of what we call ‘reality 
testing,’ so it creates an obvious risk for somebody whose job it is to gather information and 
make decisions. It creates an inability to know 
where you have gone wrong because you can’t let yourself self-correct by hearing contrary evidence.” This is particularly true when the information is viewed as an ego blow, which goes a long way toward explaining Trump’s first day in office, his blustering assertions of superiority, the speed with which he turns on former allies, and his selection of a wealthy and inexperienced Cabinet – a so-called narcissistic bubble from which anyone or anything that questions his dominance is ejected.

“When it comes to negative information about themselves, narcissists devalue it and they denigrate it and they don’t accept it,” says Pincus. “They’ll push it away, they’ll distort it, they’ll blame it on somebody else, they’ll lie about it, because they need to see that superior, ideal image of themselves, and they can’t tolerate the idea that they have any flaws or imperfections or somebody else might be better than them at something.” This not only means that Trump has no qualms about lying (a PolitiFact tally of candidates’ statements during the 2016 campaign found that only 2.5 percent of the claims made by Trump were wholly true and that 78 percent were mostly false, false or “pants on fire”), but it also means that he will continue to cater to his minority base, which, Pincus continues, “happen to have his ear and tell him he’s great. Then he’s shocked when courts and states have a different opinion, and he has to denigrate the courts and the states rather than question his own position.” It means that he will continually recast negative events in his favor: “All four corporate bankruptcies, were they a sign of failure for him during the debates?” asks Blair. “No, they were a sign he was smart.” And he will continue to double-down on delusions, like having been wiretapped by Obama, despite all evidence to the contrary.

That’s what concerns Wilentz. “We’ve had some very troubled presidents in our past, but their troubles are things like alcoholism, paranoia, you know, sort of garden-variety psychological maladies,” he tells me. “This is different. This shows a dissociation from reality. We just haven’t seen anything like this before.” Gartner’s take is even more pointed: “He’s acting crazy, and he’s mad that other people aren’t seeing and believing what he’s making up in his own head.”

This dissociation from reality, paired with Trump’s knee-jerk need to assert his dominance, has led many mental-health professionals to feel that, no matter what the specific diagnosis, the traits themselves are enough to render Trump unfit for office, and that a shrink’s “duty to warn” overrides the Goldwater Rule in this instance. “Psychiatrically, this is the worst-case scenario,” says Gartner. “If Trump were one step sicker, no one would listen to him. If he were wearing a tinfoil hat, if he were that grotesquely ill, he wouldn’t be a threat. But instead, he’s the most severe and toxic form of mental illness that can actually still function. I mean, in his first week in office, he threatened to invade Mexico, Iran and Chicago. And thank God someone finally stood up to Australia, you know? Glad someone had the balls to put them in their place.”

Indeed, it was Gartner’s fear that “Trump is truly someone who can start a war over Twitter” that led him to start a petition on January 26th that called on mental-health professionals to “Declare Trump Is Mentally Ill and Must Be Removed,” invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that the president should be replaced if he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Gartner’s petition currently has 40,947 signatures. Congresswoman Karen Bass’ petition, #DiagnoseTrump, has 36,743.

Not that any of these petitions are likely to make a difference. In order for Section 4 to be invoked, Congress or the vice president along with a majority of Trump’s handpicked Cabinet would have to call for his removal, which has never happened under any presidency. And even if Trump did something that warranted impeachment, 25 Republicans in the House would have to break ranks to pass the resolution on to the Senate, where two-thirds of that body would have to condemn him, meaning that no fewer than 19 Senate Republicans would need to vote in favor of an ouster. Many of those Republicans come from districts where #MAGA is practically gospel, meaning that these numbers are not just daunting, they’re all but unthinkable.

On June 29th, 1999, Trump gave a eulogy at his father’s funeral at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan. Others spoke of their memories of Fred Trump and his legacy as a man who had built solid, middle-class homes for thousands of New Yorkers. But his middle son, according to most accounts, used the time to talk about his own accomplishments and to make it clear that, in his mind, his father’s best achievement was producing him, Donald.

Presidents unite nations under narratives of what they stand for, whether true or false. But a president with NPD would stand for nothing but himself, offering no narrative other than the “false self” he created. An NPD president would expect Americans to go along with his rhetoric and ignore that behind the self-aggrandizing, the unyielding drive for more and more confirmation of the myth of his own greatness, he may only have his own emptiness to offer. “‘We’re going to do this thing, it’s going to be fantastic, amazing,'” Pincus paraphrases. “But there’s no substance to what he says. How are you going to do that? How is that going to be achieved?”

The answer is we don’t know. The White House leaks portray an angry man who wanted to become president, but never really wanted to be president. Trump may have stormed into the Oval Office poised to make sweeping changes, but unlike LBJ or Jackson or even Nixon, he doesn’t have the political expertise or historical perspective to see the long game. The rumblings in Congress suggest widespread fears that Trump will view policy through the prism of pathology rather than in any rational, methodological, bipartisan way. So far, as Barney Frank points out, even with a Republican House and Senate, “Trump hasn’t done very much.” His immigration bans have been blocked, his budget has been ridiculed, and his rage against the GOP to repeal and replace Obamacare, or else (and with a plan that would take health care away from millions of Americans while making it more expensive for most of the rest of us), turned into nothing more than a game of chicken – which he lost – with House Republicans. “Trump’s time horizon with regard to things that affect him appears to be about 13 minutes,” Frank says. “There is an inverse relationship between people who are more focused on how things affect them personally than on public policy and their effectiveness in Congress. You can’t work with those people.”

If Trump does have NPD, and the setbacks to his agenda keep coming, his magical thinking about the limitlessness of his power will only continue to clash with reality, and many in the mental-health field believe that would only exacerbate the problem. “I think we’re actually looking at a deteriorating situation,” says Gartner. “I think he’s going more crazy.” As Dodes’ letter to The New York Times states, Trump’s attacks against “facts and those who convey them … are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed.” Still, no matter how monumentally he fails in the next four years, says biographer Gwenda Blair, “there’s no doubt he’s going to think he’s done a great job. That isn’t even open to question.” 

[roxysbeachlife]

How to Perform Self-Hypnosis for Health and Happiness

August 9th, 2018

By Aletheia Luna

Guest writer for Wake Up World

In our families, cultures and societies, we are often taught that if you have a health issue… go to a doctor!  If you suffer from stress, tension or anxiety, go to a therapist… they’ll prescribe the very best pills and medications for you!  Oh yes!

Essentially, most of us are under the impression that in order to make our problems go away and to “get well”, we must seek out the assistance of someone else, preferably with a “professional” degree or certification that will leave us with the impression that we truly are getting the best of help.

While in some situations this might be a reasonable idea (i.e. the life and death variety), for a large percentage of us, it is not actually necessary to fork out $50-$250 on a therapy session, or throw coins and dollar bills into the hands of pharmacies for a nasty concoction of prescription drugs.

If you have the motivation, will power and persistence, you can actually learn how to heal yourself – and on an extremely tight budget.  In this article, I will show you one of the best ways to do that.

What is Self-Hypnosis?

When I was first researching ways of overcoming my intense anxiety issues, I stumbled across the phrase ‘self-hypnosis’ and almost didn’t give it a second glance.

Self-hypnosis?  It carries some pretty silly connotations.  So to clear these up, this is what self-hypnosis is not:

Self-hypnosis is not dangling a pendulum in front of your face.

Self-hypnosis is not falling asleep or into an unconscious state from which it is difficult to awaken.

Self-hypnosis does not cause you to lose control.

On the other hand, self-hypnosis does involve:

Inducing yourself into a highly suggestible state (this will be explored below).

Full control and awareness over your actions.

The ability to exit your naturally altered state of mind whenever desired.

In essence, self-hypnosis involves inducing yourself into a very calm and receptive state of focused concentration.  This makes a person’s response to suggestions heightened, e.g. “I am feeling strong, confidence and calm”, “My body is completely relaxed and still”, “I am free.  I am healthy”.  Such suggestions will be better reflected in the person’s daily life.

In fact, self-hypnosis is such a powerful tool that it has been proven to help treat a number of issues including:

Stress and anxiety issues.

Weight problems.

Chronic pain.

Depression.

Sleep disorders.

Addictions.

Self-esteem issues.

In fact, when I compare my own experience of taking SSRI anxiety prescription drugs and the affects of self-hypnosis, the most powerful and long-lasting healing affects I received were through the processes of self-induced hypnosis.

I experienced greater clarity of thought, better decision making, less general anxiety, and improved health as a result of going to the effort to change and override my deep-seated thoughts and beliefs that were causing me distress.

There is no question that self-hypnosis takes time, dedication and practice.  Don’t expect to immediately succeed on your first try (although if you do, congratulations!)  But do really take the time to explore different techniques of this powerful tool.

Below I will share with you some essential tips about self-hypnosis, and an exercise that mimics the self-hypnosis method that works for me.  However, don’t forget that we are all different and don’t necessarily respond to the same techniques.  This is why I encourage you to read more into different techniques after finishing this article.  Being your own doctor and therapist is not only invigorating, but immensely rewarding!

How to Perform Self-Hypnosis

Before you attempt to perform self-hypnosis, you must be aware of the following tips:

The unconscious mind does not process negatives.  By this I mean, if you suggest to yourself in the hypnotic state “I am not anxious.  I never was stressed.  I am not going to feel tense again”, your unconscious mind interprets this as: “I am anxious.  I was stressed.  I’m going to feel tense again.”  This is known as the law of reversed effect, and is strongly advised against by professionally trained hypnotists.  Instead, whatever suggestion you design for yourself, ensure that it is stated in the positive.  For example: “I am feeling calm and serene.  My body is still and quiet.  I am feeling strong and capable”.  Always suggest to your mind what you want to feel, as opposed to what you don’t want to feel.

State your suggestions in the present tense.  This will make them more affective.  For example, avoid phrasing your suggestions in the following manner: “I will be more confident”.  Instead, phrase them in the present tense: “I am becoming more confident”, “I am releasing this addiction with ease”.

Believe what you say and have conviction.  Your unconscious mind can’t be fooled.  If you tentatively think: “From now on I approach my day with optimism and joy”, chances are you will remain in the same miserable rut as before with no improvement.  Have faith in your suggestions.  This will reassure your mind and bring about the change you desire.

Focus on one thing at a time.  If you want to lose weight, overcome your smoking addiction and have a better sex drive, focus on what the most crucial goal is for you.  Also, be realistic in your suggestions.  Self-hypnosis will not wave a magical fairy wand and make you the happiest person alive within a week, for instance.  Instead, focus on repeating something your unconscious mind can process, e.g. “I am feeling more joyful each passing day.  I am building more positive habits”.

Now I will share with you a technique to practice on your own.  Ensure you have a specific and realistic suggestion in mind.  This is the process:

1. Find a comfortable place.

Preferably find somewhere with little disturbance or noise (although I’ve managed to practice this on a noisy bus many times!)  You will need at least 15-30 minutes to spare.  I recommend sitting up instead of lying down, as this can cause you to fall asleep easily.

2. Focus on relaxing your body.

You can do this by progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) or by repeating to yourself the word “sleep” for a few minutes slowly.  It is important that you focus your eyes on one spot, whether it be a mark on the wall, a distant static object, etc.  As you enter the hypnotic state, you will feel a sense of detachment, complete relaxation, pleasant “heaviness”, or “drifting” sensations.  You can keep your eyes open, or close them at this point.  I tend to keep my eyes open.

3. Focus on your suggestion.

You can repeat your suggestion out loud, but I prefer to mentally state my suggestions in silence.  If you desire to overcome your feelings of social anxiety, for example, you may state your suggestion slowly and with feeling in the following way: “I am becoming more calm and relaxed in social situations”.  You might also like to expand on your suggestion, remembering to keep your statements in the positive and present tense.  For example, “I feel whole… I feel confident and capable… Today I will feel happy with my success… I am making progress each day… I am becoming confident and peaceful… I am at peace within.”  These can be said slowly and deliberately, repeated throughout the 15-30 minutes you dedicate to your self-hypnosis.

4. Exit your hypnotic state.

At the end, when you feel satisfied to finish, you can gently exit your hypnotic state in the following way: “Five… I am exiting this state… four… I am awakening… three… I am awakening… two… wide, wide awake… one.”  Slowly shift your eyes away from the point you were focusing on, or if your eyes were closed, open them gradually.  You have now left the hypnotic state.  Your session is complete.

In self-hypnosis, repetition, persistence and conviction are all essential elements you require to bring about the change you need.  Don’t expect to try self-hypnosis once and have it solve all of your problems!  Also, you may need to experiment with a few different techniques to find what is the most effective approach for you.  In our vastly rich age of information, this shouldn’t be hard to do!

I hope this article has opened another possible avenue of healing to you on your soulwork path.  Please share this article with whoever you feel may benefit.  Also, I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences below!

Also by Aletheia Luna:

Being Spiritual Doesn’t Mean Sh*t If You Can’t Hold Space for Others

9 Ways to Awaken the Divine Masculine Within You

How to Re-Parent Your Wounded Inner Child

About the author:

Aletheia Luna is an influential spiritual writer whose work has changed the lives of thousands of people worldwide. As a child, Aletheia Luna was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church. But after experiencing depression, isolation, and anxiety as a result of their dangerous cult teachings, she experienced a spiritual awakening at the age of 19. Since leaving and picking up the pieces of her life, Luna has dedicated herself to intense inner healing and a process she calls soulwork. Later, in 2012 she co-founded popular spiritual website, lonerwolf.com. As a mystic, spiritual mentor and soulwork therapist, her mission is to help others become conscious of their entrapment, and find joy, empowerment, and liberation in any circumstance.

This article How to Perform Self-Hypnosis For Health and Happiness was originally published on lonerwolf.com.

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[in-sightjournal]

Interviewer: Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Numbering: Issue 15.A, Idea: Outliers & Outsiders (Part Nine)

Place of Publication: Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Title: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Web Domain: http://www.in-sightjournal.com

Individual Publication Date: December 8, 2017

Issue Publication Date: January 1, 2017

Name of Publisher: In-Sight Publishing

Frequency: Three Times Per Year

Words: 2,801

ISSN 2369-6885

  Abstract

An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. She discusses: impact of war on personal life; injustice and death in home territory; the impulse for war and atrocities; previous and current Iraq governments; respects for Kurds and Kurdish Culture; impact on women and children, as innocents in general; and rebuilding a generation who lost education, nutrition, family members, and reliable governmental support and institutions.

Keywords: Culture Project, feminism, Houzan Mahmoud, Iraq, Kurdistan, Kurds.

An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A.: Co-Founder, Culture Project (Part One)[1],[2],[3],[4]

1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When I reflect on war and conflict, the statistics tell one story. The personal narratives tell another. You experienced war, so I want to explore the latter with you. We did some work together, whether interviews or editing articles for Culture Project. How did war impact your life?

Houzan Mahmoud: This is a long story. It’s not easy to describe it. I shared the pain and sorrow of horrors of war with my family, friends, neighbors, and thousands of others. Therefore, telling my own story might be a fraction of a very small part of a huge story, the problem is those people who haven’t seen war, and only get statistics about it.

They really have no clue how ugly, insane, and inhumane war is. There is nothing humane about it. It’s only about bullets, air raids, bombardments, and shootings. It is all about sounds, sounds of bombs, and the wounded, really nasty and annoying sounds of different levels. Sometimes, even when the war is over, it stays with you.

Anything that falls, breaks, or explodes, even if it has nothing to do with war. It still connects with the images of war, the sounds, and noises, and the destruction comes alive again in your mind. There is another thing I hate most along with war: the military uniform, especially of those that belonged to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

That particular clothing of men and their guns was repulsive, as it will always stay in your mind as a symbol of killing. Men in uniforms who kill. I spent the first twenty years of my life like this. I witnessed the Iraq-Iran war, the sanctions, the first Gulf War, then the Kurdish uprising in 1991 and its aftermath of instability.

Let me share some experiences with you, when I came to London, even when I see anyone who were uniforms of their jobs, like the railway staff, I would be scared as I thought they were the army and are arresting people.

Another example was of an explosion of a boiler in my neighbourhood, although the boiler had nothing to do with rockets, bombs, or war. It straight away felt as if we were at war. So many nights, I woke up and when I didn’t hear shooting. I was relieved. I couldn’t believe it. That I would live one day and sleep one night without hearing gunshots, and without fearing for our lives.

2. Jacobsen: How did you cope, if you did, experiencing or witnessing widespread injustice and death in the home territory?

Mahmoud: Interestingly, you do cope. Sometimes, you get used to the situation. You become creative in finding life in small things that might have not mattered to you before. You try your best to protect your life because it becomes more precious to you. You will do your best to live.

You want to live more. It may be the idea of a better life and future helped us to cope better. The idea that one day the war will be over. That we can start a normal life again. The reality is even when the war ends life is never like before again. By the end of the war, we would have lost many of our loved ones. We would have sorrowed and grieved.

Sometimes, you might even think the dead are the luckiest because they are gone, and we are here to pick up pieces, to mourn and to remember the bombs, the rockets, the air raids, in addition to living under a dictator.

To sum up the love of life, the beauty of this planet, and my ideals for a world without war, without the suffering of human beings keeps me going. I enjoy nature. I love seeing flowers, trees, and parks, but also human creativity such as art, music, cinema, and dance.

There is a lot to be happy about in life. I see all of what happened to me as different chapters of my life. Today, I live a new chapter of my life. I happy to have survived, but I always remember those who didn’t make it.

3. Jacobsen: What impulse does war serve for us? Why do men commit most of the atrocities, to you?

Mahmoud: It is hard to have this discussion, there has been a lot of writings, talks, and research into ‘why war happens?’ From sociological, psychological, political, economic and cultural aspects, at the same time, it’s hard to come up with one concrete answer.

Let’s not forget that after the First World War, there were more than ten million people who died in the battlefields in Europe.  Two leading thinkers (Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein) started to debate as to why, what could be the reason? Is it human’s destructive impulse, the lust for hate and destruction as Einstein wrote to Freud? What could be the reason?

They were shocked and burdened by the war themselves, but, look, even the Second World War broke out, and then many more wars across the world in different times and places.

I find it hard to solely blame this on human nature and assert that humans by nature harbor hate and violence. A lot of this violence and hatred is learned. It is taught by the state through its apparatuses such as education, military, religion, media, and political ideology in general.

I have been at the receiving end of so many wars. I never wanted to be; I never harbored hate towards the people on the other side.

I saw a state, a bloody nation-state, backed by international forces, where weapons were sold to Iraq and Iran by the “civilized” western government, but we the ordinary people on both sides were the victims.

Or those who were forced into military conscription had to go and fight a war that had nothing to do with them. So many soldiers who were ordinary people from the poor background died in these wars for nothing.

In our case, even when I look at it now, a lot of countries in the Middle East are drowning in bloodshed. There is a huge intervention by imperialists. They have an interest – both political and economic.

I, therefore, would find a Marxian approach to war more accurate in terms of its focus on modern wars are results of the competition for resources and markets between great imperialist powers, maintaining that these wars are expected consequences of the capitalist class system and their free market.

You hardly see men from the upper ruling classes die in these wars. You see mostly or only the poor who in the process of war become a burning fuel for the capitalist killing machines. Imperialists vying for the monopoly of power, expansion, and resources using religion, race, nationality, and other excuses to invade, kill, and occupy places.

4. Jacobsen: How does the current leadership of Iraq compare with the prior leadership?

Mahmoud: It is really not a good idea to compare. What do I compare this new Iraqi regime with? With the previous regime of genocide, dictatorship, a government that was responsible for mass graves and mass exactions? It is very sad to be comparing regimes after forty years of oppression and dictatorship.

The current Iraqi regime was a product of US/UK occupation, so they gave birth to it. It is an ethno-sectarian and religious establishment. They are so corrupt and indulged in inner fighting between different sects of Islam. They didn’t have time to fight with Kurds.

There was the referendum of Kurdistan, which was even non-binding, where people peacefully voted and expressed their wish to be independent of Iraq. Yet, they brought their worst militias to invade Kurdistan and the language they use in their media and official statements are very similar to the language that was used under Saddam’s regime against Kurds.

I have opposed this Islamist and ethno-sectarian regimes from its establishment and there is no hope in them.

5. Jacobsen: Do they respect the Kurds or Kurdish culture?

Mahmoud: They respect no one, let alone Kurds. These are militia-based political parties, extremely corrupt. They act as mercenaries for regional as well as international powers. Kurds have always had high aspirations for freedom, social justice, and rights.

They don’t accept being treated as second-class citizens in their own lands. We have a history of the struggle for our rights. We will oppose whoever undermines and takes away those rights from us: be it a Kurdish government or Arab, or Islamists, and so on.

It is a basic human dignity. No one accepts being degraded and treated like a half-human or subordinate. Kurdistan has always been the center of progressive politics, the left and progressive movements always were established there. The current revolution of Rojava is the latest example of an inclusive, egalitarian alternative.

When political parties in the Iraqi government have no ideological bases that recognize basic human rights and dignity, then they haven’t learned the lesson, they only continue with their nationalistic, almost fascistic, rhetoric of ‘Iraqi unity’, and so on.

When they have been dividing Iraq along lines of religious sects, ethnic backgrounds, and persecuting religious people who are not Muslims like Yezidis, Christians, and Shabaks.

Imagine if a government is such a failure and they have been fuelling the division and instead of making human rights and equal citizenship superior to every sectarian agenda then people will not call for a break-up of Iraq.

6. Jacobsen: How does war impact women and children who remain innocent?

Mahmoud: Like in every war, women are the target due to their gender. Rape is always used as a weapon of war. For example, in the latest invasion of Kurdistan by Iraqi militias, there are many reports that they have raped Kurdish women and exploded homes of Kurdish civilians.

They are not even shy. They post them on social media, how they torture Kurdish men, how they kill them, and how the abuse the children and the elderly. Such militias are war criminals and mercenaries, who don’t think but only kill and rape.

This takes the question of women’s armed resistance and how self-defense is as important as defending the cities from invaders. Unfortunately, these women were defenseless ordinary civilians, who never thought they would be victims of rape by the army or criminal gangsters of a government that claims to be our government and wants us to live in a united Iraq.

These crimes against people come from the simple fact that they are Kurdish.

7. Jacobsen: How does a country rebuild a generation who lost education, nutrition, family members, and reliable governmental support and institutions?

Mahmoud: To such governments, people’s welfare is the last thing they would think about. Imagine that Iraq is turned into a mafia land, a bunch of mafia with armed militias, and weapons protecting only their own interest both politically and financially.

They always need a story to maintain a narrative that the “nation” or the “country” is in danger in order to start small wars to send poor people to be killed, then they make people forget about their rights, health, education, housing: everything. They came to power in 2003. To this day, most people don’t have electricity, clean water, or medicine.

Iraq, including Kurdistan, is up for grabs. This is how it has operated since then. Multinational companies and local corrupt rulers have turned people’s lives into a living hell. So, there are no institutions as such, all corrupt, and dysfunctional. They have more alignments to one party or another. The interests of the citizen are the last thing that counts.

Iraq is a name only, empty of content, empty of the most basic human rights and dignity. If you hear the rhetoric of politicians in these regions, what they say under the name of “nation,” “country,” and “our people” is overwhelming, you would say, “Wow, what great politicians, they love their people. They are doing all they can for them…” In reality, it’s only lies and nonsense. The rhetoric that every dictator is saying and using against the best interests of the common person, the citizenry.

I have lived and remember Iraq as this empty shell, where millions were killed and massacred for its sake, but it doesn’t really exist at least for its majority poor, who are workers and women.

It has never offered us, and particularly me, anything apart from suffering and loss.

That’s why I have dedicated all my life to support ordinary civilians, especially women throughout Iraq and Kurdistan who have been silenced and their rights are curtailed. So, I only have my voice to speak up, and a pen to write.

I think this is enough for a feminist to turn this patriarchal, masculinist chauvinist, and dictatorial place upside down.

References

Fantappie, M. (2011, January 30). Houzan Mahmoud of Owfi Tells Us About Her Role in the Struggle for Equality in Iraq and Kurdistan. Retrieved from https://www.w4.org/en/wowwire/equality-human-rights-social-justice-in-iraq-kurdistan/.

IHEU. (2008, September 31). Volunteer of the month: Houzan Mahmoud. Retrieved from http://iheu.org/volunteer-of-the-month-houzan-mahmoud/.

Jacobsen, S.D (2017, July 4). Interview with Houzan Mahmoud – Co-Founder, The Culture Project. Retrieved from http://conatusnews.com/interview-houzan-mahmoud/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017, June 24). An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud — Co-Founder, Culture Project. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/an-interview-with-houzan-mahmoud-co-founder-the-culture-project-7c8861d186a1.

Mahmoud, H. (2006, September 27). A dark anniversary. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/sep/27/ontheoccasionof24thseptember.

Mahmoud, H. (2006, June 12). A symptom of Iraq’s tragedy. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/12/theendofzarqawitheusmade.

Mahmoud, H. (2004, March 8). An empty sort of freedom. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/08/iraq.gender.

Mahmoud, H. (2005, August 14). Houzan Mahmoud: Iraq must reject a constitution that enslaves women. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/houzan-mahmoud-iraq-must-reject-a-constitution-that-enslaves-women-5347236.html.

Mahmoud, H. (2005, January 28). Houzan Mahmoud: Why I Am Not Taking Part in These Phoney Elections. Retrieved from https://www.vday.org/node/989.html.

Mahmoud, H. (2007, May 2). Human chattel. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/may/02/humanchattel.

Mahmoud, H. (2006, October 7). It’s not a matter of choice. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/oct/07/wearingtheveilhasneverbee.

Mahmoud, H. (2014, October 10). Kobane Experience Will Live On. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/houzan-mahmoud/kobane-isis_b_5958150.html.

Mahmoud, H. (2014, October 7). Kurdish Female Fighters and Kobanê Style Revolution. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/houzan-mahmoud/kurdish-female-fighters-_b_5944382.html.

Mahmoud, H. (2016, November 1). Mosul And The Plight Of Women. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/houzan-mahmoud/mosul-isis-women_b_12740882.html.

Mahmoud, H. (2006, October 17). The price of freedom. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/oct/17/655000isnotjustanumber.

Mahmoud, H. (2007, April 13). We say no to a medieval Kurdistan. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/apr/13/thefightforsecularisminku1.

Mahmoud, H. (2007, December 21). What honour in killing?. Retrieved from https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2007/12/women-rights-iraqi-honour.

Appendix I: Footnotes

[1] Co-Founder, Culture Project.

[2] Individual Publication Date: December 8, 2017 at www.in-sightjournal.com; Full Issue Publication Date: January 1, 2017 at https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.

[3] MA, Gender Studies, SOAS-University of London.

[4] Photograph courtesy of Houzan Mahmoud.

Appendix II: Citation Style Listing

American Medical Association (AMA): Jacobsen S. An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. (Part One) [Online].December 2017; 15(A). Available from: www.in-sightjournal.com/mahmoud-one.

American Psychological Association (APA, 6th Edition, 2010): Jacobsen, S.D. (2017, December 8). An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. (Part One). Retrieved from www.in-sightjournal.com/mahmoud-one.

Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. (Part One). In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 15.A, December. 2017. <www.in-sightjournal.com/mahmoud-one>.

Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2017. “An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. (Part One).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 15.A. www.in-sightjournal.com/mahmoud-one.

Chicago/Turabian, Humanities (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott “An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. (Part One).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 15.A (December 2017). www.in-sightjournal.com/mahmoud-one.

Harvard: Jacobsen, S. 2017, ‘An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. (Part One)‘, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 15.A. Available from: <www.in-sightjournal.com/mahmoud-one>.

Harvard, Australian: Jacobsen, S. 2017, ‘An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. (Part One)‘, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 15.A., www.in-sightjournal.com/mahmoud-one.

Modern Language Association (MLA, 7th Edition, 2009): Scott D. Jacobsen. “An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. (Part One).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 15.A (2017):December. 2017. Web. <www.in-sightjournal.com/mahmoud-one>.

Vancouver/ICMJE: Jacobsen S. An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. (Part One) [Internet]. (2017, December; 15(A). Available from: www.in-sightjournal.com/mahmoud-one.

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An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud, M.A. (Part One) Interviewer: Scott Douglas Jacobsen Numbering: Issue 15.A, Idea: Outliers & Outsiders (Part Nine) Place of Publication: Langley, British Columbia, Canada…