Are you following the G20 summit? It’s all shades of hilarious. The so – called Western leaders have been completely impotent to stop Putin, so now they decided to hurt him where he will really feel it: they are trying to make him feel like the unpopular kid during lunch break.
Somebody not very important was sent to greet him at the airport while the important greeters were reserved for other visitors. He wasn’t given a good spot at the group photo. He is now probably weeping in his room and asking, “Mommy, why does everybody hate me?”
Tony Abbott forgot about his bluster after the Malaysian Airlines plane was shot out of the sky by Putin ‘ s employees and happily shook Putin ‘ s hand. But Abbott got his revenge against Putin! The smile he gave Putin was a shade narrower than the one given to other, more popular kids! That must have stung just as much as being shot down by terrorists.
But the hero of the summit is Canada ‘ s Stephen Harper. While shaking Putin ‘ s hand he courageously mumbled, “Get out of Ukraine!” Unfortunately, since Putin wasn’t in Ukraine but right in front of Harper, the mumbled statement had a dubious effect.
Of course, everybody soon forgot about Putin, and Tony Abbott put everybody to sleep with a long lament about his incapacity to impose a $7 tax on GP visits. Evidently, this rankles much more with him than the deaths of the passengers of MH17.
Clarissa's Blog 
But, but, but, they hurted his fweeeeelings!!! Haven’t you known this is the most horrible punishment one can get in today’s tough world? The dead passengers don’t have fweeeeelings any more, so why would anyone care about them?
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Yeah, I know, they showed the bastard what it must feel like to be unpopular and shunned in the lunch room! Maybe now he will run away in tears.
So ridiculous.
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Well, according to the news I read he might even do so – I heard he didn’t attend the lunch with everyone else, he called a press conference a couple of hours earlier than planned and he is considering to leave the meeting early.
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“Well, according to the news I read he might even do so – I heard he didn’t attend the lunch with everyone else, he called a press conference a couple of hours earlier than planned and he is considering to leave the meeting early.”
– And no the Western media are discussing this with a lot more passion than they ever had for what Putin is doing in Ukraine. I guess this is the kind of stuff that the public finds important.
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Well _I_ heard that Cameron told Hollande that he heard that Angela told Renzi that she’s not sure if she even likes Putin anymore and Von Rompuy told Abbot that he’s thinking of asking her to dance next week, so there!
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As play dates go, this one looks quite successful. 🙂
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+1 for condescending readings of children’s books.
I suppose all of this is ineffectual because Putin doesn’t care about getting other nations to pretend to love him/Russia as long as other nations don’t do anything substantial.
Great Man feelings coverage let policy wonks indulge their yen for soap operas without feeling guilty. Putin’s mad! Merkel left 10 seconds after the scheduled meeting time! Someone forgot their gavel and decided to use a shoe! Burn!
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As I’ve said before the contemporary West will not regain its wholeness — meaning its capacity to theorize and act coherently — until it comes to terms with its colonial past. I know it already thinks it has done so, but feeling guilty and ashamed only leads to the splitting of the psyche and moments of shooting into heaven followed by plummeting into hell. It is not a stabilized state. All countries, all cultures, all societies, have had a history. History seems terrible to us, since it is a concrete encasement of solid facts we cannot change. Therefore the mind encodes history as “evil”. However, as Nietzsche saw, “evil is man’s best strength”. So long as you are denying your evil, you are not strong and you cannot act concertedly or with any clarity of thought. You can turn soviet actors into caricatures but you cannot think coherently about them. Everything becomes a cartoon.
The reason why I insist that the major complex disrupting Western society today (and not just on a political level) is its inability to come to terms with colonialism, is because that is what individual Westerners keep impressing on me is their main source of paranoia, fear and the origin of their failure to communicate effectively. I have been writing on this topic for almost two decades, but I have not yet found a Westerner who will speak to me on the same level that I am talking, without resorting to running away or childish retorts. I did some particularly vicious retorts for a while, when all I was doing was talking.
As I say, and I re-emphasize, to feel childish guilt and shame is very different from coming to terms with actual historical fact. In the second case, one integrates the knowledge back into one’d identity and becomes stronger as a result. I have just completed such a shamanic re-integration and now I sleep very peacefully at night and I feel very much stronger and more solid in myself.
My writing (newly re-issued) addresses precisely this matter, but I think it will take three centuries before the maturity develops where it can get a decent review.
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There’s something immature about Western culture. They’ve learned to play psychology but they’ve unlearned how to play politics. Simple lesson. If you want to get around a Western person, simply don’t play psychology with them but go straight for politics. You’ll beat them in a field they know nothing about.
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Excellent observation!
Unfortunately I can’t make too much use of it since I’m in Poland were people know all too much about politics (and freeze you out if you try to go that route). But they don’t have a knack for psychology either so I’m stuck with communication skills (which are not a local strength at all).
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I just notice if someone is playing a sado-masochistic game with me, and then I deny them any positive outcome to that game. It couldn’t be more simple. People in the West do not respond to communication skills, so that is a waste of time, but you can do the game we do in martial arts, called Zombie, which is to deflect one zombie by pushing him into another.
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“I just notice if someone is playing a sado-masochistic game with me, and then I deny them any positive outcome to that game”
I’m more interested in getting what I want to worry to much about what the other side (usually in a bureaucracy) is getting or not getting. I just imagine (and convey to them) the message: “We’re on the same side!” so they want me to get what I want too.
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I can’t say that The G20 has impressed me with a profound knowledge of psychology. 🙂 What I’m seeing is more like a complete incapacity to elaborate a position and stick to it. It’s like they have no idea why they even gathered.
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Ah, death of ideology, where is they sting? Oh, yeah…… Russia.
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The whole thing is so childish that I derive a weird enjoyment from reading Stalin’s biography. Yes, he was a bloody maniac but at least he was effective.
I understand that this is not a healthy response but I have to be honest.
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Sado-masochistic psychology tends to preclude thinking as even a rare possibility. The people who get stuck in this modality cannot theorize or plan.
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