A table-flipping day

If you're feeling like I feel throw your fist through the ceiling

Some people call it crazy well I call it healing

If you need love turn around, do the helicopter

If you're sick, baby girl I would love to be your doctor

So burn it down, burn it down baby burn it burn it down

Burn it down, burn it down baby burn it burn it down

Motherfucker, burn it down, burn it down baby burn it burn it down

~~ “Burn It Down” by AWOLNATION

Some days it just doesn’t pay to chew through the restraints, you know?

It’s not a bad day, not at all. We got the incredibly good news that when it comes to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare for the unenlightened) it looks like both “repeal and replace” and “just repeal the motherfucker” are dead in the water. The former due to some Senators feeling that it didn’t go far enough, which is more than a little disturbing, but hey, at least they said ‘nope.’ The latter was due to three—count ‘em, THREE—women Senators saying that it was cruel and would harm their constituents. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said, “I didn’t come to Washington to hurt people.”

Seems like some of the female Senators didn’t take too kindly to being completely shut out of the committee that drafted the bill, eh? We’re the majority in the country, so next time, perhaps you might give us a voice, Mitch, whaddaya say?

Hahaha...what am I saying? As long as these guys are in charge, they’re going to keep trying to control what we do with our bodies. Yet another good reason to get more women in government, at all levels, and in all branches.

So that’s a good thing. It is also beautiful and green and lush here at Nutwood and I love this time of year, despite the heat and humidity. I got to see lots of birds today, and other little critters, including a couple of young turkeys and their mama!

Also, my homey James Comey is shopping a book deal among publishers this week and I am super excited to read it when it comes out AND Ken has already said that we can travel somewhere (maybe DC!) for a book signing if he does book signings, and the publishing company will probably want him to do book signings. I know a lot of my friends still have major reservations about him, but he’s become kind of a hero to me. Don’t laugh! For real. He stood up for what he thought was right and he basically was having none of the Yam’s bullshit so figured out how to continue the investigation even though he was out as head of the FBI and he figured out how to do it in a legal way but one that totally put the screws to the Vulgar Talking Yam. That, my friends, is something I can admire. That is ninja-level badassery coated in a handsome visage and Boy Scout demeanor. I can only hope to achieve that level at some point in my life, and he has already achieved it at just a couple of years older than me. I’ve got some work to do!

I also recently discovered an older but new-to-me band called Carbon/Silicon and that will be a Music Moment entry at some point. I listened to that today as well as AWOLNATION, a long-time favorite, as reflected in today’s music selection.

All in all, it was a good day. So why am I feeling so agitated and low-level angry? I’ve been thinking about it this afternoon and I can point to a couple of things.

First, there is a former friend who is posting some really bizarre shit on their page. I won’t go into the circumstances of why they defriended me but it was pretty absurd and instead of reaching out to me and asking me what was going on, they just decided that I didn’t like some political meme they posted and so I started “ignoring” them. Bitch, please. You think I don’t deal with friends and relatives who are super conservative? I live in Indiana, for Pete’s sake. Perhaps I was trying to preserve the friendship by not seeing every anti-Hillary, anti-Obama post you put up. Did you ever think of that? Nope, they just defriended without a word to me.

They did me a favor, though, because the stuff I’m seeing on their page is more of the same and worse. When I got a message from someone I wasn’t even friends with wondering what was going on, I figured it wasn’t me. I don’t take kindly to what was said about me and came through another person, so I will be channeling my inner Comey and taking my jabs here and there where I can. I am a very easy-going person, but I think it’s safe to say that you do not want to make an enemy of me.

Second, there was this late-afternoon story about Yam supporters from Vox. It gave statistics from a poll that showed that they simply do not believe that there is anything of importance about certain campaign people meeting with Russian operatives. 32% believe the meeting never took place, despite the fact that Yam, Jr. released the emails stating that it did.

This is absolutely astounding to me and utterly mind-boggling. This is some straight jacket level delusion. They aren’t just not believing news reports about it. We all know how they don’t listen to the news that contradicts their own narrative. They literally do not believe people intimately connected with the candidate and campaign they voted for.

I really do not know how to process this. I gave up trying to discuss anything with them long ago in order to preserve my own sanity. But this is just...it just goes against everything I’ve valued and trusted in my life. The scientific method, verifiable facts, straight-up discussion using logic and reason, fucking RATIONALITY.

This is what is making me want to listen to rage music tonight. I’ll find my equilibrium soon—I always do—but this is the kind of shit that makes me question the intelligence and even the sanity of those who refuse to accept reality. I don’t know what the solution is. I really don’t.

So for now, I’ll just go with how I’m feeling.

Your reality has been disconnected

I'm really noticing a major break from reality in a lot of people lately. I'm not talking about getting things a little bit wrong; I'm talking "fuck the facts I'm just going to make shit up" wrong.

We've got the Missouri farmer who placed a huge sign on his farm calling the Democrats the "party of parasites." This same farmer has accepted a million dollars in crop subsidies from the federal government. Sir, I know parasites; I worked with parasites for much of my career. The Democratic party may have its share, but certainly does not have the market cornered on parasites.

Then there is Michelle Bachmann, teabagger royalty, who takes every opportunity to rail against big government and Obama's "socialistic" agenda. Bachmann's farm received over a quarter of a million in federal subsidies. Kind of digging that whole socialist scene, aren't you, Bachmann? At least when it is you who is the beneficiary.

Let's see...then there is Lutheran pastor Tom Brock, who is virulently anti-gay and takes every opportunity to tell gays that they are immoral and disgusting and going to hell if they don't change their ways. In his down time from gaybashing, he attends conventions with other pastors, and in a recent one in Slovakia, apparently fell into temptation and was weak...and had some sort of a homosexual encounter with a Gypsy (who he says are toothless, filthy, and smelly, although I guess for such an encounter, toothless might be a plus!). Oh, he's admitted that he's gender-confused, and belongs to a group that promotes abstinence among men who are fighting homosexual urges. All the while, he continues to preach his I-hate-gays-and-so-does-my-god rhetoric. What an amazing amount of self-loathing he must be carting around! Give it up and be fabulous, dude!

We're not done. There is the lovely desert flower, Jan Brewer, who, in order to drum up more support for her racist immigration bill in Arizona, is claiming that illegal immigrants are mainly concerned with smuggling drugs across the border rather than trying to get jobs here to feed their families. The assertion that illegal immigration in Arizona has led to higher crime rates is simply not true. It is a falsehood, and Brewer continues to spew such lies...and people continue to fall for it.

In a delusional break that hits closer to home, I've had a person who ridiculed my nephew as a coward and a "mama's boy" for not deploying to Afghanistan while in the Marines--despite the fact that he was hospitalized for over a week with a severe abscess and designated as non-deployable by the U.S. Marines themselves--in a tizzy about their own family member's possible immediate deployment, and ensuring that such deployment was delayed by whatever means necessary. Gee, really? How is that cowardice, mama's boy thingie working for you?

What do all these things have in common? From what I can tell, it's such a hatred and disdain for the other side that there is an inability to recognize one's own inconsistencies and irrational behavior, or that of whatever group affiliation is claimed. We saw it during the health care debate, when teabaggers were calling for smaller government, but at the same time shouting, "Keep your hands off my Medicare!" Or when Palin continued to harp about "death panels," when it was a patently absurd suggestion and a complete fabrication and misrepresentation of something that every family should discuss. I honestly don't know if it's a matter of being unable to grasp the larger complexities of an issue, or simply willful ignorance. Not all of these people are unintelligent; I believe it's often a calculated attempt to prevaricate and persuade through dishonest means. It is most certainly a disconnect from the reality of a situation. I may try to persuade with my arguments, but I always stay firmly rooted in reality. Once you give that up, I suppose you can justify anything, at least in your own mind.

That doesn't change reality, though. No matter how deeply you've managed to deceive yourself, those of us who haven't followed you to your own personal Bizarro World know the reality of things.

Altered reality

I've written before about cognitive dissonance, in which a person experiences conflict due to holding two opposing ideas at the same time, or being presented with incontrovertible evidence that refutes one of their firmly held beliefs. We've been seeing a lot of this lately with climate change deniers, people who oppose health care reform despite the fact that they will directly benefit from it, birther idiots who refuse to believe the evidence of a bona fide birth certificate (perhaps because it is titled certificate of live birth), and various other lies, misconceptions, or even those lovely forwarded emails loaded with bullshit.

Although not quite the same as cognitive dissonance, I would say that delusion is a part of that; people often delude themselves into believing something is real when it can be proven that it most definitely is not. I recently saw someone express extreme displeasure that President Obama had yet to visit the Gulf coast, that people were so angry at President Bush for not visiting during Katrina, but why was no one calling out Obama on this?? (All caps, of course.) Someone else chimed in and said that sure, Democrats and the media think Obama can do no wrong, and then the original poster said that Obama supporters don't want to be confused with the facts because they don't want to believe the evidence against him.

This was posted on May 30. The President had just been to the Gulf on May 28, and was there on May 2. Who is not believing evidence now? Or perhaps they just aren't paying attention, and deluding themselves into their version of reality, because to be presented with evidence that counters their belief will result in cognitive dissonance. I've also seen people write that Obama canceled the national day of prayer (he did not...although I think he should), and I've seen others say that he did not observe Memorial Day or honor our dead soldiers because he was on vacation. He was not at Arlington, but he was at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery to honor the soldiers there. As I pointed out somewhere, are soldiers buried at Arlington somehow more worthy than those buried elsewhere? Because my Dad is buried at Burr Oak Cemetery in northern Indiana, does that mean that he didn't serve his country well, and for many years, and is not as worthy of respect as those buried at Arlington? Anyone who says yes..I'll be showing up at your door soon, and we'll have us a little talk, okay?

I had it happen with that Facebook friend who, when I countered her misleading and incomplete facts with the full story, refused to acknowledge or accept it, and defriended me. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinions but not to his own facts."

It really is an odd thing to see seemingly intelligent people turn their backs on the truth, and even make shit up. Although it’s a little long, here is a very good article about delusional beliefs. One of the worst instances in my experience was with an ex-boss of mine. The guy was a jerk on many levels, and was quickly becoming known among the local research community as untrustworthy and prone to exaggeration of his own abilities. He was getting ready to go on a business trip, so we all had a little meeting about the projects we were going to be working on while he was gone. I was going to be purifying some Bovine Factor V, and it was a very problematic protein to purify. (Maybe because I didn't wear my ppppppledge ppppppin when I was working on it. Ha!) It was decided that we would send the assay out to a lab in Atlanta so that a researcher there could do the assay and give us some insight onto how we could get the process to work better. Because I wanted no misunderstandings, I said, "Just to clarify. I'll be collecting samples and sending them to Atlanta, right? I won't be doing the assay here?" He said, "Right." My manager and a coworker were also there.

Later that week....

I go through the purification process, a matter of several hours of work. As I get down to the purified protein, I start collecting samples to be sent out later, and get them frozen quickly so they don't degrade. The phone rings, and my manager answers it. It's the boss, he's calling in to check on how things are going, and after talking to him for a while, my manager says he wants to talk to me about how my Factor V project is going. I say so far, so good, I'm collecting the samples today, and I should be able to get them out to Atlanta for Dr. Whoever to do that assay. A brief silence.

Him: What?! Why aren't you doing it there? We talked about that before I left!

Me: Yes, but it was agreed that I'd be sending them out, not doing the assay here.

Him: No no no, we said you'd be doing it there!

Me: [trying again, although I knew there would be no winning this one] I specifically asked you to clarify that I would not be doing the assay here, I would only collect the samples and send them to Atlanta, and you said yes, that's right.

Him: I did NOT say that. Let me talk to Joy [the manager] again.

When Joy got off the phone with him, she came over to me and said, "Beth, he's wrong. I stood right there, heard you ask the question, and heard him agree." My other coworker who was there also agreed, said it was clear to her that I would just collect samples and send them out.

So yeah, I ended up doing the fucking assay, and yes, I still find it disturbing that he either lied so blatantly, or managed to convince himself that he had said something other than what he did...despite three other people corroborating that he was wrong and that he was not remembering the meeting correctly.

I find it really unsettling to have to deal with people like that. In fact, you might say that people like that give me cognitive dissonance. They remember events in a way that is simply not true, they change reality to fit their own needs and purposes, and then try to pass their new version of reality off as the truth, even when others produce evidence showing that they are wrong. I'm not sure what the process is there, but they are either maliciously lying or deluding themselves into a false reality. Either way, there is definitely something not altogether right there, with a distance from reality that has to be unhealthy.

One thing I've learned over the years when experiencing something like this, whether at work or in personal matters, is the importance of documentation. When you know that someone willfully and happily lies, it's best to keep a record of contact, things that were said, emails and letters that were sent, and any other pertinent info. When dealing with the deluded, the best policy is an age-old one: Cover Your Ass. And you can tell 'em to kiss it while you're at it.