Newsbusters did a great article on yet another example of Joe Biden being creepy. What makes the image immediately unsettling to any normal person, is that as they picture either placing their hand on that Sheriff in that fashion, or having Joe’s hand placed on them in that fashion, their amygdala will fire off with aversive stimulus. In Joe however, not so.
The thing is, Joe will only do things like that if he won’t get his ass kicked. He wouldn’t try that in a bar full of violent ex-cons. So he knows better, but he does it anyway if he can get away with it. Clearly there is an analogy there to our broader relationships with liberals.
I’ve seen this trait in narcissist’s before. They seem to view that action as an amgydala hack of their peers. In focusing upon it mechanistically, as merely stimulating their target’s amygdala with discomfort, they eliminate the natural human urge to cringe in themselves. That hack will work in us as well. Meeting a narcissist, I can now lay my hands on him in such a fashion, and though I would find it viscerally repulsive, I could motor through if I viewed it as simply an initial amygdala activation of an evil opponent, preparing his brain for the epic hijacking I was about to lay on him.
It is tough to say for certain if Joe is simply brain damaged (you could make a strong case for that), or if this was an initial stab at an amygdala hijack. However with my experience, I would suspect Joe did that because that Sheriff made him feel smaller in some regard at some point prior (perhaps just by fitting in so well with all his fellow LEO’s, and enjoying some laughs with them before the event began – narcissists hate to see others fitting in happily with peers). I would bet that this was merely Joe’s way of screwing with his head, Gary Busey style. It is nearly impossible to imagine that Joe didn’t notice the Sheriff’s glare.
Try to picture what is different in you. Try to feel the force in your mind which would prevent you from being what Joe is, and doing what Joe does. Imagine how it would assail you, if you tried to do what Joe is doing there. In a very real sense, that force is what makes you human. It is your conscience. It is why you are decent and good, and it is what drives such noble behaviors as sacrifice, selflessness, and honoring loyalty. It is your amygdala. Focus upon it, learn to recognize when it is guiding you and get to know it as you would a close friend. In doing so, you will get to know yourself and the people around you better.
Now imagine that force gone. Imagine no urge to avoid impoliteness, no desire to avoid making those around you unhappy and uncomfortable, no urge to avoid harsh realities, no force capable of driving real sacrifice. Without that urge, that feeling of visceral discomfort when transgressing, you cease to be human. Where I have taught myself to short circuit it when dealing with these types, I can feel the effects within me, as what it is to be human gives way to a robotic, Spock-like psychopathy. I can feel my bonds with humanity fraying, as I break free and float off alone in a world of opponents.
Look out on the people our citizenry are supposedly electing, and you will feel ever less optimistic for the future. Either despite what we have been told, we are not actually electing these idiots (a possibility rife with its own set of problems), or we are electing them, in which case civilization will have a very long period of amygdala training ahead of us before the pendulum will have fully swung back.
Fortunately those of us who are already trained will have it easy compared to the people like Joe.
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