Brain scrambling as fluent bullshit tactic and the new muscularity

coping skills in a flaccid Anthropocene

How about I do one of those posts where I plant a bunch of news items, worthwhile listens and pop culture flotsam in one spot as something of a roundup of where the world is at?

Sometimes these posts work to a theme. Today’s one does. The theme could be described loosely: “All The Ways The World Now Subjects You to Bad Faith Fluent Bullshit..and how to survive it (or at least feel less crazy in it)”.

PS I explain the phenomenon of “fluent bullshit” here:

Bullshit versus lying

And this chapter from The Collapse Book also covers it off:

Chaos is a tactic

Beware the “brain scrambler”

I saw this clip, below, a few days back. I’m not sure if it was a viral thing…I mean, we are being herded around the internet now with such sophistication, it’s impossible to grasp what is just an algorithmic mirror to one’s own private neuroses and what is legit “a thing”. It would appear on the former reading that I’m currently struggling with one or more emotionally immature people (or simply a world run by emotionally immature people), and so this clip found me.

In the clip, clinical psychologist Dr. Lindsay Gibson explains a tedious technique that I observe a lot of avoidants, toddlers, world leaders and, I’ll be frank here, a lot of men, revert to when presented with what they perceive as a challenging emotional issue that implicates them. Rather than facing said issue (maturely) with you, they’ll start bleating about some random “pet narrative over here that exonerates them and blames you for everything”. Which leaves you, the aggrieved, defending the random pet accusation, instead of having your issue addressed, and reacting to the brain-scrambling experience, probably with frustration and ire. Which then, of course, sees you criticised for your reaction (gas-lit).

You know it well?

Tragically, in a cortisol-spiking way, I do.

I’m a sucker for the brain scrambler trap and rarely know how to handle it. If you go listen to the episode, as I did, Dr. Lindsay Gibson gives a bunch of techniques for handling a brain scrambler, the most helpful being to learn to recognise when emotional hijacking is happening (in the cortisol-fuelled moment) and to use it as a cue to walk away for a second and “remind yourself to stay grounded in your own experience”.

I’m not sure who needs to hear this right now, but learning to stay grounded in your own honourable, honest, human experience - and protecting your inner calm - as a first point of order, I think, is the most powerful skill to hone in a world run by tangerine toddlers and fluent bullshitters.

If only all journalists could hold brain scramblers to account like this….

British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan left MSM 18 months ago and started up

Zeteo

an online news site that goes hard on the issues of the moment, particularly the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.

In this video below, he interrogates former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon on his bullshit denial of the famine in Gaza.

I plant it here because it shows another technique for dealing with a brain scrambler. It entails not letting them veer to their pet topic and not letting them get away with lies.

Watching this video, but also the work of other artful brain de-scramblers out there (I’m also following

Owen Jones

and Ana Kasparian from The Young Turks to this end), makes me acutely aware of the exhausting, relentless task ahead for those of us who feel a duty to not let this shitshow slip away from us. And the need for supporting really, really tenacious, artful journalism.

A fix from Iceland where they’re blowing up a corner of the patriarchy

This is all kinds of genius. In Iceland, there are kindergartens and primary schools where, for half the day, the boys engage in caring activities (like massage or babysitting with dolls) and girls take part in bold, confident tasks, often outdoors (chucking things, running barefoot in snow). About 10 per cent of Icelandic kids attend these schools where the supremely cool goal is to get kids challenging societal expectations before they set in.

Meanwhile, while we are not looking, fascism is being hypernormalised

This is an actual post from the President of the United States, posted on Monday. I presume the guy is referring to fascism?

Do we now go low when they go low?

Relatedly, I’m witnessing liberals around the world wring limbs over whether they should be meeting aggressive fascism and brain scrambling with aggressive…something-or-other. As a survival tactic. This is the tact Governor Gavin Newsom is taking with his brilliant shit-posting of Trump on social media the past few weeks. Do check it out.

In this Pivot podcast episode, he and Kara Swisher discuss his tactic and the need for the Left to get “muscular”. I’m hearing this word - muscular - a lot now.

What do you think? Should we be abandoning the higher moral ground and decades of work to lift public behaviour out of the gutter? Or do the times call for what might be described as a regressive masculine approach (to meet the regressive masculinity going on)? I honestly don’t know. I’m reflecting hard on it.

I did see a video online yesterday by a Black man in the US pointing out that what Newsom is doing could only be done by a white guy (and I’d add, an aggressively good-looking, fit white guy). No POC or woman could get away with it. The guy in the video makes a really good point - what Gov Newsom is doing demonstrates how all white men should be using their privilege.

Over and out…chime in with your thoughts…

Sarah x