Humiliation Ritualized, in Childhood and Politics

I may be wrong, but I don’t think I’m alone in having witnessed or experienced episodes of gratuitous cruelty between “friends” during my adolescence. Luckily, I was seldom the butt of such things. But there was a brief moment between the ages 13 and 14 when I, an Irish late-sprouter, was in a vulnerable position in relation to some of my earlier growing Italian buds. 

And one day, when I told one of these friends, as I often did, that he was being a dick, he decided to make me pay. And when we were alone in someone’s garage between episodes of Ding-Dong ditch, he, with this 5”8” mature body pinned all 4’11” inches of my still childish frame to the ground and dangled spit from his mouth and taunted me by saying “Wanna see how it tastes?” 

The message he was sending was clear. He had physical dominion over me at the moment and that I should tailor my behavior accordingly.

One of the many acts of self-delusion that people engage in is to believe that the attitudes and behaviors which caused them and others pain in childhood largely disappear as we mature, that for example, no one would ever try anything at all similar to what my faster-growing friend tried on me on that hazy summer day nearly fifty years ago. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed my experience in academia and many other realms of life has shown me that the desire to humiliate others and thus putatively raise one’s cache of social capital—an impulse I can honestly say I’ve never quite understood—is a cardinal trait of many human beings, most of whom are desperately and futilely trying to use these public demonstrations of would-be dominance to very fill large affective holes within their spiritually empty selves. 

It is said that all of the same elements and tendencies of human behavior have been present in each particular culture in each moment of history. And I believe this is true. If indeed this is so, it begs an important question. Why do certain cultures produce massacres at the same time others are planting and smelling flowers? 

There are, of course, many reasons. But if I had to point to one, it would be the prevailing approach to the nature and reality of power among those that find themselves in positions of influence within the society. 

Do those possessing it mostly see their power as a gift, or as a confirmation of their having achieved a special, exalted status in relation to the great mass of other beings? 

If they see it as a gift, it will be exercised with generosity, patience and an emphasis on husbandry; that is, on making sure that they seek to leave their children a better world than the one they inherited. 

If, on the other hand, they see it as a completely just and commensurate recompense for their efforts and talents, they will tend to lord it over others will few compunctions about the damage that doing so might wreak upon them, or on the long-term survival prospects of their particular collective. 

On some level those in the second category know it is pretty much all a gift, that their good fortune really could not possibly all be about their superior way of thinking about and acting in the world. 

But because they have, owing to their lack of ego strength, bought into a mythology that says otherwise, and around which they have organized their life and their concepts of the inherent—lower—value of other human beings, they have, like drug addicts, a compulsive need to prop themselves up psychologically through large and small attempts to humiliate others. 

Indeed, the further one goes up the chain of power, the more sweeping and sadistic are these acts of ritual humiliation. 

During the past few weeks, we have seen two of the most important architects of the 3-year assault upon our lives, culture and dignity engage in such acts of sadism, though many, it seems, failed to perceive it in this key. 

First came Bill Gates who, in a gathering of acolytes in Australia, announced in so many words (minute 54) that the vaccines he had used his billions to force into the bodies of as many people as possible around the world were essentially useless for the purposes for which they were deployed. 

Here is what he said: 

“We also need to fix the three problems of [COVID-19] vaccines. The current vaccines are not infection-blocking. They’re not broad, so when new variants come up you lose protection, and they have very short duration, particularly in the people who matter, which are old people.” 

This admission was followed by an academic paper co-authored by Anthony Fauci which basically restates something that was widely known way back in 2020 and reported by those academics and scientists who refused to go along with the media-induced Covid hysteria and were cancelled by Fauci and his many censors for their troubles: that respiratory viruses are seldom amenable to control or treatment by vaccines owing to their extremely fast replication, and that this is why the Covid vaccines would fail like all those vaccines against respiratory illnesses failed before them. 

Do you think either Fauci or Gates is unaware of their previous assertions about the vaccines’ capabilities during the Covid hysteria? Or that millions, if not billions were effectively forced to take them under completely false premises? I don’t for a minute. 

So what’s going on? 

It’s simple. They have entered into the pure Godfather territory of ritual humiliation. 

Fredo: Thanks for meal, Godfather. 

Godfather: I’m glad you liked it. I had the cook come up with something special for you. Had him put a little cow sh—t in the sauce. How’d it taste?” 

Like all psychopaths who have eschewed the essential task of spiritual growth and are thus deprived of any empathy, Gates and Fauci are, like the Godfather, only interested in seeing how you’ll respond, in order to know how far they can go in forcing their will upon you the next time. 

Knowing now what was in the “sauce,” will you continue to tell the Godfather and everyone else it was delicious? Or at least not culinarily objectionable? 

Or will you reassert your dignity and do everything in your power until the end of your days to keep him, anyone like him, and anyone beholden to him, as far away from the kitchen as is possible?