captaincliff

With apologies to Game of Thrones addicts (I personally don’t over-imbibe), success in politics has historically relied upon barbarian despotic leader dark triad like attributes such as bribery, intimidation, assassination, corruption, and big time power-wielding often reflected in ones ability to use special access, back room influence, connections, and leverage among others who hold substantial power and authority.  LBJ is a good example of an “old school” politician…and that might even include the assassination part.  My sons tells me one of their favorite TV series Game of Thrones (GOT) similarly gets “down and dirty” as far as backstabbing, collusion, betrayal and the proverbial “heads will roll” approach to becoming the ultimate “top dog”.

For many reasons this formula has changed somewhat over time to one that depends more on the use of ones personal charisma, likability, and ability to connect (ie.,reciprocal projection) with the largest base of voters possible. This would now also include voters with “grassroots” as well as old school “power broker” ties. While ambition and extraordinary drive have always been positive factors, winning a presidential election today requires someone with endless ambition, remarkable energy and a mental/emotional manufacturing plant of money, unabashed ego and supreme self confidence operating  24/7. Based on the above, Donald Trump exhibits all the “right stuff” whether you like him or not. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, while well suited to the actual on-the-job requirements for POTUS, stumbled badly by choosing to not see or address certain polling related bad omens early on and refusing to listen to related warnings shared with her by her philandering consort/quasi-hubby/former President Bill Clinton…a pretty sharp and charismatic political player himself. As a result, she was outplayed on the last major presidential campaign battlefield.

I am suggesting that Donald Trump who is often seen as an unusually vain village idiot very well may have various Julius Caesar like attributes that Hillary lacks.  

In Game of Thrones vernacular, you don’t need a Valyrian steel sword if you’ve got Julius Caesar’s  “tiger blood” DNA. Sad but true.

Read below two separate psychobiographical summaries of the unlikely Emperor Julius Caesar and note the specific ways (like it or not) that Donald Trump holds a much closer resemblance than wonky intellectually gifted Hillary Clinton. Even the Republican establishment didn’t see THAT coming.

Analysis #1:     Traits/Qualities Julius Caesar Possessed that Led to His Remarkable Success

Street Smart Intelligent and Self-Confident
First and foremost, Julius Caesar, the Roman general and statesman who upended the Republic and it’s laws, was a smarty pants unto himself, especially in military strategy. His supreme self-confidence, bordering on delusional narcissism was an important reasons why he was so successful. Caesar was a compelling speaker when he needed to be. When he was addressing the Senate or the public, Romans hung on his every word. His critical and decisive mind was especially beneficial during his military career. He specifically planned and strategized to outmaneuver his opponents. Essentially, like Trump he didn’t care about the “poll numbers”.

Julius Caesar: Endlessly Energetic
In addition to being clever, Caesar was incredibly energetic. As the governor of Gaul, Caesar was able to fight wars for seven years while also writing a series of books recounting his many escapades. During his life, Caesar traveled non-stop. Whether he was fighting a war or simply visiting a Roman province, he was constantly on the move and seemed to need little sleep.

Caesar’s energy was also evidenced in his romantic exploits. Over the course of his life, he had three wives and multiple mistresses. Imagine taking over a country, fighting multiple wars, AND juggling several girlfriends at the same time. The man never tired! Sound familiar?

Julius Caesar: Cunning Yet Generous
Immense military intelligence and energy were not the only qualities that made Caesar a formidable leader. He was also exceptionally driven, power-hungry, and cunning. Caesar came from a noble but relatively poor family. What Caesar lacked in funds he made up for with an insatiable thirst for power. Every action was calculated for personal gain; nothing he did was without purpose personally.

For example, when one of his greatest political opponents died, Caesar went out of his way to memorialize the man. Later Caesar acknowledged this was done not because he liked him or thought he was a great guy but because Caesar knew that speaking well about his fallen adversary would help neutralize his opponents posthumous influence.

Aside from being cunning, Caesar was also exceedingly generous, bestowing lavish gifts on the people closest to him. He gave his mistress, Cleopatra, her own palace in Rome. Additionally, he showed unusual mercy to the people he conquered and spared many of the political opponents he defeated. Sound somewhat familiar?

Analysis#2:       Julius Caesar: Personality Type Analysis
Caesar.jpg

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman aristocrat, politician, military leader, Dictator, and author, active in the last decades of the Roman Republic, in the first century BC. His impact on western history is enormous: he was chiefly responsible for incorporating Gaul (i.e. modern France) into the Mediterranean world i.e. the Roman Empire, as well as indirectly for the same with regards to Britain. The modern calendar, based on a year of 365 days with a leap year every 4 years, and 12 months, is essentially the same one as introduced under his instructions. The month ‘July’ was named so in his honour, after his clan name ‘Julius’, immediately after his death. His family name, ‘Caesar’, eventually became a synonym for ’emperor’, surviving into the 20th century as ‘Kaiser’ and ‘Tsar’. He is also generally regarded as one of history’s greatest military leaders, his battles serving as case studies to this day.

Although by ancestry belonging to the high nobility – Caesar’s family was (relatively) impoverished by the time he was born in 100 BC. In the ultra-competitive, expensive, high-stakes world of Roman politics of his time, that meant that Caesar, not withstanding his titled family background had to adopt unconventional means of advancing his political career from an early age.

Especially considering his circumstances and powerful opponents, Caesar’s political career was extraordinarily successful, with him advancing faster, and to much greater heights than any of his contemporaries, even those far wealthier and better connected.

Simplistically put, Caesar’s whole career progressed on the basis of all-or-nothing extreme risk-taking. In electoral politics, that meant spending money far beyond his means, getting into debt to the point of criminal liability – but always rescued later by electoral or military success. Failure at any point could have meant bankruptcy, disgrace, and exile: famously, at the age of 37, he bet it all in winning the election to Pontifex Maximus, telling his mother that day that either he’d win or have to go into exile. Once again sound a little familiar?

Likewise, as a military leader, his style was to get himself and his men into very difficult situations (numerical inferiority, poor logistics, unknown and hostile territory, etc.) and then use tactical brilliance and in-the-moment improvisation to find a way out – always with supreme self-confidence in his own abilities and, as he himself put it, “Caesar’s luck”. In so doing, he re-invented ancient warfare as he went along, even in situations where he had no previous experience, as in siege warfare (Alesia) or urban warfare (Alexandria) or in more conventional battles (Pharsalus). This meant that more conventional or cautious commanders such as Pompey were outmaneuvered by Caesar even when they held in numerical and tactical advantage.

Caesar obviously trusted his in-the-moment tactical improvisation and often neglected the accumulation of available military intelligence, as in his first expedition to Britain. That almost led to disaster as he simply did not realize that the Channel tides were far more intense than those of the Mediterranean. Trump much?

Caesar’s never-ending, sometimes even reckless pursuit of political power, as well as his natural ability to lead (along with his confidence in his own assessment of the likely outcome on the battlefield) demonstrate a “fearlessness” that few possess. This is also confirmed by his apparent lack of physical fear even in very disadvantageous situations, such as when he was kept prisoner by pirates (he mocked them and said he’d crucify them as soon as he was set free…which he did). Talk about a penchant for “get back”. “Revenge is sweet” could have been his middle name.

As a leader of men, Caesar was notorious for not caring about imposing discipline on his men in the way of protocol and accepted rules: what he cared about was their loyalty, obedience, competence. and trust (i.e. willingness to follow him into seemingly hopeless situations). His leadership was based not mainly on the fact that he was their hierarchical and social superior, but that he was “trusted” to be better than they were at being the principal leader and therefore deserved to be followed. Alexander the Great may be his only historical peer in this respect.

Caesar’s extreme confidence can be seen in his own memoirs of his conquest of Gaul, when he repeatedly boasts of his personal relationship to the Gallic chieftains (and complains of those who couldn’t be trusted). It can also be seen in his approach to political enemies: Caesar was so confident in his ability to gain the trust of those he had defeated that he preferred to pardon them and receive them as friends once they were vanquished.   Now it’s getting almost scary as far as Trump comparisons are concerned!

Caesar’s pursuit of personal political power and wealth, besides based on extreme risk-taking, was also based on ignoring accepted societal conventions and rules, even laws. His approach was to achieve his goals, regardless of their difficulty and worry less about such “details”. The problem with that is that his continuous illegalities led to him being liable to prosecution by his many political enemies. Like his near-disastrous self-imposed military traps, that was a longer-term personal trap that he allowed himself into (arguably without realizing it) leaving him no way out except through his ultimate extreme gambles i.e. illegally invading Italy proper with his legions, characteristically saying “let the dice fly” as he did so.

Having achieved (illegal) control of Rome and Italy through sheer military power, Caesar was concerned about legalizing it but he did so in a seemingly ad hoc manner, becoming at first Dictator for just a few days, then consul, then later Dictator again in different ways – as with military campaigns, all done in a ‘making it up as you go along manner’ and apparently having less concern with legal precedent or consistency. By now the Trump comparisons probably make you think I’m making this shit up. Im not. Look it up.

Although chiefly concerned with completing his victory over his political enemies, during his period as Dictator, Caesar engaged into a series of isolated reforms: a settlement of the debts of over-indebted individuals, urban reform in Rome, reform of the then-chaotic calendar (introducing the modern calendar), reform of the supply of subsidized grain, etc. All of those were implemented with enormous energy in a very brief period of time, but rather as a series of isolated measures aimed at fixing specific economic problems pragmatically, not as part of any ‘restructuring’ of Roman society or constitution. Indeed, despite his own position having become essentially extra-constitutional, Caesar showed no apparent interest (or idea) of how to adjust the Roman constitution accordingly, and at the time of his death his plan was to start another huge military campaign, against Parthia (Persia). This shows where his true priorities lay.

Conclusion: Julius Caesar was a man most focused and able, and an ultra confident individual, particularly in matters of career climbing, military exploits and eventual conquest (winning). Almost always he succeeded in an unorthodox way where extreme (and sometimes almost disastrous) risk-taking was the pattern, and with little sign of longterm strategy or overarching vision. In fact, in most matters he appeared to lack any visible ‘ideology’ (except that of his own rising to the top).

Finally, besides being supremely confident in his ability to get the respect and trust of  key individuals, by all accounts he was the “perfect politician” in terms of knowing the value of self propaganda and in exercising enormous personal charm, especially when he wanted to and/or needed to.   

There you have it. Game of Thrones much? Only in the real world there are no dragons, elves or clever dwarves like Tyrion Lannister to bring much needed balance, fairness, negotiation, humor or even a humane perspective to a vicious dog eat dog world.

Notwithstanding my love of the run on sentence, My Facebook friend Wendy has challenged me to write a 300 word max essay utilizing the following words she randomly pulled out of her ass: distended, lugubrious, flaccid, notwithstanding.

The Dump

I wade into the fray with clearly more disciplined and professional writers. My stock and trade is the perverse, what others consider the dark side of the naked city. I write about dicks, pricks and assholes. Sure Donald Trump is all three but besides his swollen bobblehead I prefer to author twisted but anatomically correct diatribes about penises, sexual behavior and bowel movements. I do this for my own exhibitionistic pleasure, for lack of regularity within my own sluggish and distended intestines and because even tho it’s Stargate 2016, the average Millennial in skinny jeans is an idiot savant who can’t locate Afghanistan or his own anus without a GPS, a specialized phone app or a text to his helicopter mommy. God forbid they might actually get their hands wet by reaching into the toilet bowl of life and learning how the world really works. I’m sure the White House is metaphorically no different. The real shit goes on in the musty smelling, dark cobwebby basement where CIA operatives, Morlocks, and Cheney clones with wrenches scuttle around fixing furnaces, turning dials and planning the takeover of foreign governments.

Sometimes I fear we’re raising a new race of flaccid spawn with beehive minds. They are the Eloi in the original Time Machine movie. Sure they have books but they’ve never read any. Intelligent ideas or independent thought that includes debate and challenging discourse is as rare today as a single succinct sentence in my legendary pirate blog. Call me cantankerous. Call me lugubrious. I call it as I see it which apparently is a lot better than most umpires in professional baseball or football. Did you see that missed pass interference call in the Atlanta Falcons game recently?  Now imagine Trump and his minions at the wheel of our nation. I’d call that demolition derby-type game “Narcissism Nascar” and that’s one sport I’d rather sit out and patiently wait for a cathartic dump of biblical proportions.

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”
― Isaac Asimov

“If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don’t tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don’t understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

I’ve written a few previous blogs about “human error” and how when things go wrong, i.e., ships collide, planes crash, monkey viruses go rogue, or people freeze to death on Mt Everest,  it’s usually due to many different reasons with human factors often occupying the primary explanation. It’s difficult to overcome ones cognitive biases, unbridled ego and limited perspective. Most of the time we proceed in life believing that we are “right”. However, personal blinders when combined with a refusal to solicit adequate objective feedback/input from others leave us vulnerable to making false assumptions, inaccurate conclusions and expensive mistakes. Luckily, not every error we make is of the size, cost or consequence of a Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. For that matter, the majority of our human “boo-boos” pale in comparison to monster mistakes like the sinking of the Titanic or George Bush’s decision to get us embroiled in a trillion dollar war on the basis of non-existent WMDs. In light of this topic and introduction I’d like to illustrate the concept of “human folly” by sharing a very small but pertinent example I just read about in the Atlanta Jewish Times.

I heard that both restaurant locations (Sandy Springs and Decatur) of Seven Hens the Chicken schnitzel eatery are closing. Honestly, I was surprised they lasted more than a year given that I counted only three paying customers there in over 2 years and their festive theme was  “Come Enjoy Chicken Schnitzel around the World”, not exactly a culinary concept I’d pay an ad agency a lot of dough to think up. However, given Seven Hens longevity  I began to wonder if the place was really a front for the Ukrainian Mafia who were selling kilos of cocaine and young girls out the back door. I developed this theory partially because the one guy I did see there more than once (besides the cook) was a tall gentleman who looked a lot like Liam Neeson in the “Taken” movie series. However, I was wrong. Apparently so was the Israeli owner/founder Michael Gurevich who according to the AJT article “lacked restaurant experience” but fervently hoped that the South would “embrace schnitzel and enable me to franchise it”. Riiiight…. He would have been better off franchising sweet tea and Nascar decals. Let this be a lesson to all of us. Even Israelis, the supreme innovators and entrepreneurs on planet Earth are capable of being misled by their own cultural blinders and flawed logic. The good news is that the Decatur location will be replaced by a Korean street food emporium and the Sandy Springs space has already become the Poke Bar, a Los Angeles “casual seafood/raw fish concept”. I look forward to trying them both out before they close as well. As for Donald Trump, I feel semi-confident his “goose is cooked” and like his licensed brand of “commercial quality” steaks which no longer exist, he should probably pack up his presidential snake oil products and declare bankruptcy , which is the same as saying he “lost” but is far easier on his forked tongue.

Post Election Addendum:  It seems I was wrong about that one too. My bad….

I just got back from a mini-high school reunion in Highland Park, Illinois. It’s been 45 long years since I left that cushy upscale suburban enclave near Chicago to seek fame and fortune elsewhere. I returned at age 62 (soon to be 63) not as the prodigal son, but as a wiser and definitely more arthritic version of my former self. My long hair is now long gone. The hippie-esque bell bottom jeans and puka shell necklace have been replaced by clothes meant to produce a subtle “slimming” effect”. My wise-ass attitude, rapid fire sarcastic speech and sometime condescending voice tone have given way to a sincere interest in hearing about my high school peers and learning about their lives. It seems we’ve all been on some epic journey and like Odysseus have returned home bruised and battle weary but with quite a Homeric tale to tell. The fearlessness and You Only Live Once (YOLO) type thinking endemic to youth is now tempered by a host of health concerns common to aging Baby Boomers including free floating anxiety, i.e.,”Gee, I wonder if I remembered to feed the dog before I left?” or “hey is that lump under my armpit?” and even worse by the realization that some high school classmates have passed away or are currently suffering from illnesses which they may or may not recover from.

How can this be? I thought we were immortal like the Greek Gods we studied in freshman English class. I thought life was going to be a relatively predictable affair, a linear trajectory like climbing a ladder or taking a long hike on a reasonably well marked trail in one of the many forest preserves in or around Highland Park. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy but I figured I was well prepared not just by my excellent education at Highland Park High School but also by my mastery of “life-like” board games including Risk, Monopoly, Stratego and Life. How much tougher could the adult world be then all those plastic cone obstacles, confusing road signs and simulator tests we’d already faced and overcome in Coach Wisniewski’s Drivers Ed class? Maybe I should have noticed other more subtle “signs” like how in the board game “Life” with it’s twists and turns and plastic cars full of acquired family members certain peg people would fail to stay in their designated peg holes and repeatedly fell out onto the increasingly cluttered game board. Were those Parker Brother type premonitions about some future divorce, death in the family or need to send an unruly kid to residential care or rehab someday?

Regardless of the many games I played, at age eighteen I still believed life was going to be a predictable algorithm not too different from any of the card or board games we played back in the day: deal the cards, play the odds, buy up property, stocks, utilities, and other important material “stuff “, or just assemble a vast army and proceed to “take over the world” (win). Now that I say that aloud it sounds silly but also suggests that certain individuals (like Donald Trump) are likely still stuck in their immature teenage head… seeking to “win” at all cost while munching on pretzel sticks, sugar cookies, Hostess Twinkies and playing some megalomaniacal Parkers Brothers game in a friend’s dark dreary wood paneled basement. Unfortunately, at age 62, I’ve also learned it’s not quite that easy to “win” like that in the real world and many of us don’t have the time, energy, bank account or endless reservoir of narcissistic supply necessary to lose a billion dollars like Trump in one year…or even eighteen billion. Furthermore, to then consider that experience as somehow “brilliant” is a delusional despot bridge too far for most of us. In the end, however, accepting the various ups and downs of a meaningful life still rather early in the fourth and final quarter of the “game” (of real life) is quite acceptable to me. Frankly, at this point I’d rather be hanging out with my close high school friends talking, eating Chinese takeout or deli food, and swapping funny stories than be a Pol Pot or POTUS. That said, maybe I did learn a few good tricks and pertinent life strategies playing ‘Risk” at Billy Terman’s house with Mark Scher, Joel Pathman,Todd Logan, Mike Lembeck, and Harlan Bass while Bill’s highly oversexed schnauzer Skipper tried to hump our legs ….but that’s a whole ‘nother story or at least another CaptCliff blog.

Submitted for publication to:  The Good Men Project  9/29/16

Introduction: Lately there’s been a lot of talk about toxic masculinity and male privilege. Old school narcissists with tiny hands like Donald Trump are as bad an example of mature masculinity as Anthony Weiner who cant seem to keep his Gen X pecker in his pants and  fingers away from his cell phone camera. Both of them protesteth too much as far as promoting themselves as “manly men” who carry a “big stick”. Me thinketh they both suffer from male-patterned insecurity cultivated in an unusually competitive capitalistic society and cutthroat sociopolitical state.

Historically, patriarchal cultures and patrilinear societies like the Roman Empire tend to be insecure about their political fate and sexual potency. Historians remark how obsessed ancient Rome was with “the penis motif” (otherwise known as the “dick”) and wonder why such an advanced civilization felt the need to install phallic symbols everywhere for protection, good fortune, and/or as conveniently shaped street signs. In contrast, my approach to men and masculinity applies broader and less “genital-centered” principles to address sex-related problems. Focusing too much on the penis either in therapy or in life can only lead to a bad case of performance anxiety, genital warts or penis envy a la Siggy Freud. As an older clinical psychologist and sex therapist of the male persuasion (62 years old) I hope to have gained (in addition to the proverbial extra 20 lbs “spare tire”) a few distinct advantages as a result of my longitudinal life experience. This includes but is not limited to such things as “hindsight” and a “big picture” perspective. It also means I’ve gotten my cocky male narcissistic butt kicked around enough times to know what humble pie tastes like. It’s rather tart in fact. Trying too hard to be the biggest and best at everything including sex can end up having the exact opposite effect on ones ego and externalized sex organ. In other words, it’s not just the grass that appears greener and possibly grander when you look too close at what others possess in the locker room or the Imperial gladiator ring. Personally, I say “thank the Gods” that there are other human attributes to focus on as we age besides ones penis length to offset the enlarged prostate, progressive baldness, hearing loss, and my total invisibility to any woman under the age of 50 at Starbucks.

Developing the psychological maturity necessary to experience and express emotional vulnerability, profound love, loyalty, compassion, receptivity, and empathy are not booby prizes in the sexual revolution or so-called battle between the now somewhat indeterminate sexes. Such qualities help to define our humanity and may represent the golden keys to freedom from an insidious form of male genital-centered slavery and oppression, something that has hindered both men and women alike for thousands of years. Hey, I am Spartacus!!

https://youtu.be/jJ55yasuodA