Quote of the day—Clayton Cramer

Watching Aborn’s attempt to define fear of gun bans as paranoid while arguing in favor of gun bans makes me disinclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the leaders.

Clayton Cramer
December 17, 2013
Not Trying to Ban Guns – Except When We Are
[H/T to Say Uncle.

The problem is they have mental problems. They literally cannot see they contributed to the situation.

I have a lot of experience dealing with this sort of “thinking”. Stacy, my counselor for dealing with this sort of thing, explained this was one of the symptoms of personality disorders. The essence of the explanation applicable in this context is as follows:

If you tell a normal person their actions contributed to a particular situation or result and suggest changing their behavior might result in a better outcome they will respond with something like, “I think I understand, I will try your suggestion next time.” The person with a personality disorder cannot see they contributed to the situation in any way. They never did anything wrong and will refuse to change their behavior.

There is no point in trying to have a logical discussion with these type of people. Your only productive recourse is to “set boundaries”, tell them you will not tolerate their irrational behavior, and then enforce those boundaries. As difficult as this is in interpersonal relationships it’s even more difficult when these people have political power, the power of government force, over you. This is why we have the 2nd Amendment. It is the last ditch resort to enforcing boundaries.

Further complicating the issue is that when you enforce those boundaries “the crazy” may get far, far worse. They can and will do extremely destructive things. In interpersonal relationships this is one the paths by which people get murdered by their abusive spouse.

Gun owners have a lot in common with abused spouses and should be aware things can very rapidly get much much worse.—Joe]

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12 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Clayton Cramer

  1. I have family members with legitimate mental problems, and I can confirm that this is how they think. It’s frustrating as hell to deal with people like that, because to everyone else the solution to the issue at hand is ridiculously obvious, but they just can’t see it. Sometimes it’s not even a matter of denial, they just can’t comprehend it.

  2. Well, yes. A common issue with leftists is cognitive dissonance.

    Here’s a mental exercise. Pour yourself a glass of water. Now, dip your finger in it. Yes, it’s wet. Bear with me. Now, imagine that you believe — literally, on a gut instinct level — that there is no water, and your finger cannot be wet. Yet, your finger is dripping droplets onto the table, leaves a damp spot on towels, etc.

    We’re talking ‘there are four lights’ levels of dissonance here. They cannot BE wrong. They cannot conceive of a world where they are in error (and this calls back to a comment I’ve made before, about how learning to be wrong is a step in maturity).

    From there, we get to ‘because I am RIGHT, you MUST be wrong. WHY do you not accept this?’ But because we refuse to accept it, we must not just be wrong, but evil — because clearly if we weren’t evil we would accept their arguments! After all, they’re right!

    And then things get ugly.

    • Wow! This is exactly how I feel about those on the right, particularly those who have “faith.” They are so easily led by greedy con men.

      • And here we have Exhibit A.

        ‘exactly how I feel’ — therein lies a problem right there. Are you actually building your views on observed data, or on your own preconceived notions of ‘right’?

        ‘particularly those who have “faith”‘ — I’d be hesitant to play that card if I were you. Would you like to have a discussion on the faith of socialists, communists, and Marxists that if we only put the ‘right people’ in charge that statism will work? Shall I toss in just for fun the wacky world of Lysenkoism and the infamous ‘winter wheat’ the Soviets had faith would feed their people?

        ‘They are so easily led by greedy con men’ — Ahahaha, I really think you shot your mouth off without thinking here, ubu. Wasn’t there just a bit of a stink about a woman who wrote a long involved essay on her life in poverty, only for it to be a massive fraud? Has she returned any of the donations yet?

        There will always be those wanting to take advantage of others. It’s just some of us do not give them the excuse of ‘for the common good’.

        • And you are providing Exhibit B?

          “From there, we get to ‘because I am RIGHT, you MUST be wrong. WHY do you not accept this?”

          Give me proof that “cognitive dissonance” is “A common issue with leftists” but not with anyone else.

          • How about I give you a pat on the head? I never said it was -limited- to leftists… but from observed data it would appear they suffer from it almost unilaterally (or perhaps they enjoy it).

            Your problem, ubu, is when someone presents such physical evidence, you insist your feelings hold just as much weight. This is not the case.

  3. I get the impression that you are talking about narcissistic personality disorder, there are plenty of others whose sufferers don’t react that way.

      • I’m not familiar with their history, so I can’t comment on that.

        I’ve gotten to know quite a few borderlines in my time and I wouldn’t say even the majority of them were as described in the quote. Narcissists on the other hand were almost always all like that

        Still my main point is that suffering from a personality disorder (and I do mean suffering) is not as easily generalizable as we would like. The complexity, even within a particular diagnosis, is quite staggering.

        What I think (just my opinion) is that what we deal with are people who wrapped up their identity so tightly around a particular belief that reality cannot shake them loose. It’s definitely a mental problem but I don’t think it is generalizable into “personality disorder” as defined by the field of psychology.

    • Stacy, my counselor on such matters, said all personality disorders exhibit this same behavior. It doesn’t happen in all situations though. The person with the disorder may be highly functional in some environments then be dysfunctional in others. The one other characteristic common to all personality disorders is that the symptoms are worse the closer the relationship. Hence spouses and children of the person with the disorder may see a completely different side of the person than casual friends or work associates.

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