Over the past year…. some things have changed. I’ve watched these people insult, break apart, reform and still the basis for their ‘alliance’ is as rotten as ever. The good thing is this: some of these people realized that their behavior online was seriously being criticized by more sane members of the community, and some of them have left. However, these things come about because some people are just…well, they are insecure and followers of anything that seems ‘powerful’. What they don’t realize is the power they are seeing in many of these individuals is seated deeply in a personality disorder: usually a pathology or extreme narcissism For a while, this looks powerful and weak people want to exist in the shadow of power. Perhaps this is just the worse part of human nature? But there is hope, because more and more people here in these communities have expressed their resolve to stay away from these sorts. In no way are they leaders. They are actually parasites. They are a major part of a bigger problem. Atlanta has enough issues without this fermenting and spreading around.
Perhaps the worse offenders will move to the scrub pines of Florida.
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Nihilism’s Corpse
Nihilism is a deep-sea fish.
When it, in the form of language surfaces in the sea, it is already lifeless. I detest its corpse like a dirty rag. I hate it.
—Nagase Kiyoko
(Nagase Kiyoko was a wonderful Japanese woman poet who died in 1995. She is considered the “Grandmother” of women poets in Japan. Many of us, not especially poets, but women who have regard for a woman who writes with such passion and sensibility, love her and her work. I stumbled upon this poem in the dark and it exactly fit this article. Thank you, Grandmother Nagase)
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I know calling any group today ‘Nazi’ is startling. What happened here is a bit of the behavior of the development of the Brown Shirts in Germany in 1920’s and 30’s, of course on a much more provincial scale. These were the ‘lumpen’, in German, the broken, the bottom feeders of German society. I use the term broken thinking of people who are not facing their own demons, but inflicting them on the population in general. Certainly an area like Atlanta has plenty of problems, but when the so-called intellectual class (or so they would seem to themselves) holds on to their own issues without examining them closely, we have ‘broken’ ideology leading. Or better, Nihilism which doesn’t go anywhere.
Recently I joined a local website, something called Capitol View Smart Asses. I joined because I thought perhaps these folk would be active in the community, perhaps they had some energy. We face a lot of issues here; drugs, corruption, etc. The usual for an urban area.
You know the old saying: “We have met the enemy and it is us?”
Things didn’t go well. I had a meeting with a local woman about the corruption of our council representative. That was informative, but when I gave a woman (neighbor) a sum up of our meeting, this woman immediately texted another woman in CVSA (unknown to me) with some interesting fabrications. I didn’t realize that this woman was so mentally unbalanced. I should have. Others have now told me she is extremely bi-polar.
What sort of group called itself “Smart Asses”? A lot of people have asked this. It’s made up of two connecting neighborhoods: the memebers of this site are are middle class, middle aged and white. Mostly. They consider themselves the intellectual elite of the area. But in actually, they are nothing but bullies and worse. The original woman I met with about the council rep. tucked her tail and ran. She said that “the n’hood had broken her.” Apparently not so much because she was there on the website. Some people have the moral integrity of dental floss.
What I experienced was mob mentality. Only two of these ‘girls’ (can’t call them women because they haven’t the mental maturity of women) knew me, and frankly? I broke with them over a year ago. And these two ‘women’ were either drug dealers or heavy drug users. (anyone who breaks with this behavior is gossiped and marginalized by these two and the rest of the Smart Asses. And since this area, these neighborhoods, have a huge drug problem, they are nothing but hypocrites and they are in no way a part of the solution to this problem. That they are white and consider themselves ‘leaders’ here is a serious part of the problem. White privilege raises it’s ugly head again.) The rest? Didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat. Nor I them. But that didn’t stop their pack mentality. Of course there were some ‘leaders’ in this bully brigade, but they were the usual shit stirrers. And those I knew. They hadn’t improved.
It was educational, this wolf pack mentality of bullies. And what was even more interesting was these women had lost their ability immediately to think independently. They couldn’t. They were under the power of two women who had every reason to stir the mud. Perhaps they were being fed lies, but they were too stupid to consider anything except what they wanted to hear.
Like the girls in high school, they exhibited a viciousness. Something you would expect from some teens, but not from educated women. As I said: they lost their ability to think for themselves. Lynch mob mentality. Many consider themselves (and the men in this group) as the ‘leaders’ of the community. This is especially frightening.
Over the last few years I have seen some of these same women fight, insult each other, break up and then reform. Thus it is with people who have their own emotional (and other) issues. And it will continue to happen over and over. They will not change short of a meteor hitting them on the head from outer space. They don’t see what they are or do. This is human behavior of the troublesome kind. Many of us outgrow it. These folk haven’t.
Too late my friends and neighbors told me that this group was “stupid”, “mean”, “pointless”. Yes, it was stupid and mean, but no, it was not pointless. It was in a fundamental sense, they were stroking their own egos, but the point of it was to elevate themselves above everyone else in the community. In a way, it was funny or really sad, the snarliness of the people posting there. Any group that calls themselves Smart Asses has contempt for everyone else. But they don’t amount to a hill of beans in the real world. After only a few days on that website, it was clear that the leading philosophy was Nihilism. And Nihilism only leads over the cliff. That’s if you can get anyone to follow.
It is the philosophy of nothingness.
(And what does naming a group “Smart Ass” really mean? Are they drawing attention to the hope that they are ‘smart’ or are they admitting that they are just ‘asses’?)
Internet trolls. The internet is full of people who are bullies and they make their nests within these online groups. A few readings of CVSA showed clearly that these fools were nothing progressive, were not about anything that remotely relate to the broader community. They ‘wanted’ their own group to feel ‘superior’ to another group. People who had left or refused to join saw what was going on and summed up they didn’t want to be part of this ‘bitchin’ group’. It was going nowhere.
Later I was contacted by a person who read that site. She was a psychologist. She read what happened and wanted to talk. What did I think?
We talked. What could I say? These people were corrupt, egotistical bullies, with their own demons of various kinds. That they were NOT teens was frightening. That some of them were parents was even more so. Strong Narcissistic tendencies or behaviors in that group, both in the men and women, but that is to be expected from anyone calling themselves a ‘smart ass.’
She said she saw a lot of ‘sociopathic behavior’ on this site, and of course where there is this behavior, there are usually sociopaths. I agree. These people are just embarrassing, but more so, they are…collectively as a mob and individually, dangerous. My neighbors checked them out and called them spoiled, little brats. They are bullies who probably will be raising bullies for the future.
Nothing changes until people throw off their hypocrisy and their own corruption. Then? Perhaps things will advance. But this area has hit a brick wall because the personal corruption of people like these Not-So-Smart Asses. They hold this corruption close to their hearts. It is their right. Perhaps this is just human behavior, but certainly is not the best of it. And, this area deserves the corruption these same people were complaining about with the council rep. Corruption stacked upon corruption. What a bright future this area has. No wonder people have dropped out of activities here. It looks hopeless, and it is until something breaks.
(Note: over the past year since I wrote this post, people have expressed their disgust with this group. Those people who have done so have either become friends or were. They knew a lot more about these folk than I did. And it is good to see that they can think independently and avoid these toxic people. Our neighborhoods that are polluted with drugs, crime, corruption certainly don’t need these hypocrites. Perhaps they will move to Florida.)
And about that pack mentality? These groups of bullies?
Brown noses lead to Brown Shirts over time. Hardly a progressive ideology for this area. In fact, self serving and destructive for any area. I think of these people as pre-runners of the Taliban. Weak, malleable people who in no way could be considered leaders of anything.
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Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2014
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