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Hopalong Hirschowitz

On 3/20/2017 9:55 PM, wrote:
On Monday, March 20, 2017 at 10:15:35 PM UTC-4, Hopalong Hirschowitz wrote:
On 3/20/2017 6:58 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 20 Mar 2017 12:44:03 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Monday, March 20, 2017 at 1:59:26 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sunday, March 19, 2017 at 8:41:39 PM UTC-4, Hopalong Hirschowitz wrote:

Wieber is a chronic and reflexive liar. Dan Caster charitably tried to
call them "tall tails" [sic] some time back, but he and all Wieber's
other sunshine allies know he's a liar.

I did call them tall tails. I can not believe you think they are not. I think he post them just to get a rise out of gullible fools.

Dan

No he doesn't. Most of them begin as a transparent attempt to put someone else down, or to puff up his credentials as an "expert." Then he elaborates them to double-down on the authenticity of his story.

It's the behavior of a chronic liar, not of a spinner of tales.

I have the feeling that it is a bit more than chronic. I suspect that
it is more a matter of a denial of reality, that he is a lifelong
failure, primarily due to his own lack of effort.

I think gummer has made a fair amount of effort in the past, but it was
all badly conceived, misdirected and badly executed. That was the past.
Now, I truly believe he's paralyzed. He truly has no idea what to do,
and he can't even make any progress in trying to figure out what to do.
He's completely stuck, and has no idea how to get unstuck.

I know a fellow whose wife died last summer, leaving two school-age kids
(12 or 13, and 16). He seems better, but he describes life, still, as
"just putting one foot in front of the other." I truly believe gummer
doesn't even know how to do that.

One might even use the term "psychotic" liar.

I guess it all comes down to whether or not gummer believes his own
bull****. He claims it's all true. His very close friend and staunch
supporter, Dan Caster, insists the stories are all "tall tails [sic]",
and seems to suggest that gummer knows they are. It's hard to tell from
text posts in Usenet if gummer believes the bull**** or not. If he
does, then there definitely is some kind of mental defect in play. I
don't know if it's psychosis, but it's something pretty deep in him.

We're getting some social and political lessons right now about "alternative facts" and alternative realities, and the import of the big, particular case we're living through at the moment tends to sharpen one's attention to how this all works. Big consequences tend to focus the mind.

"Big consequences tend to focus the mind." Well, that doesn't seem to
be true with gummer. gummer's mind seems no better focused on improving
his lot in life than it did when he first started begging the other
"smart" right-wingnuts in this group for help a couple or three years
ago. He has made no progress - he is living every bit as much on the
extreme edge of despair as he was then.

One thing that we're learning, I think, is that a pattern of consistent lying, which normal people think of as being either pathological or deeply cynical, may actually function in a way that isn't clearly psychosis or simple cynicism. It may be a learned way of controlling one's environment and life; an alternate narrative that both protects oneself against painful confrontations with reality, and that provides a more acceptable story line to explain one's own failings and problems.

True to all of that.

Alternatively, in the hands of someone really talented,

chortle Uh...okay.

it can be the basis of a confidence act that brings money and power.

Applying such an alternative reality to one's own life can lead to social withdrawal

I've written here several times that I've driven by gummer's squat. I
also drove around Taft. You really need to believe me when I say that
someone at the very center of civic life in Taft CA - which gummer
plainly is not - is the epitome of social withdrawal. The entire
blighted town is the very picture of social withdrawal. It's a town
full of tweekers, like gummer's pup.

The median family income is about $34,000. The median family income in
the U.S. is about $52,000, and despite Taft's squalor, it's still in
California, which means $34K won't go as far as it would elsewhere.

-- I know such a person, and he isn't nuts -- or to a belligerent form
of self-assertion that's carried out with the aid of bluster and
insults. The latter pattern fits one side of Gunner's mixed behavior. If
he had the talent to pull off a real con, in addition to the bluster and
insults, maybe he'd have a tower named after him.