by Tom Laughlin

Lord above. You fail to post the Outrages of the Week for a week or two, and when you do there are so many unbelievable and shocking things done by people or groups in power that week that there’s too many to choose from.
  Always remember there is no such thing as a group – only individuals who make up that group, and it’s always just a handful of individuals at the top who control that group who make these decisions that continue to seriously harm us and our children. From the Congressional decisions on HMOs which effect 160 million Americans, to guns and violence, in one way or another each of the outrages listed in this column, especially this week, effect all of us.
  Someone asked why keep listing this outrageous behavior going on everywhere around us? Why keep the old ones on the site?

Two reasons:

• First, because everything depends upon our becoming conscious of our Shadow, and the Shadow of others, especially those trying to manipulate and deceive us, and the only way to do that is to learn how to see through the Persona bull-spin that we are constantly deluged with as individuals and institutions make decisions and pass laws that seriously harm us, but have their experts spin it in such a way it sounds like they’re good people doing it for our benefit. Everything in your life as an individual and as a member of a society depends upon learning how to see what’s real in your own Persona and Shadow, and then seeing what’s real in those leaders and officials who have the ability to control our lives – and there’s no better place to start than with the politicians.
• Second, another reason to accumulate these rages is because picking up the paper each day and seeing a shocking decision by some individual or group that hurts or angers us disappears from our consciousness very fast. We forget about it by coffee break or lunchtime, and each one by itself doesn’t seem to create any real danger or pose a real threat to our individual lives or our rights and freedoms. But when you add them up, look at them cumulatively, especially by category such as the court decisions, or the bribing of politicians from the White House to the town mayor, then we begin to see that an unconscious infection, corruption and spin doctor deceit has massively invaded our culture, our society, and institutions that were created to protect us. Looking at them as a whole you get a chance to develop a “world view” to see where the collective unconscious in the American psyche is headed, and whether or not it creates a real danger or just something to grouse about.

For example, look at this week’s outrages. See how many of them reveal the same problems of corrupt decision in the courts, in the Congress, in our local officials, and even sports figure role models. See how the Shadow operates in each one of them. Some are minor, but very indicative of the unconscious attitude of the society we live in. Others are so despicable it’s hard to pick which one is the worst outrage.

The TV Show Teaching Men How to
Beat their Wives and Get Away With It
In Waterford, Michigan, teens produced a series of shows dramatizing how to beat your wife – by actually acting it out – and hit her in the face with an open hand which doesn’t leave the mark that can be used against you in court. So who do you think is the sickest? The emotionally disturbed, angry kids who, desperate for attention, think this is cute and makes them the center of attention in their town; the mother of the boy who defends her son making this, saying it’s no big deal, it’s funny; or the people controlling the public access programming defending it under the guise of defending free speech?
  So much idiocy is defended by the argument that it’s protected under the First Amendment and the right to free speech, that it’s very important to establish THE fundamental principle governing the First Amendment, and that is the principle of the Five A’s – Accessibility, Accountability, Absolutely no Abuse of Authority.
  The sole purpose of the First Amendment was to protect against the Abuse of Authority and hold everyone Accessible and Accountable.
  It does not protect, and never was intended by any of the Founding Fathers to protect, lying, deceit, slander, libel, or speech whose purpose was to hurt or destroy, especially falsely. Everyone knows the First Amendment does not allow you go yell “Fire!” in a theater as a teen prank because of the people that could be killed or maimed … though if the Waterford mother’s son did it, there’s no question she would defend it and the harm it caused by saying her son was just “being funny.” It does not allow someone to say on public access, in print or otherwise, that a principle of a school is molesting children when it is not the case. It does not allow conning people and defrauding them out of their money by claiming you have discovered a new gold mine in South Africa for them to invest in, when you have no gold mine. It does not allow one to get on prime time television and commit sexual intercourse naked. And it certainly does not allow teaching one stronger group how to criminally assault a weaker group and get away with it. (Two million women went to bed last night beaten in the United States alone, not to mention the number of children.)
  The interesting part of this case is the public officials, because they simply don’t know the Constitution and the purpose and limitations of the First Amendment, probably thought they were acting in defense of the Constitution simply because in their Persona they saw themselves as defenders of free speech, without being aware that in their Shadow side they haven’t the slightest idea of what the First Amendment really means or how it came into existence. As a result, they were easily manipulated by the lawyers or spokesmen defending this immediately destructive television show.

Union Bribery Prevents State from Prosecuting Brutal Guards
By now everyone has seen on television the brutality of guards in certain prisons, even to the point of forcing inmates to fight to the death which the guards bet on the outcome. If you thought the kind of sadistic torture of inmates portrayed in films though the years such chain gang Cool Hand Luke and Bob Redford’s Brubaker were a thing of the past, think again. This kind of brutality over prisoners is alive and well in California. A bill that would have allowed the Attorney General to police the state’s vast prison system and prosecute brutality was killed after intense lobbying – i.e., read “bribing” – from a single foe: The California Correctional Police Officers Association (CCPOA) … once again showing that politicians no longer act on principle, morality, or what is the right and proper thing to do. They act out of selfish financial interest.
  As one of the California Assemblymen who voted against it, Jim Battin, pulled Attorney General Bill Lockyear aside and said, “Bill, sorry, but I’m whoring for the CCPOA.” There you have it! That’s all politics are on every level in America today … whoring for the special interest group who puts up the most money. Would that all of those politicians whoring for the tobacco industry, the NRA, the insurance companies, would be as honest, wouldn’t it be nice if politicians had to disclose under a lie detector test the real reason they were voting for or against a bill?

An Outrage – a Prediction on What a Good Ol’ Boy’s Appeals Court will do to Take Away the Rights of a Jury
On July 9, 1999, a Los Angeles jury ordered General Motors to pay a record $4.9 billion to two women and four children who were trapped and burned, one having her face horribly scarred for life, as a result of General Motors deliberately choosing not to spend $8.59 per car to correct a defect they knew existed in thousands of cars -- $8.59 that would have prevented 300-500 deaths a year. As certain as it is you are reading this, the Good Ol’ Boys Appeal Court will overturn this verdict. Once again gutting the Constitution – and they will be wrong!
  They’ll be wrong for two reasons: First, because this country was supposed to be governed by the people, not a House of Lords, or a Royal Governor who could overturn the will of the people whenever it suited his fancy. Having a jury render a verdict that was binding, is the absolute heart and soul of our legal system. Allowing three men, all members of the patriarchate, the monied political system controlled by the corporations and the wealthy that appoint judges or finance their elections, to unilaterally throw out the amount of the award even though they uphold the guilty verdict is an absolutely astonishing nullification of the jury system. It says in effect, that we, the judges on the Appeals Court are vastly more intelligent and superior to these lesser beings on the jury, and it is up to us wiser parental figures to nullify our errant children on the jury. Gerry Spence has written a brilliant book, which I think is titled “And Justice for None,” showing that Appeals Courts overturn the judgements awarded by juries over, I believe it was, 85-90% of the time, and always by judges who are stapled at the side to the companies and the corporate lawyers that represent these companies who have these judgements awarded against them. How nice it must be to be a company, knowingly and willingly let 300-500 people a year die because a defect you know is in your car, and know that your friends in the Appeals Court will overturn the verdict on this poor African American family.
  There is a second reason that words fail to describe how despicable will be this Appeals Court behavior when it comes, a second reason the jury is far more intelligent in their award decision than the good ol’ boys club judges ever will be. Why did General Motors knowingly allow so many people to die and be disfigured? Because they made a simple calculation. The “bean counters” calculated how much it would cost to recall the vehicles and spend the $8.95 to save all those lives, and compared that to how much it would cost to defend against any litigation, including the costs of settlements and judgements against them. They concluded it was cheaper to let the people die than it was to recall the cars, and so with a conscience of a monster, they acted like a cold blooded cobra out of pure greed. Talk about Shadow. It’s impossible to believe that the men at General Motors who made such a decision are husbands and fathers and respectable church going members of their community, but they are.
  Now, here is the brilliance of this jury’s decision. They simply took the same formula that General Motors used to kill and maim, i.e., “bean counting”, and calculated that General Motors spends over $2.5 billion a year in advertising designed to deceive the public into believing their cars are safe and reliable, and they’re a corporation who cares about its customers. The jury simply took the cost of deluging the public with this lie for 2 years, and gave it as an award to this family. Not only is this award an act of pure genius by these 12 people, it is the ONLY way to make these inhuman monster corporations realize it will be cheaper to save lives and prevent people from being crippled by repairing defects they know will kill people, than it will be to allow all these people to die and be permanently crippled. And not only General Motors. This verdict –if it were upheld – would force all manufacturers and corporations to put public safety ahead of “bean counting” profits. It would protect consumers of every kind in ways not now possible because corporations count on the good ol’ boys club Appeals Court judges to protect them from huge awards to victims, and thereby allow them to keep killing people because it’s cheaper that way.
  Where in the Constitution does it say an Appeals Court has far more wisdom and intelligence than the jury and can therefore arbitrarily reduce an award when it agrees the verdict was correct?
  Maybe we can flood the Appeals Court with e-mail, faxes and telephone calls, not just to protect this family, but to protect ourselves and our families from being the next victim of these bean counters. Upholding this award is a monumental step towards protecting American families and children not only from physical harm, but from having our jury system continue to be taken away from us.

Cigarette Makers Liable in Florida Class Action Case … but Appeals Stand in the Way of Victory
In Florida a jury unanimously rejected the tobacco industry’s contention that there is no definitive scientific proof that smoking causes disease, that it is not addictive, and that the companies and their officers, like General Motors, conspired to suppress the information of how lethal tobacco is from its customers. So what? As detailed above, the good ol’ boys Appeals Court judges will take care of their corporate friends when it comes to appeal, just as in February an Appeals Court reduced a San Francisco jury award against Philip Morris from $51.5 million to $26.5 million, under the arrogant assumption of the judges that they possessed superior intelligence to the “common man” jury.

Outrageous Behavior and Cowardice by UCLA Football Players
Though this display of Shadow behavior on the part of the stars of UCLA’s championship football team does not rise to the level of affecting our lives and families, it is important because it is indicative of the fundamental shift that has taken place in the unconscious psyche of America today, and reveals clearly the growing of the narcissistic personality in our collective unconscious as expressed everywhere in our culture, from the executives at General Motors who made the decision to deliberately kill hundreds of people to keep profit margins up, to our current crop of athletes who, whether they like it or not, are role models for our children. What these players did is the expression of the same type of narcissistic spoiled brat behavior Martina Hingis at the French Open. (See below)
  The narcissistic personality in simple terms sees everyone and everything as nothing more than an object to be used to satisfy his or her immediate gratification and the moment that person or thing is no longer useful, it is to be immediately discarded without a second thought, no matter what pain, suffering, or harm may come to that other person or thing. (Sound like General Motors? It should, because the Shadow side of giant corporations are as ruthlessly narcissistic as it’s possible to get, which is why it is so urgent to control their narcissistic shadow behavior through our courts.) Everything in the narcistic’s life is centered around “me.” Me, me, me is the alpha and omega of the narcistic’s life. They are superior to normal human beings, and the rules, regulations and laws that apply to ordinary people do not apply to them. They are so privileged they are above the law, should always be treated as some sort of deity, and their every whim immediately granted.
  Among the places you will find the narcissistic culture exploding is where ever people are making money off of the abilities or talents of other people. And no where is this truer than with the athlete, who because some institution, like the university or pro team, or some individual is making money off of them, will cater to this need to be treated as a little god, and granted their every wish, as with the despicable behavior of seventeen current and former UCLA football players who feel that they are so superior that even disabled people should welcome their opportunity to not be able to park in the handicap zones at UCLA and in the city because these finely tuned physical specimens want to park in the handicapped parking spaces because these great athletes shouldn’t have to walk the few extra feet us normal people have to walk. They all lied and cheated and got handicap parking passes – never once giving any thought to the difficulty they were presenting to genuinely handicapped people who needed to park there. And these were some of UCLA’s biggest stars – Cade McNown, Skip Hicks, and Larry Atkins, to name a few.
  Now, let’s see the Shadow in operation, not only in these young men, but in the UCLA officials who either made this detestable cheating possible, are defending it, or failing to come out and condemn it. Why? Because UCLA makes hundreds of millions of dollars off these narcissistic “me, me, me” brats.
  So who’s worse? The players who had no qualm of conscience taking the space seriously needed by truly crippled people, the coaches who arranged for these fraudulent handicap parking passes to help the players cheat the disabled, the Athletic Director, Pete Dalis, and UCLA Chancellor, Albert Carnesale, who had condoned this behavior (after all, can’t irritate those Bruin supporters during the building fund drive), or Cade McNown, the star quarterback drafted by the Chicago Bears, who, along with all the other guilty players, in an act of sheer cowardice refuses to step forward and take responsibility, admit what they did was wrong, apologize for it, and in some way offer to perform some sort of community service in preventing this from happening again. McNown goes further. He not only denies he did anything wrong, he blames the media for making a “mountain out of a molehill.”
  This is a great insight into the narcissistic personality. They believe they are so special, so above the law they can do anything they damn please, hurt anyone who’s in their way and no longer useful in granting them the immediate gratification they are seeking, and when caught red handed not even be man enough to stand up, face their Shadow quality, and take responsibility for it, similar to OJ, Johnnie Cochran and Barry Scheck who, even though it was overwhelmingly self evident that OJ decapitated the mother of his children within a few feet of the children sleeping, blamed Columbian drug dealers, Clinton blaming a right wing conspiracy for saying he had sex with Monica in the White House, and General Motors blaming an ignorant jury for awarding the $4.9 billion verdict.
  This narcissistic “me at any cost” is all the same behavior, whether in an individual, a group, a corporation, or our most sacred institutions. And this ruthless “to hell with everybody but me” attitude is growing like a cancer in the underbelly of this great country. It is infecting our national soul in a way that is becoming truly disturbing and frightening.
  It is even more outrageous when you look at the incredible low-key behavior of the unbelievably gifted John Kennedy Jr., who lived in a very modest apartment and neighborhood, rode his bike instead of a limousine, and in every way instead of acting as if he was privileged and above the law and rules that govern the rest of us, submerged himself into behaving in a way befitting the most humble among us. So why does he die and these far lesser beings like Ryan Leaf and Cabe McNown who’s sole attribute is that they can throw a football go on living their unbelievably selfish self-centered lives? (A prediction on the side: The Shadow displayed by Cabe McNown when caught in this cheap behavior makes it almost certain he does not have the character or inherent manhood to make it as a top NFL quarterback.)

  There are more outrages … but they’ll have to wait to next week. In the meantime, where else did you see through the Persona and into the Shadow of someone or some group? More important, where did you see through your Persona into your Shadow side and discover some fault or weakness you never knew existed?