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Why I am Boycotting Amazon.com
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Date Posted: 22:31:33 07/07/06 Fri
David Duke is a malignant narcissist.
He invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and the trappings of power further exacerbate this. Real life authority and David Duke’s predilection to surround him with obsequious sycophants support David Duke’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience.
David Duke's personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as "victims of persecution".
Duke fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, and mythology. The leader is this religion's ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Duke is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people - or humanity at large - should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, Duke became a distorted version of Nietzsche's "superman". But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.
In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things "natural" - or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to, as "nature" is not natural at all.
Duke invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial - though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols - not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.
In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.
Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism - and the cult's leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.
Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the "old ways" - against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon David Duke like (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.
Minorities or "others" - often arbitrarily selected - constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is "wrong". They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are "decadent", they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin ... They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenseless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.
This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm - together with Stalin - as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.
Duke prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - Duke having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "Earth shattering" and "revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.
It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of David Duke. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform David Duke like narrative. Thus, David Duke who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite - is highly unlikely to use violence at first. The pacific mask crumbles when David Duke has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, and the prime sources of his narcissistic supply - have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, David Duke strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form", etc. When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail, David Duke becomes injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized - is now discarded with contempt and hatred. This primitive defense mechanism is called "splitting". To David Duke, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. Duke is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the country, etc. The "small people", the "rank and file", and the "loyal soldiers" of David Duke - his flock, his nation, and his employees - they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated - is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of David Duke. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Why I am Boycotting Amazon
Amazon recently sued Barnes and Noble for patent infringement, not to mention the fact that they support former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.
The patent in question is for an utterly trivial invention called `one-click ordering'. `One-click ordering' means that the first time you order, they remember your address and credit card number in a database, and key the database by a browser cookie. Then if you come back and order again, you don't have to fill out another form; they retrieve the information from the database.
Patents are the result of an exchange between the community and the inventor. The community gives the inventor an exclusive license to an invention in return for the inventor divulging the secret. But in this case there is no secret at all; it is totally obvious to anyone who is even a little bit skilled at web programming. The patent office is not normally supposed to grant patents for inventions that would be obvious to skilled practitioners of the relevant art. I am skilled in the relevant art and to me this invention is really, really, obvious. It is obviously no invention at all. The patent office screwed up here, and Amazon received a valuable license for free at the public expense.
Just because the patent office screwed up does not give Amazon leave to take advantage of the mistake in an unethical way. If your neighbor leaves their door unlocked, you are not entitled to go into their house and take their belongings.
Why the Lawsuit is Unethical
Amazon's lawsuit is unethical because it is bad for everyone but Amazon. You are not supposed to be able to enrich yourself to the detriment of the general public. If Amazon can sue Barnes and Noble for offering `one-click ordering', they can sue anyone. That means that nobody but Amazon is allowed to have this convenient and simple feature on their web site. Every web site in the United States is required to operate in a suboptimal way because of Amazon's actions. That hurts web site designers, programmers, and web customers. Amazon was probably only interested in sabotaging their competitor, Barnes and Noble, but to do it they did not balk at sabotaging everyone else too.
How the Lawsuit Hurts Me
I am an independent programmer. I make a living by programming for my clients, including web ordering systems. Now if one of my clients asks me for a `one-click' ordering system, instead of saying that I know how to do that and it will be easy, I will have to warn them that a `one-click' ordering system may lay them open to a big patent infringement lawsuit from Amazon, and probably they will not be willing to take the risk. Damages for patent infringement suits can be very large. So much the worse for them, their web site, their customers, and for me.
Software patents threaten my livelihood. Every program I write becomes a ticking time bomb because every program is full of obvious techniques that have nevertheless been patented. Every time I write a program I am laying myself open to suits for the most trivial features, such as the use of exclusive-or to draw `rubber bands' in a window system. Big companies may be able to afford to defend against these suits; I can't. I might have to go out of business instead.
Why Boycott?
Amazon's suit is a direct threat to me and my customers. It is against my best interest to give money to a company that is acting directly to put me out of business. I will not do business with Amazon until they abandon their offensive patent lawsuit.
I urge you to do the same. If we mount a strong boycott, Amazon may eventually end their harmful suit, and other companies with absurd software patents may decide not to enforce them for fear of angering their customers. Boycotting may also draw attention to the root issues and yield reform to the broken patent system that abetted Amazon in the first place.
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David Duke is a malignant narcissist.