It is my recent discovery that Blaise Pascal, who died on August 19, 1662, 39 years after being born on June 19, 1623, knew more about most of us than we know about ourselves. And that is somewhat unnerving.

Sadly, the brief, Pascal passage I will use to explain what I am talking about applies equally well to two people whose characters should be diametrically opposed, but they are not, and that is yet another unnerving observation.

Needless to say, that should make for an interesting read because the two people I am referring to are Donald Trump and Sigmund Freud. You all know who Donald Trump is and you have all heard of Sigmund Freud, the so-called father of psychology. The Trump-like Sigmund Freud is relatively unknown and that should change as the fruit of his labor is scientifically assessed.

In fact, Freud's character flaws/addictive personality mirrored Trump's in every way; his sexist attitudes, his regular use of cocaine, his preoccupation with rank and status... he naturally specialized in a "disease of the rich," hysteria, which could never be cured and consequently generated a continuing stream of income. When some of his "hysteric" patients were subsequently shown to have organic diseases, he still maintained that hysteria was part of the clinical picture because he never admitted to being wrong, "He chose to remain deceived even after having been proven wrong."

The observations of the preceding paragraph are not my own. They are the work of Frederick Crews, he carefully documented it all in his book Freud: The Making of an Illusion, wherein Crews proved that Freud was a con artist who treated pampered, rich socialites because they provided a steady source of income by not being cured. In one case, he rushed back to see a patient in the fear that he might get well in his absence. He had little sympathy for his patients; he actively despised most people, especially those of the lower social orders, he was a misogynist who believed women were biologically inferior, he treated his wife abominably, and most importantly, for the sake of assessing his professional capacity rather than unmerited reputation, his research was anything but scientific.

Nonetheless, has anybody failed to use psychological terminology to "assess" Donald Trump. The Atlantic Monthly proclaimed as follows; "Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity-a psychologist investigates how Trump's extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency." Do we really need a degree in psychology to understand an unindicted criminal like Donald Trump? Isn't that all that he is?

Some Freudian assessments that have been used to psychoanalyze Trump are disguised in language that is more geared towards impressing and excluding understanding. They are in fact so absolutely nauseating, the mindset or mental stability of their authors is, in my humble opinion, in serious doubt. What is however certain is that some people practise a profession in public when they should be rehearsing in private because their music is painful to the ear, it does not merit airplay and I am mixing metaphors on purpose. Plainly put, shut the fuck up!!!!

Enough said. It is time to try to absorb at least some of the intelligence of Blaise Pascal, a man who deserves to be heard, in his own words, because, psychiatry and psychology, as it is currently practiced by most in North America is absolutely nothing beyond elementary witchcraft, and I understand it very well because I have studied the very best and the brightest, especially the topnoch forensic experts in the field (not the well rewarded, deceptive hired guns who manipulate the judicial process for financial gain and their idea of what prestige is).

To be sure, there are certainly exceptional practitioners who maintain a solid, scientific footing in the great work they do but like in any field where human error in practice looms large, genuine competence is the exception rather than the rule.

So let's get back to Blaise Pascal, in his own words:

"The nature of self-love and of this human ego is to love only oneself and to consider only oneself. But what will man do? He cannot prevent this object he loves being full of faults and miseries: he aspires to greatness, and he sees himself small; he wants to be happy, and he sees himself wretched; he wants to be happy, and he sees himself wretched; he wants to be perfect, and he sees himself full of imperfections; he wants to be the object of the love and esteem of men, and he sees that his faults merit only their aversion and their disdain.

This embarrassment in which he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and most criminal passion that it is possible to imagine. For he conceives a mortal hatred for the truth which reproves him, and which convinces him of his faults. He would like to annihilate it; and, unable to destroy it in himself, he destroys it, in so far as he is able, within his own knowledge and that of others - that is to say that he puts forth every effort to conceal his faults from others and from himself, and that he cannot abide that anyone should reveal them to himself or even see them.

It is doubtless an evil to be full of faults; but it is still a greater one to be full of them and to refuse to recognize them, since that means adding to them the additional fault of willful illusion. We do not wish others to deceive us, we think it unjust that they should seek from us a greater esteem than they merit; it is not, then, any more just for us to deceive them and to seek from them a greater esteem than we deserve.

Thus, when they discover only imperfections and vices which we do indeed have, it is obvious that they are doing us no wrong, since they are not the ones responsible; it is even obvious that they are doing us good, for they are helping us free ourselves from an evil, which is our ignorance of these imperfections. We ought not to be annoyed that they know them, and that they hold us in disdain; is it not just both that they should know us for what we are, and that they should hold us in disdain if indeed we merit it?

Those are the ideas which would rise in the heart that would be full of equity and justice. What must we say of our own heart, finding in it a quite contrary disposition?

For is it not true that we hate the truth and those who reveal it to us, and that we like them to be deceived to our advantage, and that we wish to be considered by them other than what we really are?

Here is a proof of it which horrifies me. The Catholic religion does not obligate us to reveal our sins indifferently to everyone. It permits us to hide ourselves from all other men; but it makes a single exception to whom it commands us to reveal the hidden recesses of our heart, and to show ourselves as we are. There is only this one man in all the world that it orders us not to deceive; and it obliges him to inviolable secrecy, with the result that this knowledge is in him as if it were not there. Can one imagine anything more charitable and more gentle? And yet such is the corruption of man that he finds harshness even in this law, and it is one of the principal reasons which led a large part of Europe to revolt against the Church.

How unjust and unreasonable is the heart of man if he objects to being obliged to do in the case of all men! For is it just that we should deceive them?

There are different degrees in this aversion for truth, but it may be said that it is in all persons in some degree because it is inseparable from self-love. It is this false sensitivity which obliges those who are under the necessity of correcting others to choose so many detours and to proceed so gingerly in order to avoid offending them. They must play down our faults, pretend to excuse them, mix with their reproofs praise and displays of affection and esteem. In spite of that, this medicine is still a bitter dose for our self-love which takes the least of it possible, and often, even with a secret annoyance against those who present it.

As a consequence, it happens that if someone has some wish to win our affection, he will turn away from rendering us a service which he knows will be displeasing to us. He will treat us as we wish to be treated. We hate the truth, and so he hides it from us; we wish to be flattered, and so he flatters us; we like to be deceived, and so he deceives us.

That is why each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world moves us farther away from the truth, for people fear offending others in proportion as their affection is more useful and their enmity more dangerous. A prince will be the laughingstock of all Europe, and he alone will know nothing about it. For is it not true that we hate the truth and those who reveal it to us, and that we like them to be deceived to our advantage, and that we wish to be considered by them other than what we really are?

I am not surprised at that; to tell the truth is useful to the one to whom one tells it, but disadvantageous to those who tell it, because they arouse hatred against themselves. Now those who live with princess place their own interests above those of the prince they serve, and thus they are careful not to procure him an advantage if it means harming themselves.

This misfortune is doubtless greater and more usual in the case of people of great wealth; but others are not exempt, because there is always something to be gained by making oneself loved by men. Thus human life is only a perpetual illusion; people are constantly engaged in mutual deception and flattery. Nobody talks about us in our presence as he does in our absence. The union which exists among men is founded only upon this mutual deceiving. Few friendships would remain if each knew what his friend says of him when he is not there, although his friend talks of him then sincerely and dispassionately.

Man then is nothing but disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy both in himself and with regard to others. He does not wish to have the truth told to him; he avoids saying it to others; and all these inclinations, so contrary to justice and reason, have a natural root in the heart."

And that's all there is to it.

Next: Persecution of Alec Baldwin is illegitimate.