From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   I have known any number of people being described as “manipulative.”   
      
   That would impugn most businessmen, lawyers and politicians. In business and   
   politics it is not called manipulative. It is called competence, people skills   
   and strategic thinking.   
      
   You want you and yours to have a monopoly over winning qualities. When anyone   
   else has winning qualities they are not admirable, they are dangerous. Why are   
   they dangerous? Because they may be in a position to help people you’d like   
   to see downtrodden.    
   Also because they form a refutation of your view that you and yours own   
   winning qualities.   
      
   Hurricane Carter was seen as a dangerous person since his childhood. Why was   
   he dangerous? Because he was a black man who was not a loser and refused to be   
   treated as one. This made him dangerous to people who believed that black   
   people were losers and    
   should be downtrodden. He was right to be dangerous to such people, and I hope   
   that more people be dangerous to such people, whoever and wherever they may be.   
      
   So we have my ex-wife’s father describing her as manipulative. No, she had   
   competence and people skills. She used these to do a lot of meaningful good.   
   That does not make her manipulative. It makes her an admirable person.   
      
   Skills and propensities should be channeled into places where they can do most   
   good. If someone has emotional intelligence, she should go into fields where   
   such a thing is in order. This realizes far greater benefit than portraying   
   her as mentally ill.    
   And it realizes in people benefiting from what she has to offer rather than   
   wasting public resources on bullying her out of what are in fact winning   
   qualities.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)