Archive for 2021
January 24, 2021
STALINIST PSYCHIATRY FROM YALE’S DR. BANDY X. LEE: The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists.
I remember when it was considered a breach of professional ethics to diagnose the mental health of people you hadn’t personally evaluated. Another casualty of Trump-hatred, which has exposed our professional classes as ethical frauds more or less across the board.
GIVING NEW MEANING TO “FAT HEAD.” Study: Rising number of people getting weight-linked headaches.
QUESTION ASKED: Is 30 Minutes of Cycling A Day Enough for Weight Loss?
GLENN GREENWALD: Journalists Are Authoritarians.
‘YOU SAY WE’RE ALL LIARS:’ Rand Paul Has Fiery Debate With George Stephanopoulos. “You’re forgetting who you are as a journalist if you think there’s only one side.”
Paul understands of course that Stephanopoulos is not a journalist, merely a Democratic Party operative with a byline. But as Saul Alinsky would say, “Make the enemy live up to [his] own book of rules.”
[Bari] Weiss said she believes that “in a normal non-upside down world,” a publisher would have reacted differently to the Cotton controversy. Journalists at the newspaper publicly condemned the article and said that “running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.” In response, The NYT eventually issued an apology.
“I felt like in a normal non-upside down world, I felt like the response on the part of any publisher, in the case of journalists claiming that an op-ed by a senator put their lives in danger would be, I respect that you have this position, perhaps working in a newspaper is not the right career path for you,” Weiss said. “But instead, what happened in the wake of that was really unbelievable. It was like a struggle session, with people crying, with people being praised by the masthead for their moral clarity and their courage. It was quite a spectacle.”
Weiss and Kelly also got into the attitude of the media as former President Donald Trump’s tenure continued. Weiss suggested that as time went on, pieces that did not overtly indicate Trump was bad became viewed as “traitorous.”
“It was strange, because this is the kind of environment where inclusion and diversity are the watchwords and bullying is wrong,” Weiss noted. “But bullying the right people, it’s not just okay there, it’s kind of like a virtue. One of the ways this played out was this just really, really insidious double standard. If you had the right politics, and you have the right perspective, you could basically be unscrutinized and you could act totally unprofessionally, for example, on Twitter, and nothing would happen to you.”
Related: James Lindsay on “Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism.” Exit quote: “Pseudo-realities are, simply put, false constructions of reality. It is hopefully obvious that among the features of pseudo-realities is that they must present a plausible but deliberately wrong understanding of reality. They are cult ‘realities’ in the sense that they are the way that members of cults experience and interpret the world—both social and material—around them. We should immediately recognize that these deliberately incorrect interpretations of reality serve two related functions. First, they are meant to mold the world to accommodate small proportions of people who suffer pathological limitations on their abilities to cope with reality as it is. Second, they are designed to replace all other analyses and motivations with power, which these essentially or functionally psychopathic individuals will contort and deform to their permanent advantage so long as their pseudo-real regime can last.”
DON SURBER: Liberals Suffer Trump Withdrawal. “After obsessing over him in their every woken moment for the past 5 years, liberals face the terror of withdrawal as Donald John Trump has gone home to Florida. . . . He has lived rent-free in their heads for so long that they feel an emptiness.The Meatheads feel lonely. There is an emptiness inside them. They need something new to obsess about.”
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: CNN is already running PR for the Biden admin.
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Music professor sues university for punishing him over defense of ‘racist’ composer.
JASON WHITLOCK: I stand by my comparison of BLM to the KKK — no matter who might object.
Cultural changes and technological advances explain the difference in tactics between the KKK of old and its modern-day successor, BLM. Burning buildings have replaced burning crosses. Social media lynch mobs destroy a person’s character, strike fear, and silence dissent.
In the KKK’s heyday, a black man could have his life destroyed for making eye contact with a white woman. In BLM’s heyday, a black man can have his life destroyed for expressing an opinion that contradicts the ideology of white liberals.
The Klan has been described as “the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party.” The events of the last summer would lead one to believe that BLM are the shock troops of the Democratic Party, at a minimum.
GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Loyola asks ‘each academic unit’ to teach ‘identity and privilege.’
Cost of attending Loyola University Chicago: $65,168 per year.
‘IT’S GOT A GREAT BEAT AND YOU CAN DANCE TO IT:’ Wonder if that’s what they’d said on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand of “Graves Into Gardens” by Elevation Worship. Christian music sure isn’t what it used to be. I miss the old hymns, but there is a boatload of raw talent doing Gospel music these days.
HOW MANY MORE THOUSANDS OF JOBS WILL JOE KILL? The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz surveys the unemployment wreckage for His Fraudulency’s first day on the job in the Oval Office.
GOD AT THE INAUGURATION.
I JUST WANT TO SAY GOOD LUCK. WE’RE ALL COUNTING ON YOU. Republican Steve Scalise and Democrat Donna Brazile point way to an undemonized politics.
A REMINDER OF THE IMPORTANCE OF LIMITS: Senate Republican threatens impeachments of past Democratic presidents. “The Texas Republican senator John Cornyn warned on Saturday that Donald Trump’s second impeachment could lead to the prosecution of former Democratic presidents if Republicans retake Congress in two years’ time.” Given Cornyn’s importance in the leadership, this suggests that there will be no conviction.
MARCO RUBIO: Why is McKinsey & Co. supporting Vladimir Putin? “With every new report of McKinsey & Company’s work with authoritarian regimes, I grow increasingly concerned about its work on behalf of the U.S. Government. It is unclear why the U.S. Government, or any democratic government with whom your firm works, should accept that McKinsey’s work maintains the high standards that you claim, or believe that your recommendations have not been tainted by your stated willingness to assist authoritarian regimes in Beijing, Moscow, and elsewhere.”
FOREIGNERS ARE STARTING TO WORRY: NZ Herald: Troubling signs in Joe Biden’s first days as President. “Hopefully, now that inauguration week is out of the way, we can start to critique this presidency with the same rigour as the last one.” Well, maybe in Australia or New Zealand. Not going to happen here.
Related: Premiers tell Trudeau they ‘want to go to war’ with U.S. over Keystone XL.
SPACEX IS GOING TO TRY LAUNCHING AGAIN TODAY AT 10 AM EST. 143 satellites in one launch.
PUBLISHED THE DAY BEFORE THE ELECTION. HOW LONG UNTIL IT’S MEMORY-HOLED OR STEALTH-EDITED? Will your ballot be safe? Computer experts sound warnings on America’s voting machines.