Maggie's Farm

That is why the young rich man was so loath to follow Jesus, for the cost of his following was the death of his will. In fact, every call of Jesus is a call to die, with all of our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and His call are necessary for our death and our life.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (h/t, Dr. Bob) I have a personal piece in mind to write about this subject of "will," but it will need to wait.

The blogworld, and the media, are preoccupied with the elections. 90% of regular folks, however, are not.

It's just as well. There is such thing as an unwholesome preoccupation with political issues, as there can be with anything else.

There is reason to believe that people are more motivated to vote against someone, than for someone. Anger and hatred are powerful human motivators, and everyone is cynical about politics and politicians except the youth - who don't know any better.

So it's smears and fears season. AKA "silly season." Everybody enjoys voting in national elections, but mid-term elections tend to bring out the most engaged, and the most emotional, which brings out the lowest human impulses - and in the political world, that is lower than whale poop.

Thus the theme for both parties is "crank up the emotion." In mid-terms, in which many registered voters do not even know the names of their Reps, or even their Senators, "Get out the vote" is the name of the game. Get warm bodies into the voting booth, and room-temperature bodies if that's all you can get.

Is this election more important than any other? Probably not, because I do not think it will have any effect on the war against Islamofascism (Americans will never put up with dhimmitude.).  Every election is important, though.

Isn't it funny how, when your team wins - it's "The people have spoken," and when your team loses, it's "The people are brainwashed morons"?

May the best team win. Just do me one favor: before you pull that lever, make sure you know where Nancy Pelosi stands on the issues of the day -because that is who you are voting for or against, ultimately. The Speaker, the Whip, and other leadership run the show. The Reps are just little soldiers, and if they don't play ball, they won't be able to bring the pork home for their re-election.

From a piece by Homnick at American Spectator:

Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, a time of introspection, the one day a year where you must stare unblinkingly at The Picture of Dorian Gray that lurks in the back of your closet. Who is the real you, and how unlovely? What are you doing to improve that inner person, to guarantee that next year at this time the real you will be closer to the nice guy that the world sees? Otherwise, the initials of the Day of Atonement apply: DOA.

We'd all go nuts if we did that every day, but is once a year sufficient?

The old Soviet doctors from the Serbsky Insitute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry seem to be up to their old tricks, but to a much lesser extent than in the Soviet days of the "reformist delusion" diagnosis.

Still, Russia seems like a country which is comfortable with authoritarianism in all of its forms. Story in WaPo.

Every psychiatrist has had this experience with a patient, if not with themselves: someone feels down and despondent for a week and doesn't know what they might be reacting to until reminded, or until they remember, that it's the anniversary of a death, a loss, or anything emotionally painful or damaging.

We call these "anniversary reactions." (Sometimes I joke that the true "anniversary reaction" is how a wife responds when hubbie forgets their wedding anniversary.)

The human mind has a lousy sense of time (or we wouldn't be checking our sundials and calendars all day long,) and the human unconscious has none-to-little. The past always is part of the present, and vice versa. Time, psychologically, is a sort-of higher-level cortical illusion...or something.

My smartest supervisor in analytic school would say, of patients in psychoanalysis (as opposed to psychotherapy), "When they talk about the past, they are talking about the present. When they talk about the present, they are talking about the past. And they are always talking about the transference."

Thus the usefulness of anniversaries is to highlight, and bring into the sunlight, things that have been lurking beneath our attention - whether fine things or awful things.

In the case of 9-11, we hardly need a reminder, since the war of fundamentalist, militant Islam against the infidel continues across the globe, with daily reminders in the news. Still, it is a good idea to mark it because so many of us experienced 9-11 as personal, and as an unwelcome reminder, to us self-involved, semi-decadent, material-worshipping, and complacent Americans, of the existence of evil in the world, on a large scale. 

It is a good refresher course in Evil: people who do not know you, and to whom you have done nothing, desperately want to kill you, even if they die in the process. It isn't sick - it's plain old ordinary evil which destroys innocence, crushes good intentions and good cheer, and pursues the death of innocent strangers in the name of a prophet and a god.

So, like Pearl Harbor Day for another generation, we will all remember our 9-11s today, whether we want to or not. It's a scar that will never, and should never, fully heal. With some things, this "healing" thing is over-rated, and only means pushing things into a past which, for the human mind, does not really exist.

It is psycho-utopianism to imagine that pains entirely go away. Humans do not work that way, and it is for the best that we do not, or we could not really learn, or grow with experience. Often, the tough lessons of life have to hurt, and life is not all about "happiness," except for the most superficial and foolish. There are deeper wells...

Our pains and sorrows and angers and memories are a big part of what and who we are: in this case, the horror of what man is capable of doing to his human brothers and sisters. Since Eden, every generation, and every person, loses their innocence.

Dr. Wayne Fenton dedicated his life to taking care of the sickest of psychiatric patients - the chronically psychotic, the most difficult patients to whom to be of help, and was killed by one of them.

Thankfully, it is a rare event in our work. But it is entirely unpredictable, like suicide. In medicine, unpleasant surprises happen. It's part of the job, and there is no way to be prepared.

Wayne was doing God's work. Like any sort of chronic patient in medicine, these folks never really get better, but they have reasonable hope to function in the world, to a degree, if they take their medicine, stay in the shallow end of the pool, and if they follow advice. Big "ifs." Psychotic people can be dangerous, and not just dysfunctional.

It's a damn shame. Oddly similar to Steve Irwin's tragic death. Whoever this patient was, I know Wayne cared about him a great deal, and wanted him to have a life. However, he has proven himself to be too dangerous to be out in the world.

Reposted from November, 2005

Ya gotta leave it to female professors to come up with something like this: MSU Professors link Hunting with Sexual Violence.

This came to me via Bird Dog via a hunting friends of his, and I had to laugh, it was so stupid and ignorant - and yet so earnestly and academically so. But they don't seem to understand guy-talk.

As Maggie's readers know, I am an avid hunter and shooter, and know plenty of other women who are, and not one of us is a violent sexual pervert, or even a latent one. While it is probably true that most or all men contain a latent rapist deep inside (along with latent everything else), to connect hunting with rape is the same kind of misunderstanding of depth psychology that views knitting as a masturbation equivalent.

There are many hard-wired instincts, and many sources of pleasure and satisfaction, and it is ridiculously reductionistic to connect all pursuits to the sexual instincts...not that there is anything wrong with them. 

But, on the subject of biological instincts, should I assume that this hunting "sexual perversion" applied during the million years of hunting which kept the human line alive, as well as to our Pilgrim forefathers and their Indian pals? And that it applies to all other species with predatory instincts, including fish and birds? All nasty perverts? Or does it only apply to Michigan bow hunters?

I am not going to get into the depth psychology of this - the subjects of the instincts, pleasure, unconscious fantasy, sublimation, etc. I would simply say that obviously these professor gals' Dads or brothers never took them shooting and hunting. Too bad. Guess they'll just miss out on an excitingly twisted form of sexual stimulation.

So I'll say to these prof gals - lighten up, work on your senses of humor, and find a better target for your sadistic sexual instincts other than wholesome guys and gals in the woods with their dogs, or bows, or guns, having a good old wholesome and traditional American time in the cool breeze amongst the falling leaves.

(Photo is of the famous academic feminist "The Maid of the Marsh," who is doubtless stalking hapless duck hunters in order to sexually abuse and sadistically enjoy them - at gunpoint, if necessary. Please pick me, honey!)

Assistant Village Idiot, a blog which in temperament is quite similar to Maggie's Farm (as is YARGB), literally stole a chapter from my as yet unpublished book in their recent piece on "The Vice of Tolerance."

Read it. My comments:

"Tolerance" in its PC form is usually manifest as administrative or even legal threats against specific "intolerances," in a "thought police" format. Thus the moral authority of official "tolerance" is undone by its own intolerance and use of force of some kind. College campuses and large corporations are two places where such nonsense is rampant. I can guarantee you that if you hang a Confederate flag out of a dorm window, someone will come knocking, but a Hezbollah flag - no. Or it would be OK for a Moslem teacher to bring her Koran to school with her, but no Bible for the Christian teacher. So "tolerance" is a euphemism for selective intolerance, and is surely a vice, at at least a politically-motivated scam, of some sort.

How is it dishonest? Because there is no valid underlying principle. The charge of intolerance can be directed in any chosen direction: it can be directed towards someone expressing something, or it can be directed towards someone who is "insensitive" to someone who is "offended" by something, or it can be directed against the "offended" who is, by definition, "intolerant." For example:

A teacher wears her cross necklace to school. An atheist kid's parents complain to the Principal. They Principal tells the kid that she can wear a "Proud Atheist" button to school if she wants. OK - you could direct the charge of intolerance to the teacher, who is "indifferent to offending". Or to the kid, who is "intolerant" of the teacher's "culture and beliefs," or to the Principal, who could be charged with "creating a culture of intolerance."  Take your pick. Just charge anyone with it that you do not want to tolerate.

This notion of "tolerance," seems to be a subset of a fashionable  "tolerance ethic" which attempts to turn traditional ethics and judgements upside-down by glorifying the refusal to discriminate (judge) about much of anything: quality, morals, behavior, taste, manners, intelligence, fund of information, depth, maturity, curiosity, energy, thoughtfulness, right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, correct vs. incorrect, personality type, selfishness, humor, honor, refinement - all of the things that need to be assessed whenever we encounter another human and might need to deal with them in some way. Note that I refer to individual characteristics - classes of people are not in my vocabulary, because they mean nothing to me: gay, black, brown, white, old, young, ethnic, etc - I don't care much about those surface items. They are stupid and meaningless distinctions for most purposes.

AVI makes several good points, so you should read it all. One is that tolerance is a Christian virtue. No, not at all. (Everyone has a divine spark, but that doesn't mean that I want their spark near my life.) Another is the point that tolerance is a passive virtue - if it is a virtue. Indeed. It requires no behavior and no action, and, in fact, it is indistinguishable from indifference.

The list of things I will not tolerate in my life would be fun to write, but negative, and there would not be enough space here. The same goes for the list of things I welcome into my life, which would be more of a pleasure to write down. All I will say is that I will not tolerate enforced "tolerance," poor manners, arrogance, lying and manipulation, ignorance, and poor grammar (except on blogs, which are generally colloquial speech, dashed off in a spare moment).

Somehow this link was forwarded to me for comment. It makes the highly newsworthy and earth-shattering point that Christians are a lusty crew.

50% of Christian men are addicted to porn, it says. (What they did not discover is that 99% of Christian men are addicted to sex, and require it on a regular, if not twice-daily, basis.)

What bugs me about the piece is that it implies that Christians ought to be pure from sexual desire and interest - or at least from non-marital desire. That very idea is nuts, but I do know from whence it comes: it comes from a thread running through Protestantism (and Roman Catholicism, before that), that our desirous and loving hearts should be fixed on God and His Kingdom, not earthly delights.

Of course, fantasy and action are entirely different things. Porn, like art, books, etc., is just assisted fantasy. Adults, Christian or otherwise, are expected by others to regulate their behavior, but whether and how they regulate their fantasy life is their own, personal decision.

The use of the word "addiction" is peculiar. I think, for an interest that is so hard-wired. Do guys have an "addiction" to staring at gals' breasts?They do tell me that they can't help it, so I never show cleavage at work.

I wrote a piece on internet porn a while ago (porn is the #1 use of the internets). I have looked at a bit of it, and have been struck by the generous anatomy of the fellows who do this, but it's not my cup of tea, and I find it undignified and sleazy as hell, but I think it's fairly harmless. However, when any person's behavior is compulsive - whether it's porn, or blogging, or watching TV, or computer games, or anything - it's usually an escape from something, or from some emotion. Therefore, what is interesting to a shrink is not the object of the compulsion as much as the question of what is being avoided.

I am obviously not a pastor, but I say that there is room for both earthly and spiritual delights in this life. As animals with a divine spark, we must pursue both as best we can, while ordering, regulating and directing our life as it is - as it has been given to us - as best we can.

Note: That is not me. Our lusty Christian Editor added the charming photo - not for pleasure, of course, but only to get attention.

Yes, the UCC is one of the bees that is always in my bonnet.

Before our most recent post on the mainline churches even disappeared from our front page, we get this nonsense (h/t, Israpundit) - a quote from an exchange with UCC Canada:

All this to say, Mr. Weiner, that Israel is being so greedy and greedy in such a nasty and murderous way that we find ourselves very sympathetic to the Palestinian complaints about such behaviour. Please read our press statement. We are also working for the survival of Israel in peace and security with internationally recognized borders as much as for the same future for a Palestinian state. Israel, however, seems bent upon a brutal acquisitional policy that offends Palestinians and the whole Arab world. If we do nothing, we can expect the growth of terrorist cells here in Canada and everywhere else. Why should we be immune to this horror when we disregard the horror that Israeli policies visit upon Palestinians every day of their lives. I can witness to that and so can many others.

You challenged us, Mr. Weiner, but now it’s your turn. We are sick and tired of the pro-Israeli government lobby in Canada telling us what to understand about the ’security’ issues of Israel. We are fed up with the biased press that focusses on one abducted Israel soldier and not on the numerous unreported assassinations and abductions of Palestinian citizens whose human rights are daily violated. Israel is out of control.

I am not ready to claim that the UCC, and their friends, are anti-Semitic, but they sure don't have any sympathy for Israel. And they have more sympathy for Jihadists and the like than they do for our Christian president who took an oath on the Holy Bible to protect us from their attacks.

I just think they stick to the Leftist line of the day. As I have said here before, helping individuals with their relationship with God through Christ ought to be a plenty big enough job for preachers. Understanding world affairs is the opposite of what their job is, and they tend to be a wierd combination of naive and innocent while angry and judgemental. As Laura would say, "Shut up and Sing". The whole exchange of letters is posted at Israpundit here.

Our church is SO HAPPY to have broken with the UCC. We are Congregationalists, and we make up our own minds, thank you.

I view evil as sin without guilt or remorse. I define sin more or less Biblically. Evil does exist in this world. My Leftist academic friends refuse to see it because it would mess up their world-view and they might have to fight something a bit more dangerous than golfer Republicans with pink pants, and my re-born Fundie pals (yes - academia has some closet Bible-readers) insist that the word is "Devil" with the "D", not "Evil." There is a culture gap there which will never be crossed. "Devil" implies an external force; "evil" implies a human source.

But put me in the "Believing in Evil" column anyway, even though C.S. Lewis convinced me that it makes as much sense to believe in a God as in a Devil. And I do believe in a God, although my degree of faith varies day to day. It would chart like the Dow Jones, with its long-term upward trend.

The denial of evil is dangerous. It leads naive or willfully naive folks to trust when they should not. Whenever I consult with a new patient, one of the first several things I quietly assess is their degree of what we call "sociopathy" - the strength of their conscience. Not whether they behave well, but whether they care enough in their bones about the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, integrity or deception, manipulation vs. genuine vulnerability, self-interest vs. genuine love.

It's not about how they act in public, or about what they say - successful sociopaths can be actors and good schmoozers, flattering, engaging and ingratiating, and sometimes charismatic. Those traits are red flags. Sociopathic people are rarely awkward or genuinely vulnerable. And while they are ultimately "takers" and "users," they don't want that to show, and, if they're really good, they can even make you feel good about it. They'll tell you how great you look and buy you a drink while they pick your pocket.

It is important for a psychiatrist because sociopathic people are beyond help, and we should not take their money. They don't tell us the whole story, and they shade it, distort it, provide false confessions and play other tricks. They cannnot help it, and that is the tragedy. Self before all, Self as God. Like Tony Soprano. And they find ways to justify or "rationalize" (a shrink term for justifying or excusing sin) this to themselves, or they don't even bother. Yes, they feel pain, but it's the wrong kind. There's only narcissitic pain - self-pain, or shame, or self-pity.

But, even as I write this, I see myself falling into my own trap, i.e. talking about evil as if it were pathology. It is not. When evil is strong, it is a form of spiritual death, of soul death - a thing that "chokes the breath of conscience and good cheer" and which brings pain and misery and destruction to others with it. This happens because the experience of soul-lessness, of inner hunger, of spiritual emptiness, drives people to fill the emptiness with money, power, admiration, adolescent-style nurturing, attention, a feeling of self-importance, multiple love or sex partners, "substances," etc. - always putting their image needs, and instinctive needs, first. Life as an extension of high-school. Feeling like objects, they treat others as objects too - as sources to fulfill their needs and hungers.

When I try to blend my psychoanalytic training with my religion, I view self-love as one key to thinking about evil. I don't mean ordinary vanity and conceit - I mean the hidden destructive self-interest which is easily concealed behind any number of facades, such as modest, victimized, or innocent demeanors, for common examples. Pride, envy, vengefulness, destructive or angry inner selves - these sins reside in all of us, which is why we need Christ to bail us out - but only evil can put on a real show of care.

The only thing psychiatrists have to offer to evil is prayer.

Why discuss this in The Blog? Because I think it is relevant to our view of the world, not just our personal lives. The Stalins and Hitlers and Saddams and Castros are too easy. Don't be paranoid in life - just insist that trustworthiness and decent intentions be proven, whether in world affairs or in your personal life, before you bestow the gift of trust.

And, for Heaven's sake, don't look for those good things in the world of international affairs. Just think about it for one second - who would want to be President of Russia? Or Dictator of Venezuela? The only reason I have some trust in Bush is because I don't believe he ever really wanted the job, or felt worthy of it. That is a "plus" in my book.

When I read this piece at And Rightly So, I thought it sounded like a pretty good list of reasonable family advice from a "school health teacher" - whatever that is.

Then I looked back and saw that it was her list of signs of "dysfunctional families."

See if you agree.

I advise my kids, as they grow up and enter the semi-adult social world, to appraise the people they meet - assuming they like them - before deciding to what extent they would invite them into their personal life, if at all.

We have all been disappointed by people, by ignoring things that were right in front of our eyes, especially when we were young.

Without ever getting into psychology, I just want them to be able to identify problem personality traits or personality types which have the potential to be damaging to them. I don't want them to obsess about it - just to be intelligently observant and to not take people at face value.

It's like Bird Dog identifying birds, or The Barrister having fun identifying fallacies. Call it "Know Your People."

The subject comes up because I was forwarded Instapundit's link to his wife's piece on Borderlines, at Dr. Helen. It can be difficult to write about psychological subjects for laypeople, because we tend to use so much jargon in our thinking, but she does a good job with the subject. However smart or charming Borderline women can be, guys are best off keeping an emotional distance from these often-exciting but angry and unstable females, because they can be very hurtful.

Other types worth identifying "in the field":

The "Slimies."  This includes the ingratiating, the manipulative, the liars, the smoothies, the users, the vengeful, the overly-earnest, the conniving, the calculating. More common in men. Stay away, because how slimies treat others is the way they will treat you when you are no longer useful or convenient.

The "Angries."  Always a complaint, without ability to take any joy in life. Just not any fun. Occurs in both mean and women.

The "Dopeys." They have never been curious enough about life to know much about anything beyond the totally conventional and superficial. Could be fun for a while, but ultimately dull and cannot enrich your life. Occurs equally in men and women.

The "Narcissists." They dig themselves so much that they don't really have much interest or energy for anyone else (unless the other is a "narcissistic object" - but that's too complicated for here). They want admiring mirrors more than they want real relationships. They are takers, often attractive and charming in a way, but they can be very unpleasant when they do not get the attention or adulation they believe they deserve. Enjoy them socially, but don't get too close. Occurs equally in men and women, but more obvious in women.

This is my final Larry Summers post, and I wish him the best:

Grievance-collecting, as we shrinks term it, is a personality trait which commonly serves the purpose of self-interest or self-aggrandizement. It is rarely, in normal life, a rational or justifiable mode of operating.

While it is typically associated with paranoid personality traits, our society has taught people that it can be useful as a ploy or manipulation, and that people can actually benefit from having grievances, rather than being pitied and getting plain old-fashioned attention.

In our topsy-turvy, politically-correct, hypersensitive world, having grievances becomes a badge of honor. This is psychologically perverse.

And it is perverse to claim "offense", in my opinion. Who said YOU shouldn't be offended, anyway? Surely we all deserve to be offended, and all will be whether we deserve to be, or not. But those who seek offense and collect it will surely find the most - and will invent or imagine it when they cannot find it.

Every psychiatrist has seen a woman who had a notebook, or a mental notebook, of every insenstive act or word of their husband since the day they met. What those women (yes, it's always women) never realize is that, if he wanted to, the husband could have the same notebook, but he doesn't focus on it.

What's that problem? That problem is imagining, or wishing, that the world would pander to our every little neurotic hypersensitive feeling. There is the infantile narcissism, which tends to be much more concealed or disguised where it appears in men. And in the political and academic worlds, this seeming-weakness is exploited, converted into power to control and manipulate through guilt, and to gain a free pass for one's own aggression or destructiveness.

In America today, that conscious and deliberate exploitation of this format is a dominant force, which few are brave enough to confront. Yet it must be confronted, not only because it is nuts, but because it damages the person who does it, in the long run.

In psychiatric practice, we confront victimization daily, and refuse to permit patients to use it as a cop-out and an excuse for avoiding performance, achievement, earned, positive attention, and building good relationships. There is no human dignity, and no self-respect, and no future, in a career of bitching.

Every human has tough things to deal with, whatever color, religion, nationality, sexual interest, etc. they are stuck with. Get over it, as the Eagles say, and grow up. And growing up means giving up the baby methods of power and attention...and accepting our best, small, humble contributions to life.

I have felt that those sniveling gals at Harvard who sunk Larry Summers really took the cake in this game, and I am ashamed of my association because of that ridiculous episode. But they showed their power, didn't they? The power of sniveling bitching. That does women no good whatsoever - they need to be the best in their class in Physical Chem II, Linear Algebra, and Discrete Probability, if they even want to do graduate work. Tears and hystrionic self-pity won't do it in the big world, where performance and mastery count.

Make a rocket land on Mars or circle Saturn - that means something. Some women can do that - most cannot. But neither can most men. But we can all do something useful in this world, and destroying others isn't it.

I only have a minute to post, but I
was amused both by a comment,
and by Bird Dog's response. He should have asked me to do it for him, but he would never bother me on a beautiful weekend.

Mr. Anonymous, our critical blog friend and a sporadic reader of Maggie's, seems to feel offended by Maggie's "misogyny" for referring to female's desire to breed. Misogyny? Two out of our five regulars are women, with 7 kids between us two. Breeding is our thing, and semiotics comes second! (joke)

I know Bird Dog would be happy to take on another one, too, but counting genitalia is not his thing (as far as I know, but I know him well enough to know that he would not be that wierd).

Our blog is not totally into genitalia - mostly into ideas, but we do like humor and irony (despite being a no-irony zone). And we cheerfully defy any PC bull. But let me inform Mr. Anonymous about something his daddy never told him: men are sex objects for women. We spend a heck of a lot of time and money and energy looking for good breeding partners with decent genes and morals, and when we find them, we do not give them a vacation from their manly task: we put them to work and expect that they will give us their all. I wonder what asexual world he grew up in, or what lesbian college orthodoxy he was indoctrinated into, but it is not the real world. Maybe he went to Swarthmore? True, occasionally we enjoy getting one over on you guys with our "boo-hoo-hoo," but it's just a game we play.

We do not appreciate males who do not respond to our sexual, feminine selves. In fact, we are painfully hurt and offended if you do not. Truth. (My 16 year-old daughter concurs with this statement.) If we flirt with you, you had damn well better flirt back with interest and some snappy repartee.

We lovely, charmin' women women are breeders. We are designed for it - read our hips - and you fellows know you cannot resist our charms. No doubt about it. Sometimes we take an evil delight in toying with you, using our magical, witchy powers. Almost anything else we do is for fun or money - and this is not the time to get into the life of the spirit. Got it? Enough said?

Now I have a tennis match - and my pal and I are gonna crush our hubbies. David - now there is a real man and a fine hunk, and I'd love to fantasize about trying to "receive his serve". Rock-hard, I am sure. Nude tennis - there is an idea for the club: nude mixed doubles. A good thing. No distraction whatsoever! Haha - we are not a libido-free zone at Maggie's Farm!

I noticed the comments, especially on other blogs, related to our post a week ago by Capt. Gilmore, who offered us a follow-up note on his original letter, which we have since posted there. We do not know the Captain, but I see no reason to doubt him.

The desire, on the part of many, to deny that his letter was true seemed odd to me, until I realized that it must represent the desire to deny that 9-11 actually happened and was a Jihadist attack - or who would care?

It did happen, and it was a Jihadist attack. How many others have there been over the past 15 years? Plenty. Why desire not to believe it?

Because if you believe it, you have to do something about it. Much more comfortable to imagine that the attacks in London, and the attack on the Cole, and the first WTC attack, and all the others, were performed by an evil Bush-Israeli conspiracy for some dark but as yet-uncoded purpose. But, wait a minute - Bush wasn't Pres during most of them, was he? Well, maybe Bush and Clinton were in on it together...along with the rest of the government. Sure...that makes perfect sense: When Clinton was Pres, he probably said "George, I'll take a pass on killing these suckers, if you promise you will get them, after I rig your election, so you will get the credit and I will get...more Monica."

Trying to think like a paranoid is exhausting. We try to be sane, but if the blogosphere is a loony bin, I want out.

If I had the time today, I would go into this more deeply, but I cannot. But when I look at this thing on AOL News today - vote and check the numbers - one truly has to wonder about the irrationality, conspiracy cranks,  and wierd distrust that is going around. It is Bedlam. Maybe it's caused by fluoridation? (joke)

Sometimes I feel like adding comments, such as "Have you taken your medicine today?" However, I resist that impulse, since it would not lead to any civil exchange. One last thought: If a Dem were in office right now, and going to war against Jihad, he would be the "Franklin Roosevelt" of our generation. No doubt. 'Nuf said.

Editor's Note: More on this sad subject - "Whack Jobs Convene" - at Atlas.

Let me place the Al Gore quote in context, from a brief interview about his movie at Grist Magazine:

Interviewer: There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix?

Gore: I think the answer to that depends on where your audience's head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.

Over time that mix will change. As the country comes to more accept the reality of the crisis, there's going to be much more receptivity to a full-blown discussion of the solutions.

How much would you bet that his "solution" would entail government control of the American economy? A "Five-Year Plan," perhaps?

Over 100 readers have complained, on my original post this week, that his statement conveys no dishonest intent. In my book, half-truths and distortions in a documentary intended to inform and influence, if not frighten, is dishonest, cynically manipulative, condescending to the point of contemptuousness and, in the end, self-defeating.

It is self-defeating because you lose your credibility, and become a common crank. People aren't dumb, except when they want to be. The fact is that anyone can cherry pick data on any subject: the economy, the weather, the dangerousness of ladders, the dangerousness of Coca Cola - and create an instant "crisis." But such "discussions" are not in good faith - they are the ordinary tricks of disputation - "lawyerly", in the worst sense.

Are half-truths lies? You decide for yourself. For me, they are.

My opinion after this whole Al Gore storm this week on the blog: This issue is not about science; it's about politics or, as Al Gore puts it, it's a  "spiritual issue."  Hence the emotion.

For more quotes from the Global Warming Big Lie squad, see continuation page below - these statements will bother you, even if Big Al does not:

Whew.

I have been thoroughly farked.

I have never had one of my pieces "farked" before (see my post prior to this one), but I have also never been subjected to so much rage in my life, as in the abundant comments. "Wingnut"? Me? They would never call me that, if they were lucky enough to meet me. 172 comments!

It wasn't even a piece about global warming - just a piece about how the human conscience works. What's the big fuss? Is Al Gore a sacred cow?... or a Sacred Bull? And then does his BS not stink?

This is not war, dear gentle readers.

What especially bothered me is that essentially all of the over-heated comments missed the entire point of the post. Perhaps I should have used the example of "Bush lied so we can get all of this nice cheap oil?" But I have no comparable confession from Bush, nor do I see all of the cheap oil.

Yes, that photo is me, at Cape Cod last summer.  Surfer's Beach (White Crest Beach), where the strong and manly hands of the waves will firmly, steadily and relentlessly disrobe a lady of both her upper and her lower bathing garments, if she is not careful, and unveil the glory of her secret delights.

By the way, if I misread Gore's intent, I will say so. I am not convinced, but I am a Mass General doctor with a Harvard MD. Not a lawyer, but not stupid either: I do not parse - I just read, like a normal person. I can't help it if I am attractive - God made me this way, to be a good breeder, and I like it.

Image: Copyright Harvard Medical School Faculty Facebook

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For us head-shrinkers, public figures make for great case examples, because there is no confidentiality issue. The downside, of course, is that we don't really know them in any depth. All we have are public words and behavior.

Al Gore offered us a nice example last week when he stated, about his admittedly propagandizing and fear-mongering movie Inconvenient Truths:

"...I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis."

So it is appropriate to lie? Should we re-name it Convenient Lies?  

Although this is not the first time Big Al has made similar statements about his choices (the "no controlling legal authority" case), I will not throw stones, because I do not claim to be perfect. Instead, I'll just take a minute to look at the meaning of his statement.

I take it as a given that all humans are prone to immoral thoughts and to wrong-doing, or temptations for wrong-doing: there would be no need for laws, rules, or morals if that were not so. And it is known that, while a small fraction of the population lacks any meaningfully-functioning conscience, most people have consciences of varying degrees of strength and effectiveness. Whenever we "size up" a new person, that is always an essential item on the list.

The conscience functions by sending up warnings to us when we are heading into behavior we feel might be morally questionable; by punishing us with guilt or shame or remorse when we cross our moral lines; by rewarding us with the wonderful feeling of self-respect when we follow our moral expectations; and by holding up for us an ideal of who and what our best self could be. Living with one's conscience is one of the great challenges of being an adult: we struggle with it, and sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.

There are a number of tricks we can play on our conscience, though, in an effort to make it leave us alone and give us a free pass. Our case example of the day highlights one of the most effective tricks: Rationalizing.

What Gore said - and I believe that he believes what he said - is that it is OK for him to deceive the public by distorting and cherry-picking and exaggerating facts, because it's for a good cause and because he means well. (No doubt he rationalized illegal fund-raising with a similar justification. Hey - everything can be a "crisis", right?)  

Translated, this says: "If my intentions are good, or if I have a good excuse, then the ends justify the means and my inconvenient morality can take a vacation." (When you think about it, though, morals are always "inconvenient." Always. The Ten Commandments were a great gift to our better selves, from a God who well knew our weaknesses and flaws, and who longs for the best for us and from us, but who offers us the respect to make our own choices.)

That form of thinking is enormously corrupt and corrupting, because it can justify anything - lies, theft, mass murder, adultery, injustice, mayhem, exploitation, cruelty, disloyalty - you name it. To use this trick, all you need to do is to convince yourself that you are aggrieved, or that "everybody does it,"  or that you are such a superb person that you are on the side of the angels - and you get a free pass from your conscience. No wonder it's such a popular self-deception for those with, shall we say, "flexible" consciences, aka serious moral flaws.

If you can believe that the angels are on your side, or that you are a victim, or that you are better than other people - anything goes (especially if you can burnish it with a gloss of phony idealism or victim entitlement). How damnably convenient!

Matthew 16: "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

Image: I like the image of Jiminy Cricket as the representative of our conscience. We all need him, perched on our shoulder and whispering into our ear, at all times. If you want to enjoy yourself in the short-term - ignore him. He is a party-pooper but, in the end, he is on your side.

Editor's note: For an honest and rational discussion of the greenhouse effect, try Junk Science. And click on our blog headline to read more posts this week responding to this piece, and to the commenters on this piece.

"You know something is happening
here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"

I have always thought of the capacity for irony as a good, rule-of-thumb IQ test.

Language without an occasional twist of irony is like language without metaphor.

However, if you don't get the definition of the word correctly, you can't use the concept. The word is only properly used to refer to something addressed to a dual audience, or "as if" to a dual audience: one in the know, and one not.

The usage has been contaminated by the illiterate, and is now sometimes used to apply to the "incongruous" or "unexpected", as in "Ironically, we both showed up at the wedding in the same dress." The cutest way to say that would be "Funnily enough,..."

One amusing use of irony is to say stupid things, or ungrammatical things, with the assumption that those in the know will figure that you are using irony, while others will figure that you are plain uneducated or ignorant. Start with "nucular."

Anyway, world - let's get the usage down properly: there is no excuse for abuse of English, since it has now become our "national language."

Ed: Image of Dr. Bliss added to this post, entirely without irony.

A quote from Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, after Lee's semi- boyfriend Cross loses a basketball game:

When the buzzer sounded, I looked at Cross and was astonished to see that he was crying. I looked away reflexively, then looked back; his face was scrunched-up and red, and he was roughly wiping his eyes and shaking his head, but he wasn't trying to hide it...

Sports contained the truth, I decided, the unspoken truth (how quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound), and it seemed hard to believe that I had never understood this before. They rewarded effortlessness and unself-consciousness; they confirmed that yes, there are rankings of skill and value and that everyone knows what they are (seeing those guys who were subbed with two seconds left before the end of a quarter, I'd think how girl's coaches would never be that heartless); they showed that the best things in the world were to be young and strong and fast.

Kay Hymowitz reviews a new book by Flanagan: To Hell with all that: Loving and Loathing our Inner Housewife. The radical feminists hate her, but they should not: it's the radical feminists who "reinforce stereotypes." Who would want to be the kid of a radical feminist? Not me.

Quote from the excellent review:

What Flanagan might have better underscored is that her real subject is not The Question: To Work Or Not To Work. It is love. Flanagan had a fierce devotion to her own mother, whose presence haunts the book. She experienced in her mother’s pot roasts and freshly ironed laundry the embodiment of comfort, safety, and love. Despite Flanagan’s deficiencies in the domestic arts, it’s a feeling she badly wants to bring to her own family. What this talented writer reminds us of are two simple truths that are apostasy to the fundamentalists and, sadly, lost to many young women who never saw them in action: that when working properly, satisfying domestic life can embody a mother’s love for her children, the most powerful love there is; and that no matter how women choose to live, this love will forever be entangled with self-sacrifice.

Should this really be the stuff of war without end?

Whole thing at City Journal here - it's good, and funny.

Image: A young woman gazing at the ocean at Cahoon's Hollow, wondering about her identity, feminist stereotyping, male oppression, and the meaning of life - and hoping she'll meet the tall, dark and handsome man of her dreams at the bar later on.

The ending, last night, was the height of TV. Paulie, sitting silently with his Mom on an authentic Italian New Jersey sofa, stunned, emasculated, and disoriented, watching Lawrence Welk.

Am I alone in thinking that this season's Sopranos is the best that it has ever been?

Finally, this bunch of vulgar and ignorant sociopaths and low-lifes are actually being affected by life and reality. I discussed this with the hubby last week; we decided that only Chris and Paulie would be immune to change. Woops. Wrong!

The moving part of this is the idea that these ruthless creeps might really have hearts and souls, buried deep inside - however immature, self-centered, paranoid, and undeveloped they are. And the bits about Vito in New Hampshire - wonderful. Live Free or Die! It makes you sympathetic to every lost gay fellow, searching for a real life. It almost brought tears to these eyes when Vito and the diner cook went riding off on their motorcycles through the New Hampshire hills.

I heard a semi-well-informed rumor that they might come back next season...we'll see.  I hope so, because it is finally becoming more interesting than it was - and it was always brilliantly-made, with perfect detail. And with perfect music.

I think it was in Annie Hall. Alvy Singer is putting together a lobster dinner for his date with Annie - the famous lobster scene. She reads from the paper about the serial killer striking again, and he replies "I was nowhere near there."

My point is not to comment on Jewish guilt. Almost every religion and ethnic group with which I am familiar thinks they have the worst case of guilt. (Not sure about Islam. Do they feel guilty if they fail to kill an infidel?)

My point is to comment on neurotic guilt vs. healthy, normal guilt. Woody Allen's line is funny because it touches the neurotically guilty place in all of us. Normal people with sturdy consciences commonly have a slice of neurotic guilt in their personalities, unfortunately. It is usually a guilt about  bad thoughts, bad impulses, destructive tendencies, ugly selfish conniving, envy, cruelty, etc., or about minor, easily forgiveable moral slips. Oftentimes, such thoughts and impulses are out of our awareness, but the key is that, with neurotic guilt, one hasn't really done much to feel guilty about.

Healthy, wholesome guilt occurs to those with strong consciences when they truly cross a major line which is engraved in their hearts. It is painful, and should be painful. The warning and the punishment is self-administered, as it should be. A non-neurotic sense of guilt is, in my opinion, a matter of the spirit and not so much a matter of psychology. Everyone has stupidly or carelessly screwed up, if they have lived long enough, but a pattern of wrong-doing without appropriate self-punishment bespeaks a spiritual void as well as a non-functioning conscience. (We call that pride, or self-love, or narcissism, or sociopathy.)

Sometimes I wonder whether liberals wear guilt as a badge of pride. It is known to occur in AA meetings, where sometimes folks believe that the lower into tatoo-land they have gone, the more authority they can claim. Silly, and perversely narcissitic.

The subject comes up after reading Shelby Steele's instantly-famous essay, which basically rips apart "liberal guilt" and shows it to be the neurotic foolishness that it is.

(The subject of guilt also fits with Wednesday's post on "feelings," ...and it also comes up after reading today's post on the World Council of Churches, which contains an appalling display of public self-congratulatory hystrionic hand-wringing - so self-congratulatory, in fact, that I tend to doubt its sincerity and wonder whether it is a pseudo-humble, pseudo-contrite form of political statement. Ostentatious contrition is sometimes just the flip side of spiritual pride. If you read the whole piece at Touchstone, you will see that it's a living satire, like Woody Allen's line. I can say that, as an American citizen, I am pretty much guilt-free as far as I know, but as an individual, I am morally imperfect, and thus disconnected from God's loving but inscrutable will, despite my aspirations.)

Steele demonstrates that the undercurrent of irrational guilt in our culture, nurtured by a generation of America-haters devoted to highlighting historical imperfections and ignoring historical sources of national pride, has weakened our spine, our confidence, our common sense - and our freedom to pursue our self-interest. This is very similar to what neurotic guilt can do to an individual.

Here is short list of things about which almost all of us can say "I was nowhere near there": slavery, racial discrimination, genocide, destroying the planet, oppressing helpless people, imposing our religion on others, imperialism, evil intentions, raping and killing women and children. "Collective guilt"? Let's forget that notion: caring for our own souls is a big enough job, and a life-time job. I have no idea how preachers do what they do...

Discrimination against individuals I do not like or approve of? You bet. Always. Capitalism? Wonderful - gives everyone freedom to pursue their own path as they see fit.

There are another ten pages in this, but this is enough for now.

Image: Woody and Keaton in Annie Hall.

An afterthought: Christ set a high standard - impossibly high - in His most famous preaching, in His commentary on the Ten Commandments in the  Sermon on the Mount. Among many other things, He came close to equating evil thought with evil action, thus making all humans sinners, for sure. But Christians accept that, just as they accept the need for supernatural salvation. That is another spiritual matter, and not a psychological one.

As a psychiatrist, and a Christian, I deal with these two realities, sometimes with difficulty. Life is not meant to be easy, despite what the French want to think. "I never promised you a rose garden."