Brief Politico-Therapies: A Quick Tour Of The Psych-Bloggers

Well, it seems as though a week couldn't possibly have passed, and yet it did. "News From Around The Weird" this week would include GM (Moi, Myself, Yo) who has quit his j.o.b. and is headed back to full time private practice... oh the thrill, oh the excitement... oh the absolute stark raving terror!!! Be that as it may, it's time for another tour around the Psych-Bloggers. You know, the professional psychotherapists who have for some reason fixated on politics. As if our patients didn't cause problems what with insurance billing, missed appointments, sullen complaints about not being given priority on appointments, we have to tackle politics and people and motivation and all sorts of stuff too.

Our usual list of suspects presented this week include Dr. Helen, Dr. Sanity, Shrinkwrapped, neo-neocon, Assistant Village Idiot, One Cosmos (Gagdad Bob), Sigmund, Carl and Alfred as well as OK, So I'm Not Really A Cowboy and, as usuall, they have a heck of a lot to say, and they say it so very well.

First up this week is, of course, Dr. Sanity who graciously passed the baton of blogging on the psych-bloggers to me. She posts on Utopian Dreams and Nightmares. This is a must read for all the radical leftists out there who just can't see the forest for all the trees:

You can then count on the true leftist believer to close his eyes not only to his own internal reality, but also to the external reality that proves the uselessness of his beliefs in the real world. Few on the left have ever acknowledged the nightmare of the Soviet gulag; or Lenin's purges; or China's crackdowns. Few have ever even accepted the incredible human cost their ideologies have taken on humanity; the death the suffering and misery. Even today, they actively support all the future Stalin's (like the thug Chavez) in their grabs for unparalleled power. Chavez, of course, follows the pure utopian aspirations of the typical leftist and is only allowing himself to become "dictator for life" because he wants to help his people. [See here about the rise of neo-fascism in Latin America and here about the neo-marxist fascists of the left]

In a similar light but with a really funny intro to a long, and oh-so-very interesting post, Gagdad Bob weighs in with L. Bob Gagdad and The Cult Of Merry Raccoons taking a well deserved poke at the left:

When you talk about the differences between me and a typical leftist, you might as well be talking about different species. The left, of course, is obsessed with trivial racial differences, but the difference between me and a leftist is infinitely greater than any differences based on race, class or gender. I am a member of the same race as anyone who shares my values. Therefore, Tom Sowell and I are members of the same race, just as Margaret Thatcher and I are members of the same gender. On the other hand, the girlish John Edwards and I are the opposite sex, and Al Sharpton is from another planet altogether. "Race" hardly defines our differences in any meaningful manner, and yet, the racist left believes that it is All Important.

There is a reason why leftism is an ideology that appeals to losers, misfits, the envious, the unhappy, and the addle-brained young. It is not that leftism creates the demand. Rather, these people demand an ideology to cater to their various pathologies and deficits. In other words, it is a demand-side politics that arises from certain unfortunate but ubiquitous trends in human nature. However, once the ideology is created, then its central task will be the creation of more lost souls who demand the ideology of leftism. Here again, this is one of the keys to understanding most any leftist policy, which fosters dependency, envy, narcissistic entitlement, and victimization.

And now, boys and girls, ladies and germs (with apologies to the shade of Uncle Miltie) we turn to that famous psychiatrist with a predilection for Saran Wrap, ShrinkWrapped. Our intrepid psychiatrist begins with:

Lynch mobs do not behave in ways which reward rational responses. When hundreds of angry, fearful people are swept up in the irrational tide of hatred that leads to lynchings, there is no way to reason with them. They "know" that the perpetrators of great crimes are guilty. They don't need any facts and no amount of argumentation will convince them otherwise. In fact, those who have the temerity to oppose the lynch mob are likely to become identified with the victim of the mob and end up injured or murdered in the mob's quest for "justice." The best way to stop the progress of a lynch mob is to specifically single out a leader, point a gun at him, and let him know in no uncertain terms, that if he does not call off the lynching, he will be the first victim of the mob. Of course, any lawman who does such a thing recognizes that he is putting his own life on the line and the outcome is always uncertain; since the mob is caught up in a rage and has left their rationality far behind, the threat can just as easily increase their rage as shock them into rationality again.

Go read the rest of ShrinkWrapped's post Israel and The Lynch Mob, you won't be sorry at all.

The Assistant Village Idiot writes a letter to his 80 year old Uncle and discusses the Arts and Humanities Tribe with his post The Long Post You May Want To Skim - Or Miss. I strongly recommend you read every word. A.V.I. has a unique way of looking at political/social "tribes" that is breathtaking:

We’re not in danger of kids learning too much hagiography about dead white males and founding fathers anymore. My Romanian sons were taught who Harriet Tubman and Chief Seattle were (and that one frosts me, because the speech is an urban legend written in the 70’s. My irritation at the nasty irony of children being born under Ceaucescu being taught fabricated but politically correct history was completely opaque to their teacher. “But it’s important for them to learn about culture from another point of view!” True. How about from one that actually happened, instead?), but Lincoln got missed. So did Franklin.

Dearly Beloved, let us now turn to she who intently looks at a Granny Smith Apple (when you click on the link, you'll see what I mean) none other than neo-neocon. Neo, as we Psych-Bloggers call her, has written possibly the best article on defining neocons I've read in some time. Hating those dreadful neocons (Part I): cavils about cabals. In this, she notes an almost (nah, fully) anti-semitic belief about neocons:

But the use of the word "cabal" alone does not an anti-Semite make. One of the many hallmarks of anti-Semitism, however (almost a fingerprint), is a situation in which Jews are not allowed the same sort of leeway others are; when they are held to higher or different standards than the rest. So neocons are not allowed to simply be a group of people who share a particular approach to foreign policy--for example, much as the realpolitikers are--and with whom many happen to disagree. An approach which, like all approaches, is flawed, and leads sometimes to difficulties. An approach advocated by people who are sincere and well-meaning, but perhaps misguided, according to detractors.

No, they are evil plotters, bent on controlling the world for their own nefarious purposes, much like those Elders of Zion we've heard so much about.

Dr. Helen has an all too brief post on Youth Suicides Up:

The rate of youth suicides is up and it is possible that the reduction of antidepressant drugs is to blame:

New government figures show a surprising increase in youth suicides after a decade of decline, and some mental health experts think a drop in use of antidepressant drugs may be to blame.

Dr. Helen may be on to something. Aggressive treatment of depression seems to decrease rates of suicide as I noted in a post from almost two years ago:

Suicide is far too often not a well thought out action, but an action of desperation, of despondency, of a belief that nothing will again be better.

On a different note, we turn to OK, So I'm Not Really A Cowboy who has written a well crafted elegy for his friend Eric Shockley:

Eric was larger than life. And he was taken long before his time. But I take solace in the fact that everything I do, he does. That whatever I manage to do with my life is in no small part his doing. That if I can push people the way he pushed me, to find themselves and in so doing find each other, that if I accomplish nothing else, it’ll still be a life well spent.

Folks, this one should be suggested reading for anyone who has lost a friend or loved one.

Sigmund, Carl & Alfred, always bright and engaging have outdone "themselves" (SGA, Three Shrinks In One™) with Progressives, Wheels and Darwin. In this post, SGA takes a look at what progressives have really engendered, despite what they think they are doing:

Why isn't there a single example of a successful 'People's Paradise'? How is it that the best of intentioned revolutionaries was never able to produce a functional society? Why is it that societies that espouse economic equality and predicated on well meaning ideals, either secular or religious, have proved to be abject failures?

Socialists mistakenly believe that a collective 'unity' of beliefs, thoughts and ideologies empower a society. Their strength, they believe, are in the numbers of those who share their ideologies. Socialists believe that they have every right to design a society based on what they believe is in the best interest of that society. They also believe that an unwillingness to conform to their ideals, poses a threat, and quite possibly, a danger.

And, rounding up our little tour of the Psych Bloggers, we come at last (but never least) to me, and since I've already given you an older sample of my psych blogging, I'll not make your forehead wrinkle in puzzlement over my terse and often incomprehensible prose. Thanks for the many encouragements to me for taking on the task of giving a weekly roundup from some of the finest thinkers in the blogosphere; those who share not only my profession, but also my politics and my passion for politics. C U next week (Well, if you are a regular reader I'll see you a bit more often than that I hope. Oh, and by the way, if you wish me luck in opening up my private practice again I'll not be upset.