Brain Rot

The Oxford dictionary has declared “brain rot” to be the word of the year. We will not nitpick that the term contains two words, but clearly the American mind, and especially the minds of American college students are rotting. 

When large numbers of college students in our most elite institutions find Luigi Mangione to be a hero, you know that something has rotted their brains. 

When they are not joining groups like Queers for Palestine or Feminists for Honor Killings American university students are lining up to extol the consummate virtue of an assassin,

One suspects that they consider Mangione to be a revolutionary hero, a man who has taken action against the patriarchy and against capitalism. That defines the fiction that they are all inhabiting. 

It’s one thing to see that the American university system at the highest level is an indoctrination mill that advances radical leftist thought. It is quite another to see that those who imbibe this swill will feel obliged to idolize someone who acts on the theories.

After all, believing the correct orthodox beliefs will never be sufficient. Students and young adults who want to move to the next level must take actions that demonstrate the depth of their conviction, or at least must idolize those who do. 

The reason, Joel Kotkin explains, lies with the American university system. Clearly, he is not the first to indict academia for having gone to the intellectual dark side, for having given up on teaching and for having chosen to force feed leftist ideology.

In the great clash of civilizations we are risking failure, because the academy has become a fifth column that has worked long and hard to undermine the bases for American greatness. That means, not just patriotic pride but the use of empirical thinking to establish truth. 

Too many of us believe that our greatness lies in the fact that we engage in free and open debate. But they fail to notice that such deliberative debate requires an empirical reference to establish truth value. And that it requires a pragmatic consideration for what does and does not work.

In place of empirical science students are being force-fed ideology, to the point where they resemble those medieval clerics who were taken before inquisitions to suss out heresies. They have embraced theory, to the point where they refuse to believe that it can be refuted by fact.

If students are judged in terms of what they believe as dogmatic truth they are not being prepared to work in the real world and to respect the verdict of objective reality and the marketplace.

Kotkin writes:

Ideologically homogenous universities have become something akin to indoctrination camps, where traditional Western values are trashed while woke ideology is promoted. Not surprisingly, the graduates of today’s universities are inclined to maintain rigid positions on various issues, confident of their own superior intelligence and perspicuity while being intolerant of other views. They also tend to be not particularly proud to be American. The kind of support professors gave to the war effort in the Second World War would be hard to imagine today.

When it was merely about the humanities and even the social sciences, no one paid much attention. But now the woke mindset is being extended to the sciences, where empirical verification has been thrown aside in favor of identity politics.

Yet as the progressive educrats have seized control, many of the disciplines they dominate, like English and history, have experienced severe decline. More recently, the woke mindset has even spread into the sciences. Now we see science departments emphasising ‘social justice’ over empiricism, and placing race, gender or other considerations ahead of merit. In 2020, the medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles gave control of admissions to a DEI administrator. Since admitting students based on race, the failure rate in exams has increased tenfold.

If I were to try to explain this in a simple concept, the educrats and the ideologues are working to detach you from reality. This is obvious in the case of transgenderism, which defies reality but which you are forced to believe is a higher truth.

Without reality to put the brakes on your schemes and dreams, you will find yourself, not just promoting bad policy, but refusing to change it when they are shown to fail. Without a real reference there is no failure. There is only messaging.

Consider the case of two detectives, coming on two crime scenes. The first has a theory. He believes it unquestionably. He will set about collecting evidence that proves his theory correct, discarding evidence that refutes it. 

He believes the theory, takes it as dogma, because it provides him with membership in a local cult of true believers. Solving a crime is a second thought.

The second detective begins his enquiry by collecting evidence. He begins by noting anything that is out of place, that does not quite seem to fit. The more he collects evidence the sooner he will see a hypothesis forming. Then, he will test the hypothesis against all the evidence collected and against all future evidence. 

His empirical approach is designed to approach the truth of what happened and even of whodunit. Such is the approach that has currently been banished from too many universities, to the point where someone who lives out the terms of the ideologically driven narrative, by killing an insurance executive, is lionized as a hero.

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Three Days Before Christmas and Hanukkah

Tis the season…. 

This year Christmas occurs on the first day of Hanukkah. It’s a clear example of Judeo-Christian inclusivity.

As has become habitual, I pause on Sunday. It’s that time of the week, a time for reflection and contemplation. It also allows my readers to catch up on posts that they might have missed during the week.

I would like to think that among the topics for deep reflection is this one. Considering the time and effort it takes to write these posts, one would like to think that they are worthy of compensation.

Thus, in place of a tithe, I make a humble request for donations. 

I have been posting on this blog for nearly sixteen years now. It is not self-evident. I could not have done it without the financial support of you, my readers.

If you would like to show appreciation and to encourage me to continue, a good way would be by making a financial contribution. Gratitude is a virtue. 

I try to make my writing sound effortless, but, as the old saying goes, it takes a lot of work to make anything seem effortless. 

If you would like to donate please make use of the Paypal button on this page. If you prefer, you can mail a check to 310 East 46th St. 24H. New York, NY 10017.

I’m counting on you. 

If you have already donated, please pass the word along to your friends, family, neighbors, associates and colleagues.

Thank  you in advance.

Saturday Miscellany

First, you would think that the Democrats would be all over this story-- like a rash. And yet, the story of the institutional dereliction about anti-Semitism on and off campus was told by the Republican Congress. 

After all, when Columbia University was overrun with Hamas supporters, making it dangerous for Jewish students to go to class, House Speaker Mike Johnson led a group of legislators to the school, to show solidarity.

Democrats did not.

Now, the House has come out with a report, via the New York Post:

The Biden administration, top universities and medical institutions utterly failed to crack down on antisemitism that exploded in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack, according to a scathing House Republican report released Thursday, which laid bare “systemic” and “astounding” shortcomings.

Six GOP-led House committees declared in a joint report that “antisemitism has been allowed to fester unchecked” due to “a disturbing pattern of defensiveness and denial,” according to a copy exclusively obtained by The Post.

“Across the nation, Jewish Americans have been harassed, assaulted, intimidated, and subjected to hostile environments — violations that stand in stark contrast to America’s fundamental values, including a foundational commitment to religious freedom for all,” the 42-page report says.

As I said, you would think that Democrats would be up in arms about the return of a virulent form of anti-Semitism. They are not.

The report focuses heavily on Columbia University and its recommendations urge federal agencies to use money to incentivize more stringent anti-discrimination policies — and also proposes potential legislation to that effect.

“The executive branch should aggressively enforce Title VI [anti-discrimination rules] and hold schools accountable for their failures to protect students. Universities that fail to fulfill the obligations upon which their federal funding is predicated or whose actions make clear they are unfit stewards of taxpayer dollars should be treated accordingly,” the Republican panels said.

The Ivy League school, which was the site of a large encampment that featured on its fringes multiple documented instances of anti-Jewish remarks against pro-Israel activists and Jewish students, also reneged on a vow to punish students accused of breaking the rules to protest against Israel.

“Columbia said the 22 students arrested for the criminal takeover of Hamilton Hall would face expulsion. Instead, the University lifted the students’ interim suspensions after pushback from radical faculty, allowing 7 to graduate, restoring 11 to good standing, and leaving 3 with preexisting sanctions suspended and 1 on probation,” the report said.

“Despite dozens of students being arrested for conduct related to Hamilton Hall and the encampment, or having faced discipline for other egregious antisemitic incidents; Columbia failed to expel students and issued final suspensions to only four students.”

Incoming president Trump-- you know, the one that Democrats keep calling Hitler-- has promised to tamp down these protests. Time will tell if he keeps his word.

Second, Mario Nawfal brings us up to date on the progress of Argentinian president Javier Milei-- fast becoming a culture hero to the libertarian right around the world.

MILEI DELIVERS: ARGENTINA’S POVERTY PLUMMETS UNDER HIS LEADERSHIP Big win for @JMilei as Argentina’s poverty rate drops to 38.9% in Q3, a dramatic improvement from 54.8% in Q1 and 51% in Q2, according to INDEC. 

Indigence has also taken a nosedive, falling to 8.6% from 20.2% earlier this year. These results showcase the power of Milei’s bold economic reforms, proving skeptics wrong and reigniting hope for Argentina’s economy.

Third, maybe Disney just got tired of losing money with woke productions. Newsmax explains that the company removed a transgender story line from a new series:

Disney has cut a transgender storyline from its upcoming animated series "Win or Lose," a decision that has left the 18-year-old transgender actor who voiced the highlighted character "very disheartened."

The new Disney-owned Pixar animated series, set to premiere on Disney+ Feb. 19, follows a coed middle school softball team called the Pickles as they prepare for their championship game, according to CNN. Each of the eight episodes will focus on a different member of the team.

However, a storyline involving gender identity has been removed from the series. According to a source familiar with the matter, the character will remain in the show, but the decision to exclude the plot point was made several months ago. The changes go beyond script adjustments, as the character's dialogue had already been recorded.

Fourth, as you know, the Netherlands has produced some of the worst studies of transmania. These studies are the basis for the problems that more than a few people suffer.

But, that’s not all folks. The Netherlands is also leading the world in euthanasia-- assisted suicide for people who are especially depressed. 

The Guardian has published a long and detailed account of the case of Zoe, a young woman who found her suffering unbearable, to the point where she persuaded her physicians and therapists to put her to death. The story was written by Stephanie Bakker.

Naturally, the Dutch practice revolts. Giving up seems never to be a good option. And it cannot help patients when their licensed professional caregivers discuss it as a viable option.

Zoe’s case compels because, at the last minute, after she had arranged for her death and said all of her goodbyes, she changed her mind. She decided against death, at the risk of disappointing her therapists.

On the verge of death, she wrote this:

Dear all, I changed my mind at the last minute and won’t be dying today. My apologies for any panic that I may have caused.

The case study is certainly compelling. Bakker writes:

Zoë had wanted to die because she was unable and unwilling to live with the consequences of childhood traumas. Everyday things such as showering, brushing her teeth, getting dressed and sleeping in her own bed were triggers that brought back the most awful memories, which she then would relive all over again. The nightmares made it all but impossible to sleep and there were times when she lived on fluids because she couldn’t bear solid food in her mouth.

Dare we say that she had been diagnosed and treated by an army of therapists and psychiatrists:

She was bullied in school and given a whole raft of diagnoses by mental health practitioners. Anxiety disorder, anorexia, depression, borderline personality disorder, you name it. These were eventually whittled down to a single diagnosis: complex post-traumatic stress disorder, caused by severe childhood trauma.

One cannot vouch for the quality of the treatment on offer in the Netherlands, but Zoe seems to have suffered through every variety:

All Zoë’s other symptoms stemmed from this [childhood trauma], but that hadn’t stopped her from receiving treatment for them for 10 years: cognitive behavioural therapy, creative therapy, schema therapy, family therapy, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR), exercises to improve her self-image, eight different antidepressants and 21 rounds of electroshock therapy.

She felt like the loser who didn’t respond to treatment, the girl who hadn’t tried hard enough to get better. For fear of disappointing or being disappointed, she pushed away anyone who showed her any kindness. She was lonely.

By all accounts, she had become a professional patient. She did not have a life. She had been removed from her life, from the chance to make friends, to go do school, you name it. Her traumas had defined her. And her therapists seemed to believe that they ought to define her.

Of course, once you tell a patient that suicide is a viable option, she will start thinking that it is perhaps the only way she can be a really good patient. By killing herself she would have been saying that they did not fail her, that she was a hopeless case.

She explained what had happened with Bakker:

“Everybody was angry when I didn’t die, or else they went away, on holiday,” she told me when I visited her at the clinic in mid-July. “Now I feel more strongly than ever that I have to die, because otherwise everybody will be annoyed.”

Strikingly, aside from an army of therapists and a family that seems rather useless, Zoe seems to have one friend in the world. That is, journalist Stephanie Bakker.

Addendum: I now have some free consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, email me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com

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Bye-bye Biden

The media is saying good-bye to Joe Biden. Some would say that it is also good riddance, but today we limit ourselves to the full throated rationalization of media lies about Biden.

As everyone understood when watching Biden’s June debate with Donald Trump, the president is not there. He is incoherent and obviously mentally defective. The notion that he would be able to do the job for four years became risible. 

And yet, the larger question is quite simple-- has Joe Biden been doing the job for these past four years. In 2020 Dr. Michael Burry, of Big Short fame, opined that Biden was suffering from senile dementia, and that the condition normally advances rapidly.

People whose visceral and mindless hatred of Donald Trump caused them to lie about Joe Biden, are trying to explain themselves.

A normally competent reporter, Peter Baker of the New York Times, offers the party line. According to Baker, Biden is “weary.”

He writes:

Time is catching up with Mr. Biden. He looks a little older and a little slower with each passing day. Aides say he remains plenty sharp in the Situation Room, calling world leaders to broker a cease-fire in Lebanon or deal with the chaos of Syria’s rebellion. But it is hard to imagine that he seriously thought he could do the world’s most stressful job for another four years.

Of course, Biden and his enablers insist that he was a consequential president. And yet, he has the lowest approval ratings in recorded history and more people consider his presidency a yawning failure than see it as a rousing success.

Of course, good journalism exists. It is not the first time that Annie Linskey of the Wall Street Journal chronicled Biden’s cognitive incapacity-- she did so in June-- but she wrote about it again yesterday.

The president’s slide has been hard to overlook. While preparing last year for his interview with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents, the president couldn’t recall lines that his team discussed with him. At events, aides often repeated instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage, that would be obvious to the average person. Biden’s team tapped campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood mogul, to find a voice coach to improve the president’s fading warble. 

This meant that staff was charged with protecting Biden, from public scrutiny, and even from too many meetings with cabinet members.

The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.

The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public. 

It worked reasonably well, until the June 27 debate:

The strategies to protect Biden largely worked—until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words and unable to complete his thoughts on live television. Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.

Biden’s staff had known all about his decline. They accommodated and hid the truth from the public:

Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term. Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes. 

They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time: The exchanges should be short and focused, according to people who received the message directly from White House aides. 

Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.

The White House denied that his schedule has been altered due to his age.

Staff saw that Biden had good and bad days, days when he could function and days that he could not:

If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,” the former aide recalled the official saying.

Most officials and legislators could not get to see Biden. Among those who did, Sen. Joe Manchin:

One lawmaker who did get one-on-one time with Biden noticed that the president lacked stamina and heavily relied on his staff: Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia 

Democrat-turned-independent who held up chunks of Biden’s legislative agenda during the first half of Biden’s term. Manchin said the job required a level of energy that he wasn’t sure Biden had been able to sustain….

Instead of Biden directing follow up, Manchin noticed that Biden’s staff played a much bigger role driving his agenda than he had experienced in other administrations. Manchin referred to them as the “eager beavers”—a group that included then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. “They were going, ‘I’ll take care of that,’ ” Manchin said.

As for management, Biden was not very good at it. He rarely met with his cabinet and tended not to consult with them before making decisions.

Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said. 

One top cabinet member met one-on-one with the president at most twice in the first year and rarely in small groups, another former senior cabinet aide said. 

Multiple former senior cabinet aides described a top-down dynamic in which the White House would issue decisions and expect cabinet agencies to carry them out, rather than making cabinet secretaries active participants in the policymaking process. Some of them said it was hard for them to discern to what degree Biden was insulated because of his age versus his preference for a powerful inner circle.

Gone was any semblance of spontaneity. When Joe was going to answer questions from an audience, Biden’s staff collected the right questions and provided Joe with the answers. One thing they did not want was to have him speak off the cuff. Funnily enough, his vice president was similarly incompetent at interviews.

At some events, the Biden campaign printed the pre-approved questions on notecards and then gave donors the cards to read the questions. Even with all these steps, Biden made flubs, which confounded the donors who knew that Biden had the questions ahead of time.

Some donors said they noticed how staff stepped in to mask other signs of decline. Throughout his presidency—and especially later in the term—Biden was assisted by a small group of aides who were laser focused on him in a far different way than when he was vice president, or how former presidents Bill Clinton or Obama were staffed during their presidencies, people who have witnessed their interactions said.

Basically, all of those surrounding Joe Biden knew that he was enfeebled and mentally impaired. And yet, for years they covered up the truth, lying as though their careers depended on it. The problem was, foreign leaders were not so easily fooled and tricked. 

And besides, with the exception of Annie Linskey, the mainstream media colluded with the Biden administration. They were part of the cover-up. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to admit fault and to apologize for their dereliction.

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The Never Trump Failure

Among the more interesting consequences of the Trump era is the advent of the Never Trumper.

This motley crew of conservative Republicans broke with the party and dedicated their efforts to attacking Trump. Whether William Kristol or Jonah Goldberg or Bret Stephens, this group went over to the dark side. With a vengeance….

Stephens, a highly intelligent New York Times columnist, voted for a subliterate reformed courtesan rather than to vote for Trump. Is this a sign of good judgment or of no judgment?

Like other high princes of negativity these thinkers staked their journalistic reputations on the notion that Donald Trump was the worst thing that had ever happened to the Republican party and to conservatism. 

After all, Trump was boisterous and blustery, he spoke off the top of his head, he indulged in streams of insults directed at his fellow Republicans and he manifested a singular lack of decorum and propriety.

Add to that, he was inexperienced in the ways of Washington, and you arrive at a picture of someone who will be anything but competent to run the government. Like it or not the Never Trumpers were convinced. They thought that the Donald was an existential threat-- assuming that they knew what that meant.

But, it was not merely about wanting a different candidate. The Never Trump contingent believed that the Donald would compromise everything they held sacred. And thus, anything was acceptable to take him out of the race.

Since the Never Trumpers were willing to go to any lengths to destroy the Donald, they found themselves in collusion with leftist Trump haters.

Fair enough, the Democrats who hated Trump had different reasons. They thought that Trump was a white nationalist and a racist. Which is another way of saying that he was a Republican.

Dare we mention that the candidates who ran against Donald Trump were certainly not the best or the brightest. Hillary Clinton was largely uninspiring, having gotten her position by engaging in a bizarre marriage with Bill. 

Joe Biden was suffering from senile dementia in 2020-- quoth one Dr. Michael Burry-- but the Trump haters on the left and the right pretended that there was no problem. And the worst candidate in recent history Kamala Harris embarrassed the Democratic Party and the Never Trump contingent.

The more sane and sober voices on the left, from Van Jones to James Carville, have been saying that they seriously underestimated Trump.

While the Never Trumpers and their Democratic allies were railing against Trump, the latter produced a major political realignment. He made the Republican Party the party of working people.

Now we have a leading Never Trumper like Bret Stephens eating some serious crow. Among his arguments is a simple one. Their negativity produced political blindness. Worse yet, it produced some serious hypocrisy. Much of what the Never Trumpers hated about Trump they had applauded when they saw it in other politicians,

How come so many who denounce Trump as a sexual predator were, 20 years earlier, Bill Clinton’s steadfast defenders? Why were the same people who demanded investigations into every corner of the Trump family’s business dealings so incurious about the Biden family’s dealings, like the curiously high prices for Hunter’s paintings?

As I have noted before, the Never Trump movement came a cropper during the 2024 election campaign, because people had already seen Trump in action and they had discovered that he was not Hitler or Mussolini or even a fascist. Trump’s instinct is to run policy as a negotiation, as deal making. It does not speak fascism. In fact, it is very conservative.

Stephens explained:

We warned that Trump would be a reckless president who might stumble into World War III. If anything, his foreign policy in his first term was, in practice, often cautious to a fault. We hyperventilated about his odd chumminess with Vladimir Putin. But the collusion allegations were a smear, and Trump’s Russia policy — whether it was his opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline or his covert aid to Ukraine — was much tougher than either Barack Obama’s or (at least until Russia invaded Ukraine)President Biden’s.

Never Trumpers put all their chips on January 6. By their lights the events of that day in 2020 signalled that Trump was a fascist who wanted to overthrow the constitutional order. To which Stephens replied:

 But if democracy means anything, it’s that ordinary people, not elites, get to decide how important an event like Jan. 6 is to them. Turns out, not so much.

As Van Jones stated clearly, Trump read the electorate correctly. The Never Trumpers did not:

What ordinary people really cared about this year were the high cost of living and the chaos at the border. Why did Trump — so often deprecated by his critics as a fortunate fool — understand this so well while we fecklessly carried on about the soul of the nation?

And, of course, there is the projection factor. Democrats were doing to Trump exactly what they accused him of doing to the nation. You cannot rail about threats to democracy when you are practicing lawfare to prevent your opposition from running for office.

That’s not all:

That, as much as Trump might lie, Americans also felt lied to by the left — particularly when it came to the White House cover-up of Biden’s physical and mental decline. That, as bigoted as elements of the MAGA world can be, there is plenty of bigotry to go around — not least in the torrent of Israel-bashing and antisemitism that emerged from the cultural left after Oct. 7. That, as much as we fear Trump could wreck some of our institutions, whether it’s higher education or the F.B.I., many of those institutions are already broken and may need to be reconceived or replaced.

Chastened but unbowed, Stephens recommends a bit of sanity, even a bit of guarded optimism for the oncoming Trump administration.

Let’s enter the new year by wishing the new administration well, by giving some of Trump’s cabinet picks the benefit of the doubt, by dropping the lurid historical comparisons to past dictators, by not sounding paranoid about the ever-looming end of democracy, by hoping for the best and knowing that we need to fight the wrongs that are real and not merely what we fear, that whatever happens, this too shall pass.

In truth, the Never Trumpers protested too much. They indulged in every manner of irrational speculation, trotted out a bevy of paranoid theories, to the point where people tuned them out. 

They were trying to force people to vote against Trump. They were not offering a choice or an option. They were not saying that theirs was the better way. They were using a subliterate rhetorical ploy by pretending that Trump was Hitler. A vote for Trump was a vote to open death camps. You might have thought it idiotic. The ladies of The View actually believed it.

One thing that these serious thinkers could have learned in rhetoric class, was this. When you are forcing someone to believe something, they will naturally reject your position because they will reject being subservient. It does not matter whether you are right or wrong. You will lose the argument, because of your bad attitude and your disrespect for your audience.

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