Unfriend Her Now

The gods are smiling today. Polly has gotten one right.

The case at hand concerns an insecure woman. She has made a new female friend who likes to poach other women’s men. In the case at hand, any time the letter writer, Feeling a Bit Single-White-Femaled, expresses any interest in a man, her sometime friend immediately makes a play for said man. It feels too appalling to be real, a sign of clear disloyalty, a willingness to play out a rather nasty psychodrama at someone else’s expense.

FABSWF writes this about her friend:

But then, over time, I noticed she would contact any man I paid any attention to. If I said someone was attractive, by the end of the night she would have friended that man on Facebook and started to send him messages. If I mentioned a man from my past — who didn’t even live in the state — she would do the same. She befriended all the men that I dated. And then, recently, the tool bag of a human who publicly made me feel shitty started seeing her, in a sneaky but also super-obvious way. I should mention that for the past year I have been in a relationship with a lovely, wonderful man who is amazing and I have no interest in the tool-bag human AT ALL. But still it all makes me feel gross. It’s as though she’s taking over parts of my life (I’m not kidding when I say she has found a way to be romantically involved with at least six to eight men I’ve been involved with or mentioned since I’ve met her). But this current one feels worse. And to top it off, she keeps inviting me places they’ll both be, so I’m constantly preparing for the moment she springs their relationship on me with an audience around.

Long question short: All of this makes me angry and frustrated and mad and filled with a shitty hate feeling and I don’t know how to get over it. My life is great, why should I care? My ego however seems to feel otherwise.

You already know the answer to the question: get rid of this woman. That is Polly’s advice, and it is the right advice. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $100. Just ghost the witch.

She is not your friend. She is exploiting and abusing you in order to make herself feel more attractive.

Funny thing, this non-friend has defined her dating life in terms of FABSWF’s express preferences and interests. Now, if FABSWF were not as nice a person as I suspect she is, she might use this fact to express interest in someone who is decidedly unattractive or who is not going to treat her well or who does not exist. She might even set up a fake Facebook account for this non-existent man.

Then everyone can sit back and watch the snipe hunt.  

Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

Many people will be shocked and surprised to see mothers abusing their daughters. Within Asian, mostly but not uniquely Muslim communities, mothers force their daughters to marry as children. If their daughters disobey they are repeatedly beaten by their mothers, and then their fathers.. 

A British criminologist exposed this ugly side of so called honor-based abuse:

Mothers are the "unseen force" behind so-called honour-based abuse, inflicting violence on their daughters, a study has found.

Research by Rachael Aplin, a criminologist from Leeds Beckett University, said this was often unrecognised by police.

Of the 100 "honour" crimes she studied, 49 involved mothers - but this was often not recorded in crime reports.

Aplin recounts the case of “Sadir” a woman from an Afghan-English family:

"Sadir", who was born in Bradford to Afghan parents, was taken into care after being abused by her mother who tried to force her into marriage.

Speaking to the BBC, she described her mother as the main perpetrator, saying she was regularly beaten as a child.

From the age of nine she was told she could not play out, but had to learn how to cook in order to be "marriage material".

Now 35, she said: "I would get physically battered if I didn't cook chapatis or if the chapatis weren't round enough.

How did mothers enforce the rules on their daughters?

In Mrs Aplin's research, the abuse perpetrated by mothers included hitting, kicking and slapping, assault with household objects, cutting off daughters' hair and deception in order to encourage a fleeing victim back home.

Other behaviours included threatening to kill the victim or throw them downstairs, bartering to sell them, false imprisonment, emotional blackmail, confiscation of passports, bank cards and mobile phones and emotional blackmail.

Everyone believes that these cultures are patriarchal, thus that they are naturally inclined to abuse women. I suspect that they are far more matriarchal than it appears. In any case, we have here a marked instance of woman’s inhumanity to woman.

Meanwhile, Diplomacy Proceeds Apace

In a better world Donald Trump would not be Donald Trump’s own worst enemy. After enjoying a largely successful week, especially against arch-nemesis CNN, Trump shot himself in the… by posting a tweet about a couple of no-account talk show hosts. 

Allowing himself to be baited into looking like anything but a president, he fueled yet another round of media attacks. If he knows that media producers spent most of their waking hours trying to find anything that will delegitimize him, he should not feed their rage.

For the record, when you are President of the United States fighting back can never involve making a disparaging remark about a woman’s facelift. It diminishes you and affirms everyone’s low opinion of you. Be serious, folks.

In the meantime, the diplomatic maneuvering over North Korea continues apace. A week ago today I posted about Trump’s tweet to China… in which he thanked the Chinese government for trying to control North Korea, adding that it has not worked out.

Since then the policy has gotten some muscle, from the United States, and has elicited a response from China.

To review events,  on Wednesday Reuters (via Maggie's Farm) reported that China had suspended fuel sales to North Korea:

China National Petroleum Corp has suspended sales of fuel to North Korea over concerns the state-owned oil company won't get paid, as pressure mounts on Pyongyang to rein in its nuclear and missile programmes, three sources told Reuters.   

It's unclear how long the suspension will last. A prolonged cut would threaten critical supplies of fuel and force North Korea to find alternatives to its main supplier of diesel and gasoline, as scrutiny of China's close commercial ties with its increasingly isolated neighbour intensifies.   

Apparently, the act has produced something of an effect:

Data for May released on Friday showed China supplied significantly lower volumes of diesel and gasoline compared with a month earlier, although monthly tonnages can vary widely. June data will be released in late July. 

  

Fuel prices in North Korea, meanwhile, have sharply risen in recent months, suggesting a tightening in supply.

A Reuters analysis of data collected by Daily NK showed the price of gasoline sold by private dealers in Pyongyang and the northern border cities of Sinuiju and Hyesan had hit $1.46 per kg on June 21, up almost 50 percent from April 21. Until then, they had remained relatively stable since late last year.

Diesel prices averaged $1.20 per kg as of June 21, more than double over the same period, according to Daily NK, a website run by defectors who collect prices via phone calls with North Korean fuel traders.

For its part, the United States government has taken action against a Chinese bank that does business in North Korea. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning:

Marking a new phase in the Trump administration’s pressure on North Korea, the White House said it plans to cut off China’s Bank of Dandong from the U.S. financial system, accusing it of facilitating financing for companies involved in Pyongyang’s weapons program.

The move is an escalation in Washington’s efforts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, using a sanctions tool that proved effective under the George W. Bush administration in forcing the regime back to negotiations by cutting off Pyongyang’s financial ties to the world.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, announcing the new sanctions at the White House on Thursday, said the administration would “continue to roll out sanctions” against companies involved with Pyongyang’s weapons programs. President Donald Trump will raise the issue with leaders from the Group of 20 largest economies at a summit next week as Washington seeks to coordinate international action against Pyongyang.

“We are committed to cutting off all illegal funds going to North Korea,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “North Korea’s provocative, destabilizing and inhumane behavior will not be tolerated.”

“We are committed to targeting North Korea’s external enablers and maximizing economic pressure on the regime until it ceases its nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” he said.

Mr. Mnuchin said Thursday’s action, which will take at least two months to go into force, isn’t intended as a message to China.

This might have an effect. It might not. It beats going to war. And it does show how the diplomatic game is played.

Too Much Therapy

Sometimes our friend Polly, of the Ask Polly column, sounds like she is talking to a teenager. In today’s column she goes on at length about how the woman in question, aka, Stuck and Uncertain, has real value and real worth. Polly adds that this woman, 29 years old, should never fear asking for what she wants.

As has become my habit, I am not going to regale you with Polly’s silliness. Instead, examine the letter that Stuck and Uncertain has sent, asking whether anyone ever overcomes one’s dysfunctional past:

I’m a student in my late 20s. My question is simple and not simple. I guess the relatively straightforward version is: Are we ever able to transcend the dysfunctional patterns and behaviors established in our childhood?

The not-so-straightforward version: I grew up in a small, conservative, overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian town. My parents were pretty controlling. Partially because we lived in such an insulated environment, and partially because their professions relied on other people viewing them favorably, I was taught — in both subtle and more obvious ways — to subvert my feelings and desires if they appeared to conflict with the feelings, desires, or expectations of others. I remember standing with my father in church one day when a boy my age came up and slapped me (sort of hard) across the face; my father just stood there. Later, he told me it was hard for him to restrain himself. He’s deceased now, but I still want to scream at him, “Why the fuck didn’t you protect me? Why the fuck didn’t you stand up for me? Why couldn’t you let me be myself: a weird and complicated and messy person? Why did we always have to care so goddamn much about what other people thought?”

I still really struggle with this, even though my father has been dead for several years now. I struggle with letting myself be who I am unapologetically. Typing this feels like I’m whining, but the truth is that I continue to feel really suffocated and haunted by the male figures from my childhood and adolescence….

I haven’t been in a relationship for a long time, and I’m trying to be okay with that. I try to eat healthy and exercise; I see a therapist. But I’m upset with myself for wanting things like a partner or children; I feel like I should just be happy with where I am right now. (I should add that my childhood friends are all married and/or engaged with children.) How do I break this cycle?

Let’s cut to the chase. Is this woman suffering because she was brought up in a conservative community by Evangelical Christian parents? Or, is she struggling because her therapist has taught her that such an upbringing is fundamentally dysfunctional? Is she being treated or brainwashed? Did her therapist also tell her that she will never really overcome her upbringing?

What we have is a failed therapy, conducted by someone who has no respect for the patient. To be fair, Polly does not either. As you see,  therapy is not going very well.

Lately, cognitive therapy has lately been recommending that we get over our therapy-induced tendency to look back into the past and that we direct our attention to the future. That we be prospective and not retrospective. Because if you whine on about your past you will never escape it.

SU says that she feels like she should not want to have a partner and children. In the past, the term used to be “husband,” but the more politically correct term is partner. This tells us that the work of brainwashing is ongoing. It has made inroads,, and she is paying the price.

There is no reason on earth why she should not want to have a husband and children. She ought not to feel guilty about harboring such wishes. She has the right, as even Polly suggests, to ask for these things. 

And yet, the question is not about wanting or asking. The question is how to get what she wants. Clearly, she ought to begin by firing her therapist. This latter credentialed professional has taught her to introspect, to doubt herself, to defame and malign her parents and her birth community, and to convince her that she has nothing to offer to a relationship beyond her dysfunction.

When therapy fails, it’s good to have a few convenient scapegoats around. In this case, her therapist has scapegoated conservatives and Evangelical Christians. Because we know that such groups are fundamentally repressive. They produce intractable neuroses. If SU wants to examine her past, a good cognitive therapist would teach her that there is good and bad in her upbringing, that it has given her strengths and weaknesses.

The Summer of Their Discontent

Given that Europeans are ever so much more sophisticated than Americans they are, this summer, suffering an invasion of immigrant refugees. This time, it’s Italy and Spain that are taking the brunt of the invasion. For the record, the flow of immigrants to the United States over the past six months has dropped precipitously.

Lucianne brings us up to speed (via Maggie’s Farm):

Italy’s migrant welcome centers are in a state of “collapse” as huge waves of African migrants take advantage of the temperate climate to make the crossing from Libya to the Italian peninsula. On Tuesday, 8,500 African migrants are reaching Italian shores aboard 14 different ships, adding to the 5,000 who arrived on Monday. The massive arrivals have led local media as well as politicians to speak of an authentic immigrant “invasion” exceeding the country’s capacity of assimilation. Officials reported on June 15 that more than 65,000 migrants had arrived since the beginning of the year, but that was prior to the latest.

As for the South of Spain, aka Andalusia, the same scene is playing out. The Daily Mail has the story:

Last week, 1,025 migrants arrived illegally on the Andalusia coast, where millions of Britons holiday each year in the famous Costa resorts. Every day, more come on what is now the fastest-growing migrant sea route from Africa to Europe.

Italian authorities are now threatening to refuse entry to any refugee boats coming from Libya:

The Daily Mail reports:

Italy has threatened to close its ports to aid groups rescuing migrants off Libya's coast as it struggles to cope with the highest rate of rescues this year, officials said.

The country's representative to the EU, Maurizio Massari, said the situation 'has become unsustainable' as it emerged 10,000 refugees have tried to cross the Mediterranean in the last four days.

Italy's former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said citizens were 'exasperated' and a fresh strategy was needed.

The Italians want other European nations to share the pain. We shall see what Chancellor Merkel and President Macron say about that. For now, a group of lesser Central European nations has decided to close their borders to all further refugees.

Legal Insurrection (via Maggie’s Farm) reprints the story from ABC:

Defense officials of six Central European countries and the Balkans have pledged close cooperation in tackling migration with all possible means including use of armed forces.

The countries — Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia — have created a grouping called the Central European Defense Cooperation and want to be a role model for the entire European Union.

Among the group’s goals is that all migrants who want to apply for asylum in EU countries have to do it in centers outside the bloc.

Austrian Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil said after a meeting in Prague on Monday that his country has been preparing a detailed action plan of cooperation for the six whose military forces will train in a joint drill in next few months.

Naturally, EU authorities are trying to punish nations who are refusing to accept their fair share of refugees. National Review reports on this side of the story:

The European Union announced this week that it would begin proceedings to punish Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic for their refusal to accept refugees and migrants under a 2015 scheme the E.U. commission created. The mission’s aim was to relieve Greece and Italy of the burden from migrant waves arriving from the Middle East and Africa, largely facilitated by European rescues of migrants in the Mediterranean.

The conflict between the EU and these three nations of the Visegrád Group is not just about the authority the EU can arrogate to itself when facing an emergency (one largely of its own making), but about the character of European government and society in the future.

According to the Telegraph, it’s just beginning:

Europe could face a new wave of migrant arrivals this summer, a leaked German government report has warned. Up to 6.6m people are waiting in countries around the Mediterranean to cross into Europe, according to details of the classified report leaked to Bild newspaper.

They include more than 2.5m in North Africa waiting to attempt the perilous crossing by boat. Angela Merkel’s government has not commented on the report, which the newspaper says was marked for internal use only.

There are fears of a dramatic rise in arrivals as the summer weather turns favourable for sea crossings. Growing numbers of migrants are known to be attempting to reach Europe by boat in the wake of the closure of the Balkan land route last year.

Back in the realm of the crude Americans, the six Muslim nation travel ban will take effect today.

Bring Back the Matriarchy

Pay close attention. There will be a quiz at the end of this post.

So, don’t just revel in the entertainment value of these bizarre human customs. Thanks to Janice Zarro Brodman’s new book  Sex Rules: Astonishing Sexual Practices and Gender Roles Around the World we now know more about the sexual customs and gender roles that are practiced around the world. Just in case you thought that feminists were chasing rainbows, it turns out that the world they envision still exists… somewhere.

In a bow to French president Emmanuel Macron, the Apanyekra-Canela indigenous community of Brazil arranges for teenage boys to have sex with many women, but only women who are beyond childbearing years. As you know, in our own Puritanical culture, when an older woman chooses to initiate a teenage boy into the mysteries of sex she will be facing hard time. How can you not see that as a new way to repress female sexuality?

The New York Post reports:

“[They believe that] horny young guys should get it on with women in their late 40s and 50s. Sex with older women will make him strong and courageous, while sex with a young woman — even his wife — will make him weak and nervous.”

If a man should stray from this belief and hook up with a female his own age, he is “shamed and hazed before the whole village,” and is forced to “walk down a line of dancing women, all laughing and teasing him.”

As for how this makes him strong and courageous,  your guess is as good as mine.

And then Africa’s nomadic Wodaabe tribe has its own special customs. In an amazing role reversal men are made to compete in beauty pageants for female attention. Consider it an exercise in male pride.

There, the Post explains:

“Women are free to have sex with anyone they wish” and often pick their partners from the tribe’s popular beauty pageants — which feature men on display. For the guys, the preparation is lengthy and painstaking.

“First, shave your hairline way back,” Brodman writes. “Then smooth a layer of red clay all over your face. Carefully apply thick black eyeliner and black lip paint. Draw a white line down the center of your nose so it will look even longer than it is. Slip into your finest embroidered tunic, [then] pop on your headdress of ostrich feathers and horsehair.”

During the pageant, the men are expected to dance for the women, including having to “vibrate [their] throat, lips and mouth, roll [their] eyes to show how white they are, flash those pearly teeth, while stretching on tiptoes into the air like a bird.”

 

If you are seeking true gender equality, you can move to Indonesia and join the Tau Tau Wana tribe:

Meanwhile, the Tau Tau Wana of Indonesia believe more in gender equality than female dominance, but their version of equality would have many guys running for cover.

“They figure men and women are the same and everyone should get to do everything,” Brodman writes, “including having periods.”

The way Tau Tau Wana men “get” their periods is not for the squeamish, Brodman writes: “They go through rituals that slice the penis, which bleeds to make them mature, just as a woman’s periods do for her.”

One might argue, after famed Swiss sociologist J. J. Bachofen that these practices show a more natural and more original human condition, one where women ruled in a primal matriarchy. One might also argue that these practices lend credence to the views of Friedrich Engels, who followed Bachofen by suggesting that this primal matriarchy (and the joys of female sexuality) had been repressed by the patriarchy through the institutions of private property, the family and the state?

Has it been downhill ever since? Do we need a revolution, as Engels suggested, to overthrow the patriarchy and capitalism? Is that the only way that women will get back in touch with their sexual power?

Someone who believes that the most primitive organizations are the truest ones might accept such beliefs.

Otherwise, you will find a better answer to today’s quiz question: What do all of these communities have in common?

I am sure you have already guessed. They are all hopeless;y primitive and are probably on their way to extinction. If they have not been overrun by neighboring enemy tribes, it’s because they have nothing worth plundering.

So, if you are dreaming of a feminist paradise where women are in charge, where men are whining and mewling, you will have to ask yourself how many of your creature comforts, how much modern sanitation, how many modern conveniences, how much of your lifespan, how much of the internet you would be willing to give up in order to see men menstruate?

Open Relationships

A young woman meets a man. She had already been traumatized by a series of men who had dumped her, so her confidence was not exactly in the clouds. So, she met a wonderful man and engaged in a wonderful loving relationship with him. I know, it already sounds a bit mushy, but, hold on.

After a few months he announced that he wanted to sleep with other people. Presumably, that means other women. But that he still wanted to continue his relationship with the woman who calls herself Just Not Enough. He was willing to accord her the role of main squeeze. If we are to believe Ask Polly, open relationships are something of a thing among sophisticated urban professionals.

Today’s letter writer explains her situation. When her boyfriend told her he wanted to sleep around she told him to take a hike. Can you blame her? And yet, she is dogged by the feeling that she was just not enough. She is in therapy and what good is therapy if it does not teach you to beat yourself up for someone else’s bad behavior. Because, after all is said and done, the man in question treated with extreme disrespect.

Just Not Enough writes:

Several months ago, after a long string of 30-year-old guys dumped me unceremoniously after our fourth dates (you could pretty much set a watch to it), I met someone I adored, and who I’m pretty sure adored me, too. He was a brilliant listener, open and kind, had a great career, a sense of humor, and an affection for me I’m not sure I’ve felt before. But a few months in, he told me he needed to see other people. He wanted to see me, too, but he said there had always come a point in his relationships when he wanted to sleep with other people, and now he needed to make a lifestyle shift, and would I like to be his primary partner? He told me all this in a fog of emotion after I opened up a what-are-we-doing-here conversation; he got shifty, quiet, had a hundred weird other reasons not even worth repeating, cited his depression, said he didn’t know who he was or what he wanted, exactly, but that he had to try this. It’s funny, because in the hours and days before this happened he told me that what we had was incredibly special and rare, that he felt “understood” by me and that he hadn’t felt this way in a very long time, and also that the sex was better than any he had before. Anyway, I said no. I didn’t want an open relationship. It pained me then and it’s killing me now, but I couldn’t do it, especially not when the decision felt so fear-based and not before we had a chance to build a basic level of trust.

My therapist told me that we can give my now-ex credit for being honest about the fact that he needs to be with other people. Okay: good for him. Credit where credit is due. But as much as I am trying to applaud his resolution, I don’t understand it, never having had real issues being loyal to anyone (even to the wrong people). And what’s more, it makes me feel horribly inadequate.

Because the truth is I wasn’t enough. He needed more. More what? More sex, I guess, despite what we had getting a pretty glowing review. More conversation, maybe, even though he said he felt he could tell me anything. 

More beauty? I’m not Miss America, but I’m not an ogre, either, and that seems like a dumb reason for a good guy to bolt. Until everything fell apart, this man looked me in the eyes and told me how much he cared about me, and I could see — am I crazy?? — I could see he was beginning to fall for me. I felt so safe, and then it was over. He seemed 100 percent in, until he was out. I’ve come a long way as a woman, a human, in the last few years, and I think I know I am enough. But still I feel like I wasn’t. He needed something, someone, more….

I looked at him and saw a big, beautiful mess with a million jagged edges, but also someone who naturally made me peer into the future, and who made the future look like a place that didn’t seem so scary. After a difficult 20s and a long string of disappointments and a lot of hard work and a few losses and a few gains, I look at myself and I think: I contain multitudes. Aren’t multitudes enough?

Just a quick thought here. Of course, it's better to discover this now, rather than later. Better to discover his character flaw now, not later. And also, what happened to anger? Why should she feel that there is something wrong with her? Why shouldn’t she feel that there is something wrong with him and that he has treated her appallingly badly? Why is her therapist giving him credit for being honest instead of letting her feel angry for being mistreated?

I will spare you Polly’s paean to romantic love and great marital sex. In another context it would be called: too much information. And yet, she informs us us that open relationships are the plat du jour in some of our urban centers.

In her words:

We happen to be living in a moment when lots of young urbanites believe that open relationships are the way and the light. There’s this very common notion that sex always gets very old with the same person, and once that happens you’re fucked, so why not structure your life differently? Young people regularly talk about monogamy like it’s this trick that the Man plays to get the sheeple in line, or it’s some dying gasp of a conservative, religious world that had yet to be emancipated by the infinite choices and glories of Tinder.

Free to be used… liberated to be one of several mistresses… is this what women’s liberation was about? Why are sophisticated urban women accepting these conditions? Is monogamy really a patriarchal conspiracy? If it is, are women accepting open relationships because they can now have sex with all the men they want?

Strangely enough, or not, neither Just Not Enough nor Polly considers that the new arrangements will allow women to have more sexual partners themselves. Could it be that this is not what women want?

The Opioid Crisis

Today, our legislators are debating the issue of health care. Among the more difficult problems is how to pay for the treatment of the massive number of people who are suffering from opioid abuse.

By now we all know that the opioid epidemic was visited on the nation by pharmaceutical manufacturers, physicians and the federal government. It is an astonishing story, but, what is being done to shut this down? Apparently, not very much. Is anyone going to be held accountable for what appears to be drug trafficking? Apparently, not.

Cathryn Jakobson Ramin has written a new book, called Crooked, that examines the problem. Within her discussion of her own experience with back pain, Ramin explains how we got to this point.

In her words:

In the first five years that OxyContin was on the market, Purdue Frederick, the pharmaceutical company that had launched the drug in 1996, conducted over forty national pain management and speaker training conferences. Physicians who were willing to spread the word could expect to make up to $3,000 for telling their colleagues, often at lavish dinner meetings or continuing education medical seminars, why Oxy worked so well for them. The strategy could not have been more successful; in record time, ordinary musculoskeletal pain, long understood to be a normal part of life, was recast as an enemy to be battled and subdued.

For decades, physicians had recognized that opioids were highly addictive drugs, and that to prescribe them to any patients other than those who suffered from terminal cancer was illegal. But with Oxy, the tide had turned: suddenly, physicians who allowed patients to “suffer needlessly” from back pain were labeled as lacking in compassion. For general practitioners, who found themselves with “failed” back surgery patients entrusted to their care, OxyContin offered an answer to their prayers.

And then, the federal government protected everyone:

Under pressure not only from the pharmaceutical business, but also from physicians who wanted to be sure they had the federal stamp of approval for this rampant prescribing, the Joint Commission declared pain to be “the fifth vital sign,” adding it to measurements of pulse, blood pressure, core temperature, and respiration. This would turn out to be a grave error. The standard vital signs were readily quantified—either they were normal, or they were not—but only the patient could identify his pain level. Nevertheless, the Joint Commission directed all accredited US hospitals and health care facilities to instruct personnel to monitor pain and to provide compassionate care. In the Joint Commission’s monograph, published in 2001, the organization noted that “in general, patients in pain do not become addicted to opioids.”

And so did Bill Clinton:

Even the DEA climbed on board, signing an agreement with 21 medical professional societies that allowed doctors to prescribe the drugs without fear of prosecution. If physicians had lingering doubts, and some did, these were dispelled in president Bill Clinton’s last weeks in office, when he signed legislation declaring the upcoming decade, 2000 to 2010, to be the Decade of Pain Control and Research.

New York Magazine has reported on a recent study that showed that opioids are not just being prescribed for chronic pain. They are being given to patients having psychiatric conditions. How many prescriptions for opioids are written for anxiety and depression? The research says that the number is 50%:

The study’s researchers (led by Brian Sites, a professor of anesthesiology and orthopedics at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine) also found that adults with anxiety and/or depression were more than three times as likely to use prescription opioids as those without: 18.7 percent versus 5 percent, respectively. While some people with anxiety and depression undoubtedly suffer chronic pain, these disorders may make it difficult for patients to accurately rate their own suffering — whether because the pain is made more acute by the mental illness which accompanies it, or because the patient is less able to cope with that pain.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Sites said that while someone without anxiety or depression might report their pain level “as a two out of ten, someone with mental-health disorders — depression, anxiety — may report as a ten out of ten.” This disparity between the overprescription of opioids and the undertreatment of mental illness makes for a dangerous correlation — and with a gutted Medicaid budget, it’s likely to get worse.

Have a nice day!

Traumatized for Life

Today we learn about an irreversible trauma. A female teacher inflicted it on a male student in Missouri.

The perpetrator, who has just been arrested, is high school substitute teacher Loryn Barclay. She is 24. Her victim was 17. The stories do not tell us whether or not he was in a class she taught.

The Daily Mail details the brutal traumas that Barclay forced the boy to suffer:

Loryn Barclay of Washburn, Missouri, allegedly had oral sex with the teen in his car and on multiple occasions between November 2016 and January 2017 at his home in while she worked as a substitute teacher at Monett High School in Lawrence County, reported The Monett Times.

She also reportedly admitted having intercourse with him twice at his home, said the outlet.

On Sunday, she was charged with six counts of sexual contact with a student in two counties.

Think of it. She traumatized him in two counties.

One hopes that with counseling the boy will recover. For your edification, here’s evidence, in the form of Barclay’s mug shot.

Atheists Brook No Dissent

We take it as an article of secular faith that atheists are more open minded. Many professed atheists cling to their beliefs because they want to show the world that they reject all religious dogmas in favor of science?

We accept, unthinkingly and unknowingly, that the religious adhere to their dogmas while atheists, rational to a fault, are more open to alternative perspectives. After all, religions—some of them, at least—have notably conducted inquisitions to rid themselves of heretical beliefs.

On this topic history has been flashing a few warning lights. What was totalitarian Communism but an effort to transform cultures and make them more godless? No atheist will accept that Communism represents the goal he is seeking. And yet, people who claim to be empirical thinkers cannot dismiss the Communist effort to atheize culture. If you only accept the evidence that seems to prove you to be right, you are not thinking empirically or scientifically.

If atheists hold up British or American culture as their role models, they will have to recognize that those cultures were based in religious principles. They were not founded or constructed by atheists. As David Hume famously noted, ethical thinking does not and cannot come from science. Science is about is, he said, while ethics is about should.

Communist cultures brooked no dissent. In truth, they perfected the arts of brainwashing and indoctrination. The notion of thinking differently, of entertaining different opinions, was anathema. They wanted to create a culture where everyone thought the same thoughts, believed the same beliefs and felt the same feelings. In the past certain religions aspired to achieve the same goal, but today, those who yearn most avidly for groupthink tend to be atheists.

Today’s masters of political correctness-- dare we note that they are inevitably atheists-- are keeping dogmatism alive. They label differences of opinion as hate speech. They shut down people who hold divergent points of view. 

If you do not think as they think you will be shunned. If you think that this is an anomalous condition, limited to faculty lounges, you should note that in Silicon Valley, in Hollywood and in the San Fernando Valley, saying that you voted for Donald Trump will cost you work. It will make you unemployable. For the record, the San Fernando Valley is the epicenter of the American pornography industry. If you are in porn, you should not to speak well of Trump. Link here. Call it, news you might not want to use.

Some religions have more dogmas than others, but most religions also have widely divergent opinions about nearly all matters, theological and otherwise. Obviously, there are limits. But, a journey through the arcana of theology will show you vast differences of opinion. Thomists and Franciscans and Jesuits are all good Catholics. But, they certainly do not think the same thing.

Now we have a scientific study of the issue. Conducted by scholars from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, the study showed that atheists are, ounce for ounce, more intolerant than the religious.  They are more narrow minded and more incapable of accepting different points of view.

True enough, atheists believe that they are more open minded. Yet, when you poke beneath the surface of the atheist mind, you will someone who is more, not less bigoted than someone who follows a religion.

PsyPost summarizes the results:

New research indicates that religious believers can be better at perceiving and integrating different perspectives than atheists in Western Europe.

“The main message of the study is that closed-mindedness is not necessarily found only among the religious,” the study’s corresponding author, Filip Uzarevic of the Catholic University of Louvain, told PsyPost.

The research was published April 27, 2017, in the peer-reviewed journal Personality and Individual Differences.

“The idea started through noticing that, in public discourse, despite both the conservative/religious groups and liberal/secular groups showing strong animosity towards the opposite ideological side, somehow it was mostly the former who were often labeled as ‘closed-minded’,” Uzarevic explained. “Moreover, such view of the secular being more tolerant and open seemed to be dominant in the psychological literature. Being interested in this topic, we started to discuss whether this is necessarily and always the case: Are the religious indeed generally more closed-minded, or would it perhaps be worthy of investigating the different aspects of closed-mindedness and their relationship with (non)religion. ”

The researchers found that Christian participants scored higher on a measure of dogmatism than nonreligious participants. The Christian participants, for instance, were more likely to disagree with statements such as “There are so many things we have not discovered yet, nobody should be absolutely certain his beliefs are right.”

On one score, Christians seem more narrow-minded. They believe that most truths have already been discovered. Yet, the question feels unnecessarily vague.

Does it refer to moral principles or to scientific fact? One might argue that the moral precepts discovered, say, by Aristotle, Confucius and the Bible have not been significantly modified or superseded over millennia. One might also argue that science is making new discoveries every day; the book of science is certainly not closed.

As the researchers dug deeper they discovered that atheists were more closed-minded than the religious:

Atheists tended to show greater intolerance of contradiction, meaning when they were presented with two seemingly contradictory statements they rated one as very true and the other as very false. They also showed less propensity to be able to imagine arguments contrary to their own position and find them somewhat convincing.

Intriguing, don’t you think?  Atheists are more intolerant of contradictory statements. They are less likely to engage with people who hold different opinions. They prefer to dismiss differing opinions as extreme.

Is there something about atheism that entices people into extreme positions? Is there something about this exercise in pseudo-rationality that deprives people of the ability to think differently? Is there something about  atheism that tends toward the dogmatic and that makes people incapable of considering alternative points of view.

Perhaps they should all take a course in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas. While Catholic theology has room for the Platonist Augustine and the Aristotelian Aquinas— whose views often diverge—today’s atheists reject all dissenting opinions, even those that are based on scientific fact.

To offer some obvious examples, the nature lovers among us, nearly all of whom would reject the least whiff of religious reasoning, will tell you that if you do not accept their view of climate change you are a denier. They will not engage your point of view, or even the point of view of experts like Richard Lindzen. They will dismiss you as an extremist or bigot. And they will accuse you of trying to exterminate the human species. People will die… they will intone.

Any atheist who holds to the dogmatic truths about transgenderism will quickly dismiss the work of eminent physicians like Paul McHugh and Lawrence Mayer as so much bigotry. They refuse to engage with dissenting views. And, since the Bible tells us that God made human beings as man and woman, then God must be a sexist bigot. Again, dissenting or even differing opinions about these articles of today’s secular dogma are not allowed to be contradicted. Atheists brook no dissent.

Is it fair to say that these practitioners of extremism are all atheists? At the least, they believe themselves to be at war with religions and with any other system of moral thinking that contradicts their dogmas.

Are You Man Enough... To Be a Nurse?

This is probably not the most shocking thing you are going to hear today. While male unemployment is high jobs are going unfilled because men do not want to do them. Better yet, their wives do not want them to do the jobs. And those who hire people for the jobs do not want to hire men. Those who do the jobs do not want men as colleagues either. I am talking about care giving jobs, like nurses and home health care workers.

Naturally, Susan Chira attributes it to stereotyping, but does she know better than the men, their wives and their prospective colleagues? At the least, she ought to respect the views of the women who live with these men.

Yet, as Chira presents the case, the feminist vision of male nurses and male home care workers fades into oblivion. Gender interchangeability is just another dumb idea… one that takes permanent leave from reality.

Chira opens:

Traditionally male factory work is drying up. The fastest-growing jobs in the American economy are those that are often held by women. Why not get men to do them?

The problem is that notions of masculinity die hard, in women as well as men. It’s not just that men consider some of the jobs that will be most in demand — in health care, education and administration — to be unmanly or demeaning, or worry that they require emotional skills they don’t have. So do some of their wives, prospective employers and women in these same professions.

Notions of masculinity have developed for reasons that have everything to do with human nature. Why is that so difficult to accept?

A sociology professor who sets her straight:

Ofer Sharone, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has studied middle-aged white-collar professionals who have lost their jobs. He found that some men who might have been willing to consider lower-paid jobs in typically feminine fields encountered resistance from their wives, who urged them to keep looking.

“Marriages have more problems when the man is unemployed than the woman,” Professor Sharone said. “What does it mean for a man to take a low-paying job that’s typically associated with women? What kind of price will they pay with their friends, their lives, their wives, compared to unemployment?”

That may be, he said, because other sociologists have found that while work is important to both men’s and women’s identities, there remains a difference. “Work is at the core of what it means to be a man, in a way that work is not at the core of femininity,” he said.

Clients do not want to hire male caregivers, either. Perhaps they have bathed in the ambient culture, the one that demonizes men as repugnant abusers. Perhaps they understand that men lack the genetic make-up to be good caregivers:

Sherwin Sheik, president and chief executive of CareLinx, which matches caregivers with families, said that many clients remain suspicious of male home health care aides, worried about abuse or sexual predation, and convinced that women will be more caring.

And, of course, women who work in what have traditionally been women’s professions do not want a lot of men around:

Men can also face resistance from their female peers. Jason Mott, an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, said some of his male students were teased by their female classmates. “They feel they need to really express their manhood, stressing the athletics they take part in,” he said.

Nursing offers a perplexing case study. In theory, nursing should appeal to men because it pays fairly good wages and is seen as a profession with a defined skill set. Yet just 10 percent of nurses are men, despite “Are You Man Enough … to Be a Nurse?” posters and other efforts to enlist men.

Of course, it’s all a messaging problem. You want to attract men to nursing, you need more posters about how only a man who is man enough can be a nurse. 

Women know better. They are not rushing out to marry male nurses. Men whose manhood has been compromised by such occupations often believe that they need to become more macho than thou, more aggressive and more violent… to assure themselves and their prospective mates that they are really man enough.

If women do not want it, we should respect their views.

Why Relationships Fail

Consider this a footnote on yesterday’s post about “Why Marriages Fail.” You recall that Harvard professor Alexandra Killewald’s research showed that women were more likely to walk away from marriages when men were not breadwinners. That is, when men became the kind of male beings that feminists have told them to become.

Fortuitously, New York Magazine has just written up a case study of a relationship that failed because the man did not make enough money. (via Maggie's Farm)

Carly is 38, with a five year old son. She has her own business and barely makes ends meet. Jackson is 37, without children, but who loves her children. They have a great rapport and great sex. Yet, Jackson has no real ambition and does not make much more than he needs.

Carly said:

 It felt great having a boyfriend. A giant weight was lifted off my shoulders because I had someone to talk to, someone to rely on, someone who fit with me and my son. Plus, the sex was incredible. It was kind of picture perfect, despite the untraditional-ness of it all. I guess the only issue from the very start was that Jackson didn’t have a stable job. He’s a super-talented photographer, but his work was a little unsteady. If I’m being honest, I thought maybe there was family money, and I hoped for that only because it meant I could stay with him forever. I didn’t want to be with someone who couldn’t contribute; I knew that would only lead to resentment. But there wasn’t family money …

He was not going to be a breadwinner. End of relationship.

To be fair and balanced, Jackson offered his own viewpoint:

I didn’t make the kind of money she wanted me to, which bothered her way more than me. I feel like I’m lucky that I have a rent-stabilized apartment and work that I enjoy. In my eyes, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t provide for her or her son. Love, affection, adventure. I was devoted. Dollar signs weren’t a thing as far as I was concerned.

Carly’s response:

It started to annoy me, big time, how little he worked, how rarely he thought about money or ambition. He’d do the littlest thing, like maybe smoke a joint with my friends, and I’d just boil over inside. Like, “You fucking stoner deadbeat!” Meanwhile, all my friends were also smoking and I’d be like, “Cool, love you guys.” But I was conflicted — he and my son had gotten so close and there was so much I loved about Jackson too.

But, Jackson has work/life balance:

She wanted to change this very innate quality about me, which is that I’m not driven by money. I’m not materialistic. I don’t need fancy things. I just need good people, creativity, inspiration, honesty, a beautiful woman, a cold beer on my front stoop …

I would have done anything to make it work, except get a terrible, soul-crushing job. And that was the only thing she ever wanted me to do. It got real ugly. She’d yell at me about everything. I went from this man she wanted to raise a child with to someone who couldn’t do anything right.

Carly saw it as “the Urban Cowboy thing” and she refused to make it a part of her life. As opposed to what we read in therapy columns, this account shows a good dose of responsible adult reasoning. 

"Another Soul-Sucking Disappointment"

Democrats thought they had it won. They were convinced that they would win Tom Price’s Congressional seat in the Georgia runoff election last week. They were wrong. They lost. Now is the time for soul-searching. Because, if Democrats are good at anything, it’s soul searching.

While not the first to weigh in, Maureen Dowd has gotten her groove back in today’s column:

The Democrats just got skunked four to nothing in races they excitedly thought they could win because everyone they hang with hates Trump.

If Trump is the Antichrist, as they believe, then Georgia was going to be a cakewalk, and Nancy Pelosi was going to be installed as speaker before the midterms by acclamation. But it turned into another soul-sucking disappointment.

I’m not so sure what the Antichrist has to do with cakewalks—shifting narratives—but Democrats were persuaded that young attractive centrist Jon Ossoff would easily beat Karen Handel. He didn’t. He didn't even live in the district.

Dowd contacted Rahm Emanuel, to learn how to win elections:

“We congenitally believe that our motives are pure and our goals are right,” Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, told me. “Therefore, we should win by default.” But, he added dryly: “You’ve got to run a good campaign. In elections, politics matter. Oooh, what a surprise.”

Apparently, Rahm has forgotten the other rule of politics: when you have power you have to govern effectively. The man presiding over the killing fields of Chicago, within a state that has been bankrupted by years of Democratic governance, does not serve as a role model for effective governance.

If Democrats do not think that it matters, they are living in their own fairy tale. Dowd explains it well:

Democrats cling to an idyllic version of a new progressive America where everyone tools around in electric cars, serenely uses gender-neutral bathrooms and happily searches the web for the best Obamacare options. In the Democrats’ vision, people are doing great and getting along. It is the opposite of Trump’s dark diorama of carnage and dystopia — but just as false a picture of America.

True enough, there is enough dystopia in districts that voted for Donald Trump. That’s why they voted for Donald Trump. But, if you are looking for a real dystopia, put Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago on your itinerary.