Thursday, November 17, 2016

Therapies for President Trump Derangement Syndrome

I try on this blog to keep everyone abreast of the latest trends in psychotherapy. I am sure that you are all dying to know.

Nowadays when many therapists and many of their patients are overwhelmed with existential dread over the election of the Donald, the need for therapy seems to have become more pronounced. And the inability of therapists to do very much more than whine has become even more pronounced.

To be fair, in many cases, they excel at it. They worked long and hard to learn how to do it. So, let’s show some minimal respect.

Therapists who want their patients to get in touch with their feelings are not equipped to deal with patients who are drowning in their feelings. Therapists who are woefully uninformed about political and historical realities are incapable of offering any real perspective.

In the meantime both patients and therapists seem to believe that they do best to make public spectacles of their anguish. They do not understand that making a fool of yourself in public does not alleviate your suffering. It aggravates it. Grow up, people!

As I have noted before, college students in particular are doing the most to damage their reputations. Within a year or two or three they will all be out in the real world looking for jobs. When an interviewer asks them what they learned in college, or better how they learned how to deal with failure and adversity, are they going to explain that they retire to a safe space to suck on lollipops?

Because that is what they are doing. So says Robby Soave in The Daily Beast:

In the wake of the election, many college students at elite colleges and universities have come down with serious cases of PTSD: President Trump Stress Disorder.

Their inability to anticipate this outcome—the election of Donald Trump—should prompt the Ivy League to consider whether it’s really preparing students for life outside the liberal bubble of campus.  

To equip students with the resources they need to refute Trumpism, colleges have to stop shielding them from ideas that offend their liberal sensibilities. They have to stop pretending that shutting down a discussion is the same thing as winning an argument. Silence is not persuasion.

At Cornell University, weary students sat outside in shock the morning after the election. The Cornell Daily Sun, which live-streamed the gathering, invited viewers to “cry with us.” Attendees said they were heartbroken and terrified.

Elsewhere, at campuses across the country, students begged professors to cancel classes and postpone exams, citing fear, exhaustion, and emotional trauma. Such accommodations were frequently granted: Academics at Columbia University, Yale University, the University of Connecticut, and other institutions told students to take some time to come to terms with what had happened, as if the election of Donald Trump was akin to a natural disaster or terrorist attack.

That wasn’t all. Law students at the University of Michigan were provided with a post-election “self-care with food and play” event, complete with “stress busting” activities like play dough, coloring books, legos, and bubbles. Columbia University’s Barnard College offered hot chocolate and coloring. The University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution, created a healing space: more coloring books, and also puppies.

Do you feel their pain? If you don’t, you have not had enough therapy. Get thee to thy therapist’s office post-haste and learn to regress to a pre-infantile state.

Hats off to Robby Soave and others for trying to show these children that they look pathetic. And that it will take them some considerable time and effort to overcome the stigma they are placing on their foreheads.

To be fair, they are making such a spectacle of themselves that they are distracting us from the issues and problems that confront the nation. Generation snowflake cannot stand it when they do not receive enough attention. Even worse, they cannot stand the prospect of actually working to solve problems. Better to whine like mewling children.

Anyway, the Brooklyn Museum in New York is offering some free art therapy this weekend. At the least, it’s a step above legos and blowing bubbles.

W Magazine reports:

The Brooklyn Museum usually has an admission fee of $16, but this weekend the institution's offering free admission "as people search for a sense of national unity." The reference, of course, is to the results of the election, which many — and many artists among them — have come to consider a national tragedy.

This weekend, then, has been one for coping. And for those New Yorkers willing to venture out of their homes, the experience of seeing art has proven a useful antidote. Here, the best works to see in the city this weekend and in coming weeks, from all-immersive installations like Pipilotti Rist at the New Museum that serve as beautiful distractions to racially focused shows that'll get you ready to mobilize, like Kerry James Marshall and Benny Andrews' recaps of African-American history.

Did you catch that: this so-called art is going to get you ready to mobilize. For the record, and for those who understand the bare minimum about art, when “art” is designed to get you to mobilize it is agitprop, not art. That’s what’s wrong with so much of today’s art. Its consumers, like its producers, live in a bubble. They have no idea what the world is thinking and have no idea about how reality works. They disparage creative enterprise and only think that their work matters if it has a political impact. I suspect that the hidden meaning behind all this is that they are mediocre artists.

The result: they have been incapable of processing the simple fact that, by the rules currently in use, they and their candidate LOST. It happens, get over it.

As for those who believe that they can change the rules after the game is over, they should overcome their ignorance and grasp the rank impossibility of engineering a different outcome. See the following explanation of the electoral college by Matt Vespa in Vox. Take it as a reality check.

For those of a more resilient mindset, I offer one last therapy. It is currently on offer through Craigslist. I suspect that its practitioners are unlicensed. I mention it in the interest of completeness. I would feel remiss if I did not inform you of everything that is out there. For those of a delicate sensibility, consider yourself trigger warned.

The article comes to us from Vocativ. It was authored by one Jeff Andrews. One admires the intestinal fortitude of said Andrews, who apparently has been trolling Craigslist looking for white men who will allow you (even invite you) to express all of your aggressive tendencies toward privileged white men… by spanking them, even by beating them.

Andrews gets the tone right on this one:

It’s been seven long days since Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States, and if you’re among the Americans who believe that making a reality television star leader of the free world was not the human race’s best decision ever, you may have noticed negative changes in your behavior since last week — perhaps increased alcohol consumption, doomsday prepping, or a lack of interest in anything other than screaming “why” over and over again.

If this sounds like you, it might be time to close your laptop, and find a new way to channel your rage. It appears people all over the country have already had this idea as there’s been a huge surge in election-related appeals for companionship on Craigslist that cater to whatever stage of grief you’re in.

Vocativ read through Craigslist personals listing from several major cities and found that the most creative ads are for those from the BDSM community who expressed their willingness to take a beating to help you temporarily escape the looming specter of an alt-right dystopia.

One listing posted by a man in New York City comes with a NSFW picture of his bottom and a simple message: “This is not a solution, but maybe a small, fun, cathartic escape. Take out your anger by putting me over your knee and giving me a hard spanking!” This sentiment is echoed in another New York listing that says “I voted for trump. If you are feeling angry about trump, and you feel like relieving some stress, use me as your personal kicking/punching bag. [sic]”

I suspect that the first questions running through your mind are these: What is the fee? Is the treatment covered by insurance? Is it covered by Obamacare? If not, why not. If it is, you have yet another reason to protest against the dastardly Republicans who want to take away your Obamacare.

To be perfectly frank, I don’t know the answers to those salient questions. I leave it to those who are interested to do the research, to make the calls and to set up the therapy sessions.

Of course, some people are looking for more mundane and prosaic ways to quell their anguish. Andrews reports on them too:

In addition to the cheeky pleas to BDSM, there were dozens of Craigslist personals all over the country of people genuinely despondent about the election who thought a hook up could distract them. There were also numerous posts of people looking for someone they could marry in hopes of securing a green card, now that the threat of mass deportation is very real.

Suffice to say, there are a lot of people who don’t know what to do with themselves in Trump’s America other than boink as an escape, and you can find them Craigslist.

Of course, many of them are so depressed that they do not even want to do that.

13 comments:

  1. I watched a spanking on YouTube just yesterday! Bartiromo spanked Jonathan Gruber. She yanked his data, too. And it was an antidote for me, because watching Maria is always an experience of seeing art. You can experience seeing art at the link:

    https://youtu.be/QcuOPMbQZAU

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  2. Stuart: The result: they have been incapable of processing the simple fact that, by the rules currently in use, they and their candidate LOST. It happens, get over it.

    I agree that is excellent advice for Democrats, but #NeverTrump Republicans still have options, specifically the Electoral college - Trump needs 270 of 306 electors to stay faithful, or there will be no winner, the the U.S. House will pick a winner, which could be very interesting for people who consider Trump as not a real republican, and possibly not even a real human being.

    However I've discovered there's a small rub to this new discovered power of faithless electors - they may be murdered by Alt-righters who believe in justice when the law doesn't have the right incentives.
    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/11/allan-stevo/electoral-college-can-stolen/ The Electoral College Can Be Stolen, But It Won't By Allan Stevo November 16, 2016
    ----
    If there’s ever a year that the centuries old Electoral College might crumble, it’s this one.

    We have ALWAYS been able to trust these electors – except for 157 of them over the course of US History. All this tells me how easy it is to upend the Electoral College this year.

    If neither candidate receives more than 269 Electoral College votes, then the decision goes to the US House of Representatives in early January to choose a President.

    All of that can happen, and the stage is being set for that to happen. ... Except, that’s not going to happen.

    If the Electoral College does not support Trump on December 19, it will not just have been something that dishonors an elector’s name, or makes one’s reputation “not so great” for a while in the party until the elector is redeemed.

    It will be on an entirely different level than that. It will be a betrayal of public trust in that system of rubber stamp electors.

    In public life, there are some limits to what one can get away with. A public servant in America will not successfully betray such a trusted confidence as the Electoral College, and get away with it.

    Maybe one or two electors defect and no one bats an eye.

    If more defected, enough to change the outcome of the election, a protest from the right would almost certainly take place.

    No one will see the protest coming from the right when the right stands up. The faithless electors in that situation won’t survive through Christmas.

    I’m not one to do such a thing, but I wholeheartedly believe that exactly that would happen, and in all likelihood no one would ever know who killed those few dozen faithless electors.

    These are people who read revolutionary war books for fun, who rattle off slogans like “come and get it” or “the soap box, the ballot box, or the bullet box” and these are people who pray that in their lifetime they will never have to shoot a man, but know that if it comes to it, that they are armed, well-trained, and prepared to do exactly that.

    Any public servant who thinks they will cross a person like that and live long, does not know his own country well. I most certainly know the primary reason for the 2nd Amendment is for a threat like that to be ever-present.
    ----

    So there you have it, Electors are allowed to have their own conscience, but they are not allowed to use that conscience, or face that wrath of Trump's Alt-right Justice Warriors.

    It would be fun to see the Republican controlled U.S. House try to pick a president, given the option to avoid Trump, what they would do. And yet if 3 of the faithless electors have been murdered at that point, and 50 or so others are in Federal protection programs, you have to wonder if the House Republicans won't have a unanimous vote for President Trump. And then they'll 100% be owned by him.

    If it must be, I'd prefer that and without the executions, and then we'll really know how far the Alt-right lone wolves will go to install their new emperor.

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    Replies
    1. Interesting when the Left starts cutting and pasting from Lew Rockwell's paleolibertarian von Mises site.

      If your tinfoil hat is a bit crumpled, Ares, call me.

      But hey, why don't you guys just cast a spell?

      "To work magic is to weave the unseen forces into form; to soar beyond sight; to explore the uncharted dream realm of the hidden reality."
      --- Starhawk

      :-D

      Delete
  3. Anonymous Trigger Warning said... But hey, why don't you guys just cast a spell?

    I think I like this quote better "Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will." At least that makes it clear where magical thinking does its work, while I'd presume it is taking about one's own consciousness, and about raising it, while Trump has the persuasion sort that wills other people to their lowest consciousnesses.

    It will be interesting to see how President Trump will be resisted widely, within the republican party, within the democratic party, and with the rest of the world. Who will be taken in next by his piped piper routine next, and who will stand against Trump and see what happens. They say he likes people who stand up to him, but probably that only lasts as long as he's having fun.

    And yet surely stoking his ego will get you better results, if there's really something someone wants from him, especially if you're an attractive woman. A man who makes decisions by his gut would never be taken and made a fool of by a pretty face.

    Anyway, if he passes the 270 Electoral College test on December 19th, surely there are many more player, friends and foes, who are up the challenge of humiliating Donald when he starts acting like a bully, and then seeing how far he'll go to get revenge, how many 4am tweets you can earn, like a badge of honor?

    We live in strange times, so we might as well have fun with this.

    We can say whomever is jailed first as a political prisoner wins. Hillary doesn't count.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So change your consciousness. Visualize Hillary. Seems easy enough. That should move the EC in your direction, don't you think?

      But I guess it depends to some degree on how much consciousness you have. You might want to recruit some help, Ares.

      Delete
  4. By now, it would seem that the Republican Electors understand the feelings, emotions, and intent of the Trump voters. As would Hillary Electors.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Trigger Warning said... So change your consciousness. Visualize Hillary. Seems easy enough. That should move the EC in your direction, don't you think?

    TW, it really seems like you can't get Hillary off your mind.

    Republican electors pick Republican candidates. We will have a Republican president in 2017, but that person need not be Trump.

    Is that so complicated to imagine?

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    Replies
    1. "TW, it really seems like you can't get Hillary off your mind."

      I love Hillary.

      Delete
  6. It would be really nice if those who talk about the Constitution and its amendments actually had read the Constitution.

    Ares,

    Clue The 270 number only has one use. A tie has to be created and it would then go where for resolution? The "NeverTrumpers" are not that stupid. They would have committed the equvalent of political suicide and created a condition that would be akin to lighting an all consuming fire they know not where it would end. 60 plus or more, include the addition of people who would not like to see that king of chicanery, millions of people out after their heads is not something to be wished for by anyone with inactive brain cell. I would also suspect that the Republican party is not going to allow that to happen.
    Be careful of the fire you are trying to ignite for it might consume you. Fires have a tendency to burn out of control. Also remember that the military swears an oath to the Constitution. That you would even attempt to create this fire denotes why I have little use for you.

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  7. Well, I see that the Demogogue Party has moved beyond Starhawkian visualization magitoonery and straight on to death threats aimed at EC electors. From the Detroit News:

    http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/11/17/elector-threats/94003176/

    Folks like Ares must be p***ing their knickers. :-D

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  8. Ares,

    How many people do you want to see die to feed your desire to control others? You don't really think that the people would actually sit still for this? You are truly dangerous.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ares needs Play-Doh. Ares, would you care to reply with a shipping address? I'll send some. Wrapped.

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  10. I promise you that if anything succeeds in swaying the Electoral College to put Hillary in office, there will be a devastating civil war in this country. Just try. The liberals say they love this country (I say "liberals," because the Left certainly does not), but they don't want what's best for the country. They are political savages.

    ReplyDelete