The Trouble with the New York Times

Sometimes a juxtaposition speaks for itself. This one, from Powerline via Maggie's Farm:

Fake News in the Psycho World

My friend, Jacques van Rillaer, who professes in Belgium at the University of Louvain, has offered this correction to Jamieson Webster's piece, the one I posted about a few days ago. Link to my post here.

Jacques added his remark to the comments section, but I repeat it here because I want to make sure you do not miss it:

Webster writes:"As Sigmund Freud posited decades ago, a psychotic person who is helped to pass through the most acute phase of their symptoms by being kept safe, and who then receives a continuous form of talk treatment, as well as some means of education or ability to work, can potentially stabilize without excessive medication"

Fake news! Freud never said that. He writes in his last book: “ we discover that we must renounce the idea of trying our plan of cure upon psychotics” (An Ouline of Psycho-analysis, [1938] 1940, Standard Edition, XXIII, p. 173)

Giving Tuesday

Today is called Giving Tuesday. It seems appropriate to issue this subtle reminder, namely that Blog Appreciation Week is continuing. Thus, I humbly request that readers of this blog express their appreciation for my efforts by making a monetary contribution. For those who have already donated, I offer my sincere gratitude.

Producing posts every day requires some work. For those who wish to support my efforts, I suggest a donation. Perhaps you will feel even more gratitude this year… because I have finally figured out how to moderate the comments section and have silenced the trolls that this popular blog has attracted.

If you click on the orange Donate button, on the left side of this page, the folks at Paypal will help you to contribute as much as you would like. This year, as a special service, you can also contribute to the blog by doing your Christmas shopping at Amazon. If you enter the Amazon site by clicking the Amazon ad at the left, you will also be doing something good for the blog-- at no extra cost.

As they say: It's more blessed to give than to receive.

If you do not wish to use Paypal, I gratefully accept checks or cash sent to my address:

               310 East 46th St. 24H

               New York, NY   10017

If you have a friend or a relative who is a psychoanalyst or who still clings to Freudian theory, you can do him a great favor by sending a copy of  my book, The Last Psychoanalyst. It’s the perfect holiday gift. See the link at left.

Since this is a weeklong fundraising campaign, I will be repeating this post several other times throughout the week. Be prepared.

Thank you in advance.

Her Parents Disapprove

Should she or shouldn’t she? Should she go away for a weekend with her boyfriend of five years or should she call it off because her parents strongly disapprove?

It seems like an easy question, because she is a 19 year old college student. Thus, she is sufficiently adult to make an independent decision. And yet, by the terms of the letter she sent to Carolyn Hax, we do not know why her parents disapprove. Do they disapprove of the young man for reasons they do not want to share? Do they see something wrong in him that other people are willing to overlook? Are they very orthodox Jews who disapprove of premarital sexual relationships? In short, we do not know why the parents have taken a hard line, but they have.

Surely, it sounds quaint. But, we also do not know who is paying for the trip. And we do not know anything about the young man, his family background, his future prospects, etc.

For your edification, here’s the letter:

My boyfriend and I are both 19, and we'll be having our five-year anniversary this summer. We've dated long-distance the entire time. To celebrate this milestone, we are going on an overnight trip.

My parents strongly disapprove of this. I told them about the trip immediately after I booked it and have been honest throughout the process, but this seems to cross a line for them. They've always been very protective of me and my sisters, but I don't know why this in particular is so hard, because I've traveled on my own internationally and my boyfriend stayed with me for a weekend at college.

I feel my boyfriend and I have proved ourselves to be in a mature and healthy relationship, but my parents still don't like that I'm dating someone on principle.

Recently, my mother told me that if we go on this trip, we will be jeopardizing my boyfriend's relationship with her and my dad for the long term. Every adult I trust besides my parents (rabbi, therapist) has told me it's okay for us to take this trip, and I don't like that my mom threatened my boyfriend, but at the same time I love my parents and I don't want to make things difficult — life is tough as it is. Should I go on this trip, or keep the peace?

— Trouble With Travel

As for Hax, she takes the side that most everyone else will take, though with a bit of nuance:

And I think 19 is a good age to take on a tough, adult decision, one between two things that each will cost you something you value. The only thing you can do is figure out your values and priorities, rest your decision on them, and accept the consequences.

Whatever you decide, it’s generally good policy not to cave to emotional threats.

The letter writer is a dependent child. We consider her an adult at age 19, but she is not independent of parental influence. Surely, she is on the parental dole. I suspect that she is not self-sufficient. And I suspect that her boyfriend is not supporting her.

Hax wants her to be independent and autonomous, and thus, not to cave to emotional threats. And yet, we do not know enough about why the parents are so upset about this trip. I would suggest that her parents, being adults, have better judgment than the average 19 year old.

If we assume that they have a reason, it would seem better for her not to court their disapproval and not to undermine their relationship with her boyfriend… irrevocably. Besides, if she has told her boyfriend what her parents think, shouldn’t he do the gentlemanly thing and call off the trip? If he does not do so, what does it say about him? Does it suggest that he wants to detach her from her family in order to exercise more control over her?

My view: she should call off the trip. By the laws of filial piety, which laws everyone now seems to ignore, she has too much to lose and very little to gain by taking the trip.

What will happen if she eventually wants to marry this young man and her parents say No? It’s true that she can do what she pleases, but we do not know how important her family and community are to her emotional well being. Sacrificing your family and community for love has rarely been a winning wager.

The New American Revolution

I have not seen too many commentaries about Angelo Codevilla’s new essay about the new American Revolution. Thus, it will be worth some trouble to present it to you… at some length.

Codevilla is not talking about the Trump Revolution. He is talking about an insurrection, against Trump, but also against traditional American values, by a ruling class comprised of bureaucrats, judges, media figures, intellectuals and academics. It is not politics by another name. It more closely resembles a Revolution, an effort to defy the will of the people in order to cement the hold that the ruling class holds on power.

Plato called them a guardian class of philosopher kings, people who were so enlightened, who saw ideas so clearly, that they knew what was best for everyone. Codevilla calls them a ruling class, but clearly the origin lies in Plato.

He describes them thusly:

… there exists a remarkably uniform, bipartisan, Progressive ruling class; that it includes, most of the bureaucracies of federal and state governments, the judiciary, the educational establishment, the media, as well as major corporate officials; that it had separated itself socially, morally, and politically from the rest of society, whose commanding heights it monopolized; above all that it has contempt for the rest of America, and that ordinary Americans have no means of persuading this class of anything, because they don’t count.

Increasingly, the ruling class and those they presume to rule live in completely different worlds:

In our time, the most widespread of differences between rulers and ruled is also the deepest: The ruled go to church and synagogue. The rulers are militantly irreligious and contemptuous of those who are not. Progressives since Herbert Croly’s and Woodrow Wilson’s generation have nursed a superiority complex. They distrust elections because they think that power should be in expert hands—their own. They believe that the U.S Constitution gave too much freedom to ordinary Americans and not enough power to themselves, and that America’s history is one of wrongs. The books they read pretend to argue scientifically that the rest of Americans are racist, sexist, maybe fascists, but above all stupid. For them, Americans are harmful to themselves and to the world, and have no right to self-rule. That is why our revolution started from a point more advanced in its logic than many others.

The ruling class disdains any election that does not grant them power. Thus, upon losing hundreds of elections between 2010 and 2016, it set out to make it impossible for the victorious Republicans, especially in Washington, to govern. In the name of a sacrosanct democracy, leaders of the Resistance have worked long and hard to counteract the results of democratic elections:

The Democratic Party and the millions it represents having refused to accept 2016’s results; having used their positions of power in government and society to prevent the winners from exercising the powers earned by election; declaring in vehement words and violent deeds the illegitimacy, morbidity, even criminality, of persons and ideas contrary to themselves; bet that this “resistance” would so energize their constituencies, and so depress their opponents’, that subsequent elections would prove 2016 to have been an anomaly and further confirm their primacy in America. The 2018 Congressional elections are that strategy’s first major test.

They are not interested in debate and deliberation. They are more interested in imposing their views on the public, by censoring any speech that would dare contradict their grand theories and by going to war against dissidents. Thus, they are conducting a revolution, attempting to overthrow the national order:

By thus criminalizing differences over public policy, by using political power to hurt their opponents, they gave the revolutionary spiral its first turn.

American progressives, as they call themselves, have little to do with classical progressives. They are radicals and revolutionaries. After all, Saul Alinsky’s chapbook, so beloved by community organizer Obama, was called: Rules for Radicals.

Today’s radicals feel superior to everyone else. Their self-respect is entwined with a delusional belief that they can affirm their superiority by shutting down anyone who would question it:

The logic that drives each turn of our revolutionary spiral is Progressive Americans’ inherently insatiable desire to exercise their superiority over those they deem inferior.

And, of course, by humiliating anyone who would question their  view. Note well that they can only affirm their value at someone’s expense. Theirs is a zero-sum-game, one that does not allow mutual respect or even mutual face saving gestures. It’s win or lose… and this sets us, as Codevilla says, on a revolutionary spiral. He believes that it will eventually reach an equilibrium, but I am more skeptical. You might exhaust yourself in the midst of ruins, but you cannot negotiate or compromise when you are occupying extreme positions:

That is the Progressives’ affirmation of superior worth, to be pursued by exercising dominance: superior identity affirmed via the inferior’s humiliation. It is an inherently endless pursuit.

Those who refuse to accept the radical’s superiority are denounced as deplorables and showered with withering contempt:

But the Progressives deplore the “deplorables” not to improve them, but to feel good about themselves. Hating people for what they are and because it feels good to hate them, is hate in its unalloyed form.

As an example, Codevilla explains what happened when our largest banks failed in 2008. The public  was opposed to the bailouts, by a significant margin. The ruling class, both left and right, did it anyway. And, no one was punished for the calamities that the banks and federal agencies had visited on the nation:

But then, as three-fourths of Americans opposed bailing out big banks with nearly a trillion dollars, the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates joined; most Republican legislators joined all Democrats; The Wall Street Journal joined The New York Times, and National Review joined The Nation; in telling Americans that doing this was essential, and that their disapproval counted for nothing. And then, just as high-handedly, all these bipartisan rulers dropped that bailout scheme, and adopted another—just as unaccountably. They showed “government by the people, for the people” to be a fable.

As for the will of the people, it has often been overturned by judges. While the ruling class inveighs against Trump’s authoritarian practices, most of his more controversial orders have been stayed by federal judges. Will the real authoritarians please stand up?

Codevilla explains:

The Supreme Court struck down a referendum by liberal California defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The federal Defense of Marriage Act, which had become law by near-unanimity, was overturned bureaucratically and judicially. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, on the books just as firmly, was undone by executive, judicial, bureaucratic, corporate, and mediatic subordination of religious freedom to anti-discrimination. By the 2016 election, America’s Progressive rulers were demonizing and punishing persons who define male and female by their birth and personal plumbing. 1984’s Big Brother had not been so imperious

And then there is the Resistance, a disloyal opposition and domestic insurgency masquerading as defending democracy:

The ruling class’s “resistance” to the 2016 election’s outcome was the second turn. Its vehemence, unanimity, coordination, endurance,and non-consideration of fallback options—the rapidity with which our revolution’s logic has unfolded—have surprised and dismayed even those of us who realized that America had abandoned its republican past.

The “resistance” subsequent to the election surprises, in part, because only as it has unfolded have we learned of its scope prior to the election. All too simply: the U.S government’s upper echelons merged politically with the campaign of the Democratic Party’s establishment wing, and with the media. They aimed to secure the establishment candidates’ victory and then to nullify the lost election’s results by resisting the winners’ exercise of legitimate powers, treating them as if they were illegitimate. The measure of the resistance’s proximate success or failure would come in the 2018 elections….

Since the beginning of the Trump administration, some federal district court judge somewhere has either stayed or outright declared every action of his and his subordinates unconstitutional, dictated remedies, and passed that off as the rule of law. Thus do such judges exercise the powers of the president and Congress. At a minimum, fighting such obstruction through the appellate courts (panel and then en banc) and then to the Supreme Court takes months or years.

Among the clearest manifestations of the ruling class’s will to prevent the Trump administration from governing was the full frontal assault on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. It showed, Codevilla notes, that the ruling class had abandoned even the pretense of restraint. It would do anything, good or bad, right or wrong, to get its way. It was almost like a child throwing a tantrum:

The anti-Kavanaugh campaign’s power and significance lies precisely in the ruling class’s perpetration of an in-your-face hoax. Making someone pretend that your patent lie is true may be the most humiliating of assertions of power. The ruling class, knowing the Republicans, dared them publicly to dismantle the fraud: to show the accuser is an emotionally troubled person, a Democratic Party activist who has worked for Corcept Therapeutics, manufacturer of an abortion drug, who engaged in slander and possibly perjury. In some measure, it looks like Democrats won the bet.  The Republicans absorbed tirades and mobs, while protesting generically about “politics,” even as Democratic activists were intimidating them physically at airports, in elevators, chasing them out of restaurants, and disrupting their private lives.

Under the guise of protest and dissent, activists threatened and intimidated and bullied people. Republicans responded with cogent argumentation.

Republicans won, but Codevilla suggests that they were also defeated.

Kavanaugh’s confirmation was better than defeat. But it was not a perfect victory for the White House or for the Republicans. The “resistance” succeeded in showing: if we can do this to this man on this basis, we can wreck anybody, as may be convenient to us. It showed Americans what today’s Progressive movement means for those it dislikes: “If they can do this to him, they could do it to me.” The campaign has been part and parcel of the resistance’s ever growing violence against the rest of America. This has changed America. Like lost virginity, it cannot be undone.

What matters a lot is that our ruling class does not deal and will never again deal with their opponents as fellow citizens. Theirs was a quintessentially revolutionary act, after which there is no stepping back.

It was not as much about Kavanaugh as about the ability to destroy human beings, to destroy their lives, to destroy their families. It was about laying down a threat. They were fighting a revolution, launching an insurrection, dispensing with even the pretense of respecting American traditions and laws:

By dropping all pretense of ruling for the common good; by presuming that they embody the law (Laws-R-Us); by instituting various kinds of boycotts (Institutions-R-Us); by using the strongest, most motivating language toward opponents; by inciting all manner of violence; by death-gripping their privileges; by using their positions’ powers in government and social institutions at or beyond their extreme edge; the people who occupy the government’s and society’s institutions continue to remove whatever deference the institutions (by the authority of which they rule) had inspired.

By its influence in schools and universities, the ruling class has threatened and intimidated people into self-censoring their language according to the rules of political correctness. Moreover, tech oligarchs at places like Twitter and Facebook and Google have worked to shut down anyone who would dissent against the ruling class. They have undermined the freedom of expression by branding their opponents as practitioners of hate speech:

In short, the “resistance” has begun to radicalize middle America. It redoubled millions of Americans’ sense of siege, their fear of unbridled rule by unaccountable powers, of being accused of “hate speech,” of normal life made impossible by Progressive socio-political demands. It confirmed the sense that Donald Trump and such as he, whatever their faults, are all that stands between themselves and having an alien way of life imposed upon them.

Will Trump be strong enough to fight this insidious internal enemy. Codevilla is not optimistic. He is suggesting that Trump is not a sufficiently adept to win out against such forces:

Trump’s rousing speeches feed the body politic as empty calories feed the human body. Bluster followed by surrender has political legs both short and shaky. Trump’s tone has lifted his constituencies’ expectations. But tone does not give substance to public opinion, poses but a flimsy barrier to the ruling class’s concerted power, and does not begin to satisfy constituencies threatened by the ruling class machine that came of age in the anti-Kavanaugh campaign.

Codevilla ends on a decidedly pessimistic note. He may be exaggerating slightly, but his argument is cogent and supported. Surely, he sees things clearly. One would be hard put to disagree:

Unattainable, and gone forever, is the whole American Republic that had existed for some 200 years after 1776. The people and the habits of heart and mind that had made it possible are no longer a majority. Progressives made America a different nation by rejecting those habits and those traditions. As of today, they would use all their powers to prevent others from living in the manner of the Republic. But, perhaps, after their offensive resistance’s failure, they might be reconciled to govern themselves as they wish in states where they command a majority, while not interfering with other Americans governing themselves in their way in the states where they are a majority.

Dangerous Hookups

It’s not the perils of Pauline, but it’s certainly the perils of the hookup culture. Or better, it’s the problem that arises when a woman gives it away for free.

So, let’s see. A woman who is giving it away for free-- I am sure you know what “it” is-- discovers that when she tells her hookups that that she does not want to continue hooking up, they try to convince her to change her mind. They do not force her to do anything. But they try their most persuasive wiles to entice her back into… giving it away for free. After all, why go out and pay for something that a comely lass is giving away for nothing.

Said lass is so concerned by the fact that men do not take No for an answer that she writes to Carolyn Hax. On this score, Hax has not quite gotten it right. But, perhaps she has.

The correct answer is simple: if the letter writer acts as though she does not respect herself, why would she imagine that men are going to respect her.

To provide the relevant context, here is her letter:

Meet a guy online, engage in light "sexting," maybe even meet and have sex. Neither of us is interested in anything serious and we establish that at the beginning. I lose interest — just not feeling the connection — so the next time he contacts me, I text back something like, "Hey, I'm sorry but I don't think we're a good match."

In response, the guy argues with me, tries to convince me to give him another chance, or asks questions that are really just arguments disguised as inquiries. Almost any reply seems to be an invitation to convince me to continue texting and/or hop (back) into bed.

In a more established relationship, I would feel terrible about "ghosting" someone. But in a casual, hookup situation where both parties have explicitly stated they aren't looking for anything serious . . . is it wrong?

For what it's worth, a few guys have done this to me, and it didn't upset me; I sent a message saying, "I had fun! Hope to see you again!" and when I didn't hear back, I figured that was my answer.

I don't want to be hurtful, but I also don't think I owe anyone an explanation for not wanting to date/sleep with them, especially when the relationship is explicitly casual and very brief. Is there a kind but firm way to convey that my lack of interest is nonnegotiable? Or is this just the price I pay for casual sex?

Needless to say, she is not at great risk of developing a relationship. As it happens, she lights on an important point in her last sentence: it is the price she is paying for casual sex. Actually, it isn’t very casual at all: it more closely resembles a business transaction. I am intrigued by the fact that, given that she is not requesting that the man pay for her favors, she discovers that she is the one who is paying… and who is also being used.

Naturally, the question of whether or not she is ghosting these men-- how many are there, pray tell?-- is ancillary to the more important issue: she is acting as though she does not respect herself and should stop it. It has nothing to do with the men, and everything to do with her personal ethics.

By the way, we must consider the fact that what she calls her light sexting puts her at risk of exposure. The men who are hassling her for more free love also have in their possession compromising pictures of her. Such pictures constitute an implicit threat. Has she considered that by sending out such pictures she is putting herself at risk… and will find it more difficult to say No?  

Either Hax misses this point, or she is being excessively tactful. She seems to condone this woman’s conduct:

As for your parting shot, “Or is this just the price I pay for casual sex?,” it’s a fine line and I fear you’ve put yourself on a shamey side of it. I hope as a society that we’ve matured beyond “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” cautionary tales where women who own their sexuality are depicted as sacrifices to homicidal man-karma.

She put herself on the “shamey side.” Wherever did Hax find that inane locution? This woman is not owning her sexuality: she is giving it away for free. She is acting as though it is worth nothing. She is acting as though it belongs to someone else.

But, I repeat myself. And what is wrong with explaining that picking up a strange man at a bar does entail more risk than would a date with a man she knows. I trust you all know the story of the woman who picked up Mr. Wrong in a bar and was murdered by him. It is the subject of the book: “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”

But then, in a strange but welcome reversal, Hax points out that this woman might very well have put herself in danger, and that she ought to reconsider her behavior:

However, anyone who seeks anything from other people, be it a restaurant meal or ride sharing or app sex, casts his or her lot in with strangers. That’s life, so I’m not suggesting we all treat every single stranger as a danger to us. The numbers don’t support that and sanity doesn’t recommend it — plus, the people we know mess us up plenty. However, we all have to understand and own the amount of risk we assume. If your experiences have you rethinking your risk tolerance, then honor that with your choices. Entirely your call.

The threat assessment must recognize that these men are strangers. They are, to use the old phrase, sex objects. She is using them for her pleasure and for nothing more. This behavior, in and of itself, is demeaning, to the men as well as to her. Obviously, not all strangers are dangerous, but the risk is much higher with a man you do not know.

So, Hax ends up by telling this hookup queen that she is placing herself in danger by having carnal interludes with strangers. It is a rhetorical ploy-- a way to warn her about the wages of her behavior without being too judgmental. One understands that if Hax had been very judgmental the woman might have recoiled. Does this woman really want to know and could she really accept that she is harming herself? I do not know.

If the Hax approach brings her to her senses, I am for it. I regret that she also told this woman that she was owning her sexuality. She is doing anything but owning her sexuality. And besides, whoever got the idea that your sexuality is something you own?

Blog Appreciation Week

It’s that time of the year. As has become a tradition in these parts, I have chosen to celebrate Cyber Monday by beginning my annual fundraising campaign. Thus, I humbly request that readers of this blog express their appreciation for my efforts by making a monetary contribution.

Producing posts every day does require some work. For those who wish to support my efforts, I suggest a donation. Perhaps you will feel even more gratitude this year… because I finally figured out how to moderate the comments section and have silenced the trolls that this popular blog has attracted.

If you click on the orange Donate button, on the left side of this page, the folks at Paypal will help you to contribute as much as you would like. This year, as a special service, you can also contribute to the blog by doing your Christmas shopping at Amazon. If you enter the Amazon site by clicking the Amazon ad at the left, a percentage of each purchase price will be credited to your humble blogger. Thus, you can do something good for the blog-- at no extra cost.

As they say: It's more blessed to give than to receive.

If you do not wish to use Paypal, I gratefully accept checks or cash sent to my address:

               310 East 46th St. 24H

               New York, NY   10017

If you have a friend or a relative who is a psychoanalyst or who still clings to Freudian theory, you can do him a great favor by sending a copy of  my book, The Last Psychoanalyst. It’s the perfect holiday gift. See the link at left.

Since this is a week long fundraising campaign, I will be repeating this post several other times throughout the week. Be prepared.

Thank you in advance.