Should She Be Ashamed of Her Delusional Crush?

As I have occasionally noted, when an Ask Polly letter begins with a profession of faith in Polly's wondrousness, the letter writer will inevitably be preparing us to see that her life is a complete trainwreck.

Whether these women are trainwrecks before they light on Polly’s idiocies or whether they are functional human beings whose lives become a complete mess for following Polly’s vapid advice, we cannot decide for now. Anyway, another casualty in the Pollyanna brigade. 

But, there is certainly a correlation between loving Polly and living an absurd life. Today’s letter writer, by name of Patricia, has a wild and crazy crush on someone who has a girlfriend, lives out of town and is basically a loser. 

As sometimes happens, Patricia is an aspiring writer. Check out her opening sentence and you will think to yourself that she ought to find another career path.

I am a deep-cut, longtime fan of Ask Polly, your writing, and read your column religiously. Thank you, Pastor Polly! My dilemma today is that I’m having a deeply nonsensical crush on a friend that’s bordering on delusional. Me and this friend met a few years ago through a friend. He lives in a different, far-away city with his girlfriend of six years or so. We clicked immediately. He would visit my city every so often and we would have big sparkly nights out with his friends, and I visited his city sometimes too. We talk often, sometimes calls once a week. We definitely have been flirtatious with each other, but overall I feel a deep love for him. He is so funny and smart and a really talented writer. I’m a writer too, and we encourage each other with our writing and gossip about the writing world. He’s the kind of person who I feel lucky to have met in this life.

Patricia continues to describe the object of her delusional affections. He is, dare we say, decidedly dysfunctional and apparently unappealing. He is certainly not boyfriend material. This suggests that he must have other qualities that Patricia lusts after-- perhaps a trust fund.

No one in such columns dares suggest that there might be financial motive. Patricia would rather think of herself as delusional than a gold-digger. Anyway, we do not know, so accept my speculation as speculation.

The problem is I am feeling so drawn to and attracted to him lately that I’m getting these “risk it all feelings” that would be a bad idea. Like asking him to leave his girlfriend and be with me — I know, insane. Even if this were to happen in some alternate universe, I don’t think he would make a very good partner. He is very depressed, drinks to cope, and has a hard time emotionally supporting me when I come to him for emotional support with something. He will just act really anxious and I can tell he isn’t able to spend a lot of time helping me if I’m experiencing acute emotional distress. He can be aloof, unreliable, etc. I have talked to him about some of this behavior and he made adjustments. He can also sometimes be monologue-y and narcissistic, but we mostly are bantering and exchanging ideas. I honestly get a lot out of this friendship!

Actually, she is getting nothing out of this friendship. We would wonder about her other friendships. We wonder about her family life. Whatever is going on in her life, if this man brightens up her day, precious little seems to be going on.

Does this person’s unavailability make me certain that I have to have them? I wish I didn’t want so much from him. I can tell these feelings don’t make a lot of sense and I’m probably projecting but … the desire is fierce! I feel like if I don’t marry him, I will miss out on being with a person I’m meant to be with.

How do I interpret these strong feelings in a way that will propel me forward in this lonely life?

Projecting Patricia 

If she is prey to  a delusional belief, she ought to see a psychiatrist. Otherwise, she ought to write this man out of her life. If she cannot control her feelings toward him, she should place more distance between the two. And she should cultivate her other friendships.

Naturally, Polly, from the depths of her ignorance, misunderstands the issue entirely. She tells Patricia, who might just be delusional, that her feeling are fine and good, and that her desires are good. And that she ought not to feel ashamed for having a delusional belief in someone who is an attached loser:

The point is: The feeling part of this is good. Your desires are good. So what you want to be careful NOT to do is smother all those feelings under a giant blanket of shame. Because shame won’t just blot out all of your desire, it will also repeat the core message that desire itself makes you a filthy piece of shit. Now maybe that’s just my former-Catholic, very married, very moralistic self-hating core talking, but I don’t think so. My suspicion, based on what I’ve observed in real life, experienced for myself, and read in countless letters from strangers, is that human beings blame themselves for being regular animals with needs and ideas and imaginations. We blame ourselves repeatedly and excessively, and all of that punitive self-flogging leads us off a steep cliff of shame. We end up flattened like Wile E. Coyote and then we cannot function or connect with others. When you see people shouting on TV, and they’re not standing up for justice of any kind beyond the freedom to do whatever the fuck they want and feel comfy about it? That’s some buried self-hatred and shame and flattened coyote bullshit right there.

Assuming that Patricia is not showing off her psychotic tendencies, assuming that she is normally constructed, she most definitely should feel some shame for having allowed this crush to fester and to eat up her life. She most definitely should feel shame for wasting her life on someone who has very little, if anything to offer. She is living off of a fantasy-- or perhaps visions of his trust fund-- and should feel ashamed of herself for doing so.

Then again, Polly has no understanding of the uses of shame, so she manages to regale us, yet again, with stupid and frankly harmful remarks about it. If Patricia felt some shame for her delusion she might choose to change her ways, to dispense with her infatuation.

Polly also covers it over with a sprinkling of obscenities, designed to show how cool she is. Naturally, if that is the only way you can show you are cool, you are not cool. Stop pretending. And stop pretending to know something about matters you know nothing about.

We would be curious to know whether Patricia shares her delusional infatuation with any of her friends-- assuming that she has any. If she does not, she might start doing so. They will certainly make an effort to set her straight. Otherwise, a trip to a psychiatrist and perhaps some medication would be one place to start. The other would be to block his number and to stop communicating with him. From what she says, it would not be a great loss.

California Is Burning

By now the armies of wokeness have launched a campaign to show how blue cities in blue states are wonderful places to live. Virus and violence notwithstanding.

Pastoral images of bike riders in Central Part are supposed to erase the image of the woman, her pants down at her waist, giving a blow job to a man in public on the corner of Broadway and 79th St. And, let's not forget the man who tried to rape a woman on a subway platform a few days ago, at 11:00 a. m. Naturally, once he was caught he was quickly released on low bail.

And yet, for evidence of the current exodus out of such states, we offer this report, from Arizona. Naturally, it is merely anecdotal, but it certainly matters that Arizonans are now being inundated by Californians. The evidence: a proliferation of California license plates.

This comment, by Jon Gabriel of the Arizona Republic emphasizes the fact that it all proves that California is a failed state (via Maggie’s Farm):

Driving across Arizona, it’s hard not to notice a surge in California license plates. The reason for this is becoming more apparent every day. California is a failed state.

After nearly a decade of one-party rule, the once-Golden State is tarnished, possibly beyond repair. Listing all the problems facing our neighbors across the Colorado River would require several books, so I’ll only highlight a few.

The fifth-largest economy in the world and home to many of the greatest technology companies on Earth can’t keep the lights on. The state’s three largest utilities turned off power to more than 410,000 homes and businesses on Friday, Aug. 21, then again to half as many Saturday, Aug. 22.

And, that’s not all, folks. 

The New York Times reports today that insurance companies are refusing to write policies for California homeowners. It seems to have something to do with the wildfires, brought about by environmentally sensitive government policies. One understands that, after the riots and looting and arson in America’s major cities, these same insurance companies are going to be reluctant to write policies for inner city stores:

As wildfires burn homes across California, the state is also grappling with a different kind of climate predicament: How to stop insurers from abandoning fire-prone areas, leaving countless homeowners at risk.

Years of megafires have caused huge losses for insurance companies, a problem so severe that, last year, California temporarily banned insurers from canceling policies on some 800,000 homes in or near risky parts of the state. However, that ban is about expire and can’t be renewed, and a recent plan to deal with the problem fell apart in a clash between insurers and consumer advocates.

Insurers are widely expected to continue their retreat, potentially devastating the housing market if homes become essentially uninsurable.

What’s the old saying? Go woke; go broke. 

When Social Skills Atrophy

I am sure that we will soon be reading learned treatises about how social isolation has provided us all manner of psychic benefit.

As it happens, it isn't true, but that is not going to stop anyone from explaining how good it is.

We already know that children are suffering for being desocialized, so it remains to be seen how much adults were also being damaged.

By now, we ought to know that social isolation is bad for your mental health. It is bad for your social skills, which directly impacts your mental health.

Few psycho therapists have considered the fact. Fewer psycho analysts have thought about it at all. But, according to an excellent article by Kate Murphy for the New York Times, social isolation causes social skills to atrophy, almost as though they were a muscle. And this makes our social relations more difficult, more fraught and more dramatic.

One might also say that social skills are habitual behaviors and that when we lose a habit we have more difficulty regaining it. For instance, spending too much time eating alone will cause you to lose some part of your impeccable table manners. When you are eating alone you can get away with bad manners. The more you develop bad manners the more difficult it will be to regain your good manners. I am assuming, of course, that you ever had any.

Murphy explains:

As the school year begins amid a global pandemic, many are concerned about the negative impact that virtual or socially distanced learning may have on children’s developing social skills.

But what about grown-ups? It seems adults deprived of consistent and varied peer contact can get just as clumsy at social interactions as inexperienced kids.

Research on prisoners, hermits, soldiers, astronauts, polar explorers and others who have spent extended periods in isolation indicates social skills are like muscles that atrophy from lack of use. People separated from society — by circumstance or by choice — report feeling more socially anxious, impulsive, awkward and intolerant when they return to normal life.

Psychologists and neuroscientists say something similar is happening to all of us now, thanks to the pandemic. We are subtly but inexorably losing our facility and agility in social situations — whether we are aware of it or not. The signs are everywhere: people oversharing on Zoom, overreacting or misconstruing one another’s behavior, longing for but then not really enjoying contact with others.

So, the lockdowns and social distancing, the inability even to go out for dinner, has damaged us. They have caused our social skills to atrophy.

Feeling detached from society, feeling alone and isolated makes us feel vulnerable. And, despite what certain idiots have been telling you, feeling vulnerable is not a good thing. It causes emotional distress. So, you do not want to get in touch with your vulnerability, but you want to regain the ability to connect with other people, especially on the most superficial levels.

Besides, if you want to get in touch with your vulnerability, where do you put your hands?

Murphy continues:

“The first thing to understand is that there are biological reasons for this,” said Stephanie Cacioppo, the director of the Brain Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Chicago. “It’s not a pathology or mental disorder.”

Even the most introverted among us, she said, are wired to crave company. It’s an evolutionary imperative because there’s historically been safety in numbers. Loners had a tough time slaying woolly mammoths and fending off enemy attacks.

So when we are cut off from others, our brains interpret it as a mortal threat. Feeling lonely or isolated is as much a biological signal as hunger or thirst. And just like not eating when you’re starved or not drinking when you’re dehydrated, failing to interact with others when you are lonely leads to negative cognitive, emotional and physiological effects, which Dr. Cacioppo said many of us are likely experiencing now.

Humans are social beings. To see each human as a unique individual is a major philosophical error. Of course, much of the problem lies in how we define individuality, but if we define it in terms of being detached from human company, being self-contained, self-actualized human monads, we are trafficking in a philosophical fiction.

Even if we are socially isolated among intimates, we are still missing out on the day-to-day interaction with acquaintances, colleagues, and even strangers. We cannot, Murphy explains, overcome our need for superficial exchanges by having more intimacy. This will come as a shock to psycho therapists, but it will be for a good cause.

Even if you are ensconced in a pandemic pod with a romantic partner or family members, you can still feel lonely — often camouflaged as sadness, irritability, anger and lethargy — because you’re not getting the full range of human interactions that you need, almost like not eating a balanced diet. We underestimate how much we benefit from casual camaraderie at the office, gym, choir practice or art class, not to mention spontaneous exchanges with strangers.

Considering that psycho therapists are all-in on human intimacy, on human empathy and on love relationships, you can feel confident that these are not what we need. We need a full range of human interactions, beginning with being polite to the dry cleaner.

Murphy continues:

“This daily interacting with individuals out in the world gives you a sense of belonging and security that comes from feeling you are part of, or have access to, a wider community and network,” said Stefan Hofmann, a professor of psychology at Boston University. “Social isolation slashes that network.”

The privation sends our brains into survival mode, which dampens our ability to recognize and appropriately respond to the subtleties and complexities inherent in social situations. Instead, we become hypervigilant and oversensitive. Layer on top of that a seemingly capricious virus and we’re all tightly coiled for fight or flight.

The more we feel detached from superficial contacts, the kind that define us as members of community, the more we overinterpret and overdramatize the interactions we do have:

You get a sidelong glance and immediately think the other person dislikes you. A confusing comment is interpreted as an insult. At the same time you feel more self-conscious, fearing any missteps will put you further at risk. As a result, social situations, even a friendly phone call, become something to avoid. People start to withdraw, rationalizing they are too tired, didn’t like the person much to begin with or there’s something they’d rather watch on Netflix.

It’s like someone who has learned how to play a game, but who suddenly is deprived of any opportunity to use his skill. He might not forget how to play, but he will need some intensive training to regain his skill:

In every interaction you have to make countless intuitive judgments — interpreting words, gestures and expressions and reacting appropriately. You’ve also got to get the timing and pacing right, as well as titrate how much to share and with whom. Social interplay is one of the most complicated things we ask our brains to do. In normal circumstances, we get a lot of practice, so it becomes somewhat seamless. You don’t think about it. But when you have fewer opportunities to practice, you get off your game. The surreal and clunky quality of virtual or masked interactions just makes matters worse.

This means that when people leave the big city and take up residence in the suburbs, they will not have such an easy time working. Working from home will eventually lose its novelty and companies will be obliged to set up new workplaces. They might feel inclined to use abandoned shopping malls for that purpose. Why else is the countryside dotted with these relics of the pre-Amazon age. But, the important thing is that he exodus from major cities is only the beginning, not the end of the story.

All told, kudos to Murphy and to the social psychologists who are researching this topic.

The Antifa Commander Is a Crybaby

You will find this hard to believe. I certainly did. You know those rough and tough Antifa street fighters, those courageous rioters who have been burning down the country and attacking the police. Would you believe, that one of their commanders, by name of Matthew Banta is a crybaby. Literally. 

Armed to the teeth, carrying all manner of explosives, Banta was stopped by police in Green Bay, Wisconsin. What did he do? He dropped to the ground, curled up in a fetal position and started to cry

Here it is from Zero Hedge:

A 23-year-old Wisconsin man carrying a flamethrower, smoke grenades and fireworks during a Saturday night demonstration in Green Bay 'dropped into the fetal position and began crying' after he was chased down by police.

Matthew Banta of Neenah, WI - who is "known to be a violent Antifa member who incites violence in otherwise relatively peaceful protests," was one of four individuals walking towards a protest with baseball bats, according to ABC2.

Andy Ngo reports the story:

Green Bay police say they were called for “a whole bunch of white people with sticks, baseball bats and helmets headed... towards the police” on Walnut St. near Webster Ave.

A responding officer says he saw four individuals walking towards a protest with baseball bats. One man was wearing a metal helmet with goggles and military-style gear with multiple pouches, and was carrying an Antifa flag. When the officer pulled his squad car in front of the group, they ran away. The officer caught Banta, who was carrying the flag, and says Banta “dropped into the fetal position and began crying.” He accused the officer of lying on him; the officer replied nobody was on him. -ABC2

As suspected, Matthew Banta is a hardcore antifa militant. He goes by the online moniker "The Commander Red." Extremely disturbing that he goes to antifa protests armed w/a loaded rifle. He appears to be friends w/violent Portland antifa suspect Alex Dial aka "Beta Cuck 4 Lyfe." pic.twitter.com/6pzD9jywDP

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 12, 2020

They have done an awful lot of damage, these Antifa crybabies.

Candidate Senility on Parade

The wit and wisdom of a senile presidential candidate. Or some such.

Yesterday, Joe Biden emerged for a few minutes to deliver prepared, scripted remarks about the violence that his supporters have been committing. And, of course, to threaten the country with more violence if it dares vote for Donald Trump again.

For our edification and our entertainment, he managed to put forth a Bidenistic word salad:

Covid has taken this year, just since the outbreak, has taken more than 100 year, look, here’s, the lives, it’s just, when you think about it.

No wonder the radical left wants all schools to stop teaching English grammar.

The Blue State Blues

It’s the demography, stupid. It’s not just that people are fleeing New York in droves. Apparently, the nation’s leader in out-migration is New Jersey. You recall that New Jersey, led by Democratic governor Phil Murphy, has sported a coronavirus death rate that is just about as bad as New York State's.

Democratic governors are leading the nation in mishandling the pandemic. Naturally, they are so degenerate that they cannot take responsibility for their leadership, so they blame the president.

Fancy that.

There’s more to the New Jersey story. Happily, Zero Hedge keeps us informed. It begins with the state’s appetite for tax revenue, and its wish to suck the life out of the economy:

A new tax on millionaires, a 22.5% gas tax hike  (bringing the total increase to 250% in 4 years), and now a tax on high frequency trades: it is becoming obvious to most - except perhaps the state's democratic leadership - that New Jersey is now actively trying to drive out its tax-paying population and top businesses with a series of draconian measures to balance its deeply underwater budget, instead of slashing spending. The state-imposed limitations on commerce, mobility and socialization due to the covid pandemic have also not helped. And in case it is still unclear, the trend of New Jersey's ultra wealthy residents fleeing for more hospitable tax domiciles which started with David Tepper years ago, is now spreading to members of the middle class.

So, the rich began the march. Now, the middle class is following. In time there will be nobody left to tax.

Whereas the New York Times emphasized people who were moving to the suburbs-- see above post-- Zero Hedge highlights those who have moved away from the region altogether. We note that the Times might have a vested interest-- people who move to the suburbs might still read the Times. People who move to Vermont or Idaho, less so.

According to the latest data from United Van Lines and compiled by Bloomberg, people have been flooding into Vermont, Idaho, Oregon and South Carolina, eager to flee such financially-challenged, high-tax, protest-swept, Democrat-controlled states as Connecticut, Illinois and New York. But no other state has seen a greater exodus than New Jersey, where out of every 10 moves, 7 have been households leaving the state, or nearly three times as many moved out than moved in.

On the opposite end were bucolic, pastoral states such as Vermont and Idaho, which have seen between 70% and 75% of all inbound moves.

The interesting part of the Zero Hedge story is this: the move had begun even before the covid pandemic. Some of us-- like yours truly-- had not noticed it, but here is the data:

Those claiming this record exodus from the Tri-State area is purely a result of Covid, think again: as United Van Lines reported back in its latest Annual Movers Study held before the coronavirus pandemic struck, the exodus was already present, as New Jersey (68.5 percent), New York (63.1 percent) and Connecticut (63 percent) were all included among the top 10 outbound states for the fifth consecutive year. Primary reasons cited for leaving the Northeast back in January were retirement (26.85 percent) and new job/company transfer (40.12 percent). To that we can now add soaring taxes and stifling covid-linked mandates.

How long will this exodus persist is unclear: at some point the recipient states will realize they too have to follow with similar fiscal policies or else they too risk becoming the next New Jersey. However until then, one thing is clear: the more New Jersey and its tri-state peers seek to impose every possible form of tax on their rapidly diminishing residents, the fewer people will actually stick around to pay those taxes.

 

Pretty soon, they will all be playing The Blue State Blues.

Suburbia, Here They Come

First, it was the New York Post. Now The New York Times is giving some serious coverage to the exodus out of New York City. If the Times is covering the story, it means that it’s too flagrant to ignore.

The Times reports on number of New Yorkers moving out to the suburbs. As it notes in its headline: “The Demand Is Insane.”

For instance:

Over three days in late July, a three-bedroom house in East Orange, N.J., was listed for sale for $285,000, had 97 showings, received 24 offers and went under contract for 21 percent over that price.

On Long Island, six people made offers on a $499,000 house in Valley Stream without seeing it in person after it was shown on a Facebook Live video. In the Hudson Valley, a nearly three-acre property with a pool listed for $985,000 received four all-cash bids within a day of having 14 showings.

Apparently, the demand is also unprecedented. It’s not déjà vu all over again.

Since the pandemic began, the suburbs around New York City, from New Jersey to Westchester County to Connecticut to Long Island, have been experiencing enormous demand for homes of all prices, a surge that is unlike any in recent memory, according to officials, real estate agents and residents.

In July, there was a 44 percent increase in home sales for the suburban counties surrounding the city when compared with the previous year, according to Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Consultants. The increase was 112 percent in Westchester, just north of New York City, and 73 percent in Fairfield County, Conn., just over the state border.

At the same time, the number of properties sold in Manhattan plummeted 56 percent, according to Miller Samuel.

Fortunately, New York’s idiot mayor is on the case. He has just announced that he will not allow restaurants to open for indoor dining until there is a coronavirus vaccine. Thereby, you can kiss hundreds of thousands of jobs and God-knows-how much economic activity good-bye.

As for why people are leaving, the virus is on the list. But, so is crime. Surely, so is the resettling of homeless people in upper class neighborhoods.

For now, many buyers in the suburbs are expressing concern about the health risks of living in densely packed urban neighborhoods. Facing pandemic restrictions, they want room that New York City often cannot provide: a yard for their children to play and an office to work remotely. Many want land, even if it means being farther away from Manhattan.

Some buyers have told brokers they are concerned about reports of rising crime in New York City, real estate agents said. 

The Times downplays the rising crime rate, so you can feel confident that crime is the problem. After all, de Blasio and Cuomo did not merely empty the jails. They have joined with numerous other city prosecutors in refusing to prosecute crime. Criminals have figured out that they can do whatever they please.

Naturally, the exodus out of New York will affect city services. It will also, as noted by numerous people, greatly reduce the city tax base:

The flight out of New York City could inhibit the city’s economic recovery and its ability to maintain quality-of-life services like the police and sanitation, said Maria Doulis, vice president of strategy and operations at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog.

“What is worrisome is that the high-income earners, particularly those with more than $1 million, provide a substantial amount of resources to the New York City budget,” Ms. Doulis said. “To lose them would really represent a blow to the budget.”

Even Gov. Cuomo noted this problem, weeks ago. The city administration has not quite gotten the message.

And, we know that New Yorkers are not just leaving for the suburbs. As noted in a post two days ago, many are leaving the New York region entirely:

Still, real estate agents across the region say they have been swamped with calls from New Yorkers who are rethinking their desire to stay.

Moving companies have said they cannot keep up with the demand. Metropolis Moving in Brooklyn said the number of quotes for out-of-state moves jumped by more than 200 percent in May and in June compared with those months last year, and by more than 165 percent in July versus a year ago. Most people seeking quotes were moving to the city’s suburbs, he said, though others were moving to areas stretching from Washington, D.C., to Boston.

Optimists think that New York will come roaring back. Increasingly, it seems that they are living an illusion.