Rob Henderson on Neuroticism; Peter Wallison on Mr. Trump's vulnerability; John Tierney on anti-male bias; Scott Alexander on evolutionary fitness and mental health
Dr. Kling writes "Given their timing, the goal of the indictments appears to be to reduce [Trump's] chances of winning in 2024."
I suspect that there's a darker motive afoot, as well, especially with the highly contrived New York charges. Some of that, of course, looks like Alvin Bragg throwing meat to a highly Democratic electorate in the expectation that he might run for higher office down the line.
But I can't overlook the fact that these contortions of the law will strengthen Trump's support in the Republican party, and make it more likely that he'll get the 2024 nomination, giving Biden or his Democratic successor a better chance of winning the general election. I suspect that Bragg knew this full well, and regards it as a desirable outcome.
In fact, this looks very much like the strategy that worked so well for the D's in the 2022 Congressional elections: support a noisy Trumpista in the Republican primaries, giving the Democratic candidate a greater likelihood of victory. This almost backfired in the case of the Arizona governorship: the D's backed Kari Lake against Karrin Taylor Robson in the Republican primary, figuring that Katie Hobbs would have a better chance against Lake, a notorious and noisy election-denier. Hobbs won in the general election, but by a margin of less than 1%; if fewer than 9,000 people had voted for Lake instead of Hobbs, she'd be the governor today.
I'm afraid that the Democrats are similarly gambling on being able to beat Trump in 2024. From a purely partisan standpoint, in which the only thing that matters is whether a candidate has a D or an R after their name, it makes sense. But if there're principles at play beyond "Democrats should always win, and one Republican is as bad as another", they're taking grave risks with the country's future.
In trying to avoid value judgements Emil can't stick the landing.
The tell on homosexuality being a mental illness is its correlation with so many other mental illnesses. Promiscuity to the point of being an STD factory, check. Hedonistic drug use, check. Narcissistic personality type, check. Etc. Obviously not all of these are present in every homosexual, but they are present more often in homosexuals when controlling for other facts (class, etc).
This is also why people don't associate lesbians with mental illness, because they don't share the same negative predilections of male homosexuals.
The bottom line is if I found out my daughter was a fag hag, I would assume it was having a negative influence on her. Just like if she was hanging out with promiscuous, hedonistic, narcissistic women.
"Is homosexuality a mental illness if everyone abhors it but not a mental illness if everyone is ok with it?"
I think part of the reason homosexuality has become more accepted is because promiscuity, hedonism, and narcissism have become more accepted. Is everyone being OK with those things a good thing?
"If there is a crisp, clean definition for mental disorder lying around, I don’t see it."
You know it when you see it, it can't be defined in abstraction. Jumping on a grenade to save your friends, heroic. Committing a banzai charge on Okinawa, mentally ill fanatic. It's all context.
The Democrats have put us on the path of having political prisoners from now going forward. They should be ashamed, but they aren't- they have the upper hand politically and they are doing exactly what they feel they need to do to retain and strengthen it, and it is hard to argue that they are wrong. Too many in the GOP think that when Trump is gone, things go back to normal- they are foolishly naive. If Trump can be prevented from running by ridiculous criminal prosecutions, the Democrats will not hesitate to use the exact same method on any other GOP candidate.
The GOP had better figure out a way to use mail-in-balloting exactly the same way Democrats use it, or the GOP won't even be competitive in 60% of the House seats inside of the next three elections. It will probably take at least one Presidential election with turnout over 110% to get people to wake up to the fraud involved in such insecure balloting methods.
Being worried about the state of our nation or the world is not a sign that someone is mentally ill. It is a sign that he knows what is going on and/or is not on the side of politics that gets to write the official Big Media party line.
Once most of the public figures out that all this hatred and phony charges against Trump and his allies are being done to conceal the fact that they intend to take away normal diets and normal energy-use habits from everyone, not because of any real enviro danger but to turn us into serfs, we will be vindicated and proven right on all counts. But after 2024 it may be too late. Burn your TV.
Re: "If there is a crisp, clean definition for mental disorder lying around, I don’t see it."
See Thomas Szasz, The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary (1990):
"Psychiatric diagnoses are stigmatizing labels phrased to resemble medical diagnoses, applied to persons whose behavior annoys or offends others. Those who suffer from and complain of their own behavior are usually classified as 'neurotic'; those whose behavior makes others suffer, and about whom others complain, are usually classified as 'psychotic.' [... .] Mental illness is a myth whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations. In asserting that there is no such thing as mental illness I do not deny that people have problems coping with life and each other. [,,, .] The business of psychiatry is to provide society with excuses disguised as diagnoses, and with coercions justified as treatments." (pp. 115 , 135, and 178)
“The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) rate in 2022 was 12.4%, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from 2021. This is the first increase in the overall SPM poverty rate since 2010. … ...Real median household income fell by 2.3% from $76,330 in 2021 to $74,580 in 2022. Income estimates are expressed in real or 2022 dollars to reflect changes in the cost of living. Between 2021 and 2022, inflation rose 7.8%; this is the largest annual increase in the cost-of-living adjustment since 1981. This year’s report is the first in which the Census Bureau used the Chained Consumer Price Index to adjust prior year income estimates for inflation… ...
The real median earnings of all workers (including part-time and full-time workers) decreased 2.2% between 2021 and 2022, while median earnings of those who worked full-time, year-round decreased 1.3%”
Falling incomes are seen by some as being not particularly conducive to social harmony. But table A-1 in the Income Report shows that it was primarily white household incomes that fell and Black and Hispanic households rose. And the Gini coefficient fell for the first time (“money income Gini index decreased by 1.2 percent between 2021 and 2022 (from 0.494 to 0.488); this represents the first time the Gini index has shown an annual decrease since 2007.”) so one might not be surprised if the report is celebrated in the establishment press as more proof of Biden being the world’s greatest economist in all of history. And I doubt anyone believes relative improvement of Protected Classes relative to whites is going to do much to ameliorate anti-white hostility.
Table A-1 Summary Income Measures by Selected Characteristic offers some support for Tierney. In family households, median income was up 1.6 percent for female householders/no spouse, down 3.9 percent for married couples and down 3.2 percent for male household/no spouse. Median income for in non-family households was up 4.3 percent for females and down 2.6 percent for males.
In racial terms, Black households were up 1.5 percent and Hispanics up 0.5 percent while Asians were down 0.6 percent and whites down 3.6 percent. Possibly correlated, for educational attainment, those with no high school diploma were up 6.4 percent while those with a BA or higher were down 4.9 percent. This may suggest a tightening of higher income opportunities as well as a shortage of workers willing to fill service sector jobs at minimum wage (obvious solution – more open borders, make everyone grateful to have a space on the floor in the Amazon warehouse to sleep upon.)
Based on my priors, my hypothesis would be that women and minorities are over-represented in public employment where salaries are largely insulated from inflation so this might account for them not suffering as much. Working class whites, however, are disproportionately impacted by the Biden Administration’s war on reliable energy, particularly in oil country, transportation services, and in other energy intensive industries generally. Haven’t found statistics to test these hypotheses, but BLS does report that of 7,674,000 people employed in public administration, 3,482,000 are male (45 percent) and 1,347,000 are Black (17 percent versus about 12.8 percent of the civilian labor force).
Further, BLS reported for June that:
“Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $41.03 per hour worked in June 2023. Wages and salaries averaged $28.97 per hour worked and accounted for 70.6 percent of employer costs, while benefit costs averaged $12.06 per hour worked and accounted for the remaining 29.4 percent. (See tables 1 and 4.)
Total employer compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $58.25 per hour
worked in June 2023. Wages and salaries averaged $35.90 and accounted for 61.6 percent of employer
costs, while benefit costs averaged $22.35 and accounted for 38.4 percent.”
What is the best extended refutation of the claims that there were only limited irregularities in the 2020 election? To be completely honest, I did not investigate the claims thoroughly, mostly for Occam's Razor reasons-- I wasn't surprised that a controversial President lost in very, very strange year. But did anyone actually take the time to carefully review and refute the claims in a non-condescending, non-Trump Derangement Syndrome way?
Considering how slow judicial process are, I think it is amazing t hat the indictments have come as soon as they did. I do ot find the timing "suspicious" at all.
"If someone is inclined to jump on a grenade to save his mates, he is not going to survive, but that does not make him mentally ill. Or to take a less dire example, an astronaut on a risky mission may be lowering his chances of reproducing, but we would not call him mentally ill. Conversely, a psychopath may be able to reproduce. That does not mean that we should regard him as mentally sound."
I don't know; I wouldn't be so ready to dismiss Kirkegaard's attempts to put it in evolutionary terms, even if he didn't get it quite right in his formulation. Altruism and self-sacrifice are clearly explainable in evolutionary terms, as is the willingness to undertake dangerous exploratory ventures. Psychopathy, likewise, I think you can categorize as a particular reproductive strategy that tends to be successful when utilized by a small fraction of the population, but becomes less so if/when its relative proportion of the population grows.
"....the general perception is that Mr. Trump was flailing". But is it not the case that, in the 2020 election, both candidates got more votes than any previous presidential candidate? I am no great admirer of Donald Trump but it is the case that his presidency received a level of MSM hostility that was quite unprecedented (way beyond anything meted to previous Republicans). The hysterical establishment reaction has been likened by someone (can't remember who) to the kind of reaction that would be appropriate if a huge meteorite was hurtling towards earth.
For him - in spite of this - to have got such a huge popular vote was hardly 'flailing'. Is it not also the case that most psephologists concede that, were it not for Covid, he would have won hands down because his administration up 'till then had been (perhaps in spite of him) surprisingly successful?
"If you think these indictments need to happen during election season, then you have given up on the system." I don't think these indictment need to happen during election season, but I am still dangerously close to giving up on the system.
"When kids play, this is an indication that they are comfortable. ... If kids are hungry or frightened or otherwise don’t have their needs met, they won’t play."
"This is one way you can tell whether your house is well-ordered and emotionally stable—if your kids are playing. This indicates that everything else they might need has been taken care of."
I can maybe agree with the first sentence of the quoted paragraph. The last two seem to reach too far.
Everything else is taken care of?
Kids without needs met never play?
I agree the timing of charges against Trump should concern all.
"Conversely, a psychopath may be able to reproduce. That does not mean that we should regard him as mentally sound."
Reproductive fitness - Ability to reproduce is not fitness. Homosexuality, depression, and anxiety don't prevent reproduction either. That said, I agree fitness is rather vague.
Links to Consider, 9/12
Dr. Kling writes "Given their timing, the goal of the indictments appears to be to reduce [Trump's] chances of winning in 2024."
I suspect that there's a darker motive afoot, as well, especially with the highly contrived New York charges. Some of that, of course, looks like Alvin Bragg throwing meat to a highly Democratic electorate in the expectation that he might run for higher office down the line.
But I can't overlook the fact that these contortions of the law will strengthen Trump's support in the Republican party, and make it more likely that he'll get the 2024 nomination, giving Biden or his Democratic successor a better chance of winning the general election. I suspect that Bragg knew this full well, and regards it as a desirable outcome.
In fact, this looks very much like the strategy that worked so well for the D's in the 2022 Congressional elections: support a noisy Trumpista in the Republican primaries, giving the Democratic candidate a greater likelihood of victory. This almost backfired in the case of the Arizona governorship: the D's backed Kari Lake against Karrin Taylor Robson in the Republican primary, figuring that Katie Hobbs would have a better chance against Lake, a notorious and noisy election-denier. Hobbs won in the general election, but by a margin of less than 1%; if fewer than 9,000 people had voted for Lake instead of Hobbs, she'd be the governor today.
I'm afraid that the Democrats are similarly gambling on being able to beat Trump in 2024. From a purely partisan standpoint, in which the only thing that matters is whether a candidate has a D or an R after their name, it makes sense. But if there're principles at play beyond "Democrats should always win, and one Republican is as bad as another", they're taking grave risks with the country's future.
In trying to avoid value judgements Emil can't stick the landing.
The tell on homosexuality being a mental illness is its correlation with so many other mental illnesses. Promiscuity to the point of being an STD factory, check. Hedonistic drug use, check. Narcissistic personality type, check. Etc. Obviously not all of these are present in every homosexual, but they are present more often in homosexuals when controlling for other facts (class, etc).
This is also why people don't associate lesbians with mental illness, because they don't share the same negative predilections of male homosexuals.
The bottom line is if I found out my daughter was a fag hag, I would assume it was having a negative influence on her. Just like if she was hanging out with promiscuous, hedonistic, narcissistic women.
"Is homosexuality a mental illness if everyone abhors it but not a mental illness if everyone is ok with it?"
I think part of the reason homosexuality has become more accepted is because promiscuity, hedonism, and narcissism have become more accepted. Is everyone being OK with those things a good thing?
"If there is a crisp, clean definition for mental disorder lying around, I don’t see it."
You know it when you see it, it can't be defined in abstraction. Jumping on a grenade to save your friends, heroic. Committing a banzai charge on Okinawa, mentally ill fanatic. It's all context.
The Democrats have put us on the path of having political prisoners from now going forward. They should be ashamed, but they aren't- they have the upper hand politically and they are doing exactly what they feel they need to do to retain and strengthen it, and it is hard to argue that they are wrong. Too many in the GOP think that when Trump is gone, things go back to normal- they are foolishly naive. If Trump can be prevented from running by ridiculous criminal prosecutions, the Democrats will not hesitate to use the exact same method on any other GOP candidate.
The GOP had better figure out a way to use mail-in-balloting exactly the same way Democrats use it, or the GOP won't even be competitive in 60% of the House seats inside of the next three elections. It will probably take at least one Presidential election with turnout over 110% to get people to wake up to the fraud involved in such insecure balloting methods.
No good definition of mental illness/disorder exists. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1995-01851-001
Being worried about the state of our nation or the world is not a sign that someone is mentally ill. It is a sign that he knows what is going on and/or is not on the side of politics that gets to write the official Big Media party line.
Once most of the public figures out that all this hatred and phony charges against Trump and his allies are being done to conceal the fact that they intend to take away normal diets and normal energy-use habits from everyone, not because of any real enviro danger but to turn us into serfs, we will be vindicated and proven right on all counts. But after 2024 it may be too late. Burn your TV.
Re: "If there is a crisp, clean definition for mental disorder lying around, I don’t see it."
See Thomas Szasz, The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary (1990):
"Psychiatric diagnoses are stigmatizing labels phrased to resemble medical diagnoses, applied to persons whose behavior annoys or offends others. Those who suffer from and complain of their own behavior are usually classified as 'neurotic'; those whose behavior makes others suffer, and about whom others complain, are usually classified as 'psychotic.' [... .] Mental illness is a myth whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations. In asserting that there is no such thing as mental illness I do not deny that people have problems coping with life and each other. [,,, .] The business of psychiatry is to provide society with excuses disguised as diagnoses, and with coercions justified as treatments." (pp. 115 , 135, and 178)
re: “As of now, the gender issue and the race issue just look more tense than they have ever been.”
The Census Bureau reports released today (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/income-poverty-health-insurance-coverage.html ) may, or may not, be adding fuel to the fire. (See: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/09/the-daily-chart-falling-incomes.php and https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-real-household-incomes-slide-3rd-year-row-white-incomes-slide-black-hispanics-rise ) . The Census Bureau press release says,
“The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) rate in 2022 was 12.4%, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from 2021. This is the first increase in the overall SPM poverty rate since 2010. … ...Real median household income fell by 2.3% from $76,330 in 2021 to $74,580 in 2022. Income estimates are expressed in real or 2022 dollars to reflect changes in the cost of living. Between 2021 and 2022, inflation rose 7.8%; this is the largest annual increase in the cost-of-living adjustment since 1981. This year’s report is the first in which the Census Bureau used the Chained Consumer Price Index to adjust prior year income estimates for inflation… ...
The real median earnings of all workers (including part-time and full-time workers) decreased 2.2% between 2021 and 2022, while median earnings of those who worked full-time, year-round decreased 1.3%”
Falling incomes are seen by some as being not particularly conducive to social harmony. But table A-1 in the Income Report shows that it was primarily white household incomes that fell and Black and Hispanic households rose. And the Gini coefficient fell for the first time (“money income Gini index decreased by 1.2 percent between 2021 and 2022 (from 0.494 to 0.488); this represents the first time the Gini index has shown an annual decrease since 2007.”) so one might not be surprised if the report is celebrated in the establishment press as more proof of Biden being the world’s greatest economist in all of history. And I doubt anyone believes relative improvement of Protected Classes relative to whites is going to do much to ameliorate anti-white hostility.
Table A-1 Summary Income Measures by Selected Characteristic offers some support for Tierney. In family households, median income was up 1.6 percent for female householders/no spouse, down 3.9 percent for married couples and down 3.2 percent for male household/no spouse. Median income for in non-family households was up 4.3 percent for females and down 2.6 percent for males.
In racial terms, Black households were up 1.5 percent and Hispanics up 0.5 percent while Asians were down 0.6 percent and whites down 3.6 percent. Possibly correlated, for educational attainment, those with no high school diploma were up 6.4 percent while those with a BA or higher were down 4.9 percent. This may suggest a tightening of higher income opportunities as well as a shortage of workers willing to fill service sector jobs at minimum wage (obvious solution – more open borders, make everyone grateful to have a space on the floor in the Amazon warehouse to sleep upon.)
Based on my priors, my hypothesis would be that women and minorities are over-represented in public employment where salaries are largely insulated from inflation so this might account for them not suffering as much. Working class whites, however, are disproportionately impacted by the Biden Administration’s war on reliable energy, particularly in oil country, transportation services, and in other energy intensive industries generally. Haven’t found statistics to test these hypotheses, but BLS does report that of 7,674,000 people employed in public administration, 3,482,000 are male (45 percent) and 1,347,000 are Black (17 percent versus about 12.8 percent of the civilian labor force).
Further, BLS reported for June that:
“Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $41.03 per hour worked in June 2023. Wages and salaries averaged $28.97 per hour worked and accounted for 70.6 percent of employer costs, while benefit costs averaged $12.06 per hour worked and accounted for the remaining 29.4 percent. (See tables 1 and 4.)
Total employer compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $58.25 per hour
worked in June 2023. Wages and salaries averaged $35.90 and accounted for 61.6 percent of employer
costs, while benefit costs averaged $22.35 and accounted for 38.4 percent.”
(https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm )
When one considers this along with other factors like the extraordinary lengths that universities like Stanford (https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-racial-engineering/ )and others will go to to exclude white students it is no wonder that younger white males are growing increasingly conservative (https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-really-need-to-win-back-young-white-male-voters-from-the-gop ). The mine field likely will only become more perilous.
What is the best extended refutation of the claims that there were only limited irregularities in the 2020 election? To be completely honest, I did not investigate the claims thoroughly, mostly for Occam's Razor reasons-- I wasn't surprised that a controversial President lost in very, very strange year. But did anyone actually take the time to carefully review and refute the claims in a non-condescending, non-Trump Derangement Syndrome way?
Considering how slow judicial process are, I think it is amazing t hat the indictments have come as soon as they did. I do ot find the timing "suspicious" at all.
Joe Biden may have won, but it was by definition illegitimate
There were many exception granted to election laws and rules by courts, which was also illegitimate per the constitution
Illegitimate: Being against established or accepted rules and standards.
"If someone is inclined to jump on a grenade to save his mates, he is not going to survive, but that does not make him mentally ill. Or to take a less dire example, an astronaut on a risky mission may be lowering his chances of reproducing, but we would not call him mentally ill. Conversely, a psychopath may be able to reproduce. That does not mean that we should regard him as mentally sound."
I don't know; I wouldn't be so ready to dismiss Kirkegaard's attempts to put it in evolutionary terms, even if he didn't get it quite right in his formulation. Altruism and self-sacrifice are clearly explainable in evolutionary terms, as is the willingness to undertake dangerous exploratory ventures. Psychopathy, likewise, I think you can categorize as a particular reproductive strategy that tends to be successful when utilized by a small fraction of the population, but becomes less so if/when its relative proportion of the population grows.
"....the general perception is that Mr. Trump was flailing". But is it not the case that, in the 2020 election, both candidates got more votes than any previous presidential candidate? I am no great admirer of Donald Trump but it is the case that his presidency received a level of MSM hostility that was quite unprecedented (way beyond anything meted to previous Republicans). The hysterical establishment reaction has been likened by someone (can't remember who) to the kind of reaction that would be appropriate if a huge meteorite was hurtling towards earth.
For him - in spite of this - to have got such a huge popular vote was hardly 'flailing'. Is it not also the case that most psephologists concede that, were it not for Covid, he would have won hands down because his administration up 'till then had been (perhaps in spite of him) surprisingly successful?
"If you think these indictments need to happen during election season, then you have given up on the system." I don't think these indictment need to happen during election season, but I am still dangerously close to giving up on the system.
Mental illness has a large dimension of subjectivity, so there can never really be a precise definition. However, most people know when they see it.
"When kids play, this is an indication that they are comfortable. ... If kids are hungry or frightened or otherwise don’t have their needs met, they won’t play."
"This is one way you can tell whether your house is well-ordered and emotionally stable—if your kids are playing. This indicates that everything else they might need has been taken care of."
I can maybe agree with the first sentence of the quoted paragraph. The last two seem to reach too far.
Everything else is taken care of?
Kids without needs met never play?
I agree the timing of charges against Trump should concern all.
"Conversely, a psychopath may be able to reproduce. That does not mean that we should regard him as mentally sound."
Reproductive fitness - Ability to reproduce is not fitness. Homosexuality, depression, and anxiety don't prevent reproduction either. That said, I agree fitness is rather vague.