Category Archives: Psychology & Pop-Psychology

The Catholic Church Is On The Rack

Christianity, Criminal Injustice, Pseudoscience, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Sex

The breakdown of boundaries in society may be one of the main sources of all the rot we see around us, but the Catholic Church will not be permitted to survive in the way it was intended to function: as a hierarchical organization.

The Pontiff likely quit because, brilliant prescient man that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is, he knows that the Church is no longer a haven from the toxic tides of populism and liberalism. And he is powerless to stop the avalanche.

The clamoring masses believe that they are every bit as smart as men like Benedict. The faithful, moreover, no longer see themselves as members of a community of believers, but as members of gay, lesbian, feminist, black, brown and plain angry clans. Unless the Church recognizes their brand of identity politics—they will bring it down.

Benedict also knows that the Church is on the rack. The victim community has found a way to bleed the Church dry and rob it of its moral authority. Sexual abuse litigation is big business, a racket facilitated by courts that are conduits to this theft.

After “asbestos, tobacco, guns, lead paint,” the next jackpot for tort lawyers was … sex, wrote Daniel Lyons of Forbes Magazine. In 2003, Lyons hashed out all there is to say about the sexual-abuse shakedown to which the Catholic Church has been subjected.

In “Sex, God & Greed,” Lyons pointed out how many of these class-action claims are, if not bogus, backed by the discredited excavation of false memories. (See my “Repressed Memory Ruse.”)

“… The focal point of this tort battle is the Catholic Church. The Church’s legal problems are worse even than most people realize: $1 billion in damages already paid out for the victims of pedophile priests, indications that the total will approach $5 billion before the crisis is over… The lawyers are lobbying states to lift the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases, letting them dredge up complaints that date back decades. Last year California, responding to the outcry over the rash of priest cases, suspended its statute of limitations on child sex abuse crimes for one year, opening the way for a deluge of new claims. A dozen other states are being pushed to loosen their laws. … But this wave of litigation does not end here. Is there any reason to think that the priesthood has a monopoly on child molestation? The lawyers who are winning settlements from Catholic dioceses are already casting about for the next targets: schools, government agencies, day care centers, police departments, Indian reservations, Hollywood. Plaintiff lawyer Roderick MacLeish Jr. and other litigators have parlayed the priest crisis into a billion-dollar money machine, fueled by lethal legal tactics, shrewd use of the media and public outrage so fierce that almost any claim, no matter how bizarre or dated, offers a shot at a windfall.”

UPDATED: Blade Runner Still Walking On Water

Celebrity, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, Pseudoscience, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Race, South-Africa, Sport

A high-profile murder involving a class of people whose role in South Africa’s endemic crime is statistically insignificant occurred last week. The two wealthy white South Africans involved, however, will become a perfect foil for the hypocritical tele-twits of the West. The latter have said nothing about the carnage of crime in that country—and they’ll continue to say nothing meaningful at all.

Crime in South Africa should have been making news headlines across the world throughout South Africa’s overnight transition from minority to majority rule. It hasn’t. Blade runner Oscar Pistorius’ run-in with the law has occasioned the first such mention that I can recall by anchor-personality Megyn Kelly of Fox News, and her colleagues in the industry. (The killing fields of South Africa are dissected in “Crime, The Beloved Country,” a chapter in my book).

A statistical outlier, an anomaly—the murder of a (white) South African celebrity (Reeva Steenkamp) by another (Olympian Oscar Pistorius), allegedly—has newsmen in the West mentioning a subject they’ve so far submerged.

Steenkamp was a South African model. Pistorius is also a celebrity whose fame comes from being a tenacious (and talented) track-and-field annoyance. An annoyance, because most hardcore track-and-field fans want able and disabled Olympians segregated. (Yes, this is an intentional play on “loaded” words. Call the PC police!) The separation why? So as to allow fans (me) to enjoy the sport without the accoutrements of technology and the incontinent gushing that accompanies Pistorius whenever he makes a run for it.

In any event, how PC and TV perfect is this crime? (This or any other crime should never be called “a tragic circumstance,” as such vague language implies that bad deeds are invariably caused—never committed. And that they are caused by factors outside the perpetrators. (See “Rah-Rah For Rioters.”)

I wager that next, Anderson Cooper or Piers Morgan will call on the actress Charlize Theron to comment about the relevance of her pet campaign to stop violence against women in our former homeland, and its relevance to this case.

There is no relevance. Violence in the “Rambo Nation” is unidirectional: black on black and black on white. Violence against women—at least the kind that causes more than hurt feelings—follows the same pattern.

Meanwhile, the blade runner is still walking on water. Oscar Pistorius is receiving “overwhelming support” from his fans. Or so his agent informs the fans and the press.

UPDATE: FROM the Facebook thread. It’s just as I said. The Guardian is turning a statistical anomaly in this group (well-to-do whites) into a generic statement about violence against women in South Africa.

UPDATED: Guns Are Good For Me, But Not For Thee

Barack Obama, Constitution, Democrats, Family, Feminism, Gender, GUNS, Individual Rights, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Regulation

A coterie of creepy kids converged today on DC. These modern-day freaks, the products of progressive parenting and pedagogy, put on a show worthy of the miniature reality show stars they are. (Watch Dance Moms to get a feel for the pathological, repulsive vernacular America’s kids are acquiring from the formative figures in their lives.)

The hallmark of an infantile society whose members lack an adult life: the canonization of The Kids.

Soon, the estrogen brigade on TV—right and left; Megyn Kelly and her slobbering sister on the other news stations—began beating on breast. The kids, the kids, you can’t use the “nation’s” little Buddhas—our demigods, our future (NOT)—in such a manner.

The participation of creepy kids—at the urging of their weepy, corpulent parents—in the celebration of 23 imperial orders in furtherance of federal tyranny was conflated by TV’s estrogen brigade with the NRA’s factual allusion to The Kids in this perfectly good NRA ad. It declares, “Protection for their kids, gun-free zones for ours:

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the ad’s narrator asks. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”

UPDATE: I am all for child labor. But kids should be seen and not heard. (Humor alert, FB Friends.)

UPDATED: The Pornography Of Grief (Barf, Barf)

Crime, Education, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Journalism, Media, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Zeitgeist

Almost as warped as the (evil, not ill) mass murderer who killed 20 children and 7 adults (his mother included) at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., is the freaky spectacle of mass contagion—where members of the public turn professional mourners, flocking to funeral happenings for victims they never knew.

Yes, each one of us can project his own baggage onto the senseless deaths in Newtown. But grief is not a tribal affair. Communities don’t grieve; individuals who incur loss do. These ritualistic displays among regular folks across the US are symptomatic of our festering cultural commons.

At the center of this festering culture is the journalist, acting as a master of ceremonies (MC). (I can see Anderson Cooper reconfiguring his Hero of the Year Award as we speak. This low-watt, dim bulb of a journo chooses America’s heroes each year, based on how many tears they shed. Pretty much.) For the media’s blow-by-blow, wall-to-wall coverage of the memorial in Newtown, Connecticut—and of every connected utterance on the issue, official or other—is a deconstruction of the discipline of journalism.

“Intellectual disciplines,” historian Keith Windschuttle has written, “were founded in ancient Greece and gained considerable impetus from the work of Aristotle who identified and organized a range of subjects into orderly bodies of learning. … The history of Western knowledge shows the decisive importance of the structuring of disciplines. This structuring allowed the West to benefit from two key innovations: the systematization of research methods, which produced an accretion of consistent findings; and the organization of effective teaching, which permitted a large and accumulating body of knowledge to be transmitted from one generation to the next.” (The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle, Encounter, pp. 247-250)

The signal achievement of the postmodern tradition has been to completely dismantle one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization: the intellectual discipline.

If there is nothing new to report on the case, no reporting needs to take place.

The victims of this shooting have become a sideshow in the pornography of grief.

UPDATE: BARF, BARF. A headline on Huffington Post (CNN’s Alpha Female, Anderson Cooper, Did a Similar Segment on The Topic): “Comfort Dogs Sent To Newtown From Chicago Area To Help Community After Sandy Hook Shooting.”

One day after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a group of golden retrievers from the Chicago area made a cross-country journey to comfort the affected community in Newtown.

Apparently there are no companion dogs in Newtown, Conn. They had to import expert dogs to handle the situation.

There is very little dignity in this.

You can’t make this stuff up.