NEW COLUMN: Conservation IS Conservative: BLM? Black-And-Yellow Lives Matter

Argument, Conservatism, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Reason

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NEW COLUMN: “Conservation IS Conservative: BLM? Black-And-Yellow Lives Matter.” It’s a feature on WND.COM, The Unz Review and The New American.

Excerpt:

… For the Left, love of the environment amounts to an anti-intellectual, atavistic ritual, the kind performed by Homo species, say, when lightning struck. Primitive man would have looked to the heavens, and promised a sacrifice, to appease the particular god in control. In our times, the pagan pantheon has been replaced with the Almighty God of Climate Change.

What about conservatives? Conservation is conservative. At least it ought to be.  But are conservatives better custodians of nature than progressives?

Everywhere you look conservatives are rejoicing that the world population count broke 8 billion this month. Population explosion is to be celebrated! You can never have too many people, for people, in conservative thinking, are only ever a positive sum; never zero sum. Resources are endless—or, so conservatives seem to assume.

Animal life and habitat? Who cares? Kill the good-for-nothing critters. Deforestation? Bring it on. Forests are overrated. Ditto oxygen. Besides, we are on our way to being an anaerobic species. Ask Mr. AI (Artificial Intelligence). He was on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” so he knows. (By the way, it’s beyond silly to believe in the autonomy of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is nothing more than meta-programing by mega-programmers.)

And, of course, the most populated places on earth are also heaven on earth. Oh, for the glories of Calcutta, Cairo and Gaza, already upon your little American hamlet.

The conservative overpopulation enthusiast could easily borrow the utilitarian arguments advanced by the open-border crowd, when touting the advantages of high-population density. …

… READ THE REST. “Conservation IS Conservative: BLM? Black-And-Yellow Lives Matter” is a feature on WND.COM, The Unz Review and The New American.

 

 

 

Black-And-Yellow Lives Matter: On Driving Your Local Liberal More Loco

Comedy & Humor, Conflict, Culture, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

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Context: Our mountain neighborhood is blessed with a unique layout. The lower-neighborhood stretch faces green embankments, angled at approximately 60 degrees. This lovely midsection is abutted each side by the road.

I like my incline to be natural, which means that now, the embankment is supposed to be blanketed with wild flowers. But not if the local, progressive, statist tyrant has his way, and he always does.

It has been decreed that a close shave of the neighborhood embankments be the rule, for fear of … as Basil Fawlty would screech, “Fa-Fa-Fa-fire.” That is ridiculous, because the grass is predominantly green, and, you know, … the asphalt. It acts as a firebreak.

But progressive statists are not good at loving a neighbor as thyself (one of the Ten Commandments), which means practicing the live-and-let-live motto. Neither are progressives environmentalists. When it comes down to brass tacks, they don’t much like the natural world.

But I do.

So mow we do. But we leave the lovely embankment dotted with little alien-like crop-circles of wild flowers and grasses. And, I had a signpost made to place alongside my wild flower crop-circles. It reads:

“HELP THE BEES POLLINATE
BLACK-AND-YELLOW LIVES MATTER”

In one fell-swoop, the local progressive vigilante is being taunted for his lack of brotherly bee love. Mocking the Black Lives Matter catechism is a heresy that drives this progressive prototype more loco than he already is.

 

 

Mental Maladies: Tucker And Mainstream Discover What Thomas Szasz Explained In 1960

Argument, Logic, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Science, The Therapuetic State

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About the lack of empirical evidence for so-called organic nature of “mental disease,” Tucker Carlson said TODAY, , (well, almost) what this column wrote first in 2002 and countless times since, in titles archived under Psychiatry and The Therapeutic State category:

“Cruise And The Psychiatric Shamans,” (2005) “EVIL, NOT ILL” (4/2007), “Conservatives For Abolishing The Fact Of Evil (2015),” “School Shootings: A Moral-Health, Not Mental-Health, Problem” (2018).

Tucker discovers what we wrote in “Broken Brains?” (January 16, 2002):

“… Consider also that there is no credible, scientific, peer-reviewed evidence for the organic basis of aberrant behavior, and you grasp the chicanery that surrounds the claim that strange or bad conduct is caused by ‘chemical imbalances’ in the brain. …”

The more rigorous and honest clinicians will concede that drawing causal relationships between “mental illness” and “chemical imbalances” is impossible. That prescription medication often helps misbehaved or unhappy individuals is no proof that strange behavior is an organic disease. One can chemically castrate a pedophile. But does this demonstrate that molesting kids is an organic disease? Never. It proves only that chemical castration can at times reduce recidivism in people who have chosen to victimize children.

Clear analytical thinking is at the root of solid science, it precedes empiricism.

Roughly 75 percent of the value of “antidepressant” drugs is due to the placebo effect. And talk therapies—cognitive-behavioral therapy in particular—can have equal or better results. Veracity permits only that we limit our causal conclusions to saying that assorted treatment modalities sometimes help people with behavioral problems, nothing more.

MORE.

My mentor, the great Dr. Thomas Szasz, wrote and proved all this analytically in the Myth of Mental illness, 1961. His books I studied at university, back when thought was taught. Both Tom Szasz and I lauded Tom Cruise when the actor attacked psychiatry so very cogently.

See “Cruise And The Psychiatric Shamans” (2005):

The psychiatric peanut gallery has blasted actor Tom Cruise for insisting correctly that there’s more voodoo to the profession than veracity. Cruise’s instincts are good: “Psychiatrists don’t have a test that can prove that a so-called mental illness is actually organic in origin, I wrote. Rigorous clinician —members of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology come to mind —concede that drawing causal connections between “mental illness” and “chemical imbalances” is impossible. That prescription medication often helps misbehaved or unhappy individuals is no proof that strange behavior is an organic disease —placebos or cognitive-behavioral therapy, for example, are as effective.

Tucker Carlson had summoned some limey, a quick-fix popularizer, to speak to these issues.

UPDATE II (7/24/022): NEW COLUMN: Crappy Conservative Thinking: Protecting Power, Not Freedom (On ‘Manners, Solid Values & A Soul’)

China, Conservatism, Kids, Pop-Culture, Republicans, Sex

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NEW COLUMN is “Crappy Conservative Thinking: Protecting Power, Not Freedom.” It’s a feature on WND.COM, The Unz Review, and on The New American, Friday.

Excerpt:

DID YOU notice the theme on the Tucker Carlson Tonight, July 18? Tucker Carlson got into TikTok mode, blaming China for pervasive American decadence, decades in the making.

The host petulantly saddled China and its algorithms for, among other things, America’s gutter culture, as acted out on TikTok.

If we are to believe Mr. Carlson, the Chinese made those Americans hos disrobe and simulate all manner of sex on TikTok. The Chinese made American TikTokers gesticulate and grunt and generally privilege Ebonics over English. And the Chinese made the same pornographic performers worship hip-hop and rap and energetically deploy their lower bodies to signal mating behavior that jibes with that of primates.

A non sequitur is when your argument’s conclusion does not follow from its premise. Milking illogic to incriminate China for cultural trends that pervade mainstream America culture—why, Laura Ingraham herself professed her love for the rap hump-a-long genre—Tucker offered up his proof for the blame-China thesis:

Chinese TikTokers are seen practicing piano, manners and magic cube mental skills, whereas Americans can be observed doing what they do on … TV, in the movies, on reality shows, on campuses from kindergarten to college and on political panels.

Say no more. Point proven (mine). QED. Doing dumb and degenerate has become the Alpha and Omega of American life. TikTok reflects not Chinese machinations, but the broader American culture.

China’s culture until Communism was Confucian, which is high-minded and genteel. And, contra ConOink (my variation on ConInc), China is reactionary, returning not to Communism, but to Confucianism.

America’s youth, enabled by indulgent and permissive parents and pedagogues, have become increasingly licentious, lippy and libertine. Most are ignorant and lousy at writing, reasoning, and conversing coherently about anything other than raaaaaacism and, “Like my sexuality.” The kids have also become un-moored from their finest traditions, which are being embraced by …the Chinese: They are returning to things classical, traditional and eternally and universally beautiful.

You don’t see many of China’s youth act out in estrus, because they can’t. China has banned corrupt hip-hop culture, and has a new export: Western classical music.

“Once, classical music generally traveled from the West to the rest,” marveled the Economist. “Now China is reversing the exchange, not merely performing Western classical music in China, but exporting it. …”

In China, they’re inclined to consider a youth-obsessed society such as ours a silly society. The standard inquiry, among Taiwanese engineers, I am told, about their American counterparts in hardware engineering is, “How many grey hairs and no-hairs are in the group?” Unlike their youth-worshiping American colleagues, these wise instinctual Confucians reason that the presence of “grey hairs and no-hairs” in the collaborating high-tech team bodes better for the project.

On the other hand, “in America,” as Oscar Wilde had observed, “the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.” And adults are always on-hand to facilitate their folly.

From Fox News we move to LinkedIn for a snapshot of the Zeitgeist…

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Crappy Conservative Thinking: Protecting Power, Not Freedom,” now on IlanaMercer.com

* My “I might be a Chinese spy” look is suitable for this subversive material.

UPDATED (7/22/022): My batting average. Every week, over 22 years, the likes of these come in:

Hi Ilana,

This is excellent: https://www.wnd.com/2022/07/crappy-conservative-thinking-protecting-power-not-freedom/   One of Wnd’s best over the past few months. Way to go!

Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.
President
National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI)
Editor-in-Chief
Home School Researcher (peer-reviewed journal)

UPDATE II (7/24/022):  On “manners, solid values and a soul”: Some men like to break a warrior down. Others take the time to do their part in propping her up. Chivalry among men is on life support, but is not entirely dead. I don’t get the reader’s French, but appreciate his kindness. 

—–Original Message—–
From: es
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2022 5:51 AM
To: ilana mercer <ilana@ilanamercer.com>
Subject: the chinese spy look

Love it!

You should run for something. Good looks n’est-pas la seule chose, c’est toute chose, d’accord?

Wait, I take that back. You have brains, manners, solid values and soul.

You’d lose in a landslide.

ES