A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
PAGE 567 of 725
A story about mental illness: The Millions of Christs of America
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2021/08/the-millions-of-christs-
of-america.html
As an undergraduate History major, I reluctantly dug up a halfway natural science class to fulfill my college’s general education requirement. It was called Psychology as a Natural Science. However, the massive textbook assigned to us turned out to be chock full of interesting tidbits ranging from optical illusions to odd tales. One of the oddest was the story of Leon, Joseph, and Clyde: three men who each fervently believed he was Jesus Christ. The three originally did not know each other, but a social psychologist named Milton Rokeach brought them together for two years in an Ypsilanti, Michigan mental hospital to experiment on them. He later wrote a book titled The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.
Rokeach hypothesized that since Jesus exists by the same code that the Immortals in Highlander later stated as “There can only be one,” these three men might be cured of their delusions when confronted with others who insisted likewise. Of course he was very wrong. Much like Highlander’s Immortals, they simply fell into conflict. When faced with the others’ unrelenting presence, each dug their heels in and doubled down on their delusions. Even Rokeach’s jaw-dropping manipulations, which included a string of outrageous lies and elaborate fabrications, could not dissuade them.
I’ve recently been pondering this infamous tale of poorly conceived psychological experimentation because in it I see reflections of problems currently plaguing America. Except instead of being thrown together in confinement, people with similar mental disorders are now finding each other on their own. And instead of a psychological professional at least trying (albeit in a highly flawed manner) to cure them, the medium of connection is the largely unregulated and even more manipulative internet. And, finally, instead of insisting there can only be one, mentally ill people are now reinforcing and reduplicating each other’s delusions.
Of course you don’t have to be mentally ill to believe most of the world wide web’s whack-a-doo conspiracy theories. One need merely be stupid or gullible, or in most cases perhaps, just a bit desperate. Take for example the entirely discredited “theory” that childhood vaccines cause autism. It is very understandable that the trauma of conceiving and parenting a severely autistic child would break someone just a little bit, to the point that they demand an explanation that satisfies them more than what we currently know about autism’s causes, which is very little. For some, “very little” just won’t do. Furthermore, the little we do know, including that genetics might be a factor, may contribute to a sense of misplaced guilt that some simply cannot shoulder, leading them to grasp at whatever else is out there. And what’s out there is an internet-fueled story about vaccines.
Funnel it through the internet, and suddenly it’s the conspiracy theory that’s infectious, spreading from the desperate to the naive. By 2011, 18% of Americans believed this incredibly dangerous hooey. That’s roughly 50 million people.
Likewise, you don’t have to be mentally ill to sincerely believe that the Earth is flat, that the Holocaust is a hoax, that the moon landing was faked, that Princess Diana was murdered, that 9-11 was an inside job, or that JFK was killed by the CIA or the Mafia or the Cubans. You might very well be mentally ill. But you don’t have to be.
However, as we move up the ladder to more and more ludicrous internet conspiracy theories, it begins to seem as if some sort of mental illness is a prerequisite for full faith. That is not a professional assertion. Psychology as a Natural Science was a fun course, but not life changing. I stuck with my major and became a Historian, not a mental health professional, and I respect professional boundaries. But just as any reasonable person can make lay interpretations about the past, any reasonable person
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Another story about mental illness:
Malignant normality: The psychological theory that explains naked emperors, narcissists and Nazis
https://www.salon.com/2021/08/12/malignant-normality-the-psychological
-theory-that-explains-naked-emperors-narcissists-and-nazis/
There are many variations to Hans Christian Andersen's classic literary folktale "The Emperor's New Clothes," but most have the same basic plot points: A vain emperor is duped by two con men into buying clothes that don't exist. They trick him by saying that the non-existent fabric is actually visible, but only stupid and incompetent people can't see it. The emperor pretends that he can see the clothes, and then ordinary people follow his lead — whether because they believe him, or because they are simply afraid to state otherwise. It is only when a child blurts out that he is naked that the illusion is shattered.
Andersen was unfamiliar with the psychological concept known as malignant normality, but his tale captures it perfectly. The folktale also teaches an important lesson about standing by one's own common sense, even when social pressures are insurmountable, and remembering that confidence in your correctness is not enough on its own — particularly if those around you don't buy in too. And the idea — of a narcissist with power and/or popularity normalizing an "alternate reality" that is patently absurd — clearly has analogues in schoolyard politics, global politics, and everything in-between.
The concept of malignant normality, as explained by psychiatrist Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, is rooted in history — specifically, in our understanding of Nazi Germany. Lifton argued that many Nazi doctors weren't active ideologues, but were willing to send Jews to gas chambers because this was their job — even though they had taken a hippocratic oath.
The reality of institutionalized genocide, which had not seemed plausible to Germans only a dozen years earlier, had become a malignant normal. Not everyone had to buy into the ideas of Nazism, at least not in full. They simply had to live in a society where actions that would usually be considered atrocious are instead perceived as routine. In turn, while they didn't have to believe in Hitler's lies, they had to at least accept that a social order based around those lies could be legitimate. The moral system and fundamental political beliefs of millions of people had been radically altered — and all of it based on a narcissist's word.
That last detail — and all of it based on a narcissist's word — is crucial to understanding malignant normality, clinical psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula told Salon.
More at https://www.salon.com/2021/08/12/malignant-normality-the-psychological
-theory-that-explains-naked-emperors-narcissists-and-nazis/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's the problem with anecdotal evidence then, I'm afraid.
Where I lived, in the mid to late 90's when I had a shitty job, the only ones doing shitty jobs around me were the kids. Outside of the customers, the only adults in those buildings were management.
P.S. And seriously dude. Why am I still hearing about Trump from you every single day?
If you haven't noticed, we've got a new douche in office screwing everything up right now.
FACTS:
Quote:
Is Trump dead? No. Is Trump highly regarded in Texas? Yes.
OPINION:
Quote:
Is Biden screwing up? No.
FACT:
Quote:
Is Biden poorly regarded in Texas? Yes.
Quote:
Those are what you call anecdotal evidence.
No. You have no idea what anecdotal evidence is. Go look it up.
I've grown weary conversing with the retarded.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The Tax Policy Center estimates that last year nearly 107 million households, or about 61 percent, owed no income tax or even received tax credits from the government. The share of non-payers will decline to about 102 million or 57 percent this year.
The importance of the refundable credits is clear when you look at families with children. For example, this year 70 percent of all those families and 84 percent of unmarried people with dependents (who file as heads of household) will pay no federal income tax.
More at https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/covid-19-pandemic-drove-huge-te
mporary-increase-households-did-not-pay-federal-income-tax
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
A Conservative brilliantly explains what is wrong with angry white men
During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," conservative commentator and U.S. Naval War College professor Tom Nichols went into an extended explanation about the rising tide of angry middle-aged white men that helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump and why their reasoning is dead wrong.
Promoting his book, "Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within of our Modern Democracy," Nichols explained that they are wallowing in "poisonous nostalgia" because they believe the world is coming apart before their eyes.
"We want to believe things are not our fault and things are so terrible and we would do better and wouldn't have to be so angry if things weren't so awful all the time," he told host Joe Scarborough. "Every age has its advantages and disadvantages. but the notion that somehow in 2021 -- when we're living longer, healthier, the world is mostly at peace, whether people want to believe that or not, it's true -- people want to believe this is the worst time ever, and it's a poisonous nostalgia that looks back and there's no way a democratic government can keep up with that unless they can invent a time machine."
With co-host Willie Geist asking about former president Donald Trump running on lost jobs as part of his "Make America Great Again" campaign, Nichols explained that the decline of industrial jobs is not a recent phenomenon.
"I do not come from a privileged family, my parents were Depression-era high school dropouts. I grew up among factories that by the time I was a child were empty and rotting, " he recalled. "I played in abandoned -- with abandoned equipment and empty factories and coal yards and railroad trestles. I write about that this morning in USA Today, there are two things about that. A lot of that happened before people were willing to admit that happened. I talked to a friend in a book and said I remember when all those factories were full. I said that was impossible; we broke the windows in that factory when we were 11, like 50 years ago. People have convinced themselves there was once this golden age they remember that was only taken away in the last few years."
"I had a friend who, you know, working-class guy I went to school with since we were small children, spends his weekends on his boat, and he says everything is changed, it's awful."
"What he means is the street we grew up on, we had a neighborhood barber, candy store and diner, and one of them is an antique shop now, another is a Spanish storefront church, and the library is closed," he elaborated. "He just wants it to be -- it's like a mid-life crisis for a lot of white males for whom they want it to be 1969 again. I think that the problem of becoming a minority is really anxiety-producing for a lot of them. But again, the answer to that is more democracy, not some kind of illiberal backlash and trying to turn the clock back by force. But they've been told by politicians and political entrepreneurs that with just enough willpower and rage and anger and resentment they can turn the hands of time back and, you know, make it 1965 again."
"I think anyone who is nostalgic for the 1970s - I talk about this in the book -- people see the 70s as a benchmark," he added. "I was a teenager in the 70s and I can not imagine a decade I would rather not go back to in my hometown and the way I grew up. But people have, you know, sanitized these memories and turned them into sepia-toned photographs in their minds that aren't true."
More at https://www.rawstory.com/angry-white-men-trump/
Our Own Worst Enemy
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Own-Worst-Enemy-Democracy/dp/0197518877/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
A Conservative brilliantly explains what is wrong with angry white men...
Quote:
...Promoting his book...
Fuck your book dude.
Enjoy Trump for 4 more years once we vote him in again.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I know you will want to read the book called The Death Of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge. From introduction:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Fuck your book dude.
Enjoy Trump for 4 more years once we vote him in again.
Back in the late 1980s, when I was working in Washington, DC, I learned how quickly people in even casual conversation would immediately instruct me in what needed to be done in any number of areas, especially in my own areas of arms control and foreign policy. (As usual, it was what “they” should do, as in “they ought to ....”) I was young and not yet a seasoned expert, but I was astonished at the way people who did not have the first clue about those subjects would confidently direct me on how best to make peace between Moscow and Washington.
To some extent, this was understandable. Politics invites discussion. And especially during the Cold War, when the stakes were global annihilation, people wanted to be heard. I accepted that this was just part of the cost of doing business in the public policy world. Over time, I found that other specialists in various policy areas had the same experiences, with laypeople subjecting them to ill-informed disquisitions on taxes, budgets, immigration, the environment, and many other subjects. If you’re a policy expert, it goes with the job.
In later years, however, I started hearing the same stories from doctors. And from lawyers. And from teachers. And, as it turns out, from many other professionals whose advice is usually not contradicted easily. These stories astonished me: they were not about patients or clients asking sensible questions, but about those same patients and clients actively telling professionals why their advice was wrong. In every case, the idea that the expert knew what he or she was doing was dismissed almost out of hand.
Worse, what I find so striking today is not that people dismiss expertise, but that they do so with such frequency, on so many issues, and with such anger. Again, it may be that attacks on expertise are more obvious due to the ubiquity of the Internet, the undisciplined nature of conversation on social media, or the demands of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. But there is a self-righteousness and fury to this new rejection of expertise that suggest, at least to me, that this isn’t just mistrust or questioning or the pursuit of alternatives: it is narcissism, coupled to a disdain for expertise as some sort of exercise in self-actualization.
This makes it all the harder for experts to push back and to insist that people come to their senses. No matter what the subject, the argument always goes down the drain of an enraged ego and ends with minds unchanged, sometimes with professional relationships or even friendships damaged. Instead of arguing, experts today are supposed to accept such disagreements as, at worst, an honest difference of opinion. We are supposed to “agree to disagree,” a phrase now used indiscriminately as little more than a conversational fire extinguisher. And if we insist that not everything is a matter of opinion, that some things are right and others are wrong ... well, then we’re just being jerks, apparently.
The Death Of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Thomas M. Nichols
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/46750905-the-death-of-expertise-
the-campaign-against-established-knowledge-and-w
Download the book for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.ch/search.php?req=Tom+Nichols+Expertise
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I know you will want to read the book called The Death Of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Fuck your book dude.
Enjoy Trump for 4 more years once we vote him in again.
Nah. I'm reading Influence: The Power of Persuasion right now.
I don't waste my time with pseudo-intellectual books written for pseudo-intellectuals by pseudo-intellectuals.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Hey. Where's Ted, BTW?
Finally realized what a fuck up voting for Biden* was and in hiding, I presume.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Are you working on a legal way to swindle fools out of their money, 6ix? Because if you aren't working on a swindle, yet you're reading that book, you're wasting your time. I will quote from the 2021 version:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Nah. I'm reading Influence: The Power of Persuasion right now.
I don't waste my time with pseudo-intellectual books written for pseudo-intellectuals by pseudo-intellectuals.
Chapter 4 Social Proof
Truths Are Us
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate one another. —Eric Hoffer
A few years ago, the managers of a chain of restaurants in Beijing, China, partnered with researchers to accomplish something decidedly profitable—increasing the purchase of certain menu items in a way that was effective yet costless. They wanted to see if they could get customers to choose them more frequently without lowering the items’ prices or using more expensive ingredients or hiring a chef who had more experience with the dishes or paying a consultant to write more enticing descriptions of them on the menu. They wanted to see if, instead, they could just give the dishes a label that would do the trick. Although they found a label that worked particularly well, they were surprised it wasn’t one they’d thought to use previously for this purpose, such as “Specialty of the house” or “Our chef’s recommendation for tonight.” Rather, the label merely described the menu items as the restaurant’s “most popular.”
The outcome was impressive. Sales of each dish jumped by an average of 13 to 20 percent. Quite simply, the dishes became more popular because of their popularity. Notably, the increase occurred through a persuasive practice that was costless, completely ethical (the items were indeed the most popular), easy to implement, and yet never before employed by the managers. Something similar happened in London when a local brewery with a pub on its premises agreed to try an experiment. The pub placed a sign on the bar stating, truthfully, that the brewery’s most popular beer that week was its porter. Porter sales doubled immediately. Click, run.
https://libgen.unblockit.ch/search.php?req=Robert+B.+Cialdini
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME