Many people who suffer from mental illnesses often find it difficult, or outright refuse, to get therapy. Now imagine being one of these people who finally decide to get the help they need and find any therapist to take you on as a new client (which is becoming increasingly challenging into itself) and they turn out to be one of these quacks.
A close family member of mine was in therapy in the summer of 2020. Told her therapist she was scared to drive because people just weren't obeying traffic laws anymore, running red lights, crazy speeding, etc. The therapist basically responded by saying "Yeah well you don't know how stressed those people are from systemic this-or-that, so maybe you shouldn't judge them."
She promptly left that therapist.
One advantage of therapy being a business is that, eventually, it will respond to demand.
The truly unfortunate thing though is that for every client like your family member, with the internal resources to know what’s true and what’s not, there are ten or twenty clients who will hear that and think “wow -- she’s right. I really am a bad and selfish person.” That’s the harm being done here.
There is truth in what you say. Many who could benefit from therapy are there because those internal resources are absent or weak. A good therapist can be like a personal trainer building a different sort of muscles.
It is time to stop pretending that woke therapy is "taking over" psychotherapy. Therapy with few exceptions IS now fully woke, just as every university with rare exceptions is fully woke. To see this woke therapy as anything other than "Brave New World" lunacy is is to be blind.
But there is hope in the programs mentioned at the end of the article. This is one area where I believe there will be some serious fighting back, because therapy IS a business. People will stop seeing the woke therapists simply because seeing them will make them feel worse, and it will not take long for this to happen. Those patients who continue with woke therapy will become inert.
Cognitive behavior therapy is a God-send, and those who practice it without any woke infusion will attract more patients. This is one area of our modern world that may be reaching a breaking point sooner than most other areas.
As Ayn Rand predicted, the "woke establishments" in therapy, law, and education, media, will start to use their power and ugly desires to make it so no alternatives can operate as a business, get accreditation, etc. They may not win right away, but they will try. They aren't doing all of this because they are kind people. Anyone can see how it segments society, turns everyone against each other, does not treat races or any other characteristic equally.
Right, and what of all the children and teens caught in the gender cult which they often take up at school? They are moved along "the journey" further by therapists who "affirm, affirm, affirm". Many parents are shocked when they learn this.
Parents with Inconvenient Truths About Trans is coming out with a book in August. Therapy today is a big part of the problem.
A blurb from the publisher:
"A medical scandal is currently unfolding across Western liberal societies. As Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans reveals, the primary victims are vulnerable, socially awkward kids with normally developing bodies who fall for the Internet-fueled promise that they can solve their emotional, psychological, or physical discomfort by adopting an opposite-sex identity. With deep reservations about the new gender orthodoxy that informs this promise and the irreversible one-size-fits-all medical prescription that comes with it, the parent contributors to this anthology share deeply personal stories about transition and desistance that won’t be told at the gender clinic. They also offer practical advice based on hard-earned experience that won’t be found in mainstream media. Whether progressive or conservative, gay or straight, secular or religious, they all share the aim of protecting children from the physical and emotional harms of the gender industry and seek to empower and encourage other parents and individuals to combat gender ideology at home, in schools, in clinics, and beyond."
I have been looking for a comment from you because I thought you would be interested to know that every doctor with the Dell Children's Hospital adolescent department has been dismissed. No reason was provided but I saw a tweet from.a woman who said they were fired for providing gender affirming care. There are similar Reddit posts
The hospital had previously denied that it provided such care.
The funny thing about that therapist’s comment is how unintentionally racist it is.
Since something systemic would, by definition, affect everyone in the oppressed group, that statement means the therapist basically thinks all minorities drive like shit but it is understandable.
I took me a while to learn to get a new therapist if your current one is not helping. This of course would apply to a racist therapist, my belief is CRT is inherently racist. My marriage therapist took the side of my wife, another therapist i went to simply was no help. I finally found a cognitive behavioral therapist who helped me a great deal.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment, but it seems like you and Sumdood are in agreement here. Not sure what the difference is between saying “X is inherently Y” and “X’s premise is Y.”
The worst thing about driving in the summer of 2020 was that, here in Florida, most of the snowbirds stayed instead of returning to their homes in the lockdown Midwest and Northeast. While sympathetic to their reason, one benefit of the arrival of the oppressive summer heat had always been the greater ease of getting around without the snowbirds clogging up traffic.
Until very recently I agreed with this, but, as Leslie Elliott explains in the article, "At least church offers a path to redemption. But not social justice. There’s no forgiveness. You’re just confessing and confessing and confessing."
Religion gives you something important in exchange for your belief. A cult only takes and takes and takes. Woke is a cult. The Democrat Party is a cult. Democrats, wittingly or unwittingly, are cultists. The only return on your investment is the celebration that there are a lot of other cultists just like you. That's all you get, shared misery.
There are paths to redemption in CSJ for people with "white privilege" such as becoming a queer non-binary 2 spirt panda and renouncing "normalcy". Woke has all the aspects of a gnostic believe set. Original sin. Penitence. Chants. Duty of conscience. Saint hood (St. Floyd). It’s all there.
I agree with you except that Woke is a cult that gets you power and influence. Also, in the case of the Trans Cult it also gets people a great deal of $$$
"There have been many terrible medical experiments in America, but none of them have had the deadly and destructive combination of ideology, politics, and profits propelling them into the culture. Lobotomies had profits, but no ideology or political movement supporting the procedure. Eugenics had an ideology and a political movement, but no profits that could be reinvested in lobbying for protective legislation. Transgenderism has the winning trifecta, and it makes the movement much more difficult to defeat, despite its obvious harm to people and the lack of any legitimate science or data to back up its central tenets."
The funny thing that they don't seem to realize is: A religion or belief system that offers only damnation, with no possibility of redemption, is a belief system that no one will adhere to for very long. After all, if you are damned no matter what you do, then why adhere to any standards of behavior? If you're going to do the time anyway, you may as well do the crime.
This actually provides us an opportunity only to pay for therapists who are not woke. We pay them, we are not their victims. Pay for good shrinks only and the lousy ones will go out of business. Schools whose therapist cannot repay their loans will change their point of view. Social Justice is a luxury for those who can already afford to pay their rent. I love Nature, but not if I cannot afford a coat.
You're not wrong. But since the CSJ model is ubiquitous in the universities now, the likelihood is high that future therapists will have been trained in institutions that are already corrupted. Students who are understandably offended by the critical social justice model will drop out or be forced out, because CSJ is a cult, and cults tolerate no opposition. Therefore, finding a non-woke therapist will become more and more difficult.
People looking for therapy today might be best served by seeking a therapist over the age of 50, because presumably they won't have been trained in the new model. But we can't assume anything. If I were seeking a therapist today, I'd interview the therapist on their worldview before signing up for what could be a sinkhole of indoctrination and a waste of time and money.
Here's an interesting interview with a therapist who confronted the CSJ model in academia:
I hope Bari’s University of Austin really gets up and running at maximum scale because in 20 years UATX grads will be the only professionals you can trust in the country.
And they’ll be able to charge $1,000/hr with a mile-long waiting list which is a benefit I hope UATX is pushing to potential students.
Powerful videos. Antioch is not a good place, and has not been for some years. But there are other graduate schools that have a much more reasonable approach. My only hesitation is why this student did not look into Antioch before laying out the money to go there. It is not like they keep their point of view hidden. Simply go to their web site. I would never go there nor would I ever recommend any of my students to go there. They are proud of being biased. https://www.antioch.edu/ They also have a bad retention rate and a pretty awful Return on Investment compared to other schools and a terrifying default and Not Making Progress on loan repayment rate. In effect Antioch is a predatory school that appeals to the very poor they pretend to help. https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?245892-Antioch-University
I know what you're saying. But I can't second guess her. Marxist ideological corruption has been seeping into academia in a subversive fashion for a long time. It's been a gradual process of take-over. We don't know when she began her education. And given Antioch's reputation as a "good school," a person might be forgiven for assuming that the basic rules and expectations of a good education are intact. Plus, the degree to which the classical psychoanalytic process has been poisoned by ideology is so extreme that it's hard to believe. Denial is very powerful. Could things really be that bad?
Why yes, they could, and they are.
For instance, I had a conversation recently with a friend in his early 70s who used to work as a high school guidance counselor. When I described to him the current state of psychotherapeutic training, his first reaction was to assume I was either lying or didn't know what I was talking about. I could hardly blame him (although I did blame him, because he knows me and he knows that I'm not a idiot or in the habit of making stuff up). But the degree to which the country has deteriorated in fundamental ways is so mind-bogglingly extreme that it's hard to accept...especially if, like my friend, one has an ossified progressive mindset that has not been updated in thirty or forty years.
It's not Marxism, but something much, much worse: bad philosophical fads of the 1990s - postmodernism, poststructuralism - infiltrating the mainstream.
It's both. Marxism predates postmodernism and the two comingled. Marxist ideology permeated academia way before postmodernism came on the scene, through intellectuals like Herbert Marcuse. Maybe you're familiar with James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose's book, Cynical Theories, or perhaps have read or listened to Lindsay's deep dives into the relationship between Marxism and woke ideology at his website, "New Discourses." If not, I highly recommend.
I feel ya. My 78 y/o father is the same wrt his lifelong belief that mainstream media is trustworthy. When I try to explain to him how it is now mostly a purveyor of corporate/Establishment propaganda, the result of which is this thing called "independent media," he (totally blind to the irony) calls me ignorant/naive for believing "those conspiracy theorists." He's the poster boy of the 'old dog/new tricks' cliche.
Yes, it's very frustrating. I'm from your dad's generation. I went through a period of disenchantment. It was painful, but once you really see, you can't unsee.
"Prominent conservative outlets have called transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney a “she” despite him being a biological male.
Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and Washington Examiner have all referred to Mulvaney as a “she” or “her” in articles, mirroring the rhetoric of left-wing activists."
...
"In June 2022, Fox News gave a platform to a family who “transitioned” their 5-year-old daughter into a boy. Anchor Bryan Llenas praised the family’s so-called “extraordinary courage.” (RELATED: Fox News Promotes Family Who Transitioned 5-Year-Old)"
..
Recent articles published by the Wall Street Journal have followed suit with its fellow conservative-leaning outlets. An April 28 published piece referred to Mulvaney as a “she” in the excerpt located below the headline, then continued calling him a “she” and “her” throughout the article. Another article by the outlet referred to the influencer as “Ms. Mulvaney” and a “her.”
The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal are owned and under the authority of its parent company, News Corps."
I came to the conclusion that I would do all with in my power to prevent anyone I cared about from seeking traditional psychological help from a certified practitioner a couple years ago after reading some of the research authored by a prominent psychology professor at my red state's flagship public university. These are the people teaching new psychologists and I don't want anything to do with any of it--they are tainting everything with crazy politics. Here's an excerpt from the abstract:
"The mainstreaming of White nationalism in the United States and worldwide suggests an urgent need for counseling psychologists to take stock of what tools they have (and do not have) to combat White supremacy. ...Finally, we suggest three steps for sharpening counseling psychologists’ approaches to social justice: rejecting racial progress narratives, engaging in social justice-oriented practice with White clients, and centering White supremacy as a key problem for the field of counseling psychology and allied helping professions."
But my experience is that a huge and growing population is on Medicaid, which severely limits choices in psychiatric/psychological care. So the market will play no role with these patients.
Sadly, even they cannot be trusted. We sent our gender-dysphoric teen to two (the first was in his late 60s, the second his mid-30s), both of whom we (parents) told during the consultation that we were looking for someone to NOT send our child down the path of affirmation, but would instead focus on the underlying REAL issues of anxiety/depression/trauma. Yet, despite their promises to abide by our wishes, BOTH wound up going the affirmative care route, from which we pulled our child out immediately upon discovery. It was infuriating. That experience, plus learning what we've learned about the field of therapy since, has completely eroded our faith/trust in the profession. Which is why reading the end of this article was so encouraging.
Sadly not all therapists can afford, or want, to go private practice. For those of us who work with seriously ill (Medicaid/Mcare) couldn't stay in business.
The issue is that some people who really need help may not be in a great position to refuse whatever 'help' is available. Or even be in the right mindset to understand how their treatment is actually bad for them.
In a way, this kind of 'therapy' is abusive. I bet there are some patients out there who might have a case to sue.
Great point, and ideally it would work that way. However, I fear for those therapy clients who are not able to recognize the spell that has been cast upon them due to their mental vulnerability (which, I believe, describes most people seeking therapy).
Since I’m a narcissistic megalomaniac I will assume this piece originated from my comment a few weeks ago after a shooting where I warned
“Do not allow the government to try to treat this as a mental health crisis. If there is one industry, besides ‘education’, that has been more thoroughly penetrated by bloodthirsty Marxist perverts, it’s ‘mental health’.”
I mean, there *is* a mental health crisis but we can’t trust the industry AT ALL so we have to address it by other means, if ‘we’ try to address it at all.
If this article is close to the truth then CSJ infused therapy will die of its own accord - since it is not individualized and allows the patient seeking help to blame all his or her mental anguish on the perceived racist oppression built in the society around them. As the patient can blame everything on an external source, he or she can never resolve it - since it is beyond their control.
I don’t think therapists using this method will stay in business very long..
Either that or they (along with the education, legal, corporate, political, etc institutions) will completely destroy society by creating a population of fragile-minded victims. Won't that be fun.
Recalling the psychiatrist in US Army who ended up killing 13 people and wounding 20 others at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan although clearly stating his prejudice was allowed to work with veterans suffering from ptsd. One wonders what the actual kill and wounding the army allowed him to inflict through his practice. There is a real need for standards to be in place!
Articles like this are what make The Free Press a must-read. Many doctors have abandoned the Hippocratic Oath for CRT, trans, and COVID hysteria. The ones in my family compare their jobs to car mechanics, which is why they refuse to answer basic questions like "What is a woman?" and defer to corrupted specialist "experts" about child castration, masking, and jabs. Here is an e-mail exchange I had with them: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-do-no-harm-part-3
The courageous Miriam Grossman is not playing along. Look out for "Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness" to be published June 27, 2023
by Miriam Grossman MD (Author), Dr. Jordan B Peterson (Foreword)
I am a doctor and one of the few MD s who actually work on their own car. Try replacing the PCV valve on an Audi and you will gain respect for mechanics
Loyalty oaths or else you get expelled. What does that remind me of? Still thinking.
I could not help but think of the recent Jonathan Haidt piece in which he described Woke hysteria as essentially Anti-CBT, and thus inherently productive of psychological maladjustment, and everything that goes with it: helplessness, anxiety, rage and anger, depression, and failures in work and relationships.
To my mind, the psychological benefits of personal empowerment have been obvious for a long time. Frederick Douglass--who I will remind everyone was ACTUALLY a slave--said after the slaves were freed, in effect "don't worry about us. Let us make our own way. If we fail we fail as individuals, which means that when we succeed we also succeed as individuals. Leave us alone. Don't "do" anything with us. Get away." This is healthy.
Everything I see from horizon to horizon being foisted on our young by nearly every authority, from schools to shrinks to governments--is working to shrink and infantilize our young, to justify fear and helplessness and lack of responsibility, and thus working to build a worse society, filled with losers and whiners incapable of basic respect to one another, and thus ripe for mass failure in every possible way.
There is nothing guaranteed about American freedom. We were special once, but we are leading the world right now in a race to the bottom.
I was surprised that Jonathan Haidt was not mentioned in this article. He was concerned about the overwhelming lack of political diversity in psychology a decade ago.
Am I the only one concerned that most of this crap is coming from women, especially white women? Education and therapy being just two examples of fields dominated by females.
Feminism was easily captured by the Marxists and turned into a whole grievance industry. Gramsci's plan to turn children against their parents was readily adopted by second wave feminists, leading to their promotion of women's hatred for their mothers and the denigration of motherhood.
Black people are not wrong when they complain that the group that has benefitted most from policies favoring minorities is white women. Alice Walker attempted to form a distinct kind of black feminism--womanism--that initially rejected feminism's hatred of motherhood and of men. But I suspect that this, too, has fallen prey to CRT.
I find it interesting that the feminist movement is now divided, with hard-core Marxists dedicated to using gender ideology to further destroy Western society on one side, and "TERFs"--who have somehow woken up to the fact that women are being used merely as disposable pawns--on the other side.
It seems every "wave" of feminism results in yet another fracture. I've concluded it's just more wedges intentionally being driven into society to keep us in a perpetual state of distraction of battling each other rather than turning our torches & pitchforks on our overlords.
Have you ever seen Bill Burrs comedy bit on white women? It's brilliant. It essentially states that the woke movement has been hijacked by white women, who swung their "Gucci booted feet over the fence of oppression" to get to the head of the line.
My phones acting up or I would have pasted the link
Well more alarming (and I’m a white, overly-“educated”female) is that women are earning the majority of masters and doctorate degrees these days and so this ideological insanity is infecting more broadly than just education and therapy. It’s going to seep into everything based on what colleges are sending out into the world.
I (a male, if you can’t tell from my name :)) got my MS in 2020. I am shocked that in my department, I was the only person in my field that actually works in the industry. I’m in animal science and was there to advance my own business. In the ag college, it is roughly 80% female, which is a drastic change from 2011 when I graduated with my BS.
I don’t say this to say anything negative about the smart, ambitious women with whom I shared and office - this is a crisis with our boys. A society with lazy men that can’t lead anything can’t stand.
Maybe stop giving them 72 vaccine doses in childhood. Boys are vastly more affected by ADHD and autism. Something in our environment is taking out boys. I suggest watching the documentary The Act, about the 1986 law that gave childhood vaccine manufacturers freedom from liability. Since then, the schedule has tripled and chronic disease in kids skyrocketed. A good place to start looking.
Its a sad irony that while successfully shining a light on bias & ideology in psychotherapy; the author overlooked her own implicit sexist bias. For example: Look at the 1st picture in the article. The patient is a white man with a cigar. The therapist is a white man with a lab coat & red bullhorn. At first glance, I thought this was going to be just another article bashing white men.
Take his statement; 'There is no doubt that, historically, the fields of psychology and psychiatry—founded in the 19th and early 20th centuries by men like Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and others—made many mistakes and did people serious harm.' .. No mention of the millions of men & women who they helped. These men created the foundation of modern psychotherapy. Just another example of demonizing white men (OWM) from the past.
It goes on to say, 'Bookshelves are filled with volumes on the mistreatment of women.' ... By phrasing the statement this way, no reference is required. It's just an assumption. Where's the proof? Just because their are lots of books about the subject doesn't make it true. They were probably written by over-educated white women.
The author quotes a male therapist who is concerned about boys and men's treatment. Particularly because counselors are 75% women and have been a majority for much, much longer than a decade. I would suggest that in the 1st picture, it would have been more realistic to have the patient and therapist be a women.
I'm not trying to tear down the author. It's a good article and sorely needed. I suggest she look in the mirror & question her own implicit feminist bias. It has a pernicious & negative influence on all of us.
Now Jonathan Haida is busy blaming social media for the problem- see his Substack After Babel. Seems he believes the medium is the problem, not the message.
He's not wrong about the damage that social media has done. I'm sure he knows very well that social media has allowed the Left to amplify their message and given them more ways to punish dissenters.
But despite accurately diagnosing the problems, he has not been able to provide ready solutions that people are willing to try to implement. No one is willing to give up their ability to like and share social media posts. No one is willing to require proof of identity to use social media. No one is willing to make political views a protected class against discrimination.
I agree with your interpretation. He focuses in on the social media part while ignoring many other things. I think uts bc he doesn't want to offend his lefty colleagues, endanger his cushy job and place among the (so called) intelligentsia. I have the same theory about David Brooks, who I stopped reading years ago, after he became FAR too dismissive of the reasons Trump was elected and FAR to permissive of the sins of the left.
I'm not sure how conscious it is. Much of their madness is simply madness. I do think there are opportunists, though, hovering around, and sometimes instigating it.
For the ultra-rich, who are above politics, leftism is a method. They don't believe any of the tenets of it. It's just a way of manipulating useful idiots, who they have made sure occupy most seats in most of our universities. If none of it makes sense, it is designed that way. One part of our population has been functionally lobotomized and thus naturally comes into conflict with those possessing residual wit. If conflict is the aim, this is a good method.
Thinking requires rambling sometimes, otherwise it is just jumping to conclusions. I think your assessment of a powerful whatever it is moving pawns is correct. I begin to feel as if we are in Oz and the Wizard needs to be exposed.
While you (the US, I am British) sure as hell are having a terrible time you do at least have a good chunk of people fighting back. Wokeism/Maoism and its cultists are almost completely unopposed in the UK and seems even worse in Canada, Australia and NZ. They have control of almost everything: Media, Govt. Companies, education, Health, military. The Milgram experiment on steroids.
It does seem that way. There's absolutely nothing wrong with courtesy or kindness, but both have been weaponized since at least the Fabians. As most of the world is aware, many Americans don't mind being rude at times, and don't mind telling people to go pound sand.
As I have at times put it, the world needs assholes. Sometimes they are the only ones willing to speak obvious truth. That's why Donald Trump is so popular. I tell people to dislike him all you like, but he's not wrong about essentially anything (other than vaccines and maybe a few others.)
Wise man, that Frederick Douglass. Jonathan Haidt, too. I came to that same conclusion a while back about how all this postmodern-ness/wokeness will ultimately have the opposite effect as an unintended consequence. Or who knows, maybe it's all actually intended.
Interesting post, Barry. I’ve just finished an superbly interesting history book called the ‘American Revolutions.’
In it, among so many revelations, was the penalty during the Revolutionary War Patriots would put perceived Loyalists (all Americans..) through - tar and feathered with houses and possessions burnt. And sometimes killed. In other words, a loyalty oath or else.
Were we as a country all that special, ever?
Conformity dictated then as it is attempting to do now. It passed then. It will pass now.
The main latent reference there was so called McCarthyism. The same people who want to call everything Tail Gunner Joe did wrong ALSO want to impose loyalty oaths, fire anyone who is ideologically noncompliant, create lists of enemies, and the like. Either what Joe did made sense, or what these people are doing is wrong.
And in my own view, there WERE and plainly still are many people working to destroy our Constitutional Republic and replace it with a much poorer nation, vastly less freedom, no opportunity, and an unrestrained government run by an unaccountable elite--which is what Communism is.
Joe's argument, that such people existed, was sound. The argument being made to therapists that we all need to be pushing ideas which manifestly make the world a worse place is a non-starter. It can't be made, which is why it isn't. They simply attack those who refuse to be bullied or tricked into submission.
It’s the same story, over and over again. Wokeness destroys everything it touches. It’s not enough to simply notice it, or empathetically understand it. Sane people must loudly and publicly fight against it, like a war.
I completely disagree, in fact we have all the power if we choose to use it. This very article proves it. It was legal to publish this and we have all read it. We face a New American Crisis. Carry on.
"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." Tom Paine
Almost every institution of American society has been captured by the Left in their Long March. We are already living in a totalitarian state; the dictators just haven't flaunted their power with complete openness yet. For good reason--they can't afford to enrage too much of the populace at once. But they still hold enough power that their eventual victory is guaranteed.
Run for School Board. Fire all Critical Theorist teachers and administrators. This is a battle that we can win and are winning if we simply do not stop. Well educated High School Graduates will not attend woke universities. Do not despair. Run for School Board.
Agreed. My kids are 23,26,28. None are even remotely woke, they laugh at it. All college grads but not to stupid progressive schools. Speak up and loudly to the woke around you. Call them totalitarians to their faces. I’m done with these people.
I agree to an extent but school board's do not control, but rather influence, the curricula. That too is big busineess. My instinct is that the solution is for disillusioned teachers to form small private schools with an emphasis on traditional education subjects.
It’s possible to mount a fight though. I did in 2021 against my kids’ public school in WA state over a hardcore DEI program the superintendent was trying to implement - the school is 96% white with a single minority family and the plan called for a majority of teachers and staff to be bi-lingual among many other things including a long list of required reading from the likes of DiAngelo, Kendi, etc.
I became the PTO president and rallied a very angry parent body, including the parents of the sole black kid, and several families yanked their kids from the school for the year which created a devastating loss of state funding. The board ended up removing the program, creating a collaborative parent/board curriculum review process, and replaced the Uber-woke superintendent with a lovely moderate guy from rural Alaska.
It was a very rough couple of years and I contemplated home schooling or private school so many times but now I’m happy to say the school is back to being a wonderful community of fairly traditional values. We’re in WA state so I expect we’ll need constant vigilance but it’s worth it. Parents need to fight back collectively and believe change is possible.
That was the dream of charter schools. I actually started one in Penn Hills Pa. 15 years ago. In the end it did not work as I had hoped since charter schools have so much less money than the public schools. But the school still exists.
My husband and I are heavily involved in the alternative education field, so I can attest that it's rapidly growing, due to increasing demand, especially since the dual "coffin nails" of covid and CSJ. It's been so encouraging to realize there are far more sane people out there than the MSM would have us believe.
I disagree Celia. Keep your chin up. The leftists nutjobs are drawn to bureaucratic roles and yes, institutional capture. They produce no food, create no goods, can’t effectively wield weapons…history is on our side. 0% of leftist societies have lasted for a century. This mania won’t go nearly that long. The correction, however, may be messy.
1) They have perfected capturing the minds of America's children, all the way down to pre-K. Although the trend in universities has been apparent for two decades, the extension of the ideology to lower and lower grades is a problem that people are only just becoming aware of. The next generation's minds are already dedicated (in a very religious sense) to Wokism, which makes it likely that it will take a Soviet century for the U.S. to shake off the chains of Leftist ideology.
2) Leftists have largely seized control of the mechanisms of justice--specifically judges and prosecutors. That is a problem that cannot be solved merely by a change in political leadership. And under complete Leftist control of government, that system can and will be used to crush dissent.
Obama did not present himself as a progressive Democrat when he entered office, and I don't think he ever was that authentically on their side. I was far more radically left than he was, and hated him because he used the left wing voters to get into office then spent his first term pandering to the Republicans. I think he might have been a Republican if the GOP were more welcoming to black people. That has always been a problem with the GOP; they don't recognize that most black Americans are more socially conservative than white leftists are. Obama was not enthused about gay rights, or at least not enthused about being associated with them, and not favorable towards cannabis, although he admitted to experimentation with something or other, all of which was similar to Bill Clinton, who also was not a radical leftist. Obama said repeatedly that he was not an ideologue and that is what I saw. I know that conservative white people cast Obama as somewhere left of Lenin, but I don't know why they think that.
If a smarter version of Ibram X. Kendi emerged, the woke cult would probably mobilize behind him, but they might be even more receptive to a sufficiently narcissistic trans-identified white male. Most woke people are white females, and I don't know how comfortable they actually are around black people. Please God, don't let Dylan Mulvaney be our next President!
When I think about how to convert Democrats to Independents I see the first battle in this war a fight over Free Speech and the First Amendment. The attack plan is to rally around defunding the Censorship Industrial Complex. The woke mind virus's defenses will be weak in this battle.
I'm a Dem who went unaffiliated a few years back. Dem insanity on public safety was one factor, and they for some reason decided to demonize/ignore blue collar workers which helped Orange Foolius come into power. CRT drives me nuts. The Repubs are often off on weird tangents and sticking their noses in pregnant women's business so I vote by candidate, not by the party. It's amazing how much time that takes, but necessary. I still wish for a 3rd party of moderates.
Agreed. But if Republicans and Independents can come together on free speech we do not need a majority of Democrats becoming Independents. An interesting question is what are the attributes and demograpics of Democrats most likely to become Independents?
Men. Latino and Black men, many Asian men especially of more modest middle class education/background. Democrats hate men and alienate them. The only demographic of men that like Democrats are Millennials, and still a majority of them have voted republican recently
I would guess that it would require, at minimum, a devotion to the concepts of the Enlightenment that form the core of classical liberal thought.
As many former Democrats have discovered in recent years, the Left is antithetically opposed to classical liberalism. When you get called a racist and a Nazi for holding to the same liberal principles that you've held for decades, it tends to make you realize that the Left is no longer actually liberal.
But I think it also requires a certain amount of courage. If being called ugly (and false) names is too scary, it's easier to keep your head down and your mouth shut.
And the sad reality is that most people find it easiest to keep their heads down and their mouths shut, especially if their employment depends on their doing so.
The only job I was ever fired from was as a tutor at one of the WWASP boarding schools (abusive reform schools for rich kids). The only way you stayed employed there was by either joining in the culture of abuse or keeping your head down and your mouth shut. As you might guess, I am fundamentally unable to keep my head down and my mouth shut!
But I know a lot of people who worked there (fortunately it got shut down in 2015) who are what I would describe as genuinely *good* people, but who found it more prudent to keep their heads down. Nor did it help that the guy who ran the school was *extremely* good at gaslighting employees into believing that what the school was doing was necessary, and that the kids were all "bad" kids who deserved it.
Sadly 🥲🥲we have got such a great country, the people unfortunately running it at the moment are lunatics. Read Dick Morris’s The Return it’s brilliant he explains in simple English how the Democrats have seized power of this country.
Skinny, I fear that the corruption has infiltrated both parties and has been that way for many decades. Are you not just so tired of watching the elected officials stuff their pockets? I guess though, that the woke fanatics are predominantly on the left
Would you mind saying to which country? After reading the Durham report I found myself thinking I’d rather live where the rules apply to everyone and without the indoctrination that seems impossible to stop.
I agree with Original Woman. It will get worse. The Woke will not go quietly into the night. I also left. Moved to Panama. Woke does not exist here. Beautiful country. Beautiful people.
Aren't people fleeing these Central and South American countries (and coming illegally to the U.S.) because of criminal cartels and corrupt government making those countries unsafe to live in?
Nicarauga, Honduras and El Salvador. Not Costa Rica. Costa Rica has a stable government that works for its people. Mandatory public education. 95% literacy rate.
No, because right is stronger than the imbecile's that learned to behave by spoiled Americans. I am focusing on living my best life…with a gas stove. I think the food will be controlled in U.S. Travel too. They are headed towards digital currency to control population in name of equity and climate change. See it coming!
What we need is a massive solar flare or a world-wide EMP to level society back to its original survival mode. These issues are a result of a people living in comfort and spending their intellectual capital on the latest theory of everything. Sometimes a house gets to the point that it just can't be repaired and needs to be torn down and rebuilt.
The Warmists want population decimation, but they don't plan on being the ones who die as a result of their policies. But the disruption of all electronics in a world now dependent on computers, cell phones, and Internet connections would cripple distribution systems, resulting in urban areas running dangerously short of food very rapidly.
But I'm sure the Warmist leaders have stockpiles that rival anything Survivalists and Preppers have. As always, the poor will suffer most.
There were once a bunch of Democrats who thought that they were better than everyone else. And they never, ever stopped fucking believing this shit because the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and all of their professors said they were right and that the rest of world was ignorant. And so, they kept being well-meaning Democrats who think that "they" can save the world... messianic weirdos... you know the type!
And the people who run the Free Press used to be in that really cool club. And now, they're not. And they just can't figure out why. Because when they were in the club, they weren't judgmental at all. They were really cool. They elected Obama and everything was better! Something must have been lost in translation because when they were in the club, the club was righteous and good...but now, the club isn't as good. But they don't know why. They can't imagine the possibility that 100% of all of the people in this story are Democrats. Nope... that just CAN'T be the connection at all!
The only good part of this story is that at least these therapists are wrecking the lives of people who can afford their services: whiny, white, liberal women.
Why not do a piece about the history of HOW these fucking institutions got this way and the role that Democrats like you people played in pushing these agendas with such reckless glee for the past 40 fucking years?
Or is this a "new phenomenon" that the New York-cool-elite jet-set is finally fucking figuring out?
Thank you for this comment! You've described this all so well. The FP has such a strange dynamic of having writers comprised of formerly staunch Democrats who seemingly refuse to ever admit the problems they are being ostricized for acknowledging stem almost entirely from Democratic policies.
You gave me a laugh with "David French in reverse"! I can't stand his sanctimonious righteousness. He has incorporated his Calvinistic view of the world into his political writing.
Nah, I get where you're coming from but hard pass.
I want one of my guys in here mixing it up, would be a good thing
A real, honest to god capital C constervative who actually has some principles correct or incorrect.
The liberal media got into it's own echo chamber partly by having 'debates' against the house straw man - see The View or the NYT, or whatever a never trumper is.
That's what makes Breaking Points much better than just about anything out there.
He and Nellie can have a back-and-forth on the TGIF once a month where she has a take and he has one where they keep it funny so things aren't just Crossfire 2.0.
Ahhh, thanks for that. The best part is imagining how the "whiny, white, liberal women" reading your post will react. I suspect their "therapists" phones are ringing off the hook.
yeah, it's funny how "whiny, white liberal women" don't seem to get that it is the whiny and liberal parts they should feel guilty about, not their "whiteness."
No, stop and think how the "fair minded" people of the Democratic party manipulate districts so that only Ds can win. Even Kevin McCarthy's district was "re-organized". For us who pull R or pull for the most conservative candidate for judges and DA, St Anthony (patron saint of loss causes) pray for us.
Except for most Democrats, it doesn't matter how much they disagree with their party - notice how every big city constantly complains about their incompetent Democratic leadership - they will NEVER vote Republican because after all Democrat=good and Republican=bad.
I read an article last week about a recent college grad lamenting that boomers do not understand what her group is facing. No job opportunities at the payrate demanded. High inflation. Skyrocketing real estate prices. She was oblivious to the fact that we all lived through the Carter years and the results thereof. It informed me as a person and I vote fiscal policy to this day. It is why I can never support Democrats. Yet that white woman whining about boomers lacks sufficient intellect to grasp that she voted for those whose policies have caused her difficulties. Boomers are not her problem in any way except we exist. Given the opportunity I think she would vote that boomers be mandated to appear at the Soylent Green factory.
What these young whiners don't realize is that the reason the boomers did so much damage was a combination of pushing the U.S. to the Left with their protesting and voting habits, plus the same sense of entitlement that drives the current generation of whiners.
In other words, these young whiners are actually trying to out-boomer the boomers, without even realizing it.
One of the reasons so many Gen-Xers have trended conservative or independent is that we experienced first-hand what the boomers caused.
Given the state of education today, that grad probably has no knowledge of anything that happened in the 1970s beyond Nixon's resignation. If that.
(Which is a shame, because the 1970s was bat guano crazy and some unbelievable history. I remember telling some young'un about the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and he thought I was making it up.)
It's been baked into people's brains for a long time that Republicans equals racists, this is why they will not vote for anyone but Democrats. The Republicans really need to do a better job of reaching people. I realize that's hard to do because MSM and social media all caters to the left.
Yes yes yes!!!! They all seem so proud that they’ve figured it out, they’re “true liberals” not the leftists of today. All the same sandbox. All the same ideas with some air in between, they’re just splitting hairs sometimes.
I'm giving her some wiggle room bc she's building a paper from scratch, which takes some time. Most of her reporter contacts are probably from the left. Also, she IS center-left so it wouldn't surprise me if her paper turns out this way.
Also I listened to the podcast with Peter Thiel and it was really really. Her questions were precise and probing. The way interviewing should be.
I am increasingly convinced that issues like the ones described in this article are, at their core, a result of the decline of religion. This is ironic because it is partially the work of prominent psychologists that helped to drive religion’s decline. But, as engagement with religion declined, people (myself included) brought forth more and more complex questions about their own identity, the world’s problems, politics, etc. and sought answers from non-religious modern sources that are “fact-based” or “proven.” These questions require our institutions to build themselves on the go and spin up more and more answers and somehow that led us down the path of eugenics to CSJ. Personally, I spent a good amount of time seeking answers in books and therapists to no avail. I am early on in rediscovering my faith, but have found that, much to the disdain of $150/hr therapists, anyone who spends an hour reading The Bible will find that the questions they have about their lives have been answered for about 2000 years and you’ll get them for a fraction of the cost!
Sounds like you must enjoy Jordan Peterson a lot. I've learned so much from him about the deep roots of religious stories. I think religion, Christianity, could do itself a huge service if it said, look... Stories about floods, whales and snakes, they are parables meant to teach lessons. They are not meant to be taken 100% literally.
Also, excellent comment you made. Very insightful.
Here’s another place where the “Current Communist Goals” from 1963 are unfortunately relevant:
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for Intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression In the schools on the grounds that It violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
Seriously, this is from the congressional record, January 1963. Appendix page A32 or so. I don’t remember the exact page.
I heartily agree. I wish "religion" wasn't talked about as one amorphous "mind-control" system though. I'm a follower of Jesus, but there are fundamentalist churches I wouldn't set foot in because I'd consider them cults. I attend a diverse urban church that would still be considered "oppressive" and "bigoted" by woke groups, but open dialogue and differences of opinion on all topics are welcomed. That's one reason I attend. The Bible itself is full of people questioning where God is and how on earth he could let X,Y Z happen. The Christianity I read about in the Bible is all about questioning things.
One of the main reasons for the decline in religion is comfortable lives. Even the poor in thic country have newer cars and big screen televisions. And despite what many "educated" people proclaim, hunger is NOT a national problem. Compared to Third World countries we in the West are pampered fools.
Absolutely. As Chesterton remarked, “when people don’t believe in God any more, they will believe in anything. “ Hence the anger and division in our societies.
I see it as spiritual, the spirit motivating the leftist revolution consuming the body of the elder religions.
"Progressivism" or "DEI" might be the best name for that spirit, but one of its interesting qualities is its hatred of being named. We call its worshippers the "woke" but the movement itself denies any name assigned to it.
It's not religion (as that has been wildly corrupted); it is the core and essence of spiritualism which is wedded and threaded to the material world. Religions seek to define a set of values and modalities that express spirituality, and we are relying on ancient texts and languages that have been manipulated and taken out of context. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights were designed to update core beliefs and re-created and reasserted a system of governance and behavior in which we can all abide. Surely, we can still achieve this.
Yes! The WSJ recently ran an article about the uptick in converts to Orthodoxy and noted the majority being young men. As a cradle Orthodox myself, I have seen the increase in my own parish over the past few years--tons of young single men and young couples. Seems like some folks are realizing secular therapy ain't the way and church is. How ironic it will be if the woke takeover ultimately sends more people back to church!!
I believe it is human nature within all of us to crave and seek out a deeper meaning that organized religion has provided for millennia. The rise in "Wokeism" follows a decline in religion among certain people. They still crave that deeper feeling of belonging, even if they do no consciously seek it out. Social justice fits the bill and has all the tenets of a religion.
I recall watching in amused horror, one Sunday morning working out in a hotel gym that forced me to watch CNN as a comedic dwarf was interviewing two prominent "mental health experts," Drs. Li of Yale and Frances of Duke, who claimed that Trump had killed more people than Hitler, Mao and Stalin combined. It encapsulated the insanity of the entire "woke" movement for me in a way that nothing else has done before or since.
It is too bad that there were no indictments along with that report. It will be forgotten soon as the left keeps pushing their agenda. And now they are slowly white washing the Hunter scandal too.
I specifically subscribed so I could comment on this article. It was infuriating but also affirming to see The FP write this piece. It was frustrating in my CMHC program to become a therapist to see these ideologies taught and used to frame the experience of clients as experiencing aspects of society as oppressive. That isn't to say bigotry and discrimination do not exist; they certainly do, and clients attest to it in certain ways. Of all the clients I have had in my short-time as a resident therapist and an intern at training sites, my clients didn't come with a primary focus on oppression. Their concerns were related to sexual assault histories, experiences of domestic violence, unemployment, long-term mental illness, dealing with the mental illness of family members, anxiety, depression, professional stagnation and dissatisfaction, divorce, to name a few. None of the theories mentioned in this article ever worked or could capture the profound difficulties my clients experienced. They just didn't apply.
I'm probably throwing myself under the bus here in making this comment as a professional, but I can't in good conscious use a method that is unhelpful and narrowly categorizes my clients into boxes they sure don't ask to be put in.
Beware! Turn back now! You're on the path to being red-pilled. Pretty soon you'll start questioning whether men can get pregnant, and the moment that happens you've definitely become a Nazi (CNN told me so).
BTW: Welcome to FP, a community led by 2 liberal lesbians, half of whose readers are conservatives (that most of the editors former friends would call deplorable Nazis), and the other half run the gamut from old-school liberals to socialists. We don't agree on much, but we do agree that reality exists. And we have great conversations with each other. Welcome to the party.
As I was reading this article, I kept wondering whether the wave of Social Justice Therapists might actually be the result of philosophical differences between the education that someone pursuing a Master's in Clinical Psychology receives and someone with a Master's in Social Work receives.
That's a hard one to pinpoint and answer, and unfortunately, the answer is, it depends.
When you choose a program in this field, you need to research the school and the theoretical perspective or model they are training students in. Most are fairly upfront, as some schools will specialize in psychoanalytic/psychoanalysis, person-centered, Jungian, etc; they want you to choose based on that framework for understanding the human person. With that being said, there's also a diagnostic world-view-based orientation. Psychologists, generally, operate from more of a disease-based model. This is not all of them, but the root of their field was formulated during the late 1800s-early 1900s, where mental illness was looked at something to be treated like a disease and many of the major players (Freud/Jung, others) were atheistic or at least agnostic. They strove to streamline the process into something more scientifically based, to give more legitimacy and quantify it. Counseling and social work both branched off as separate fields I think about the mid 1940s/1950s or a little later. I can't speak for SWs, but LPC (licensed professional counselors, aka the counseling specific masters programs) are less focused on the disease model and were a little more geared toward a holistic understanding of the person -- as it was explained to me during my classes that covered the history of the founding of the field. All of this is what I remember from how it was explained.
Now to answer your question with this background in mind: very likely yes, depending on that person's personal philosophy/theological framework. Anecdotally, a psychologist resident I'm friends with and myself had a discussion that we noticed different types of personalities of therapists seemed attracted to specific modalities. A lot of the psychoanalyst types were very cold and reserved, and often careful and extremely analytical. CBT types can also be somewhat the same. Most of counselor educators I knew were agnostic or atheists, and strong humanists, and were all fairly on board with CRT and SJ methodologies. Draw what you will from it. I have my suppositions, but not enough evidence to back up my personal assertions.
Welcome! Easy fixes rarely work and in essence that is what this tripe is - it-is-a-difficult-problem-and-I-don't-have-a-magic-wand-to-fix-it-so-let's-affix-a-label-and-blame-The-Man. The sad thing is it is dismissing the key component of mental health because the mind and how one uses it is the key.
I'm finding it hard to relate or get any beneficial information from the articles lately. I didn't fall for any of this BS and have a hard time finding empathy for people who did and now are trying to climb back to reality. Get out in nature, interact with animals (horses being my favorite) and pay attention. We are not man-made, we are created by something far more perfect and purposeful.
Lisa, unfortunately, some of us in the business world are having to live with this crap day in and day out. I recently lost a job because of Wokeness. It’s very real and very frightening.
Same. I know the FP is writing to the like-minded, the liberals who can't figure out where it all went wrong, but I've not got much left in my sympathy bucket either. I mean come on people. And they made fun of people like us who didn't fall for the BS. At least have the grace to apologize.
Thank you! I have the same hard time finding empathy for the people you describe, but maybe that's because I don't really try hard enough. Reminding myself not to be like the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son helps sometimes, but - sad to say - only temporarily.
I’m a therapist with a degree in social work and can confirm that every word of this article is true. I remember professors offering deadline extensions during the 2020 election season, citing students’ need for self-care; I remember a heated conversation with a classmate where I said it wasn’t my job to tell my clients how to vote -- she was appalled. Throughout my time in grad school I was increasingly concerned about ideological creep, to the point that I almost withdrew several times. The problem is, social workers in particular should be pointing their attention at the conditions (internal and external) people need to live in in order to function well, but social work in practice winds up causing people to become mouthpieces and apologists for the very systems they’re supposed to question. Asking questions is no longer acceptable in my field.
I’m lucky enough to be able to practice with a group that’s committed to providing good therapy, but I’m well aware of how rare that is becoming. In the future I plan to vet potential colleagues VERY carefully, or practice solo. It’s good to know about these growing groups of heterodox thinkers, though -- we really need it.
As a fellow social worker, I agree. I'm so glad that I'm 15-plus years removed from graduate school. I see clients who have been clearly harmed by this ideology, and many more who never got the help they needed and deserved from professionals. How can we say we are mental health professionals when we collude with delusional and prosecutorial thinking?
I’m glad I’m as old as I am, honestly, and not a 26-year-old MSW grad who knows nothing about the real world besides what she learned in this week’s Canvas discussion boards. When I started supervision my biggest fear was not being able to find a non-woke supervisor. (I succeeded! I think there are more heterodox thinkers out there than we assume, partly bc no one can say anything out loud.
"Cooney wanted to share her newfound realizations, but feared being canceled and ostracized—by her friends, fellow activists, perhaps even her girlfriend. The burden weighed on her, and therapy seemed the place to address it." Sounds like a cult, doesn't it?
In 2018 I enrolled in a masters of counseling program. I withdrew after the first 2 courses, one of which was on culture and identity. I wanted to work with and help individuals struggling with the human condition. I did not want to be trained as a social worker, social justice warrior, or political activist. I did not want to believe or pretend to believe a 40 year old, 6’2 biological male in an ill fitting dress and wig was more of a victim than his wife and 3 children. I did not want to believe or pretend to believe that because I am white, straight, and Christian I could not understand the suffering of others who were different. I did not want to believe or pretend to believe that because I am a woman I am victimized by the patriarchy. One evening in class we had a “self care night” we colored in coloring books, carved pumpkins, did a group meditation, sang and danced. It was ridiculous and I could not take the program seriously.
I did not like being treated like a preschooler. Nor did I wish to infantilize others. I thought it was best to help people develop resiliency. You can’t always stop bad things from happening but you can learn how to face them and grow stronger.
Some people were so impressed I was going for a masters degree. A fifth grader could do it! It was embarrassing.
Thank you for writing this. As a psychologist, as much as I find this to be the heartbreaking reality of our current moment- I am simultaneously encouraged by thoughtful coverage of the issue in posts like these. When this ideological encroachment first began to take hold, I felt alone in the midst of insanity. Now, this is at the very least a problem that is better understood by people outside the field and I will hold out hope that we can build better, properly informed and educated alternative institutions. Our most immediate imperative is helping the public connect with real therapists (we are out here) who can see past the thin veneer of this morally vacuous religion and are interested n helping people honestly contend with their suffering - no matter what their “identities” may be.
I join in you in your dissent and agree. We do exist out there. I don't think the people who make public displays and comments on the ACA and APA are entirely in touch with reality; I haven't had a single client come in who is seeking help for oppression in any form. Their suffering is more nuanced and their "identities" have little to do with the issues they present.
Same. Not one single client has come in saying “help! Help! I’m being oppressed!” -- they are all individuals with their own stories, and I’m not about to make them feel like the victim in their own narrative.
So help the public out. If the people who approve this idealogical.takeover of your profession have code words to filter out non-believers, what code words should those seeking genuine, non-idealogical therapy look for?
Yes! I am a therapist and I would love to signal to all patients that they will receive non-ideological care. That Dr. Mitch Prinstein from the APA who says this is not a problem is either totally disingenuous or frighteningly naive. I quit the APA in a huff and let them know that it was because of this harmful ideological capture. Critical Therapy Antidote (with their new book on this topic) has been an extremely helpful organization.
My husband went to CBT for help managing his tendency to yell at our kids and it was hard for him to find a moderate-conservative therapist in our purple city. He went through a few that couldn’t tolerate his “pro-gun, pro-Trump” ways before finally just getting a recommendation from another therapist. Apparently there was insider knowledge on who in town is willing to help the non-left clients.
This is scary on different levels. Mostly because it will deter or prevent people (especially men) from getting needed psychological help, and the result will be more domestic abuse, more divorce and other social ills. It will also force the people who do seek help to be very circumspect in what they choose to reveal to therapists, to feel they have to walk on eggshells all the time for fear of alienating the person treating them. I experience this personally. I work with mental health providers, and find myself self-censoring or not being fully forthcoming about certain things because of my suspicion that the provider is certain to be a lefty. The mental health field should be completely apolitical, but like everything else at present, it's been hijacked by politics. And medicine in general is moving in that direction; newer practitioners will not want to treat anyone whose worldview doesn't align with theirs or will give them inferior treatment. The implications are chilling.
If you live someplace where asking for a non-woke therapist is not a mortal sin in everyone's mind, that is what I would advise. In recent years, when police officers or their family members contact me, one of the first things they say is, "I have to ask you this Doc, which side are you on?" Easy question for me to answer!
This is an excerpt from the congressional record in 1963, which is apparently a prophetic document, outlining “current communist goals”:
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest
from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession
and use mental health laws as a means of
gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
Along with other prescient nuggets:
15. Capture one or both of the political
parties In the United States.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them
as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line In textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public
protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
Yeah, anyway, it’s nice to see these critical, potentially fatal national struggles as someone else’s desired end state as expressed 50 years ago. The assumption that this is all “just happening” may not be valid.
And the people who support this explicitly call themselves socialists conducting a revolution.
Then their media tells everybody I'm a white supremacists conspiracy theorist for observing that we're in the midst of a socialist culture revolution designed to eradicate our country.
Yes. And in the parlance of the American Revolution, the name calling, vilification, and deplatforming/canceling, etc in response to your legitimately voiced concerns is abuse. Persistence of these abuses becomes a long train of abuse that serves as evidence of a plan to force you to be a slave under a rule of absolute despotism. They referred to it as “evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism” which is accurately posed as a legal cause, under natural law, to throw off the forms of government to which they have been accustomed and to form new safeguards for their own security.
These topics are not light. The times we live in are not the passive, inconsequential, transient, peaceful bliss we hoped, and some of us fought, for.
I don’t know how we fix it, but I will not be a slave.
Yes we all know exactly how to fix this: Get on the school board, run for those little offices in your town. Fire all Critical Theorist teachers and administrators and colleges will stop making them. They only make them because we keep hiring them. Boycott the dog gone boycotters.
I think that’s what we’re all hoping. But when the bureaucrats, like teachers and school administrators, feel morally obligated to ignore anything that isn’t what they want to hear, the power of our political offices, indeed the power of the people itself, is moot. This is also true of federal power and the presidency. It’s also why the judiciary is the last pillar standing, though it too is fast falling. Law schools and accreditation programs are generating armies or ideologues to replace our legal institutions. These people will soon be the judges in our highest courts and there will truly be nothing left.
In the long history of humanity, it is the optimists who always end up right though often for reasons they never expected, and the pessimists forgotten. Let us remain optimists. There is simply too much at stake.
Thanks for that. I’m afraid I’m optimistic that we’ll figure it out, but not optimistic that the existing United States will be part of the solution. I want to be wrong. Any argument to show me to be wrong enjoys favorable prejudice in my heart and mind. Even under those conditions, I don’t see it.
This is an appropriate and wise observation:
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
What follows is equally wise and, I’m very afraid, also appropriate. I’ve made an effort to enumerate the abuses, but have erased them over and over again, because if they find coherent form, the necessary conclusions will be inescapable. It would be the tipping point.
Yes. This is the pdf transcription. The relevant part is A34-A35 from Congressman Herlong. It’s referencing findings/analysis in “The Naked Communist” by Skousen.
Women on Riley gaines's swim team were told that if they couldn't handle seeing male genitalia in a women's locker room they should get counseling. That umbrella is wide.
That social justice activism has turned into a nascent religion makes all of it much simpler to understand. It is a missionary religion, spreading as far and wide as it can, using familiar dogmas and tactics. Bigot is the new heretic.
I live in SF where it’s hard to have even a mildly dissenting opinion. I feel incredibly alienated and stressed after reading news articles, social media timelines/posts, and having conversations with my peers where my opinion doesn’t align perfectly with the prevailing narrative. I want so badly to talk to my therapist (also in SF) about it but I don’t feel comfortable with how she’d react, perceive me, or try to “correct” me.
It’s sad when even the places we go to feel “safe and free of judgment” cannot meet our needs. I know I’m not alone in my feelings completely, but what does it do to a society when individuals are scared into silence or submission?
Anyway, I was happy to see this article and see I’m not 100% alone.
It's pervasive. I don't want this to come across as minimizing the issue, but even in my Book Club, the assumptions, the insults, the judgements, the editing of what people say just fly out of the mouths of those who are so self righteous in their belief system. It comes so easily to them and it is always in one direction.
Too funny! My step mom is quite liberal (enjoys Rachel Maddow) and even she recently felt ostracized a bit when she dared to express a dissenting opinion in her book club.
Kathy, so sad to hear your story, but you do know that Massachusetts is the belly of the woke beast, right? Kind of like living in Hell and expecting to hear a bad word about the Devil-- ain't gonna happen.
Just curious, what do you talk about in your book club? Are the discussions stimulating? If you can't engage in back and forth what's the point? You're stronger than you think. Know your facts and force them to respond. They may not like you for it but you'll definitely feel better.
I've never been to therapy, but how can it be of any benefit to see a therapist with whom you cannot be honest? Serious question.
When my kids were little, and their pediatrician made a recommendation, I always asked her if she truly believed it was necessary, or if she was just following the party line. She was honest with me, and several recommendations (such as making babies sleep on their backs) turned out to be party line diktats.
You are not alone... There is a certain subset of the population who recognizes the insanity and while we may not live together, we do congregate here on Substack. It may not be much consolation, but there are other people who think like you.
Honestly, if you’re having these thoughts about your therapist you need to either bring them up with her or find a new therapist. You’re wasting your time and money otherwise, and if your therapist is a True Believer™️ you’re financially supporting her in practicing bad and harmful therapy.
I live in Portland, which is similarly horrible as SF, and I am a psychologist. Look for therapists who have seniority in the field as well as good word of mouth reputations. The number of years of experience is a necessary but not sufficient component of excellence.
It enslaves them. Ironically by people who decry oppression. Your comment really strikes a chord with me. God bless and keep you. If you are not a person of faith please do not take offense as this is how I try to embrace or protect you. If you are a person of faith, or are at least open to it, try to find a church/synagogue/mosque/
temple, etc. with traditional values and go. Spiritual leaders are good counselors.
Be bold! Be bold! Fear is the real pandemic. Courage is sunlight. You must not forsake your conscious, you must not suppress your convictions. You are strong and intelligent and free! What can they do to you that would not just prove them ever more so to be the villain which they project onto others. Be the sunlight!
Many people who suffer from mental illnesses often find it difficult, or outright refuse, to get therapy. Now imagine being one of these people who finally decide to get the help they need and find any therapist to take you on as a new client (which is becoming increasingly challenging into itself) and they turn out to be one of these quacks.
This is so profoundly sad.
A close family member of mine was in therapy in the summer of 2020. Told her therapist she was scared to drive because people just weren't obeying traffic laws anymore, running red lights, crazy speeding, etc. The therapist basically responded by saying "Yeah well you don't know how stressed those people are from systemic this-or-that, so maybe you shouldn't judge them."
She promptly left that therapist.
One advantage of therapy being a business is that, eventually, it will respond to demand.
The truly unfortunate thing though is that for every client like your family member, with the internal resources to know what’s true and what’s not, there are ten or twenty clients who will hear that and think “wow -- she’s right. I really am a bad and selfish person.” That’s the harm being done here.
There is truth in what you say. Many who could benefit from therapy are there because those internal resources are absent or weak. A good therapist can be like a personal trainer building a different sort of muscles.
It is time to stop pretending that woke therapy is "taking over" psychotherapy. Therapy with few exceptions IS now fully woke, just as every university with rare exceptions is fully woke. To see this woke therapy as anything other than "Brave New World" lunacy is is to be blind.
But there is hope in the programs mentioned at the end of the article. This is one area where I believe there will be some serious fighting back, because therapy IS a business. People will stop seeing the woke therapists simply because seeing them will make them feel worse, and it will not take long for this to happen. Those patients who continue with woke therapy will become inert.
Cognitive behavior therapy is a God-send, and those who practice it without any woke infusion will attract more patients. This is one area of our modern world that may be reaching a breaking point sooner than most other areas.
As Ayn Rand predicted, the "woke establishments" in therapy, law, and education, media, will start to use their power and ugly desires to make it so no alternatives can operate as a business, get accreditation, etc. They may not win right away, but they will try. They aren't doing all of this because they are kind people. Anyone can see how it segments society, turns everyone against each other, does not treat races or any other characteristic equally.
Right, and what of all the children and teens caught in the gender cult which they often take up at school? They are moved along "the journey" further by therapists who "affirm, affirm, affirm". Many parents are shocked when they learn this.
Parents with Inconvenient Truths About Trans is coming out with a book in August. Therapy today is a big part of the problem.
A blurb from the publisher:
"A medical scandal is currently unfolding across Western liberal societies. As Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans reveals, the primary victims are vulnerable, socially awkward kids with normally developing bodies who fall for the Internet-fueled promise that they can solve their emotional, psychological, or physical discomfort by adopting an opposite-sex identity. With deep reservations about the new gender orthodoxy that informs this promise and the irreversible one-size-fits-all medical prescription that comes with it, the parent contributors to this anthology share deeply personal stories about transition and desistance that won’t be told at the gender clinic. They also offer practical advice based on hard-earned experience that won’t be found in mainstream media. Whether progressive or conservative, gay or straight, secular or religious, they all share the aim of protecting children from the physical and emotional harms of the gender industry and seek to empower and encourage other parents and individuals to combat gender ideology at home, in schools, in clinics, and beyond."
https://www.amazon.com/Parents-Inconvenient-Truths-about-Trans/dp/1634312465
https://pitt.substack.com/p/the-pitt-book-coming-soon
I have been looking for a comment from you because I thought you would be interested to know that every doctor with the Dell Children's Hospital adolescent department has been dismissed. No reason was provided but I saw a tweet from.a woman who said they were fired for providing gender affirming care. There are similar Reddit posts
The hospital had previously denied that it provided such care.
Thank you, Lynne!
Lynne does that mean they were or were not following woke policies?
Also read Time to Think by Hannah Barnes. It is UK-centric, but very relevant.
Also look for "Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness" to be published on June 27, 2023
by Miriam Grossman MD (Author), Dr. Jordan B Peterson (Foreword)
The funny thing about that therapist’s comment is how unintentionally racist it is.
Since something systemic would, by definition, affect everyone in the oppressed group, that statement means the therapist basically thinks all minorities drive like shit but it is understandable.
😂😂😂
What a f***ing scumbag.
Come from an area of (relatively) courteous drivers and drive on the streets of New York.
But like everything else, when you tune into the customs and traditions, it all makes some sense.
I took me a while to learn to get a new therapist if your current one is not helping. This of course would apply to a racist therapist, my belief is CRT is inherently racist. My marriage therapist took the side of my wife, another therapist i went to simply was no help. I finally found a cognitive behavioral therapist who helped me a great deal.
CRT is inherently racist?
Come now. It is racist every way you look at it. Its premise is racism.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment, but it seems like you and Sumdood are in agreement here. Not sure what the difference is between saying “X is inherently Y” and “X’s premise is Y.”
The worst thing about driving in the summer of 2020 was that, here in Florida, most of the snowbirds stayed instead of returning to their homes in the lockdown Midwest and Northeast. While sympathetic to their reason, one benefit of the arrival of the oppressive summer heat had always been the greater ease of getting around without the snowbirds clogging up traffic.
Hey, now...We have to put up with you here in the tourist season.
But we have the beaches all to ourselves for the other ten months of the year!
Maybe remote therapists? Although they still have to follow State Licensing Boards.
It's dangerous. This is the machinery of totalitarianism. This is how government takes over and consumes religion.
Until very recently I agreed with this, but, as Leslie Elliott explains in the article, "At least church offers a path to redemption. But not social justice. There’s no forgiveness. You’re just confessing and confessing and confessing."
Religion gives you something important in exchange for your belief. A cult only takes and takes and takes. Woke is a cult. The Democrat Party is a cult. Democrats, wittingly or unwittingly, are cultists. The only return on your investment is the celebration that there are a lot of other cultists just like you. That's all you get, shared misery.
There are paths to redemption in CSJ for people with "white privilege" such as becoming a queer non-binary 2 spirt panda and renouncing "normalcy". Woke has all the aspects of a gnostic believe set. Original sin. Penitence. Chants. Duty of conscience. Saint hood (St. Floyd). It’s all there.
I agree with you except that Woke is a cult that gets you power and influence. Also, in the case of the Trans Cult it also gets people a great deal of $$$
"There have been many terrible medical experiments in America, but none of them have had the deadly and destructive combination of ideology, politics, and profits propelling them into the culture. Lobotomies had profits, but no ideology or political movement supporting the procedure. Eugenics had an ideology and a political movement, but no profits that could be reinvested in lobbying for protective legislation. Transgenderism has the winning trifecta, and it makes the movement much more difficult to defeat, despite its obvious harm to people and the lack of any legitimate science or data to back up its central tenets."
From: https://pitt.substack.com/p/lets-read-the-transgender-leviathan
The funny thing that they don't seem to realize is: A religion or belief system that offers only damnation, with no possibility of redemption, is a belief system that no one will adhere to for very long. After all, if you are damned no matter what you do, then why adhere to any standards of behavior? If you're going to do the time anyway, you may as well do the crime.
That's what makes it a cult.
Wokism is a religion.
The success of the woke mind virus pandemic sheds light on the madness of the Salem Witch Trials.
It's weaponized goodness.
Nothing “good” about it. Purely about power. Fight back
This actually provides us an opportunity only to pay for therapists who are not woke. We pay them, we are not their victims. Pay for good shrinks only and the lousy ones will go out of business. Schools whose therapist cannot repay their loans will change their point of view. Social Justice is a luxury for those who can already afford to pay their rent. I love Nature, but not if I cannot afford a coat.
You're not wrong. But since the CSJ model is ubiquitous in the universities now, the likelihood is high that future therapists will have been trained in institutions that are already corrupted. Students who are understandably offended by the critical social justice model will drop out or be forced out, because CSJ is a cult, and cults tolerate no opposition. Therefore, finding a non-woke therapist will become more and more difficult.
People looking for therapy today might be best served by seeking a therapist over the age of 50, because presumably they won't have been trained in the new model. But we can't assume anything. If I were seeking a therapist today, I'd interview the therapist on their worldview before signing up for what could be a sinkhole of indoctrination and a waste of time and money.
Here's an interesting interview with a therapist who confronted the CSJ model in academia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-zyCXHZQsg
I hope Bari’s University of Austin really gets up and running at maximum scale because in 20 years UATX grads will be the only professionals you can trust in the country.
And they’ll be able to charge $1,000/hr with a mile-long waiting list which is a benefit I hope UATX is pushing to potential students.
Powerful videos. Antioch is not a good place, and has not been for some years. But there are other graduate schools that have a much more reasonable approach. My only hesitation is why this student did not look into Antioch before laying out the money to go there. It is not like they keep their point of view hidden. Simply go to their web site. I would never go there nor would I ever recommend any of my students to go there. They are proud of being biased. https://www.antioch.edu/ They also have a bad retention rate and a pretty awful Return on Investment compared to other schools and a terrifying default and Not Making Progress on loan repayment rate. In effect Antioch is a predatory school that appeals to the very poor they pretend to help. https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?245892-Antioch-University
I know what you're saying. But I can't second guess her. Marxist ideological corruption has been seeping into academia in a subversive fashion for a long time. It's been a gradual process of take-over. We don't know when she began her education. And given Antioch's reputation as a "good school," a person might be forgiven for assuming that the basic rules and expectations of a good education are intact. Plus, the degree to which the classical psychoanalytic process has been poisoned by ideology is so extreme that it's hard to believe. Denial is very powerful. Could things really be that bad?
Why yes, they could, and they are.
For instance, I had a conversation recently with a friend in his early 70s who used to work as a high school guidance counselor. When I described to him the current state of psychotherapeutic training, his first reaction was to assume I was either lying or didn't know what I was talking about. I could hardly blame him (although I did blame him, because he knows me and he knows that I'm not a idiot or in the habit of making stuff up). But the degree to which the country has deteriorated in fundamental ways is so mind-bogglingly extreme that it's hard to accept...especially if, like my friend, one has an ossified progressive mindset that has not been updated in thirty or forty years.
It's not Marxism, but something much, much worse: bad philosophical fads of the 1990s - postmodernism, poststructuralism - infiltrating the mainstream.
It's both. Marxism predates postmodernism and the two comingled. Marxist ideology permeated academia way before postmodernism came on the scene, through intellectuals like Herbert Marcuse. Maybe you're familiar with James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose's book, Cynical Theories, or perhaps have read or listened to Lindsay's deep dives into the relationship between Marxism and woke ideology at his website, "New Discourses." If not, I highly recommend.
I feel ya. My 78 y/o father is the same wrt his lifelong belief that mainstream media is trustworthy. When I try to explain to him how it is now mostly a purveyor of corporate/Establishment propaganda, the result of which is this thing called "independent media," he (totally blind to the irony) calls me ignorant/naive for believing "those conspiracy theorists." He's the poster boy of the 'old dog/new tricks' cliche.
Yes, it's very frustrating. I'm from your dad's generation. I went through a period of disenchantment. It was painful, but once you really see, you can't unsee.
It is very frustrating. Maybe Dylan Mulvaney could provide a wake up and smell the coffee moment? Even if the Hunter laptop and Steele Dossier do not?
From: https://dailycaller.com/2023/05/17/all-conservative-leaning-outlets-dylan-mulvaney-pronouns/
"Prominent conservative outlets have called transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney a “she” despite him being a biological male.
Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and Washington Examiner have all referred to Mulvaney as a “she” or “her” in articles, mirroring the rhetoric of left-wing activists."
...
"In June 2022, Fox News gave a platform to a family who “transitioned” their 5-year-old daughter into a boy. Anchor Bryan Llenas praised the family’s so-called “extraordinary courage.” (RELATED: Fox News Promotes Family Who Transitioned 5-Year-Old)"
..
Recent articles published by the Wall Street Journal have followed suit with its fellow conservative-leaning outlets. An April 28 published piece referred to Mulvaney as a “she” in the excerpt located below the headline, then continued calling him a “she” and “her” throughout the article. Another article by the outlet referred to the influencer as “Ms. Mulvaney” and a “her.”
The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal are owned and under the authority of its parent company, News Corps."
See also https://www.wsj.com/articles/ab-inbev-bud-q1-earnings-report-2023-aae4f177
and "NEW: Footage has surfaced of Dylan Mulvaney—pre-transition—on ‘The Price Is Right’"
https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1636464466228289539
I came to the conclusion that I would do all with in my power to prevent anyone I cared about from seeking traditional psychological help from a certified practitioner a couple years ago after reading some of the research authored by a prominent psychology professor at my red state's flagship public university. These are the people teaching new psychologists and I don't want anything to do with any of it--they are tainting everything with crazy politics. Here's an excerpt from the abstract:
"The mainstreaming of White nationalism in the United States and worldwide suggests an urgent need for counseling psychologists to take stock of what tools they have (and do not have) to combat White supremacy. ...Finally, we suggest three steps for sharpening counseling psychologists’ approaches to social justice: rejecting racial progress narratives, engaging in social justice-oriented practice with White clients, and centering White supremacy as a key problem for the field of counseling psychology and allied helping professions."
holy crap
Great video, thanks!
True to some extent.
But my experience is that a huge and growing population is on Medicaid, which severely limits choices in psychiatric/psychological care. So the market will play no role with these patients.
It appears that one should first of all only choose male shrinks. The population of which appears to be shrinking.
Especially if the male therapist is a practitioner of Bob Newhart's "Stop It!" therapy.
You made me laugh. That was my husband's model for our distressed teenage daughter. She is now 23yo, and has turned out just fine (thank goodness).
Sadly, even they cannot be trusted. We sent our gender-dysphoric teen to two (the first was in his late 60s, the second his mid-30s), both of whom we (parents) told during the consultation that we were looking for someone to NOT send our child down the path of affirmation, but would instead focus on the underlying REAL issues of anxiety/depression/trauma. Yet, despite their promises to abide by our wishes, BOTH wound up going the affirmative care route, from which we pulled our child out immediately upon discovery. It was infuriating. That experience, plus learning what we've learned about the field of therapy since, has completely eroded our faith/trust in the profession. Which is why reading the end of this article was so encouraging.
I only choose male therapists for my household.
Sadly not all therapists can afford, or want, to go private practice. For those of us who work with seriously ill (Medicaid/Mcare) couldn't stay in business.
The issue is that some people who really need help may not be in a great position to refuse whatever 'help' is available. Or even be in the right mindset to understand how their treatment is actually bad for them.
In a way, this kind of 'therapy' is abusive. I bet there are some patients out there who might have a case to sue.
Yes, for what seems to be medical malpractice.
Great point, and ideally it would work that way. However, I fear for those therapy clients who are not able to recognize the spell that has been cast upon them due to their mental vulnerability (which, I believe, describes most people seeking therapy).
Since I’m a narcissistic megalomaniac I will assume this piece originated from my comment a few weeks ago after a shooting where I warned
“Do not allow the government to try to treat this as a mental health crisis. If there is one industry, besides ‘education’, that has been more thoroughly penetrated by bloodthirsty Marxist perverts, it’s ‘mental health’.”
I mean, there *is* a mental health crisis but we can’t trust the industry AT ALL so we have to address it by other means, if ‘we’ try to address it at all.
You should listen to Roger Mc Phillin’s podcast Radically Genuine
The “industry” is why we have a mental health crisis.
I would go further than that... there is a mental health crisis, and to a considerable extent, the therapy industry is a major factor in creating it.
If this article is close to the truth then CSJ infused therapy will die of its own accord - since it is not individualized and allows the patient seeking help to blame all his or her mental anguish on the perceived racist oppression built in the society around them. As the patient can blame everything on an external source, he or she can never resolve it - since it is beyond their control.
I don’t think therapists using this method will stay in business very long..
Either that or they (along with the education, legal, corporate, political, etc institutions) will completely destroy society by creating a population of fragile-minded victims. Won't that be fun.
Saw this the day before.
Perfectly captures this article
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRK3cCJa/
Brilliant and horrifying at the same time.
Wow...this was so disturbing I couldn't finish it. Does that make me...privileged?
Recalling the psychiatrist in US Army who ended up killing 13 people and wounding 20 others at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan although clearly stating his prejudice was allowed to work with veterans suffering from ptsd. One wonders what the actual kill and wounding the army allowed him to inflict through his practice. There is a real need for standards to be in place!
Articles like this are what make The Free Press a must-read. Many doctors have abandoned the Hippocratic Oath for CRT, trans, and COVID hysteria. The ones in my family compare their jobs to car mechanics, which is why they refuse to answer basic questions like "What is a woman?" and defer to corrupted specialist "experts" about child castration, masking, and jabs. Here is an e-mail exchange I had with them: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-do-no-harm-part-3
“many patients are left feeling it isn’t “safe to ask questions.”
спасибо Yuri, I’d rather have questions that can not be answered, than answers that can not be questioned.
Amen.
Doctors abandoned the Hippocratic Oath when they began performing abortions like nose-jobs.
Dr. Malone's substack is also a great resource for truth and real health advice.
Yup - it's shameful.
The courageous Miriam Grossman is not playing along. Look out for "Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness" to be published June 27, 2023
by Miriam Grossman MD (Author), Dr. Jordan B Peterson (Foreword)
As a society we are hyper-specialized. Every rat in its niche.
I am a doctor and one of the few MD s who actually work on their own car. Try replacing the PCV valve on an Audi and you will gain respect for mechanics
Loyalty oaths or else you get expelled. What does that remind me of? Still thinking.
I could not help but think of the recent Jonathan Haidt piece in which he described Woke hysteria as essentially Anti-CBT, and thus inherently productive of psychological maladjustment, and everything that goes with it: helplessness, anxiety, rage and anger, depression, and failures in work and relationships.
To my mind, the psychological benefits of personal empowerment have been obvious for a long time. Frederick Douglass--who I will remind everyone was ACTUALLY a slave--said after the slaves were freed, in effect "don't worry about us. Let us make our own way. If we fail we fail as individuals, which means that when we succeed we also succeed as individuals. Leave us alone. Don't "do" anything with us. Get away." This is healthy.
Everything I see from horizon to horizon being foisted on our young by nearly every authority, from schools to shrinks to governments--is working to shrink and infantilize our young, to justify fear and helplessness and lack of responsibility, and thus working to build a worse society, filled with losers and whiners incapable of basic respect to one another, and thus ripe for mass failure in every possible way.
There is nothing guaranteed about American freedom. We were special once, but we are leading the world right now in a race to the bottom.
I was surprised that Jonathan Haidt was not mentioned in this article. He was concerned about the overwhelming lack of political diversity in psychology a decade ago.
Am I the only one concerned that most of this crap is coming from women, especially white women? Education and therapy being just two examples of fields dominated by females.
Feminism was easily captured by the Marxists and turned into a whole grievance industry. Gramsci's plan to turn children against their parents was readily adopted by second wave feminists, leading to their promotion of women's hatred for their mothers and the denigration of motherhood.
Black people are not wrong when they complain that the group that has benefitted most from policies favoring minorities is white women. Alice Walker attempted to form a distinct kind of black feminism--womanism--that initially rejected feminism's hatred of motherhood and of men. But I suspect that this, too, has fallen prey to CRT.
I find it interesting that the feminist movement is now divided, with hard-core Marxists dedicated to using gender ideology to further destroy Western society on one side, and "TERFs"--who have somehow woken up to the fact that women are being used merely as disposable pawns--on the other side.
It seems every "wave" of feminism results in yet another fracture. I've concluded it's just more wedges intentionally being driven into society to keep us in a perpetual state of distraction of battling each other rather than turning our torches & pitchforks on our overlords.
Yes, it is mostly coming from women. I also work in a female- and SJW-dominated field.
Have you ever seen Bill Burrs comedy bit on white women? It's brilliant. It essentially states that the woke movement has been hijacked by white women, who swung their "Gucci booted feet over the fence of oppression" to get to the head of the line.
My phones acting up or I would have pasted the link
Great bit. And SO SO true
I’ll look it up.
Well more alarming (and I’m a white, overly-“educated”female) is that women are earning the majority of masters and doctorate degrees these days and so this ideological insanity is infecting more broadly than just education and therapy. It’s going to seep into everything based on what colleges are sending out into the world.
Me too! Master’s in accounting here. At least all of us aren’t insane!
I hate using the term well-educated because the education wasn’t amazing. But a masters nonetheless. I have my MBA.
Imo, you seem TRULY well-educated (i.e. by life rather than higher ed) for the mere fact you can recognize the insanity.
I (a male, if you can’t tell from my name :)) got my MS in 2020. I am shocked that in my department, I was the only person in my field that actually works in the industry. I’m in animal science and was there to advance my own business. In the ag college, it is roughly 80% female, which is a drastic change from 2011 when I graduated with my BS.
I don’t say this to say anything negative about the smart, ambitious women with whom I shared and office - this is a crisis with our boys. A society with lazy men that can’t lead anything can’t stand.
Maybe stop giving them 72 vaccine doses in childhood. Boys are vastly more affected by ADHD and autism. Something in our environment is taking out boys. I suggest watching the documentary The Act, about the 1986 law that gave childhood vaccine manufacturers freedom from liability. Since then, the schedule has tripled and chronic disease in kids skyrocketed. A good place to start looking.
"Am I the only one concerned that most of this crap is coming from women, especially white women?"
The main cohort being "overeducated" and most certainly undersexed, at least with real men.
Its a sad irony that while successfully shining a light on bias & ideology in psychotherapy; the author overlooked her own implicit sexist bias. For example: Look at the 1st picture in the article. The patient is a white man with a cigar. The therapist is a white man with a lab coat & red bullhorn. At first glance, I thought this was going to be just another article bashing white men.
Take his statement; 'There is no doubt that, historically, the fields of psychology and psychiatry—founded in the 19th and early 20th centuries by men like Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and others—made many mistakes and did people serious harm.' .. No mention of the millions of men & women who they helped. These men created the foundation of modern psychotherapy. Just another example of demonizing white men (OWM) from the past.
It goes on to say, 'Bookshelves are filled with volumes on the mistreatment of women.' ... By phrasing the statement this way, no reference is required. It's just an assumption. Where's the proof? Just because their are lots of books about the subject doesn't make it true. They were probably written by over-educated white women.
The author quotes a male therapist who is concerned about boys and men's treatment. Particularly because counselors are 75% women and have been a majority for much, much longer than a decade. I would suggest that in the 1st picture, it would have been more realistic to have the patient and therapist be a women.
I'm not trying to tear down the author. It's a good article and sorely needed. I suggest she look in the mirror & question her own implicit feminist bias. It has a pernicious & negative influence on all of us.
Now Jonathan Haida is busy blaming social media for the problem- see his Substack After Babel. Seems he believes the medium is the problem, not the message.
He's not wrong about the damage that social media has done. I'm sure he knows very well that social media has allowed the Left to amplify their message and given them more ways to punish dissenters.
But despite accurately diagnosing the problems, he has not been able to provide ready solutions that people are willing to try to implement. No one is willing to give up their ability to like and share social media posts. No one is willing to require proof of identity to use social media. No one is willing to make political views a protected class against discrimination.
I agree with your interpretation. He focuses in on the social media part while ignoring many other things. I think uts bc he doesn't want to offend his lefty colleagues, endanger his cushy job and place among the (so called) intelligentsia. I have the same theory about David Brooks, who I stopped reading years ago, after he became FAR too dismissive of the reasons Trump was elected and FAR to permissive of the sins of the left.
That seems to be the leftist playbook - create a problem and profit from trying to fix it.
I'm not sure how conscious it is. Much of their madness is simply madness. I do think there are opportunists, though, hovering around, and sometimes instigating it.
For the ultra-rich, who are above politics, leftism is a method. They don't believe any of the tenets of it. It's just a way of manipulating useful idiots, who they have made sure occupy most seats in most of our universities. If none of it makes sense, it is designed that way. One part of our population has been functionally lobotomized and thus naturally comes into conflict with those possessing residual wit. If conflict is the aim, this is a good method.
This was a bit rambling, but I'm thinking aloud.
Thinking requires rambling sometimes, otherwise it is just jumping to conclusions. I think your assessment of a powerful whatever it is moving pawns is correct. I begin to feel as if we are in Oz and the Wizard needs to be exposed.
It's unquestionably a curated reality, into which truth only rarely breaks.
“We were special once” 😥
While you (the US, I am British) sure as hell are having a terrible time you do at least have a good chunk of people fighting back. Wokeism/Maoism and its cultists are almost completely unopposed in the UK and seems even worse in Canada, Australia and NZ. They have control of almost everything: Media, Govt. Companies, education, Health, military. The Milgram experiment on steroids.
It does seem that way. There's absolutely nothing wrong with courtesy or kindness, but both have been weaponized since at least the Fabians. As most of the world is aware, many Americans don't mind being rude at times, and don't mind telling people to go pound sand.
As I have at times put it, the world needs assholes. Sometimes they are the only ones willing to speak obvious truth. That's why Donald Trump is so popular. I tell people to dislike him all you like, but he's not wrong about essentially anything (other than vaccines and maybe a few others.)
Hmmm, those same 5 countries make up Five Eyes. I wonder if there's a connection.
Leading the world in a race to the bottom is still "special".
Race to the bottom, on the road to serfdom.
This is so uplifting to read. Thank you.
I too found this uplifting. It's nice to know that we still have some fight left in us. This horse isn't dead yet!
Very well said!
Yes. There is wisdom here.
Wise man, that Frederick Douglass. Jonathan Haidt, too. I came to that same conclusion a while back about how all this postmodern-ness/wokeness will ultimately have the opposite effect as an unintended consequence. Or who knows, maybe it's all actually intended.
Interesting post, Barry. I’ve just finished an superbly interesting history book called the ‘American Revolutions.’
In it, among so many revelations, was the penalty during the Revolutionary War Patriots would put perceived Loyalists (all Americans..) through - tar and feathered with houses and possessions burnt. And sometimes killed. In other words, a loyalty oath or else.
Were we as a country all that special, ever?
Conformity dictated then as it is attempting to do now. It passed then. It will pass now.
The main latent reference there was so called McCarthyism. The same people who want to call everything Tail Gunner Joe did wrong ALSO want to impose loyalty oaths, fire anyone who is ideologically noncompliant, create lists of enemies, and the like. Either what Joe did made sense, or what these people are doing is wrong.
And in my own view, there WERE and plainly still are many people working to destroy our Constitutional Republic and replace it with a much poorer nation, vastly less freedom, no opportunity, and an unrestrained government run by an unaccountable elite--which is what Communism is.
Joe's argument, that such people existed, was sound. The argument being made to therapists that we all need to be pushing ideas which manifestly make the world a worse place is a non-starter. It can't be made, which is why it isn't. They simply attack those who refuse to be bullied or tricked into submission.
That's my two cents.
It’s the same story, over and over again. Wokeness destroys everything it touches. It’s not enough to simply notice it, or empathetically understand it. Sane people must loudly and publicly fight against it, like a war.
We are powerless to stop it. I moved out of the country. It’s just going to get worse.
I completely disagree, in fact we have all the power if we choose to use it. This very article proves it. It was legal to publish this and we have all read it. We face a New American Crisis. Carry on.
"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." Tom Paine
Almost every institution of American society has been captured by the Left in their Long March. We are already living in a totalitarian state; the dictators just haven't flaunted their power with complete openness yet. For good reason--they can't afford to enrage too much of the populace at once. But they still hold enough power that their eventual victory is guaranteed.
Run for School Board. Fire all Critical Theorist teachers and administrators. This is a battle that we can win and are winning if we simply do not stop. Well educated High School Graduates will not attend woke universities. Do not despair. Run for School Board.
Agreed. My kids are 23,26,28. None are even remotely woke, they laugh at it. All college grads but not to stupid progressive schools. Speak up and loudly to the woke around you. Call them totalitarians to their faces. I’m done with these people.
I agree to an extent but school board's do not control, but rather influence, the curricula. That too is big busineess. My instinct is that the solution is for disillusioned teachers to form small private schools with an emphasis on traditional education subjects.
It’s possible to mount a fight though. I did in 2021 against my kids’ public school in WA state over a hardcore DEI program the superintendent was trying to implement - the school is 96% white with a single minority family and the plan called for a majority of teachers and staff to be bi-lingual among many other things including a long list of required reading from the likes of DiAngelo, Kendi, etc.
I became the PTO president and rallied a very angry parent body, including the parents of the sole black kid, and several families yanked their kids from the school for the year which created a devastating loss of state funding. The board ended up removing the program, creating a collaborative parent/board curriculum review process, and replaced the Uber-woke superintendent with a lovely moderate guy from rural Alaska.
It was a very rough couple of years and I contemplated home schooling or private school so many times but now I’m happy to say the school is back to being a wonderful community of fairly traditional values. We’re in WA state so I expect we’ll need constant vigilance but it’s worth it. Parents need to fight back collectively and believe change is possible.
That was the dream of charter schools. I actually started one in Penn Hills Pa. 15 years ago. In the end it did not work as I had hoped since charter schools have so much less money than the public schools. But the school still exists.
My husband and I are heavily involved in the alternative education field, so I can attest that it's rapidly growing, due to increasing demand, especially since the dual "coffin nails" of covid and CSJ. It's been so encouraging to realize there are far more sane people out there than the MSM would have us believe.
I disagree Celia. Keep your chin up. The leftists nutjobs are drawn to bureaucratic roles and yes, institutional capture. They produce no food, create no goods, can’t effectively wield weapons…history is on our side. 0% of leftist societies have lasted for a century. This mania won’t go nearly that long. The correction, however, may be messy.
They have two important things on their side:
1) They have perfected capturing the minds of America's children, all the way down to pre-K. Although the trend in universities has been apparent for two decades, the extension of the ideology to lower and lower grades is a problem that people are only just becoming aware of. The next generation's minds are already dedicated (in a very religious sense) to Wokism, which makes it likely that it will take a Soviet century for the U.S. to shake off the chains of Leftist ideology.
2) Leftists have largely seized control of the mechanisms of justice--specifically judges and prosecutors. That is a problem that cannot be solved merely by a change in political leadership. And under complete Leftist control of government, that system can and will be used to crush dissent.
They also haven't produced a single charismatic leader who electrifies their passion and sends it in a unified direction.
Obama?
Obama did not present himself as a progressive Democrat when he entered office, and I don't think he ever was that authentically on their side. I was far more radically left than he was, and hated him because he used the left wing voters to get into office then spent his first term pandering to the Republicans. I think he might have been a Republican if the GOP were more welcoming to black people. That has always been a problem with the GOP; they don't recognize that most black Americans are more socially conservative than white leftists are. Obama was not enthused about gay rights, or at least not enthused about being associated with them, and not favorable towards cannabis, although he admitted to experimentation with something or other, all of which was similar to Bill Clinton, who also was not a radical leftist. Obama said repeatedly that he was not an ideologue and that is what I saw. I know that conservative white people cast Obama as somewhere left of Lenin, but I don't know why they think that.
If a smarter version of Ibram X. Kendi emerged, the woke cult would probably mobilize behind him, but they might be even more receptive to a sufficiently narcissistic trans-identified white male. Most woke people are white females, and I don't know how comfortable they actually are around black people. Please God, don't let Dylan Mulvaney be our next President!
When I think about how to convert Democrats to Independents I see the first battle in this war a fight over Free Speech and the First Amendment. The attack plan is to rally around defunding the Censorship Industrial Complex. The woke mind virus's defenses will be weak in this battle.
I'm a Dem who went unaffiliated a few years back. Dem insanity on public safety was one factor, and they for some reason decided to demonize/ignore blue collar workers which helped Orange Foolius come into power. CRT drives me nuts. The Repubs are often off on weird tangents and sticking their noses in pregnant women's business so I vote by candidate, not by the party. It's amazing how much time that takes, but necessary. I still wish for a 3rd party of moderates.
Unfortunately, many on the Left don't see it.
Agreed. But if Republicans and Independents can come together on free speech we do not need a majority of Democrats becoming Independents. An interesting question is what are the attributes and demograpics of Democrats most likely to become Independents?
Men. Latino and Black men, many Asian men especially of more modest middle class education/background. Democrats hate men and alienate them. The only demographic of men that like Democrats are Millennials, and still a majority of them have voted republican recently
I would guess that it would require, at minimum, a devotion to the concepts of the Enlightenment that form the core of classical liberal thought.
As many former Democrats have discovered in recent years, the Left is antithetically opposed to classical liberalism. When you get called a racist and a Nazi for holding to the same liberal principles that you've held for decades, it tends to make you realize that the Left is no longer actually liberal.
But I think it also requires a certain amount of courage. If being called ugly (and false) names is too scary, it's easier to keep your head down and your mouth shut.
And the sad reality is that most people find it easiest to keep their heads down and their mouths shut, especially if their employment depends on their doing so.
The only job I was ever fired from was as a tutor at one of the WWASP boarding schools (abusive reform schools for rich kids). The only way you stayed employed there was by either joining in the culture of abuse or keeping your head down and your mouth shut. As you might guess, I am fundamentally unable to keep my head down and my mouth shut!
But I know a lot of people who worked there (fortunately it got shut down in 2015) who are what I would describe as genuinely *good* people, but who found it more prudent to keep their heads down. Nor did it help that the guy who ran the school was *extremely* good at gaslighting employees into believing that what the school was doing was necessary, and that the kids were all "bad" kids who deserved it.
Actual liberals who don't yet know that the woke cult has seized control of everything. They actually do. not. know.
Longtime fan of Mr. Paine.
Sadly 🥲🥲we have got such a great country, the people unfortunately running it at the moment are lunatics. Read Dick Morris’s The Return it’s brilliant he explains in simple English how the Democrats have seized power of this country.
Skinny, I fear that the corruption has infiltrated both parties and has been that way for many decades. Are you not just so tired of watching the elected officials stuff their pockets? I guess though, that the woke fanatics are predominantly on the left
So so so very tired in fact I’m exhausted!
He would know. He was part of it until he ran afoul of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Would you mind saying to which country? After reading the Durham report I found myself thinking I’d rather live where the rules apply to everyone and without the indoctrination that seems impossible to stop.
Israel. Family values here, great weather, great food. If you hear negative things, don’t read/watch the news. Love is here.
Awesome! Thank you for sharing. I am glad you found your place to be.
The news not telling the truth. Imagine that.
That said, when this country finally falls, there will be nowhere safe.
I agree with Original Woman. It will get worse. The Woke will not go quietly into the night. I also left. Moved to Panama. Woke does not exist here. Beautiful country. Beautiful people.
Costa Rica may be a viable option.
Aren't people fleeing these Central and South American countries (and coming illegally to the U.S.) because of criminal cartels and corrupt government making those countries unsafe to live in?
Nicarauga, Honduras and El Salvador. Not Costa Rica. Costa Rica has a stable government that works for its people. Mandatory public education. 95% literacy rate.
But if Costa Rica is so safe, why are people fleeing to the U.S.? I know I'd prefer to flee to a country where people speak my language.
I too am interested in knowing where you moved to.
Israel. Family values here, great weather, great food. If you hear negative things, don’t read/watch the news. Love is here.
Thanks! I’d love to make aliyah but can’t convince my other half. I’m also worried about the leftist craziness going on there. That doesn’t worry you?
No, because right is stronger than the imbecile's that learned to behave by spoiled Americans. I am focusing on living my best life…with a gas stove. I think the food will be controlled in U.S. Travel too. They are headed towards digital currency to control population in name of equity and climate change. See it coming!
Their plan is global tyranny. US is the only country that must be destroyed to enact it
Preparing a house for showing to an agent in an hour. Renting it out. Heading to Southern Italy..
I don't think so. If that were true then there wouldn't be such absolute hysteria over the right.
Don’t think so what?
What we need is a massive solar flare or a world-wide EMP to level society back to its original survival mode. These issues are a result of a people living in comfort and spending their intellectual capital on the latest theory of everything. Sometimes a house gets to the point that it just can't be repaired and needs to be torn down and rebuilt.
The Warmists want population decimation, but they don't plan on being the ones who die as a result of their policies. But the disruption of all electronics in a world now dependent on computers, cell phones, and Internet connections would cripple distribution systems, resulting in urban areas running dangerously short of food very rapidly.
But I'm sure the Warmist leaders have stockpiles that rival anything Survivalists and Preppers have. As always, the poor will suffer most.
I agree except the reason the left wants to “ burn down the house” and tear it down is for control.
Not like, it is a war. Just not kinetic. Yet.
Hi Free Press...!
There were once a bunch of Democrats who thought that they were better than everyone else. And they never, ever stopped fucking believing this shit because the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and all of their professors said they were right and that the rest of world was ignorant. And so, they kept being well-meaning Democrats who think that "they" can save the world... messianic weirdos... you know the type!
And the people who run the Free Press used to be in that really cool club. And now, they're not. And they just can't figure out why. Because when they were in the club, they weren't judgmental at all. They were really cool. They elected Obama and everything was better! Something must have been lost in translation because when they were in the club, the club was righteous and good...but now, the club isn't as good. But they don't know why. They can't imagine the possibility that 100% of all of the people in this story are Democrats. Nope... that just CAN'T be the connection at all!
The only good part of this story is that at least these therapists are wrecking the lives of people who can afford their services: whiny, white, liberal women.
Why not do a piece about the history of HOW these fucking institutions got this way and the role that Democrats like you people played in pushing these agendas with such reckless glee for the past 40 fucking years?
Or is this a "new phenomenon" that the New York-cool-elite jet-set is finally fucking figuring out?
Thank you for this comment! You've described this all so well. The FP has such a strange dynamic of having writers comprised of formerly staunch Democrats who seemingly refuse to ever admit the problems they are being ostricized for acknowledging stem almost entirely from Democratic policies.
They need a legitimate conservative voice to interplay against
Otherwise it's just David French in reverse
Bring in a Chad, Bari
You gave me a laugh with "David French in reverse"! I can't stand his sanctimonious righteousness. He has incorporated his Calvinistic view of the world into his political writing.
How about we ditch the conservative moniker? It is all about respect for the individual and skepticism against the ideologies of groups.
Nah, I get where you're coming from but hard pass.
I want one of my guys in here mixing it up, would be a good thing
A real, honest to god capital C constervative who actually has some principles correct or incorrect.
The liberal media got into it's own echo chamber partly by having 'debates' against the house straw man - see The View or the NYT, or whatever a never trumper is.
That's what makes Breaking Points much better than just about anything out there.
He and Nellie can have a back-and-forth on the TGIF once a month where she has a take and he has one where they keep it funny so things aren't just Crossfire 2.0.
If I thought moving voters from the Democrat column to the Independent column was best accomplished with big C conservatives I would agree with you.
Ahhh, thanks for that. The best part is imagining how the "whiny, white, liberal women" reading your post will react. I suspect their "therapists" phones are ringing off the hook.
yeah, it's funny how "whiny, white liberal women" don't seem to get that it is the whiny and liberal parts they should feel guilty about, not their "whiteness."
So true!!
Wait til "Martha" weighs in.......
Obama's fundamental transformation of America into a nation that no one would defend is ongoing.
And all these people will continue to pull the D lever.
Of course, that is the goal.of the puppetmaster. This cannot be organic.
No, stop and think how the "fair minded" people of the Democratic party manipulate districts so that only Ds can win. Even Kevin McCarthy's district was "re-organized". For us who pull R or pull for the most conservative candidate for judges and DA, St Anthony (patron saint of loss causes) pray for us.
Yeah - I know the type (unfortunately). Great post.
Unfortunately there's only two parties that matter. It's come down to voting for a party that one disagrees with the least.
Except for most Democrats, it doesn't matter how much they disagree with their party - notice how every big city constantly complains about their incompetent Democratic leadership - they will NEVER vote Republican because after all Democrat=good and Republican=bad.
I read an article last week about a recent college grad lamenting that boomers do not understand what her group is facing. No job opportunities at the payrate demanded. High inflation. Skyrocketing real estate prices. She was oblivious to the fact that we all lived through the Carter years and the results thereof. It informed me as a person and I vote fiscal policy to this day. It is why I can never support Democrats. Yet that white woman whining about boomers lacks sufficient intellect to grasp that she voted for those whose policies have caused her difficulties. Boomers are not her problem in any way except we exist. Given the opportunity I think she would vote that boomers be mandated to appear at the Soylent Green factory.
What these young whiners don't realize is that the reason the boomers did so much damage was a combination of pushing the U.S. to the Left with their protesting and voting habits, plus the same sense of entitlement that drives the current generation of whiners.
In other words, these young whiners are actually trying to out-boomer the boomers, without even realizing it.
One of the reasons so many Gen-Xers have trended conservative or independent is that we experienced first-hand what the boomers caused.
"...trying to out-boomer the boomers..."
i love it and spot on!
"Given the opportunity I think she would vote that boomers be mandated to appear at the Soylent Green factory".
The bad news for her is she's probably Vegan. The good news is that won't excuse her from eating bugs to save the planet.
Given the state of education today, that grad probably has no knowledge of anything that happened in the 1970s beyond Nixon's resignation. If that.
(Which is a shame, because the 1970s was bat guano crazy and some unbelievable history. I remember telling some young'un about the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and he thought I was making it up.)
It's been baked into people's brains for a long time that Republicans equals racists, this is why they will not vote for anyone but Democrats. The Republicans really need to do a better job of reaching people. I realize that's hard to do because MSM and social media all caters to the left.
Yes. Both parties are pretty crappy.
Yes yes yes!!!! They all seem so proud that they’ve figured it out, they’re “true liberals” not the leftists of today. All the same sandbox. All the same ideas with some air in between, they’re just splitting hairs sometimes.
The worst person in the world to lie to is yourself.
And also, the easiest person to get away with lying to is yourself.
Maybe so.
Obamawasafool, your bitterness is so sweet!
Lol we are living in the era of The Karen
I'm giving her some wiggle room bc she's building a paper from scratch, which takes some time. Most of her reporter contacts are probably from the left. Also, she IS center-left so it wouldn't surprise me if her paper turns out this way.
Also I listened to the podcast with Peter Thiel and it was really really. Her questions were precise and probing. The way interviewing should be.
All that said I definitely see your point
Wow!! Home run!!
Lol. Yes.
I am increasingly convinced that issues like the ones described in this article are, at their core, a result of the decline of religion. This is ironic because it is partially the work of prominent psychologists that helped to drive religion’s decline. But, as engagement with religion declined, people (myself included) brought forth more and more complex questions about their own identity, the world’s problems, politics, etc. and sought answers from non-religious modern sources that are “fact-based” or “proven.” These questions require our institutions to build themselves on the go and spin up more and more answers and somehow that led us down the path of eugenics to CSJ. Personally, I spent a good amount of time seeking answers in books and therapists to no avail. I am early on in rediscovering my faith, but have found that, much to the disdain of $150/hr therapists, anyone who spends an hour reading The Bible will find that the questions they have about their lives have been answered for about 2000 years and you’ll get them for a fraction of the cost!
Sounds like you must enjoy Jordan Peterson a lot. I've learned so much from him about the deep roots of religious stories. I think religion, Christianity, could do itself a huge service if it said, look... Stories about floods, whales and snakes, they are parables meant to teach lessons. They are not meant to be taken 100% literally.
Also, excellent comment you made. Very insightful.
Here’s my simplistic “take”. I believe in an all powerful Creator/God. He can do whatever he wants however he wants.
Here’s another place where the “Current Communist Goals” from 1963 are unfortunately relevant:
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for Intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression In the schools on the grounds that It violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
Seriously, this is from the congressional record, January 1963. Appendix page A32 or so. I don’t remember the exact page.
I heartily agree. I wish "religion" wasn't talked about as one amorphous "mind-control" system though. I'm a follower of Jesus, but there are fundamentalist churches I wouldn't set foot in because I'd consider them cults. I attend a diverse urban church that would still be considered "oppressive" and "bigoted" by woke groups, but open dialogue and differences of opinion on all topics are welcomed. That's one reason I attend. The Bible itself is full of people questioning where God is and how on earth he could let X,Y Z happen. The Christianity I read about in the Bible is all about questioning things.
A theology professor once said "the Bible does not answer your questions . . . it questions your answers." Best thing I ever learned.
Must have been a great professor.
Interestingly Jesus “solved” the diversity conundrum. We are ALL one in Christ. He overcomes all apparent, and man made, divisions.
One of the main reasons for the decline in religion is comfortable lives. Even the poor in thic country have newer cars and big screen televisions. And despite what many "educated" people proclaim, hunger is NOT a national problem. Compared to Third World countries we in the West are pampered fools.
Absolutely. As Chesterton remarked, “when people don’t believe in God any more, they will believe in anything. “ Hence the anger and division in our societies.
I see it as spiritual, the spirit motivating the leftist revolution consuming the body of the elder religions.
"Progressivism" or "DEI" might be the best name for that spirit, but one of its interesting qualities is its hatred of being named. We call its worshippers the "woke" but the movement itself denies any name assigned to it.
I know what that means.
It's not religion (as that has been wildly corrupted); it is the core and essence of spiritualism which is wedded and threaded to the material world. Religions seek to define a set of values and modalities that express spirituality, and we are relying on ancient texts and languages that have been manipulated and taken out of context. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights were designed to update core beliefs and re-created and reasserted a system of governance and behavior in which we can all abide. Surely, we can still achieve this.
I think you are correct about the demise of religion. Common belief systems were unifying.
Pastors, rabbis, ministers, preachers, imams, gurus and other spiritual leaders used to be the therapists.
Yes! The WSJ recently ran an article about the uptick in converts to Orthodoxy and noted the majority being young men. As a cradle Orthodox myself, I have seen the increase in my own parish over the past few years--tons of young single men and young couples. Seems like some folks are realizing secular therapy ain't the way and church is. How ironic it will be if the woke takeover ultimately sends more people back to church!!
This makes my heart sing. I found the recent campus revival movement very uplifting.
All that. This is a new religion and just impoverished compared to Christianity.
I believe it is human nature within all of us to crave and seek out a deeper meaning that organized religion has provided for millennia. The rise in "Wokeism" follows a decline in religion among certain people. They still crave that deeper feeling of belonging, even if they do no consciously seek it out. Social justice fits the bill and has all the tenets of a religion.
So true!! Read The Word!!
💯 In a similar place myself.
Or, in other words, lunatics treating lunatics.
What could possibly go wrong?
I recall watching in amused horror, one Sunday morning working out in a hotel gym that forced me to watch CNN as a comedic dwarf was interviewing two prominent "mental health experts," Drs. Li of Yale and Frances of Duke, who claimed that Trump had killed more people than Hitler, Mao and Stalin combined. It encapsulated the insanity of the entire "woke" movement for me in a way that nothing else has done before or since.
Have you heard the news? Special counsel put out 300 page document stating the “Russian collusion “ hoax...was a hoax.
It is too bad that there were no indictments along with that report. It will be forgotten soon as the left keeps pushing their agenda. And now they are slowly white washing the Hunter scandal too.
I specifically subscribed so I could comment on this article. It was infuriating but also affirming to see The FP write this piece. It was frustrating in my CMHC program to become a therapist to see these ideologies taught and used to frame the experience of clients as experiencing aspects of society as oppressive. That isn't to say bigotry and discrimination do not exist; they certainly do, and clients attest to it in certain ways. Of all the clients I have had in my short-time as a resident therapist and an intern at training sites, my clients didn't come with a primary focus on oppression. Their concerns were related to sexual assault histories, experiences of domestic violence, unemployment, long-term mental illness, dealing with the mental illness of family members, anxiety, depression, professional stagnation and dissatisfaction, divorce, to name a few. None of the theories mentioned in this article ever worked or could capture the profound difficulties my clients experienced. They just didn't apply.
I'm probably throwing myself under the bus here in making this comment as a professional, but I can't in good conscious use a method that is unhelpful and narrowly categorizes my clients into boxes they sure don't ask to be put in.
Beware! Turn back now! You're on the path to being red-pilled. Pretty soon you'll start questioning whether men can get pregnant, and the moment that happens you've definitely become a Nazi (CNN told me so).
BTW: Welcome to FP, a community led by 2 liberal lesbians, half of whose readers are conservatives (that most of the editors former friends would call deplorable Nazis), and the other half run the gamut from old-school liberals to socialists. We don't agree on much, but we do agree that reality exists. And we have great conversations with each other. Welcome to the party.
You’re correct, obviously. You aren’t alone. Stay the course!
I value your input.
As I was reading this article, I kept wondering whether the wave of Social Justice Therapists might actually be the result of philosophical differences between the education that someone pursuing a Master's in Clinical Psychology receives and someone with a Master's in Social Work receives.
That's a hard one to pinpoint and answer, and unfortunately, the answer is, it depends.
When you choose a program in this field, you need to research the school and the theoretical perspective or model they are training students in. Most are fairly upfront, as some schools will specialize in psychoanalytic/psychoanalysis, person-centered, Jungian, etc; they want you to choose based on that framework for understanding the human person. With that being said, there's also a diagnostic world-view-based orientation. Psychologists, generally, operate from more of a disease-based model. This is not all of them, but the root of their field was formulated during the late 1800s-early 1900s, where mental illness was looked at something to be treated like a disease and many of the major players (Freud/Jung, others) were atheistic or at least agnostic. They strove to streamline the process into something more scientifically based, to give more legitimacy and quantify it. Counseling and social work both branched off as separate fields I think about the mid 1940s/1950s or a little later. I can't speak for SWs, but LPC (licensed professional counselors, aka the counseling specific masters programs) are less focused on the disease model and were a little more geared toward a holistic understanding of the person -- as it was explained to me during my classes that covered the history of the founding of the field. All of this is what I remember from how it was explained.
Now to answer your question with this background in mind: very likely yes, depending on that person's personal philosophy/theological framework. Anecdotally, a psychologist resident I'm friends with and myself had a discussion that we noticed different types of personalities of therapists seemed attracted to specific modalities. A lot of the psychoanalyst types were very cold and reserved, and often careful and extremely analytical. CBT types can also be somewhat the same. Most of counselor educators I knew were agnostic or atheists, and strong humanists, and were all fairly on board with CRT and SJ methodologies. Draw what you will from it. I have my suppositions, but not enough evidence to back up my personal assertions.
Welcome! Easy fixes rarely work and in essence that is what this tripe is - it-is-a-difficult-problem-and-I-don't-have-a-magic-wand-to-fix-it-so-let's-affix-a-label-and-blame-The-Man. The sad thing is it is dismissing the key component of mental health because the mind and how one uses it is the key.
I'm finding it hard to relate or get any beneficial information from the articles lately. I didn't fall for any of this BS and have a hard time finding empathy for people who did and now are trying to climb back to reality. Get out in nature, interact with animals (horses being my favorite) and pay attention. We are not man-made, we are created by something far more perfect and purposeful.
Amen to your last line. That’s what it’s all about, and why these therapists are spinning their wheels.
“Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
https://gaty.substack.com/p/americas-mental-health-crisis-does
Lisa, unfortunately, some of us in the business world are having to live with this crap day in and day out. I recently lost a job because of Wokeness. It’s very real and very frightening.
Same. I know the FP is writing to the like-minded, the liberals who can't figure out where it all went wrong, but I've not got much left in my sympathy bucket either. I mean come on people. And they made fun of people like us who didn't fall for the BS. At least have the grace to apologize.
Thank you! I have the same hard time finding empathy for the people you describe, but maybe that's because I don't really try hard enough. Reminding myself not to be like the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son helps sometimes, but - sad to say - only temporarily.
I've always had trouble with that parable. I think I understand the broader/deeper message, but I sympathize with the elder brother too.
I’m a therapist with a degree in social work and can confirm that every word of this article is true. I remember professors offering deadline extensions during the 2020 election season, citing students’ need for self-care; I remember a heated conversation with a classmate where I said it wasn’t my job to tell my clients how to vote -- she was appalled. Throughout my time in grad school I was increasingly concerned about ideological creep, to the point that I almost withdrew several times. The problem is, social workers in particular should be pointing their attention at the conditions (internal and external) people need to live in in order to function well, but social work in practice winds up causing people to become mouthpieces and apologists for the very systems they’re supposed to question. Asking questions is no longer acceptable in my field.
I’m lucky enough to be able to practice with a group that’s committed to providing good therapy, but I’m well aware of how rare that is becoming. In the future I plan to vet potential colleagues VERY carefully, or practice solo. It’s good to know about these growing groups of heterodox thinkers, though -- we really need it.
As a fellow social worker, I agree. I'm so glad that I'm 15-plus years removed from graduate school. I see clients who have been clearly harmed by this ideology, and many more who never got the help they needed and deserved from professionals. How can we say we are mental health professionals when we collude with delusional and prosecutorial thinking?
I’m glad I’m as old as I am, honestly, and not a 26-year-old MSW grad who knows nothing about the real world besides what she learned in this week’s Canvas discussion boards. When I started supervision my biggest fear was not being able to find a non-woke supervisor. (I succeeded! I think there are more heterodox thinkers out there than we assume, partly bc no one can say anything out loud.
We need you and others like you!!
"Cooney wanted to share her newfound realizations, but feared being canceled and ostracized—by her friends, fellow activists, perhaps even her girlfriend. The burden weighed on her, and therapy seemed the place to address it." Sounds like a cult, doesn't it?
Sounds like a toxic relationship that isn't going to make it. "I'm afraid my partner will know what I really think." Yikes.
What’s crazy is that she stayed with the therapist for 6 more months. I’m floored.
Self-loathing. Which is what one would expect a therapist to help with not turn into self hatred.
In 2018 I enrolled in a masters of counseling program. I withdrew after the first 2 courses, one of which was on culture and identity. I wanted to work with and help individuals struggling with the human condition. I did not want to be trained as a social worker, social justice warrior, or political activist. I did not want to believe or pretend to believe a 40 year old, 6’2 biological male in an ill fitting dress and wig was more of a victim than his wife and 3 children. I did not want to believe or pretend to believe that because I am white, straight, and Christian I could not understand the suffering of others who were different. I did not want to believe or pretend to believe that because I am a woman I am victimized by the patriarchy. One evening in class we had a “self care night” we colored in coloring books, carved pumpkins, did a group meditation, sang and danced. It was ridiculous and I could not take the program seriously.
That sounds like a scene straight out of a comedy/horror movie!
I did not like being treated like a preschooler. Nor did I wish to infantilize others. I thought it was best to help people develop resiliency. You can’t always stop bad things from happening but you can learn how to face them and grow stronger.
Some people were so impressed I was going for a masters degree. A fifth grader could do it! It was embarrassing.
Thank you for writing this. As a psychologist, as much as I find this to be the heartbreaking reality of our current moment- I am simultaneously encouraged by thoughtful coverage of the issue in posts like these. When this ideological encroachment first began to take hold, I felt alone in the midst of insanity. Now, this is at the very least a problem that is better understood by people outside the field and I will hold out hope that we can build better, properly informed and educated alternative institutions. Our most immediate imperative is helping the public connect with real therapists (we are out here) who can see past the thin veneer of this morally vacuous religion and are interested n helping people honestly contend with their suffering - no matter what their “identities” may be.
I join in you in your dissent and agree. We do exist out there. I don't think the people who make public displays and comments on the ACA and APA are entirely in touch with reality; I haven't had a single client come in who is seeking help for oppression in any form. Their suffering is more nuanced and their "identities" have little to do with the issues they present.
Same. Not one single client has come in saying “help! Help! I’m being oppressed!” -- they are all individuals with their own stories, and I’m not about to make them feel like the victim in their own narrative.
Based.
And this is how the change begins
Not at all Jay. Go ahead and I'll do my best to answer them and offer some suggestions/guidance.
Yes!! I felt so, so alone in grad school. It’s nice to know there are at least a couple of others who aren’t succumbing to ideology.
You aren't alone!
So help the public out. If the people who approve this idealogical.takeover of your profession have code words to filter out non-believers, what code words should those seeking genuine, non-idealogical therapy look for?
Yes! I am a therapist and I would love to signal to all patients that they will receive non-ideological care. That Dr. Mitch Prinstein from the APA who says this is not a problem is either totally disingenuous or frighteningly naive. I quit the APA in a huff and let them know that it was because of this harmful ideological capture. Critical Therapy Antidote (with their new book on this topic) has been an extremely helpful organization.
My husband went to CBT for help managing his tendency to yell at our kids and it was hard for him to find a moderate-conservative therapist in our purple city. He went through a few that couldn’t tolerate his “pro-gun, pro-Trump” ways before finally just getting a recommendation from another therapist. Apparently there was insider knowledge on who in town is willing to help the non-left clients.
This is scary on different levels. Mostly because it will deter or prevent people (especially men) from getting needed psychological help, and the result will be more domestic abuse, more divorce and other social ills. It will also force the people who do seek help to be very circumspect in what they choose to reveal to therapists, to feel they have to walk on eggshells all the time for fear of alienating the person treating them. I experience this personally. I work with mental health providers, and find myself self-censoring or not being fully forthcoming about certain things because of my suspicion that the provider is certain to be a lefty. The mental health field should be completely apolitical, but like everything else at present, it's been hijacked by politics. And medicine in general is moving in that direction; newer practitioners will not want to treat anyone whose worldview doesn't align with theirs or will give them inferior treatment. The implications are chilling.
I take comfort in this and that the therapist was at least willing to make a good referral.
If you live someplace where asking for a non-woke therapist is not a mortal sin in everyone's mind, that is what I would advise. In recent years, when police officers or their family members contact me, one of the first things they say is, "I have to ask you this Doc, which side are you on?" Easy question for me to answer!
This is an excerpt from the congressional record in 1963, which is apparently a prophetic document, outlining “current communist goals”:
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest
from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession
and use mental health laws as a means of
gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
Along with other prescient nuggets:
15. Capture one or both of the political
parties In the United States.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them
as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line In textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public
protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of
book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions' In radio,
TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
Yeah, anyway, it’s nice to see these critical, potentially fatal national struggles as someone else’s desired end state as expressed 50 years ago. The assumption that this is all “just happening” may not be valid.
And the people who support this explicitly call themselves socialists conducting a revolution.
Then their media tells everybody I'm a white supremacists conspiracy theorist for observing that we're in the midst of a socialist culture revolution designed to eradicate our country.
Yes. And in the parlance of the American Revolution, the name calling, vilification, and deplatforming/canceling, etc in response to your legitimately voiced concerns is abuse. Persistence of these abuses becomes a long train of abuse that serves as evidence of a plan to force you to be a slave under a rule of absolute despotism. They referred to it as “evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism” which is accurately posed as a legal cause, under natural law, to throw off the forms of government to which they have been accustomed and to form new safeguards for their own security.
These topics are not light. The times we live in are not the passive, inconsequential, transient, peaceful bliss we hoped, and some of us fought, for.
I don’t know how we fix it, but I will not be a slave.
Yes we all know exactly how to fix this: Get on the school board, run for those little offices in your town. Fire all Critical Theorist teachers and administrators and colleges will stop making them. They only make them because we keep hiring them. Boycott the dog gone boycotters.
I think that’s what we’re all hoping. But when the bureaucrats, like teachers and school administrators, feel morally obligated to ignore anything that isn’t what they want to hear, the power of our political offices, indeed the power of the people itself, is moot. This is also true of federal power and the presidency. It’s also why the judiciary is the last pillar standing, though it too is fast falling. Law schools and accreditation programs are generating armies or ideologues to replace our legal institutions. These people will soon be the judges in our highest courts and there will truly be nothing left.
In the long history of humanity, it is the optimists who always end up right though often for reasons they never expected, and the pessimists forgotten. Let us remain optimists. There is simply too much at stake.
Thanks for that. I’m afraid I’m optimistic that we’ll figure it out, but not optimistic that the existing United States will be part of the solution. I want to be wrong. Any argument to show me to be wrong enjoys favorable prejudice in my heart and mind. Even under those conditions, I don’t see it.
This is an appropriate and wise observation:
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
What follows is equally wise and, I’m very afraid, also appropriate. I’ve made an effort to enumerate the abuses, but have erased them over and over again, because if they find coherent form, the necessary conclusions will be inescapable. It would be the tipping point.
The long slow march through the institutions.
Gramsci, were he alive today, would weep with joy at his success.
Do you happen to have a link to the complete document?
Yes. This is the pdf transcription. The relevant part is A34-A35 from Congressman Herlong. It’s referencing findings/analysis in “The Naked Communist” by Skousen.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1963-pt22/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1963-pt22-1.pdf
Thanks!
Therapy for white guilt? Why not a priest for some exorcism too? It's the same delusion
Women on Riley gaines's swim team were told that if they couldn't handle seeing male genitalia in a women's locker room they should get counseling. That umbrella is wide.
There's a meme going around of women in a locker room who look horrified that a male is in there. The male says "relax, I'm a woman".
I heard that on Petersons interview with Riley. That’s major bullshit right there!
That social justice activism has turned into a nascent religion makes all of it much simpler to understand. It is a missionary religion, spreading as far and wide as it can, using familiar dogmas and tactics. Bigot is the new heretic.
That's an insult to exorcism.
A refreshing/worrisome article to read.
I live in SF where it’s hard to have even a mildly dissenting opinion. I feel incredibly alienated and stressed after reading news articles, social media timelines/posts, and having conversations with my peers where my opinion doesn’t align perfectly with the prevailing narrative. I want so badly to talk to my therapist (also in SF) about it but I don’t feel comfortable with how she’d react, perceive me, or try to “correct” me.
It’s sad when even the places we go to feel “safe and free of judgment” cannot meet our needs. I know I’m not alone in my feelings completely, but what does it do to a society when individuals are scared into silence or submission?
Anyway, I was happy to see this article and see I’m not 100% alone.
It's pervasive. I don't want this to come across as minimizing the issue, but even in my Book Club, the assumptions, the insults, the judgements, the editing of what people say just fly out of the mouths of those who are so self righteous in their belief system. It comes so easily to them and it is always in one direction.
Too funny! My step mom is quite liberal (enjoys Rachel Maddow) and even she recently felt ostracized a bit when she dared to express a dissenting opinion in her book club.
Kathy, so sad to hear your story, but you do know that Massachusetts is the belly of the woke beast, right? Kind of like living in Hell and expecting to hear a bad word about the Devil-- ain't gonna happen.
I love linear thought.
Just curious, what do you talk about in your book club? Are the discussions stimulating? If you can't engage in back and forth what's the point? You're stronger than you think. Know your facts and force them to respond. They may not like you for it but you'll definitely feel better.
I've never been to therapy, but how can it be of any benefit to see a therapist with whom you cannot be honest? Serious question.
When my kids were little, and their pediatrician made a recommendation, I always asked her if she truly believed it was necessary, or if she was just following the party line. She was honest with me, and several recommendations (such as making babies sleep on their backs) turned out to be party line diktats.
You are not alone... There is a certain subset of the population who recognizes the insanity and while we may not live together, we do congregate here on Substack. It may not be much consolation, but there are other people who think like you.
Cheers from the eastern side of the country
Honestly, if you’re having these thoughts about your therapist you need to either bring them up with her or find a new therapist. You’re wasting your time and money otherwise, and if your therapist is a True Believer™️ you’re financially supporting her in practicing bad and harmful therapy.
I live in Portland, which is similarly horrible as SF, and I am a psychologist. Look for therapists who have seniority in the field as well as good word of mouth reputations. The number of years of experience is a necessary but not sufficient component of excellence.
It enslaves them. Ironically by people who decry oppression. Your comment really strikes a chord with me. God bless and keep you. If you are not a person of faith please do not take offense as this is how I try to embrace or protect you. If you are a person of faith, or are at least open to it, try to find a church/synagogue/mosque/
temple, etc. with traditional values and go. Spiritual leaders are good counselors.
Look for therapists who graduated 2011 or earlier. My program was just beginning to shift around then.
Why are the progressives always entitled to their "safe spaces" but if I ask for one I'm a bigot?
Be bold! Be bold! Fear is the real pandemic. Courage is sunlight. You must not forsake your conscious, you must not suppress your convictions. You are strong and intelligent and free! What can they do to you that would not just prove them ever more so to be the villain which they project onto others. Be the sunlight!