Thanks for having this discussion, it’s very important. I was diagnosed bi-polar at 30, and suffered with depression since childhood. I well know manic episodes and suicidal ideation. I have never stopped taking my meds because I KNOW the consequences and dangers of going into full blown mania. The manic high is one of the greatest feelings in the world, UNTIL you come crashing down and friends and relatives have to pick up the pieces…Great episode and podcast. Thank you!
This episode was mind blowing. I had to stop multiple times to take notes. Thank you for the interview! I am now a proud paid subscriber to Common Sense, and am excited to be a part of this community!
Good insights by this guest. This epidemic of self diagnosed disease is what happens when medical regulations are trumped by the tyranny of feelings. Of course people will exploit the loopholes to game the system in oppression olympics. Having a non-victim status in today's age renders individuals vulnerable to attacks based on perceived privilege. The desire to be in a protected category is driving must of the trans social contagion.
Bari, I'm sorry but how can you glorify a Marxist? I don't care how intellectual and clever he is. Hitler was charismatic and clever. I'll bet you, you wouldn't have written this article if Freddie was an old school NAZI.
I have said before on your BBS that communists, when it came to slaughtering people, made Hitler look like a girl scout. Freddie may be well educated and brilliant but how can a smart, educated person look at the history of communism and proudly say, "I'm a Marxist."?
I need to amend my post. To me, my post sounded like one of those woke moron, tyrants. I need to clarify. I don't mean we need to cancel NAZIs or Communists. My dislike of them is visceral but in a free society, something NAZIs and Communist don't support, we need to rise above our prejudices and at least not only listen to these thugs but to embrace their right to speak.
This will not mean I will stop despising them. I will always despise those who promote tyranny and that is what NAZIs and Communists promote.
"we need to rise above our prejudices and at least not only listen to these thugs but to embrace their right to speak."
Except for the "listen to these thugs part". I'm 60. Not going to use up any more of my remaining time on listening to wanna be authoritarians, any more than I need to listen to SJWs lecture me on how awful I am for existing. I already know what they have to say. Private Property is theft. All "wealth" must be redistributed until there isn't any. Any system or institution created by anyone with white skin must be destroyed. Got it....
Most of the wealthy people I know or have read about worked hard long hours to be where they are. Work is not only a foreign concept to the Dems/Socialists it is a four-letter word.
I am, perhaps, an anomaly to the comments on this Substack. I am not a progressive or liberal, but I so enjoy anything Bari Weiss writes or her podcast interviews, whether or not I agree with her position or the views of her guests. I would want this interview to be heard by a national audience. It is spot on. Free minds of the right or left need to form a new center to steer our society back to civility and truly common sense. Without a middle, we are lost. I am at the end of my career as a psychiatrist, and I have seen much nonsense, such as the conflation of science with pseudoscience. The misattribution of political correctness or wokeness for settled science. Physicians, and psychiatrists in particular, risk their careers and livelihoods for openly contesting nonsense. We are living through a woke inquisition where the mob is the grand inquisitor. Western medicine uses a common parlance known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual(DSM), now in its fifth edition, to define psychiatric illnesses. Many have described it as science by committee, an oxymoron. I prefer to reference John Godfrey Saxe, “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made." The DSM is made much like sausage. As years go on, we have seen the definition of autism, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and even depression get expanded to include all the permutations of the normal human condition. Not all existential sadness is a clinical depression. Not every response to boredom or academic limitation is ADHD. Not every personality disordered rageaholic is bipolar. The new underlying ethic of diagnosis is that no one is accountable for bad behavior, as bad behavior must stem from some bad biology. Consider autism. The classic triad is impaired relatedness, impaired cognition, and impaired language; this is wide net. I had to laugh when Daryl Hannah disclosed that she was diagnosed as autistic as a child……..it would be quite difficult for someone with impaired relatedness to participate in the complexities and nuances of acting……I posit misdiagnosis at a time(when she was a child) when the DSM II was used, which was a document with significant psychoanalytic (read mythological) underpinnings. Social anxiety and avoidant personality disorders are often diagnosed as autism. We live in a time when self-mutilation is performance art and no reason for concern. While we should all live and let live and “you do you”, it would be idiotic not to identify dangerous social contagion, such as the explosion in transgenderism. Prof. Lisa Littman at Brown University was censured and almost cancelled academically for a paper on making the distinction between early onset and late onset transgenderism. August institutions like Harvard are at the forefront of correct thought and robust woke branding in providing any treatment that the public wants, including chemical and surgical interventions for transitions children. There will most certainly be a backlash in another generation to the stupidities and cynicism of the current historical moment. I once treated tween girl from a religious Christian family who was ostracized by peers in her middle school where over half of her classmates were either trans on nonbinary (this is not hyperbole). While I believe that we should all accept others as they come, I do not believe that we need to embrace their worldviews because of their hunger for global validation. We live in a time when influencers hold more sway in public views than true experts. “Science” is now in the service of politics. We no longer know who is a true expert.
Huge respect for deBoer’s intelligent and sensitive take on the insane progressive inclination to tie identity as a positive to absolutely everything (except being Jewish, of course…that can’t be allowed) but especially mental Illness.
His perspective on Marxism, on the other hand, is valuable by understanding how such intelligent people can be fooled by anything. Any implementation of Marxism ultimately results in the few controlling the many. So, it always, always fails.
Glorification of mental illness makes perfect sense as a byproduct of victimization worship, in which progressives strive to build a religion built around collective grievance ideology.
Speaking as someone who has a "cool" job (I create comic books, host a podcast and build web sites – all as part of my own business) the idea that movies and TV have shaped people into wanting cool jobs and not becoming actual adults is something i see constantly in the generational gaps. These movies and TV shows and comics have become their religion.
Freddie deBoer found the NY Times article alarming because it was so unbalanced. He seems surprised that they didn't include a hint of an opposing view. Maybe he will consider that this is how the NY Times covers so many topics. That would be nice.
As someone who is on the spectrum, I 100% agree with his take on the fetishization of ASD. Yes, I suffer some issues, but I'm completely independent (and have been from age 18), am financially stable, have friends, own my own home and business, and so on. To ignore the real and pressing needs of people with more severe cases in order to feed one's own ego strikes me as obscene. I'm one of the lucky ones for whom ASD can be relegated to the status of an annoying quirk. I'm grateful for that, and respect that a lot of others are not in my position, and they and their families need (and deserve) all the support they can get. Hats off to Freddie for being willing to take this trend on.
I’m not 💯 certain but I believe This is the same person who wrote an article on this issue for another site. I posted a comment regarding my personal experience of raising a now 20 yr old daughter with ADHD/Autism. It was never a self diagnosis nor was it a sudden revelation based on behaviors described on Tik Tok. She was diagnosed a 3 and it’s been a long road for her and us. I do know she prefers to not be defined by it and her wish was always to be like everyone else. A human with her own unique struggles.
That being said the podcast touched on the mental health of mass shooters.
A few years ago I attended a play about suicide and gun control. It was written by a person who lost a loved one and believes we need stronger gun laws.
They had a “town hall” discussion after the play lead by 2 mental health professionals. One specifically a psychiatrist the other I believe was a therapist,
I stood and asked about mental health and looking into early interventions, increasing awareness of signs to look for, access to resources etc.
I have no illusions that navigating mental health issues is easy nor is finding the right answers or solutions.
But what struck me that evening and I have never been able to forget is the Dr. responded with a condescending tone and said “Mentally ill people are not the ones going out and shooting people”
I cannot make sense of it. Is it mentally healthy people who commit suicide or violence onto others?
What is going on here? I’m open to hearing from anyone who could make it make sense.
Good podcast. I learned that a man took responsibility for his life and that is IT right there. The need for people to 'be seen' is the opposite. Everybody is a 'winner' these days. Freddy's view on Marxism is the same "But we haven't tried it my way yet." All Marxism leads to death as our own Governor William Bradford found out in our early colonies and it is all around us today with forced vaccinations leading to many deaths. Marxism means some control others, nothing more. No personal choices. I experienced it in East Germany. Today's example is energy, democrats completely shut down ALL energy development in the U.S. and prices are literally destroying people.
Health care problem? Insurance and Pharm companies control it by buying government to control; there is no free market forces at all. Can you shop and make choices? No, you are subjected to protocol's designed by said others, not doctors. Can you choose to have Ivermectin(which works well with zinc) prescribed by a thinking doctor to help with your virus? No, you are to wait until you are sick and then we put you on a ventilator and give you Remdecivir(not FDA approved) and most likely die.
The free market response to faux pandemics like WuFlu is to listen to professional doctors like Marty Makary, Peter McCollough, and Zev Zelenko(RIP) and their proven treatments that work.
The free market response to fake news is to subscribe to Bari's substack which we love. :-D
I was so glad to see Freddie's response as well as this podcast. Disabilities and accommodations are so complicated, in part because the term disability covers such a broad range. I manage anxiety and my son has ASD, ADHD, and anxiety. He's a bright kid, but he is learning how to manage so much, as is appropriate for a 12 year old boy, in addition to his diagnoses. As his mother, my goals are that he be as independent as possible, know how to interpret unspoken rules in social/educational/work situations (there are so many). He's a bright kid and wants to succeed. At the same time, he really benefits from guidance in identifying his emotions, what to do about them, as well as how to communicate all of this to the neurotypical world. It's complicated. And at a certain level, being able to work with the neurotypical world will benefit him, as unfair as it may be.
Overidentification with a disability doesn't work, ultimately. That's in part why the person -first language developed. And that was a fight. The disability does not define a person, though, in the case of autism, there is a case for its strong influence on personality. Still, conversely, a person can be an asshole outside of their disability. In other words, the diagnosis is not absolution for the consequences, and definitely not a justification, though it may help explain the circumstances. While accommodation is necessary, a disability in the long run does make life more difficult, if not much more difficult, for many. Signed, a professional and mother who regularly interacts with people who have disabilities.
Yes...."Overidentification with a disability doesn't work, ultimately. That's in part why the person -first language developed. And that was a fight. The disability does not define a person, though, in the case of autism, there is a case for its strong influence on personality. Still, conversely, a person can be an asshole outside of their disability. In other words, the diagnosis is not absolution for the consequences, and definitely not a justification, though it may help explain the circumstances. "
Thanks for having this discussion, it’s very important. I was diagnosed bi-polar at 30, and suffered with depression since childhood. I well know manic episodes and suicidal ideation. I have never stopped taking my meds because I KNOW the consequences and dangers of going into full blown mania. The manic high is one of the greatest feelings in the world, UNTIL you come crashing down and friends and relatives have to pick up the pieces…Great episode and podcast. Thank you!
This episode was mind blowing. I had to stop multiple times to take notes. Thank you for the interview! I am now a proud paid subscriber to Common Sense, and am excited to be a part of this community!
Good insights by this guest. This epidemic of self diagnosed disease is what happens when medical regulations are trumped by the tyranny of feelings. Of course people will exploit the loopholes to game the system in oppression olympics. Having a non-victim status in today's age renders individuals vulnerable to attacks based on perceived privilege. The desire to be in a protected category is driving must of the trans social contagion.
Bari, I'm sorry but how can you glorify a Marxist? I don't care how intellectual and clever he is. Hitler was charismatic and clever. I'll bet you, you wouldn't have written this article if Freddie was an old school NAZI.
I have said before on your BBS that communists, when it came to slaughtering people, made Hitler look like a girl scout. Freddie may be well educated and brilliant but how can a smart, educated person look at the history of communism and proudly say, "I'm a Marxist."?
What if he proudly said, "I'm a NAZI."?
Communists like NAZIs are monsters.
I need to amend my post. To me, my post sounded like one of those woke moron, tyrants. I need to clarify. I don't mean we need to cancel NAZIs or Communists. My dislike of them is visceral but in a free society, something NAZIs and Communist don't support, we need to rise above our prejudices and at least not only listen to these thugs but to embrace their right to speak.
This will not mean I will stop despising them. I will always despise those who promote tyranny and that is what NAZIs and Communists promote.
"we need to rise above our prejudices and at least not only listen to these thugs but to embrace their right to speak."
Except for the "listen to these thugs part". I'm 60. Not going to use up any more of my remaining time on listening to wanna be authoritarians, any more than I need to listen to SJWs lecture me on how awful I am for existing. I already know what they have to say. Private Property is theft. All "wealth" must be redistributed until there isn't any. Any system or institution created by anyone with white skin must be destroyed. Got it....
I agree but what is an SJW?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/social-justice-warrior
thanks
Most of the wealthy people I know or have read about worked hard long hours to be where they are. Work is not only a foreign concept to the Dems/Socialists it is a four-letter word.
I am, perhaps, an anomaly to the comments on this Substack. I am not a progressive or liberal, but I so enjoy anything Bari Weiss writes or her podcast interviews, whether or not I agree with her position or the views of her guests. I would want this interview to be heard by a national audience. It is spot on. Free minds of the right or left need to form a new center to steer our society back to civility and truly common sense. Without a middle, we are lost. I am at the end of my career as a psychiatrist, and I have seen much nonsense, such as the conflation of science with pseudoscience. The misattribution of political correctness or wokeness for settled science. Physicians, and psychiatrists in particular, risk their careers and livelihoods for openly contesting nonsense. We are living through a woke inquisition where the mob is the grand inquisitor. Western medicine uses a common parlance known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual(DSM), now in its fifth edition, to define psychiatric illnesses. Many have described it as science by committee, an oxymoron. I prefer to reference John Godfrey Saxe, “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made." The DSM is made much like sausage. As years go on, we have seen the definition of autism, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and even depression get expanded to include all the permutations of the normal human condition. Not all existential sadness is a clinical depression. Not every response to boredom or academic limitation is ADHD. Not every personality disordered rageaholic is bipolar. The new underlying ethic of diagnosis is that no one is accountable for bad behavior, as bad behavior must stem from some bad biology. Consider autism. The classic triad is impaired relatedness, impaired cognition, and impaired language; this is wide net. I had to laugh when Daryl Hannah disclosed that she was diagnosed as autistic as a child……..it would be quite difficult for someone with impaired relatedness to participate in the complexities and nuances of acting……I posit misdiagnosis at a time(when she was a child) when the DSM II was used, which was a document with significant psychoanalytic (read mythological) underpinnings. Social anxiety and avoidant personality disorders are often diagnosed as autism. We live in a time when self-mutilation is performance art and no reason for concern. While we should all live and let live and “you do you”, it would be idiotic not to identify dangerous social contagion, such as the explosion in transgenderism. Prof. Lisa Littman at Brown University was censured and almost cancelled academically for a paper on making the distinction between early onset and late onset transgenderism. August institutions like Harvard are at the forefront of correct thought and robust woke branding in providing any treatment that the public wants, including chemical and surgical interventions for transitions children. There will most certainly be a backlash in another generation to the stupidities and cynicism of the current historical moment. I once treated tween girl from a religious Christian family who was ostracized by peers in her middle school where over half of her classmates were either trans on nonbinary (this is not hyperbole). While I believe that we should all accept others as they come, I do not believe that we need to embrace their worldviews because of their hunger for global validation. We live in a time when influencers hold more sway in public views than true experts. “Science” is now in the service of politics. We no longer know who is a true expert.
Huge respect for deBoer’s intelligent and sensitive take on the insane progressive inclination to tie identity as a positive to absolutely everything (except being Jewish, of course…that can’t be allowed) but especially mental Illness.
His perspective on Marxism, on the other hand, is valuable by understanding how such intelligent people can be fooled by anything. Any implementation of Marxism ultimately results in the few controlling the many. So, it always, always fails.
Glorification of mental illness makes perfect sense as a byproduct of victimization worship, in which progressives strive to build a religion built around collective grievance ideology.
Speaking as someone who has a "cool" job (I create comic books, host a podcast and build web sites – all as part of my own business) the idea that movies and TV have shaped people into wanting cool jobs and not becoming actual adults is something i see constantly in the generational gaps. These movies and TV shows and comics have become their religion.
I am 60. When I was young, we all wanted to be rock stars. I got over, as does most everyone when it turns out they are not going to be rock stars.
Freddie deBoer found the NY Times article alarming because it was so unbalanced. He seems surprised that they didn't include a hint of an opposing view. Maybe he will consider that this is how the NY Times covers so many topics. That would be nice.
As someone who is on the spectrum, I 100% agree with his take on the fetishization of ASD. Yes, I suffer some issues, but I'm completely independent (and have been from age 18), am financially stable, have friends, own my own home and business, and so on. To ignore the real and pressing needs of people with more severe cases in order to feed one's own ego strikes me as obscene. I'm one of the lucky ones for whom ASD can be relegated to the status of an annoying quirk. I'm grateful for that, and respect that a lot of others are not in my position, and they and their families need (and deserve) all the support they can get. Hats off to Freddie for being willing to take this trend on.
Thank you for another excellent interview Bari. You are the best in the business!
Wow. Amazing.
I’m not 💯 certain but I believe This is the same person who wrote an article on this issue for another site. I posted a comment regarding my personal experience of raising a now 20 yr old daughter with ADHD/Autism. It was never a self diagnosis nor was it a sudden revelation based on behaviors described on Tik Tok. She was diagnosed a 3 and it’s been a long road for her and us. I do know she prefers to not be defined by it and her wish was always to be like everyone else. A human with her own unique struggles.
That being said the podcast touched on the mental health of mass shooters.
A few years ago I attended a play about suicide and gun control. It was written by a person who lost a loved one and believes we need stronger gun laws.
They had a “town hall” discussion after the play lead by 2 mental health professionals. One specifically a psychiatrist the other I believe was a therapist,
I stood and asked about mental health and looking into early interventions, increasing awareness of signs to look for, access to resources etc.
I have no illusions that navigating mental health issues is easy nor is finding the right answers or solutions.
But what struck me that evening and I have never been able to forget is the Dr. responded with a condescending tone and said “Mentally ill people are not the ones going out and shooting people”
I cannot make sense of it. Is it mentally healthy people who commit suicide or violence onto others?
What is going on here? I’m open to hearing from anyone who could make it make sense.
I think you are amazing and provide invaluable insight and context to social and political issues. Your book on anti-semitism was brilliant.
But why are you referring to yourself in the third person?
Good podcast. I learned that a man took responsibility for his life and that is IT right there. The need for people to 'be seen' is the opposite. Everybody is a 'winner' these days. Freddy's view on Marxism is the same "But we haven't tried it my way yet." All Marxism leads to death as our own Governor William Bradford found out in our early colonies and it is all around us today with forced vaccinations leading to many deaths. Marxism means some control others, nothing more. No personal choices. I experienced it in East Germany. Today's example is energy, democrats completely shut down ALL energy development in the U.S. and prices are literally destroying people.
Health care problem? Insurance and Pharm companies control it by buying government to control; there is no free market forces at all. Can you shop and make choices? No, you are subjected to protocol's designed by said others, not doctors. Can you choose to have Ivermectin(which works well with zinc) prescribed by a thinking doctor to help with your virus? No, you are to wait until you are sick and then we put you on a ventilator and give you Remdecivir(not FDA approved) and most likely die.
The free market response to faux pandemics like WuFlu is to listen to professional doctors like Marty Makary, Peter McCollough, and Zev Zelenko(RIP) and their proven treatments that work.
The free market response to fake news is to subscribe to Bari's substack which we love. :-D
I was so glad to see Freddie's response as well as this podcast. Disabilities and accommodations are so complicated, in part because the term disability covers such a broad range. I manage anxiety and my son has ASD, ADHD, and anxiety. He's a bright kid, but he is learning how to manage so much, as is appropriate for a 12 year old boy, in addition to his diagnoses. As his mother, my goals are that he be as independent as possible, know how to interpret unspoken rules in social/educational/work situations (there are so many). He's a bright kid and wants to succeed. At the same time, he really benefits from guidance in identifying his emotions, what to do about them, as well as how to communicate all of this to the neurotypical world. It's complicated. And at a certain level, being able to work with the neurotypical world will benefit him, as unfair as it may be.
Overidentification with a disability doesn't work, ultimately. That's in part why the person -first language developed. And that was a fight. The disability does not define a person, though, in the case of autism, there is a case for its strong influence on personality. Still, conversely, a person can be an asshole outside of their disability. In other words, the diagnosis is not absolution for the consequences, and definitely not a justification, though it may help explain the circumstances. While accommodation is necessary, a disability in the long run does make life more difficult, if not much more difficult, for many. Signed, a professional and mother who regularly interacts with people who have disabilities.
Yes...."Overidentification with a disability doesn't work, ultimately. That's in part why the person -first language developed. And that was a fight. The disability does not define a person, though, in the case of autism, there is a case for its strong influence on personality. Still, conversely, a person can be an asshole outside of their disability. In other words, the diagnosis is not absolution for the consequences, and definitely not a justification, though it may help explain the circumstances. "