Clio's Psyche #6

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moral panics + collective trauma 1 post by 1 author

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Ben

10/31/17

To the limited extent that I'm even familiar with it, one thing I find disagreeable about demausian psychohistory is the apparent lack of treatment of people as social actors. People are all acted on psychologically as individuals by the conditions they face in whatever period of history, and this in turn influences their behaviour as individuals in society. Well, if the Trump phenomenon hasn't rammed it into our consciousnesses well enough, we very often don't act as individuals, but as members of groups, tribes, nation-states, corporate entities.

So as social beings we have a social dimension to our makeup. I hesitate to argue we have a social consciousness; we have a social unconsciouness more like, a kind of collective psychopathy or collective psychosis insofar as we are quite often subject to mass phenomena such as groupthink and moral panics. An integrated, critical social consciousness is extremely rate.

Anyway given this social / group / collective / herd dimension to our makeup, am just wondering if this also means we experience collective trauma, ie not as individuals but as groups. Take 9/11 for example, the trauma of being in and around that, or of watching it first hand if you were in New York or Washington, or of watching it on television if you were anywhere else in the world, must have been colossal. But again it wasn't an individual experience, because there were thousands of people in the WTC towers at the time, and millions more within line of sight, and hundreds of millions more watching the saturation news coverage.

While that's the case not one person has ever really had a collective opportunity to heal, because the entire period since has been subject to moral panic. This reopens the traumatic wounds created by those attacks again and again in the name of spreading fear of terrorism, which is then used as a form of crisis leverage to justify wars of aggression whose actual purposes are massively at odds with their stated purposes -- eg maintain control of the oil supply, pursue geopolitical hegemony in the middle east, buttress the US-Saudi Arabia-Israel petrodollar nexus, suppress pan-arabism, provide keynesian stimulus to the US economy through government subsidies to the private sector in the form of military contracts, save capitalism with perpetual war economy, etc etc etc.

Not being able to heal, society goes batshit and eventually you wind up with Mr Grab Em in the Pussy with access to the nuclear codes. I think there are other reasons that help to account for Trump, such as his capacity to play on popular disaffection with neoliberalism and globalism which is totally understandable, proposing exactly the wrong solutions, and the utter pissweakness pardon French of the Democratic Party, your candidate of choice being so eyewateringly corrupt that half the country votes for the other guy purely to stick it to the Goldman Sachs sockpuppet who comes out with Der Sturmer type shit about superpredators. But surely none of this would have been possible without a decade and a half of scare propaganda.

There are other examples as well, the Jewish experience in the holocaust seems another one. Did the survivors properly heal, recognising the collective trauma they had all suffered, or are they reliving the trauma endlessly and taking it out on the surrounding Palestinian population?

Anyway definitely keen to hear your thoughts on this one.

Ben

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Clio’s Psyche ›

When Rose McGowen appears in Asgard 1 post by 1 author

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/5/17

A psychohistorical review of "Thor: Ragnarok":

When Rose McGowen appears in Asgard (blog post at The Invisible Counterpoint)

When Rose McGowen appears in Asgard (posted at Letterboxd.com, the major film review site on the web)

Note: many spoilers.

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Clio’s Psyche ›

Interesting article about Mary Trump 2 posts by 2 authors

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david

11/7/17

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/03/mary-macleod-trump-donald-trump-mother-biography-mom-immigrant-scotland-215779

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/8/17

Thanks for posting David. The article would be one to expand Trump's appeal, is my guess. How many Americans are always proclaiming their mothers the greatest things in the world, while admitting they don't see them enough, don't return home enough... and sheepishly admitting to themselves that 97 seconds in their company can sometimes be about their max limit too? There's a bit there in the article that buttresses thinking of him as someone who experienced growth panic at the rapprochement age, around 2 yrs old, associating his first forays into the world on his own with the deliberate abandonment of him by his mother. I appreciated that.

We can leave it to psychohistorians to explore how Trump has projected his mother onto "America," and people, who want to do the same, sense this in him. He thereby, in standing up against all the bad children who've wandered too far away from their forlorn mothers -- that is, to too individuated liberals -- and for collective self-sacrifice to the mother nation, guarantees himself a huge mass of Americans who want him to be successful. Trump, donned in his mother's hair, has become her great protector, her knight. And for such, he can only feel righteous, for he knows he's not doing it for himself... he's being selfless, and he knows not a single critic has tried to charge him as bad for being, truly too freely giving of himself, at his own expense.

On Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 9:41:36 PM UTC-5, david wrote:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/03/mary-macleod-trump-donald-trump-mother-biography-mom-immigrant-scotland-215779

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Clio’s Psyche ›

Re: [cliospsyche] Digest for cliospsyche@googlegroups.com - 1 update in 1 topic 1 post by 1 author

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Paul Elovitz

11/8/17

Thanks David,

This is a good article. I think Trump's life from 2 1/2-5 is a crucial period in the formation of his personality and I would love to know more about what happened.

Best,

Paul

Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, Historian, Professor, Director of the Psychohistory Forum, and Editor, Clio's Psyche

On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 12:22 AM, <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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· Interesting article about Mary Trump - 1 Update

Interesting article about Mary Trump

"David Lotto" <dlotto@nycap.rr.com>: Nov 07 09:41PM -0500

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/03/mary-macleod-trump-donald-trump-mother-biography-mom-immigrant-scotland-215779

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Novel Idea!?Fanatical Moderates - No Labels Group Initiative 2 posts by 2 authors

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Judith Logue

11/9/17

Called themselves fanatical moderates...lol!?

Senators Susan Collins (R) and Joe Manchin (D) are starting a “No Labels” movement. To institutionalize Respect and Common Ground

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/9/17

Fits the times... ostensibly, absence-of-egotism movement; we're-all-in-this-together movement. Very 1930s folk. It's the thing amongst students too... to remove all the labels off their clothes. I just did it recently with my knapsack. Cheers.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/cutting-brand-logos-off-clothing-hiding-lacoste-ralph-lauren-fashion-trend-abercrombie-and-fitch-a7500666.html

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Clio’s Psyche ›

Where will metoo# lead to in a time of Chris Hedges populism rather than Hillary Clinton individualism and self-ambition? 1 post by 1 author

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/9/17

This is going to be hard thought to express, but here goes:

Most are assuming that the massive power of #metoo right now means we've finally become more progressive. I'm not sure that's the only reason for the timing of this, though, this mass demolition of opponents, of predators, who successfully cowed people for decade after decade. I think in play is also a public's sense that this is all about licentiousness, about people using their power and revelling in it (picture Weinstein right now; his gloating), and believe it or not I think this could hurt progressives more than it will conservatives.

I think people assess that when liberals partake in "spoils" it's all done for their own enjoyment, their own sick pleasure; but when conservatives do so it's somehow not the same thing, for they assess conservatives as those who fundamentally have forsaken themselves the right to self-individualize, to reach heights never reached before, to glory on top of fallen bodies to themselves be the ones who grasp at a crimson flag, who touch the very hand of "god" and reach even beyond. Rather, they assess them, they understand them, as those who began the climb up but were immediately cowed away from further doing so, and thus they conserve, halt, stop, rather than progress, for they are broken; are stewards of the broken, and count amongst the miserable. Liberals reach for the new, the forbidden, the apple in the garden -- and they are understood as essentially sinful for this: sex, drugs, rock and roll. Conservatives never go there, and so their behaviour, however egregious, tastes differently to us; can be surprisingly easy to pass over when nothing makes us more anxious than "immodest," "spoiled" behaviour.

At the end of this we may find that liberalism loses. For being for full individual self-realization, for what is ostensibly a quintessentially American ambition, an American glory -- the undeterred right to happiness -- still arouses guilt in almost all of us, creates chaos in our minds, and this can be "addressed" in projecting our own sinfulness into others and punishing them for it. Many powerful liberals, simply for being possessed of something genuinely virtuous -- an unwillingness to deter their own self-growth -- may be guilty of a surprising degree of predatory behaviour... it might be lopsided on the liberal side, at least amongst the powerful. If they are all outed, a culture may decide that the lesson to be learned is that we must be more modest in our ambitions -- for look what belief in intrinsic human goodness rather than sinfulness leads to when its lead propagandists arrange things so they go unsupervised, unchecked.

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Clio’s Psyche ›

The reactionaries double down 1 post by 1 author

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Trevor Pederson

11/11/17

The populism that the right fostered and that Trump harnessed isn’t strong enough for Republicans to retain power.

Next step: moral panic

Fox News Opinion: Our culture is experiencing a hostile takeover. We must stop rejecting God if we ever want it to end

The recent Texas church shooting, the terrorist driving a truck through a crowd in New York City, and the Las Vegas massacre may seem shocking - but to anyone who has been paying attention, they should not.

Our culture is undergoing a hostile takeover. American society used to be governed by Judeo-Christian do-unto-others morals. But we have drifted (been pushed, really) into a hedonistic YOLO (You Only Live Once)cultural morass. The upshot of this is a distinct lack of respect for human life in general, as well as a pervasive, insidious obsession with self.

This is the "me" generation, the "selfie" culture, the "entitlement" mentality. And what is entitlement, except the narcissistic assumption of deserving and demanding what is not earned?

Our cultural crisis is exhibited by egotistic multimillionaires demonstrating on football fields against the police instead of seeking solutions to rampant inner-city violence; coddled young people demanding free birth control and socialized health care; and even the major media ignoring the corruption trial of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.

Another example of the crisis is the lack of attention the mainstream media are paying to the Clintons' collusion to sell Russia 20 percent of U.S. uranium.

We've replaced our moral imperative to do what's rightwith a personal obsession ofwhat's in it for ME?

But no amount of self-love can fill the God-shaped hole in someone's heart. We are created and called to love each other, and no self-absorbed spa treatment or Instagram post can supplant our innate yearning for love from God.

The spirit of our time is gradually revealing in our culture a subversive, resolute, and increasing hatred toward God and Christianity, and an irresistible temptation toward evil that betrays man's innate desire for power: a longing to be God.

The Harvey Weinsteins of the world (and they are myriad, both in Hollywood and out) seek to force others to do their will, much like they envision a capricious God would be, if they believed in such a being.

It is much easier, however, to deny God than to acknowledge him. God, being good, condemns evil-doers. So, like a child throwing a tantrum in a toy store, some people must deny the existence of God and his inherent goodness, and lord their power over weaker people. "I can make you watch me shower."

Society, still trading in our inherited moral capital, might verbally condemn the behavior. But that's just lip-service, because we've succumbed to the YOLO moral relativism and forgotten our metric for right and wrong.

"I forbid you to see me as a sex object," screamed the gal in the pink hat! And those who claim they wanted to expose the bully - and they all say that now - confess they were too afraid of retribution. Translation: I like my money and position more than I believe in right and wrong. "Followers" on social media beat morals every day of the week in YOLO land.

When a righteous dad wanted to expose a high-powered elitist climbing in bed with youngsters, the Hollywood leftists and atheists sided with the pedophile over the conservative. Status is more important than virtue in YOLO land.

The growing YOLO culture seeks to silence the stalwart dissent of facts. Feelings are more important than truth in YOLO land.

Threatened by disagreement and privilege, yelling triumphs over logic. The YOLO culture seeks not content of character, but equality of outcome. Hatred is so much easier than forgiveness.

Self-destructive loathing and jealousy stems from the hypocrisy that started in kindergarten, when children are taught: You are an accident of nature, and survival of the fittest is the law of the land. Now, don't bully.

And so, they distrust the dark abyss of irreligion, even as they embrace it.

Attacks against the only one who preached forgiveness and grace, goodness and love - and any who support him - will increase: He challenges the YOLO worldview taught in public school.

As it becomes more and more costly to be an adherent of Christianity, with stories of the persecution of bakers, florists, teachers, and T-shirt makers splashing across newspapers every day, the truth gathers defenders.

Though meant to intimidate us, these stories do the opposite. They galvanize Christians to stand firm in the light of understanding, and the peace that surpasses it.

The people who still trade in the Judeo-Christian ethic of "love one another" and "life has value" are not called simply to defend their position, but to fight for it, before the overwhelming tide of YOLO selfishness inundates us with the intolerance and bigotry integral to the religion of self.

The YOLO culture divides people against the each other.

To survive and prosper as a nation, we must reaffirm our Judeo-Christian heritage, indivisible, under God. Because if you only live once, it's survival of the fittest, and it's all about you, then laws are meaningless.

A recovering international fashion model who adores shoes, Sam Sorbo produced the film "Let There Be Light," opening October 27th.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Sent from my iPhone

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Clio’s Psyche ›

What if the king gets toppled?: Obama's own relationships with women 4 posts by 2 authors

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/17/17

Ken Fuchsman has said some interesting things about Obama's relationship with his mother -- of how he felt mostly abandoned by her -- that strikes me as rather pertinent right now. One of the reasons #metoo is emerging right now is not only because we've evolved but because this is a populist moment where victims, where violence against women, where used, spurned women imagined together as an angry, chasing, annihilating horde, can be used to discredit arenas of liberal power -- Hollywood, Washington -- and as well the previous reigning societal "philosophy" -- neoliberalism -- with any possible defence of why the massive horrible prevalence, totally absconded from view. (There are actually a number of them, all hopelessly politically incorrect/vile: one, as Ann Douglas argues in her book on the 1920s, "Terrible Honesty," perhaps in certain historical periods creativity requires the presence of the Terrifying Father -- a predator, that is -- to back down the felt presence of intrusive, smothering mothers on our lives [regarding the '20s, the Victorian Titaness]. In our own period, one was the dictator producer, enabled by the idea that if you want to have resourcefulness and creativity and true love of Art in our time, brash, bullysome HE had to be at the centre of it. Two, we may delegate both Washington and Hollywood to serve out group fantasy needs to see unvarnished, unapologetic pursuit of happiness both absolutely fulfilled AND completely rendered. Emotionally unhealthy people in both places might have picked up on our obvious cuing of them and moved as we "told" them to and both enabled and destroyed people. Three, society in general might in the late '70s entered a more problematic period where social growth [for beginning after so many postwar years of seeming justified to seem spoiled] could no longer be shared by all -- a rising tide of boats -- but granted some while completely withheld to others, so that we felt considerable sacrifices of devastated and lost lives were being sufficiently supplied to a hungry maternal maw, thereby keeping her from rising and rendering from us, all of our growth... she was occupied, and temporarily sated. Actresses being those who still must "put out" on a casting couch, who are not generally associated with higher education, and who represent the immodest, immoderate, working class wish "to be a star!," could not maintain themselves as sufficiently distinct from the designated out-groups in society... the occupations that if you held them you would not like educated professionals find yourself garnering increased respect these last forty years of information age competency and with-itness, but made to seem as deserving whatever sign of disregard you might want to administer to them -- restaurant workers, retail... all low-wage earning jobs, for instance -- for already being in the way of the future; a pest whose future depends on luck, random accident, rather than on guarantees... on having a diligent manner of applying yourself; on having a PhD.) As such, if there is any way that Fuchsman is right about Obama we need to know if it is possible that Obama inflicted revenge on other women for his mother's own crime of abandoning him, that we may have totally bleached from our view in order to make our association with him an absolute guarantee of our virtue during a time of our own prospering.

For if he too's got "a history" too, that’s what populists will be on the hunt for, ultimately. It would discredit our age, everything about it being unquestionable in its virtue for it being so sane and civilized and decent while its opponents rage senselessly, mindlessly on, and leave a lot of the great defenders of it essentially dismantled from further speaking sane opposition to spreading regressive populist movements across the world, for their not realizing that part of their self-balance, their equilibrium, their ability to respond with intelligence and vigor and quick wit, rested on a certain particular essential figure retaining himself as an absolute emblem of virtue. I've seen it happen, a spark of it... when the Gore marriage of two brilliant, empowered people who love one another in a fully reciprocal way... devoted to the end of time, was revealed to be myth, the leading feminist of her generation and possibly -- along with Solnit -- of our time, NYMagazine's Rebecca Traister, was left as if struck by a blow. I think she might have realized for a minute that if a curtain came up over certain other things she might have assumed, not though knowing quite what they might be at that moment, she wasn't beyond losing all grip; going insane.

Incidentally, I may have mentioned it in another post but I'll say it again here: if anyone is wondering how powerful men will find their way out of this fix, as more of their rank get culled daily, it's to sacrifice their existence as independent, self-actualized adults and agree in way some to become boys dependent on their mothers again. That's what Zaretsky argues happened in the 1930s/40s: people surrendered their 1920s adulthood and regressed to become Depression/WarYears boys loyal to their mother nations. By doing so, they'll know they've basically placed themselves in the same space conservatives are in (wonder why we aren't as interested in them as "bad boy" predators, even as they're worse? here's why--)... who are each one of them those whose childrearing was insufficient to ever allow them to part ways with their parents' will and fully become individuated adults (and therefore press for progress), and will feel that what had earned their being punished -- that is, presumption, personal enjoyment, "spoiling"... all held as evidence of sinfulness from children of all parenting "styles" other than the most recent one -- was no longer any part of their being. They won't FEEL guilty, for they know their minds have placed them in a state where they will sacrifice everything truly worthy about life to please and serve somebody else, and we won't see them anymore as guilty either. The gaze will pass them over... the gaze connected with populism and all its insistence that people aren't individuated and distinct but part of an indistinct mass, will pass them over. And all it will of cost them is the loss of their own individuality, as quite permanently they will have sacrificed their own self-will and will do now as their mother country directs. They'll become part of the mass of Bernie Bros., or some such, very much willing to junk their careers, if you asked them to. Watch for it. It'll be real: not a PR move -- their own brains will be behind it, willing the most interesting parts of themselves to be forever nudged out of prime spot, replaced by complete selflessness. (Want to know why the 1930s felt like they deserved a Roosevelt... why in a sense Obama, contra Fuchsman, could never have gone Roosevelt?: because along with his provocative reforms came a mass who abstained from the individuality we've resourcefully found ways to insist on, again and again and again. [Incidentally, about Roosevelt... do you know about his love for the dictator-love film dedicated to him, "Gabriel Over the White House"?])

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Ken Fuchsman

11/17/17

Patrick,

One of the things Obama learned from his mother was to control his emotions, not to express anger or discontent. It has often made him a self-contained individual, one who often keeps his distance from others. You seem to me to make a leap from Obama's feeling abandoned by his mother to that he might have wanted to seek revenge on women. There are certainly many other characteristic ways Obama or anyone else who felt abandoned might respond to being abandoned. Obama searched for and found in Michelle Robinson someone who was rooted where his mother was not, and whom he felt would not abandon him. As a father, what he has also been intent on doing is providing being there for his daughters as he did not feel happened for him with his parents. You should read some of what he says about his being a father. It also seems to me you are asking a question about Obama and women, but do no indicate what evidence might be needed to find out if your suspicion is warranted or off base. I suggest before you make further statements on Obama and women, you might read some of the good sources on Obama. You should read Janny Scott's A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother. The other is David Marannis's Barack Obama: The Story. In psychohistory,it is always important to have sufficient evidence at hand before making statements.

Ken . . .

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/18/17

Ken,

I do make one hell of a leap... and I have no idea if he has "a history," only that he mostly certainly could have and we would have ignored it, even if it was considerable. But in psychohistory perhaps what one ought to do is begin to loosen the possibility of actually undertaking an exploration, for someone, anyone, actually doing it, that we might have shielded ourselves off of for our own equilibrium. You yourself did research, but the Clio Psyche' reaction to your reveal of his abandonment by his mother was initiated by your own willingness to accept the idea. You admire Obama, but you didn't need him... you didn't need his relationship with his mother to be exactly one way in order for you to do so (though do you need his relationship with Michelle to be a certain way?... fits a bit too neat. Traister did with the Gores). The way in which people reacted to your research suggested to me that some others might however require prompting, a preparation of the way, before they could even begin to on their own find evidence contra their preferred estimation of him, or accept it if others did so. If this is the case then first you need to prepare people to begin to be sure, in this period where we were clearly weighted to assume Obama as an upstanding gentleman and then mostly leave off him -- a perfect guardian against all our identity troubles -- that we actually knew who he was, that we actually wanted to know who he was, before you would even undertake to do the research. A hegemonic estimation of him needs unsettling first; otherwise "proof" won't be able to nestle in anywhere, for the membrane they're trying to stick to is still steel and sure.

So this is my prompt: #metoo might not only be getting its impetus because this is finally a time for victims, for feminism, for progressive emergence, but because populists know that the previous age of liberalism was undeniably a predatorial one (and I think if was necessarily so, for societal growth always being "problematic," cruel, after a few decades of postwar permission has finally ended... the deMausian idea/conception of stages). The two seemed necessarily connected: there would be ongoing advancement in our recognition of the humanity of previously stigmatized peoples, but there would also be enlarged permission in how you could stigmatize, how you could destroy, OTHER different sorts of people. There would be an increasing mass of people who come to know themselves as possessed of an individuated, professional identity, with money and status to effect great change in the world as well as to enjoy their own lives immensely, and to flesh our their own developing identity (consumerism is good!), but there would also be a large mass of people who would know only disenfranchisement and instability and who would find that not only was no one was listening, that no one cared, but they made sport of their discombobulated condition -- see the showcased liberal in "Manchester by the Sea," for an example. Populists, who whether of the Chris Hedges/bernie bros. sense or rightwing Breibart sense, know that the professional liberal class no longer controls the narrative anymore... there is massive dissent within, as well as outside. And they know that they have worked to deprive the populace of any way of accepting their "rule" -- as Zaretsky has argued, feminists and homosexuality advocacy groups have worked to ensure Freud is out, and so the only explanation for adverse behaviour is simply evil -- if they can be made to be shown to be a particular kind of way... that is, the way they are beginning to seem now, as brutal repeat mass victimizers of women AND of children, all while having a whirl of fun. And it occurs to them, right now, that as they watch former supporters of the Clintons, former makers of films which upheld identity politics liberalism rather than populism (Weinstein), former politicians of the Clintonian mold, former liberal comedians, go down, that they could shortcut to the ultimate takedown of a whole political era if they took down only one particular person during this #metoo awakening.

If we are to continue functioning as effective psychohistorical commenters on this very dangerous era, we need to think deep on the requirements we may have made on Obama that might have shielded us from doing certain kinds of research on him, shielded away others from doing certain kinds of research on him. David Mannanis... does he strike us as the kind of person who would find evidence that would completely betray his own preferred image of Obama? If there were reports by women that Obama had abused them, is this something he would have made sure to note, or would he have elided it. If he, like pretty much everyone on the left, would have elided it -- his brain not allowed him to see it -- the women who experienced these harassments would have taken note -- here is about our best defender, and even he wouldn't see it! -- and never said a further word. They knew they would be destroyed if they ever said anything, as an angry mob went at them for trying to disturb the perfect solution to their troubled existence as liberals individuating almost admittedly over other people's backs. If the likes of the wonderful, self-aware Gloria Steinem could have seen Clinton(!) as not truly a victimizer of women, we should ourselves caution people when advising them to take note of previous respected biographers of Obama; what they found. Without having read their works, it strikes me as very likely they would not have seen what a generation of #metoo activists would now be able to see, if Obama has any kind of a similar history with women as these other powerful men who felt abandoned by their mothers are proving to have had. (Also, just as a note: I've never believed the Obamas were more emotionally healthy than the Clintons were. This not by research but just by my sense of them. I think the Clintons came out of more nurturing backgrounds, yet Bill's, truly wonderful Bill's, was adverse enough for it to have likely lead to his raping women and destroying them.)

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/19/17

And for example, are we prepared for this about Elie Wiesel. Commentary's reaction suggests, maybe no:

I know I will be vilified for this, but Listman’s tale is hard to believe. She not only describes behavior on Wiesel’s part that no one, in his half-century as a major world figure, has ever even whispered about; she seems to know he thought she was religious and was underage and would therefore never report his offense against her. How could she know what he had thought, what she had looked like to him? The fact she is free to advance these wild speculations as though they were truth impeaches her credibility.

https://medium.com/@jblistman/when-i-was-nineteen-years-old-elie-wiesel-grabbed-my-ass-10370829c4bd

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Clio’s Psyche ›

Some technological determinism 26 posts by 7 authors

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Trevor Pederson

11/21/17

How the computer revolution is deepening America's partisan divide

6:18 AM EST November 21, 2017

Add the computer and communications revolution to the list of fundamental changes that are widening the political divide between red and blue America.

A revealing new Brookings Institution study shows that the thriving metropolitan areas at the vanguard of the transition to the highly digital, post-industrial economy flocked toward Hillary Clinton in last fall's presidential election, while Donald Trump dominated the places largely left behind in that shift.

Clinton won preponderant majorities in the communities where the highest share of workers perform jobs that require intensive use of computerized technology — most of them larger cities, many along the two coasts. Trump overwhelmed her in the mostly smaller interior places that haven't attracted nearly as many well-paying, information-savvy jobs, according to figures provided by the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.

Based on Brookings' data, CNN has analyzed the election results for all 536 federal statistical areas, including the 382 metropolitan areas, and the 154 non-metropolitan areas, which comprise all of the remaining counties not encompassed in any of the metros.

Clinton won 18 of the 20 metropolitan areas where the largest share of employees work in jobs that require high levels of digital skill, and 36 of the top 50. But Trump won a steadily increasing share of communities that ranked lower in the share of high-digital employment. He carried five times as many communities as Clinton did among the areas that ranked outside the top 200 for high-digital jobs.

"The ones at the top are ... profiting from the current [economic] order of the successful internationalist, cosmopolitan, export-oriented, high-tech metropolitan centers," says Mark Muro, the Metropolitan Policy Program's director of policy and a co-author with three colleagues of the new study. "The other places see these changes as more a challenge and certainly a force of pain and transition, and some of them feel they have been losers in the face of this technology."

Transformation vs. restoration

This stark economic pattern reinforces the central cultural and demographic fault lines already separating the parties. In elections from Congress to the White House, Democrats are consistently drawing the most support from what I've called the coalition of transformation: the heavily urbanized alignment of minorities, the millennial generation and white-collar whites generally most optimistic about the changes remaking America's demography, culture and economy. Meanwhile, Republicans are amassing commanding majorities among the blue-collar, older, evangelical and non-urban whites generally most uneasy about all of those changes — what I've termed the coalition of restoration.

The challenge for Democrats is that, as the opportunities ignited by the digital revolution concentrate in fewer "superstar cities" like San Francisco, Seattle and Boston, more places feel excluded than included in this economic transformation. The challenge for Republicans, particularly in the Trump era, is that the party's agenda is increasingly isolating it from the growing, racially diverse, post-industrial and globally integrated communities that have emerged as the nation's most dynamic engines of economic expansion and innovation. In essence, the GOP is trading a stronger hand in the communities that are losing ground economically for a weaker one in those that are propelling the nation's growth — an exchange that rarely proved sustainable for political parties in the past.

Participation in the computer and communications revolution that is upending the economy largely follows the borderline between the competing political coalitions. It both parallels and reinforces the class inversion that has seen Republicans gain ground among working-class whites since the 1960s, while Democrats have grown more competitive among whites holding four-year college degrees or more.

The Brookings study creatively uses a long-standing federal survey called the Occupation Information Network that provides detailed data on Americans' experiences at work. From that data, the study tracked how heavily workers in 545 occupations (covering 90% of the workforce) use computerized technology of all sorts on the job.

A changing workforce

With those results, the study broke the workforce into three categories: those whose jobs required high levels of digital skill (professions such as software developers and financial managers), medium levels (ranging from lawyers to automotive service technicians) and low levels (security guards and construction workers.)

From 2002 to 2016, the study found, the share of all jobs requiring the highest level of digital skill soared from about one-in-20 to nearly one-in-four, while the share requiring medium digital skills increased from about four-in-10 to nearly half. With digital demands infusing so many jobs, the study found that since 2002 virtually all of the nation's metropolitan areas have seen an increase in the overall level of digital skill in their local employment.

But, more important, the study found that the jobs that require the highest level of digital skill, and that generally also pay the most, are concentrating in fewer places. The communities that had generated the most highly digital jobs around 2000 — places such as San Jose, Washington, Austin, Boston, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle and Madison, Wisconsin — have added them much faster in the years since than the places with the smallest share of such jobs then, such as Riverside and Fresno, California, or Youngstown, Ohio.

That separation is fueling economic polarization, because the jobs that require high levels of digital expertise now pay far more ($73,000 annually) than those that require only medium ($48,000 annually) or low ($30,000 annually) skills. What's more, since 2010, average annual wages for high-skill digital jobs have increased over twice as fast as those for the medium-skill jobs — while wages at the lower end have actually declined by 0.2% annually. The result is that the metropolitan areas with the highest share of digital skills also now rank the highest in wages and wage growth — and are pulling farther away from those lagging in the digital transition.

These centers of digital innovation are driving an increasing share of the nation's economic output. Since 2002, the 25 metropolitan areas with the greatest share of high-digital jobs have increased their share of the nation's total economic output from 24% to 34%, and their share of total employment from slightly less than 21% to over 28%.

"Though there is stress, the places in the vanguard are succeeding," says Muro. "Their problems are those of growth, rather than its absence, and they are confident in their futures."

And those are precisely the places where Democrats now run best.

Where Clinton won

In the 20 metropolitan areas that ranked the highest in jobs requiring top levels of digital skills, those jobs account for at least 27% of all employment, Brookings found. In that top 20, the only two that Clinton didn't win were somewhat anomalous: Huntsville, Alabama (where a large NASA installation is located) and Lexington Park, Maryland (which includes a naval base). The remaining areas in the top 20 that she carried represented the who's who of New Economy superstars including San Jose and San Francisco in California; Denver and Boulder in Colorado; Raleigh and Durham in North Carolina; and Seattle, Austin, Washington, DC, and Boston.

Clinton also won 18 of the next 30 metros that ranked best for high-digital employment, all places where such jobs accounted for about one-fourth of the total. That list included university towns such as Madison, Wisconsin; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Corvallis, Oregon; and Columbus, Ohio, as well as such big urban centers as New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and San Diego. Trump won 11 of these (including Bloomington, Boise and Tampa) and they tied in one.

Muro said the cities with the greatest digital opportunities — particularly those on the very top of the list — share several characteristics that now also overlap with a tendency to support Democrats. "They have high college-degree attainment; they often are coastal; they have proven to be attractive to millennials," he said. "They have high amenities and had initially high levels of earlier [generations] of information technology activity, so they became centers of wave after wave of subsequent technologies. So it's very much a case of the technological rich getting richer."

Trump's message resonated in less digital areas

The needle tilts increasingly toward Trump in communities where the digital revolution hasn't advanced as far. In the next 50 metro areas, high-digital jobs accounted for 22-24% of total employment. Among those, Trump won 26, compared with 22 for Clinton and two ties. On this list, Clinton generally won the largest places, including Philadelphia, Miami, Chicago and San Antonio, while Trump's strength emerges in midsized and smaller metropolitan areas ranging from Indianapolis, Nashville and Dayton to Charleston, West Virginia, and Peoria, Illinois.

Lower down, the balance shifts lopsidedly to Trump. High digital jobs accounted for between 19-21% of the employment in the next 100 communities; Trump won 69 of them and Clinton just 29 (with two ties). Trump's wins in this category included places like Greenville, South Carolina; Midland, Texas; Fargo, North Dakota; and Green Bay, Wisconsin.

After that, as the list shifts toward smaller places rooted in manufacturing, resource extraction or agriculture, Trump dominated. High-digital jobs accounted for 18% or less of employment in the remaining 336 metro and non-metropolitan areas: Trump won 279 of them and Clinton just 55 (with two more ties). These included such blue-collar Trump strongholds as Youngstown, Ohio; Erie, Pennsylvania; and Roanoke, Virginia.

Many aspects of Trump's agenda — such as his calls to reduce legal immigration and his retreat from free trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership — elevate the priorities of the less digital places over those driving the transition. That tilt is also clearly evident in the GOP tax plan moving through Congress, which would increase taxes on graduate students and homeowners in the most expensive real estate markets, particularly in blue states — a list that largely overlaps with the digital high achievers.

These economic positions reinforce the distance between the GOP and these places, particularly in the Trump era, over cultural and racially tinged issues. As the digital revolution proceeds, that could increasingly place Republicans in the same difficult position as Democrats were in the second half of the 19th century, when the party championed the agrarian South and West against the rapidly industrializing North and Midwest,, which had emerged as the powerful piston of economic growth. Behind that alignment of economic and political forces the GOP held the White House for all but eight of the 52 years from 1860 to 1912.

America is now so closely divided between the parties that such an extended imbalance isn't likely to occur again. But with the same communities now either experiencing — or being excluded from — not only demographic and cultural but also economic change, the nation appears locked into an era of sustained political turbulence that pits what America has been against what it is becoming.

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/21/17

Psychoclass division leads to tech division. People out of families that impart on their kids that if they grow they are worthy of apocalyptic punishment, don't thrive in the new environment. This is primary. We could literally foist thriving jobs on them, terrific prosperity, and they'd still vote to annihilate it... knowing exactly what they are doing.

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Trevor Pederson

11/21/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

I agree that there are strong "conservative" elements that keep some children attached to the class/traditions of their parents, but this is also an issue of town vs. country and the opportunities that surround one based on the 'accidents of birth.'

Whether the country folk would want to join the digital class or not there aren't many opportunities outside of the major centers. Moreover, there are many digitally savvy people from small places and I don't necessarily see them as having the best upbringing. Often they are nerds and its out of the failures of their child rearing that they attach to things from outside of it.

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/21/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

The only thing they're trying to conserve is the ability to not be devoured by their mothers for having the temerity to individuate. But still, what you're articulating here, to me, elides the fact that one of the principle stories over the last 40 yrs has been that of liberal minded people (i.e., those of higher psychoclass) leaving small towns to find themselves in the like of coastal cities. Haven't we just seen a enormous amount of places made into what Lloyd articulates as psychogenic cul-de-sacs, owing to this? Those that are into tech for autism (escape) purposes aren't really the digital people this article is addressing... gamer gate people aren't usually the ones finding themselves working at facebook/apple/google. And if we could expand the opportunities in small towns by a gigantic margin, we'd still find ourselves dismayed that they're somehow using the tech to inhibit or destroy a society bent on ongoing legitimate growth... we'd have just made small American towns into very able Russian bots. Congratulations! Town vs. city... does not feed into psychoanalytic probing, but of commonplace psychological assumptions. Digital divides, economic divides = commonplace. Give more money and more opportunities... like really give it, and voila! Not so: a lot of well-off people voted for Trump.

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Trevor Pederson

11/21/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

Not true Patrick

There are many examples of how this connection to the class of the parent shows up from the parents indifference to the child. It's not all about anxious moms who use their children as security blankets or tiger moms who invest their narcissism in their kids:

One patient, Sarah, brings up how she missed her midterm because her son was sick and the professor wouldn’t let her take the exam at a different time. He also wouldn’t let her other assignments soak up what the exam was worth for her grade. She had taken this class twice before and failed it, this would be the third time. I ask her if she could get a note from the hospital and she said yes. I tell her that she wasn’t being treated fairly and she could either ask the professor about this in person or go to the dean. Sarah isn’t sure at first. She brings up worries about coming across as “rude” to the professor. Next session she begins by talking about how her boss scheduled a training for her during time she needs to study for her finals. She reports that she tried to tell her that she needed to study but she says her boss told her that work needed to be her priority and that she, herself, had been in college and worked at the same time, and did just fine. Sarah says she agreed to work, but as she talks about it, she shows frustration and angrily scoffs that school was her priority and not the “stupid job.” I ask her about talking to her boss and letting her know school is her priority and that she needs to study and not waste a lot of time and money on a failed class (or one with a low grade). Sarah again expresses that this seems “rude” and that she feels a resistance to saying something, but knows that she should. She then reports that she didn’t talk to the professor yet either.

Instead of “coaching” her, I ask her what would happen if she failed the course for a third time, and got a bad grade in the other course because of the training for her job. Sarah imagines that she gets frustrated with things and then drops out of college and doesn’t go on to become a nurse (as she wants to do). I ask her what kind of life she would have. She says she would have just a “normal, bum life” at a job she doesn’t like that doesn’t pay well. I ask for clarification about what “bum life” means and she says she’ll be “miserable, not have any money, not have a nice home, and no cool stuff” (she didn’t say this all at once. I constructed this list from all the things she said). I ask her to turn these into other-statements, about someone else from her past, and who comes to her mind (i.e. “you are miserable, you have a bum life, you have no money or cool stuff”). She reports that her mother comes to mind and talks about how her mother has been an addict and hasn’t really had a comfortable or stable life. I ask, “how does it feel if you say, I don’t deserve to have a better life than my mom?” Sarah says it doesn’t feel true, but makes a face as she says it. I clarify that people are made up of many different feelings and asks her if it feels true for a part of her. She agrees that it does and says “a little part of me feels bad for my mom.” She discusses how she’s “looked down on her” for a long time. She talks about how she would have liked her mother to have a good life so she could have been her “idol” and shown her how to have one too. She complains about her grandmother who raised her and how she “never proved anything” to client and was never her idol. She says that she doesn’t look up to anyone. She returns to talking about her mother, and as she does I notice that she often starts and then has to restart her sentences and that she’s making slips that show she is talking as if she is her mother or saying something about her mother that is really about her. She catches herself and corrects herself, but I use this as an opportunity to say that client sometimes feels like she should be the idol for others and like she’s become her own idol and taken the place of her mother. Sarah acknowledges this and brings up her desire to have a relationship with a “real man” and gets into some issues with her boyfriend.

In a future session, I ask her to return to her mother and talk more about her ‘bum life.” Sarah recounts how her mother would show up at her grandmother’s make promises and leave. She dwells on a particular memory of how she got to live with her mother for a few months and her mother brought home a man and she walked in on them having sex, and yelled at her mother, and how her mother got angry with her and locked her in her room. Sarah gets in touch with strong anger. I encourage her to say what she would have liked to say to her mother and she swears at her profusely. After this Sarah begins to feel some remorse. She begins to bring up how her mother had been really hurt by her father cheating on her and leaving her, and how she began to deal with this by drinking and sleeping with men. She begins to reprocess her mother as being more human and weak, and how by sending her to live with her grandmother, her mother was doing what was best for Sarah. In the session that follows, she reports that she called her mother for the first time in years and apologized to her. She establishes a relationship with her mother and also becomes more focused on her school work. She also reports that she has a cleaner house and feels more productive there and at work.

I disagree that liberals are necessarily of a higher class. I hold the Republican party and Fox news in very low esteem but I think one can be a conservative and have very important and valid points to make in a political dialogue.

It's funny to me that you elide all the technological changes that have allowed people to become so mobile.

I'm a psychoanalyst in my approach to psychology but I'm not a dogmatist in its application to culture or politics.

There's a mania that some can have for the latent content of a dream for example, but experience has shown me that there is much of value in the manifest content too.

I'm fine with being commonplace sometimes,

Trevor

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Trevor Pederson

11/21/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

on a different note,

I'm sad to see that the left will probably lose Al Franken.

Like Anthony Weiner, he was a Democrat with balls (no pun) who would really question people and point out hypocrisy.

The Republicans never let the Democrats keep anyone like that, and the Democrats often would rather turn on their own then get angry and push back.

If there was a fox news of the left, there would be such a powerful, and mostly truthful, outrage machine...

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/21/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

I'm happy to see Franken go, if he goes. I'm tired of this past tradition where if you're someone doing powerful things for Democratic causes, we'll overlook it if you were a predator to women. Guys like this cause humiliations which last for years. Time to go.

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Trevor Pederson

11/21/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

I disagree.

A guy who grabs a boob or butt has never shown up in any work with a woman I have done.

Rape and real assault has, of course.

Grabbing like this is not appropriate, and shouldn’t be viewed as so, but he’s not a monster.

You should become a therapist Patrick and see these things for yourself.

Sent from my iPhone

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bdagostino2687

11/21/17

RE: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

Based on what has come out so far on Franken, his conduct is reprehensible and unacceptable but needs to be distinguished from seriously predatory behavior. Grabbing another adult’s butt in a one-time encounter is a serious violation, but a person who exploits a difference in power arising from age or authority to satisfy his sexual or psychological needs at the weaker person’s expense is engaged in a significantly more serious violation and this greater gravity is generally recognized by the law.

Brian

bdagostino.com

917-628-8253

From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Trevor Pederson

Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 7:56 PM

To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/22/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

About the not being a monster bit... numbers 4 and 5. And one is a charming story about him doing his firm butt-grasp thing and then asking her to go the bathroom with him, which is almost as charming as his doing the boob grab thing to a sleeping woman, exhausted after working to provide moral support to troopers, and thereafter ensuring she'd learn of how she'd been understood only as a mockery of a person.

And this human anomaly should have visited a psychologist, so she could be on record as an actual human possibility: I felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated.

How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?

I told my husband everything that happened and showed him the picture.

I wanted to shout my story to the world with a megaphone to anyone who would listen, but even as angry as I was, I was worried about the potential backlash and damage going public might have on my career as a broadcaster.

“He came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth,” she wrote.

“I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time,” Tweeden wrote. “I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.”

“I felt disgusted and violated,” she added.

No dear, you didn't, for Trevor Pederson the psychologist has confirmed that never in his history has any client ever felt all that bad about some guy assaulting them, unless they'd had their clothes torn off and been full-on raped.

Adios, Al Franken.

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/22/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

This person too reminds me of exactly the kind of person who would never visit a psychologist for what happened to her, owing... not to psychologists' tendency to automatically belittle such things, but to it being objectively no big thing really -- not "real" assault. (And think of her clear hysteria at guessing that Franken would use his advantages over her [including her colour!] if she ever tattled on him, to make her feel even worse than she already did.)

The second woman, who said she was groped at a fundraiser, told HuffPost it took place in the fall of 2008 at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She was excited about attending the event and meeting someone she wanted to support.

“I had never attended anything like that,” she said.

She and her friends found themselves introduced to him.

“I shook his hand, and he put his arm around my waist and held it there,” the second woman said. “Then he moved it lower and cupped my butt.”

“I was completely mortified,” she added.

In order to escape the situation, the woman excused herself to go to the bathroom. At that point, she said, Franken leaned in and suggested that he accompany her. She grabbed her friend and fled to the bathroom without him.

The second woman told several people ― including one of the reporters for this story, Zachary Roth ― about the incident some years ago, but didn’t want it reported then. She said she didn’t tell anyone at the time of the incident because inappropriate behavior from men was not that unusual to her or her friends.

“Sexual harassment happens so often, you have to learn how to move on,” she said, describing her thinking at the time.

Several other factors also left her feeling powerless.

“I felt like I didn’t have a voice,” she said. “This man had all of the power, all of the authority. In addition, he is a white man and I am a woman of color. I was 21 years old. And I was afraid that he would use all of those privileges to discredit me, to make me feel even smaller than I already felt.”

Today, she said, she feels more confident, in part thanks to the flood of women who have come forward over the last month to share stories of sexual harassment by powerful men.

“I couldn’t see all these other women come forward and not walk the walk myself,” she said. “I wanted my report to be a way for other women to say, ‘Yes, that happened to me and I don’t have to be afraid.’”

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bdagostino2687

11/22/17

RE: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

Patrick, only a week ago or so you were expressing anxiety that the avalanche of public denunciations of sexual misconduct in high places would adversely impact liberalism. That seemed like “growth panic” to me. Now that a liberal politician has actually been discovered to have engaged in sexual impropriety, you seem to be on your high horse about what a horrible person he is, how he should be driven out of public life, and how anyone who wants to make a distinction between what Franken did and rape is being somehow calloused or protective of sexual abuse. I don’t understand what is going on here.

Franken is going to be investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and the Republicans are going to throw everything at him that they possibly can. Unless anything more serious comes to light than what has come to light so far, they will not find grounds for removing him from office. But apparently if you had your druthers, he’d be out on the street. What is this about?

Brian

bdagostino.com

917-628-8253

From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrick McEvoy-Halston

Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2017 9:25 PM

To: Clio’s Psyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

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Trevor Pederson

11/22/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

He’s thin skinned Brian, that is what’s going on.

He’ll jump on 2 anonymous claims and turn them into two felony charges.

He will say that women who were groped will avoid psychologists to bolster his claim, when the spirit of the metoo movement is based on the truth that there is likely not a female who hasn’t had to deal with a creepy guy.

How many years in prison should Franken get for the lifelong trauma he caused these women?

Sent from my iPhone

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Alan Mohl

11/23/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

In the area of sexual predatory behavior, the difference is that when caught , the liberals apologize and the conservatives attack the victims for lying. I guess you can call it Trumpspeak.

Allan

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Joel Markowitz

11/23/17

OK. Let’s be psychohistorians.

Gatherer-savenger-hunter Era: “Pre-oedipal Era": cooperative, peaceful, anti-competitive-aggressive and anti-competitive-sexual ; Group-serving ...

Pagan Era: “Phallic/oedipal Era” : War as Natural Selection; patriarchal; hierarchal; competitive-aggressive and competitive-sexual; Self-serving; the suppression of women and female values ...

Christian Era: “Latent-Oedipal Era”: War as Natural Selection; patriarchal; hierarchal; God-serving; Nationalism; the more-intensive suppression of women (thousands burned as witches— in part to intimidate others) …

Late Christian Era: Anti— hierarchal: Early democratic- Youth Rebellion + Women’s Liberation & Feminism + Ethnicity is respectable + anti-bias + Religious Freedom + Political Correctness …..

Clio is now focused on the still-evolving Feminism and Political Correctness periods … and on what we should do with the guys who are caught in the cross-hairs.

Natural selection tends to be brutal, however necessary. Their bad luck. They are not in the right place at the right time …

Many are grateful that WE weren’t in those cross-hairs during the last century.

Joel

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Judith Logue

11/23/17

Some Technological Determinism, continued

Joel,

Ya think there is chance equal rights and especially in the sensuality/sexuality arena might ever result in equal responsibility?

I hoped for it in the tumultuous seventies, but it was a pipe dream.

Ya think progressives will ever catch on that medical privacy — (instead of “abortion rights”) vs forced birthing (instead of “right to life”) — are part of an Age of Integrity??

In a Post -Christian Era ? With an ERA??

Dream on, right?

Happy Thanksgiving to all,

😍🦃😍

Judy

Zero expectations. But “Imagine?”

Judy

On Nov 23, 2017, at 3:55 PM, Joel Markowitz <markowitzjoel@gmail.com> wrote:

OK. Let’s be psychohistorians.

Gatherer-savenger-hunter Era: “Pre-oedipal Era": cooperative, peaceful, anti-competitive-aggressive and anti-competitive-sexual ; Group-serving ...

Clio is now focused on the still-evolving Feminism and Political Correctness periods … and on what we should do with the guys who are caught in the cross-hairs.

Natural selection tends to be brutal, however necessary. Their bad luck. They are not in the right place at the right time …

Many are grateful that WE weren’t in those cross-hairs during the last century.

Joel

On Nov 23, 2017, at 2:31 PM, 'Alan Mohl' via Clio’s Psyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com> wrote:

In the area of sexual predatory behavior, the difference is that when caught , the liberals apologize and the conservatives attack the victims for lying. I guess you can call it Trumpspeak.

Allan

-----Original Message-----

From: bdagostino2687 <bdagostino2687@gmail.com>

To: cliospsyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Wed, Nov 22, 2017 9:56 pm

Subject: RE: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

Brian

bdagostino.com

917-628-8253

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Joel Markowitz

11/24/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Some Technological Determinism, continued

Judith,

You’re in too much of a hurry.

Our thinking is still largely shaped by Christian Era formulations. It’s still “latent-oedipal”; preadolescent. Mature Psychosexual Development is still decades away.

My prior post is based on applying Freud’s Libido Theory— in which Freud explained the developmental stages of children. His theories on a boy’s development apply accurately to COLLECTIVE development.

Today our groups are demonstrating HINTS of mature development. But most of the world still ignores those hints. There’s very little response to this thinking. Even psychohistory journals don’t want to deal with them.

Joel

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Judith Logue

11/24/17

How are our journals ignoring hints of mature development ?

Joel,

Please explain.

Judy

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Ken Fuchsman

11/24/17

Re: [cliospsyche] How are our journals ignoring hints of mature development ?

Joel,

I too am not sure what you mean that we are still largely in the Christian era.

I have four questions for you:

1. How is modern science with its emphasis on experimentation, reliability, statistics, validity a product of the Christian era?

2. How is the notion of a representative government a product of Christianity?

3. Explain how technology from the steam engine to the smart phone is also derived from the Christian era

4. How is Freudian psychoanalysis an outgrowth of the Christian era?

Thanks.

Ken

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Joel Markowitz

11/24/17

Re: [cliospsyche] How are our journals ignoring hints of mature development ?

Ken,

All the progress you cite— and more— has evolved WITHIN the Christian Era context. As the “seeds” of Early Mature development. But they’ve hardly begun to flower.

For the MORE FUNDAMENTAL current of Christian Era thinking, refer to Martin Luther. “Man is irremediably sinful.

"Were God just, he would damn us all. But He is merciful— so He will spare a few pf us (or words to that effect).”

Christian Era DIRECTIVES were for us to repress our forbidden (sexual and oedipal) fantasies; suppress our forbidden impulses;

seek purity through the unconflicted worship of God and obedience to His laws. We were taught self-denigration; severe self-criticism; humility.

Science was fought tooth and nail (and still is-== more than most realize) ……….

All was part of a NECESSARY period (preadolescence = LATENT-oedipal development) because it suppressed and replaced Paganism. (Which was simply repeating over 15 thousand years.)

And some of our REPRESSED SEXUAL AND OEDIPAL impulses and fantasies SUBLIMATED into science, and into the remarkable progress of this period.

But some “sublimated into” (i.e., generated) the massive neurosis we have suffered.

Joel

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/24/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

The spirit of metoo isn't about creepy guys, but criminal predators... there's a massive conception switch. Old Hollywood thought Weinstein creepy, even when it was common knowledge he was a rapist... used power over young people to force sex. So in any forum the term should no longer carry authority... its history is of it enabling predators. Al Franken isn't being revealed merely as creepy (... he was just creepy? well then, stop being such a wimp/thin-skinned/sensitive and brush him off = old think), but as a predator, whose behaviour would already be judged criminal in many states. The philosophy of deMausian psychohistory is that through time things that become unacceptable and criminalized started off as everyday, essentially expected, occurrences; abuse we criminalize now was once accepted behaviour: but it was always a big deal. I'm amazed that anyone could read Tweeden's account and think, no biggie there... wonder what this is all about?... the problem must be with people who have a problem. This isn't any longer 1990 and the Clintons... we've entered a new era where thought isn't first on what could happen to someone's career, but on what occurred to the people that were humiliated and used. You want to know all about that, how that felt, then you think on what to do with the abuser. Personally I don't believe in jails or prisons, but certainly on reform centres for the mentally sick.

I'm also fed up with the way he has responded. To gain my respect he would have admitted automatically that what he did to Tweeden wasn't really a once-only. He would not have said he was a guy who liked to hug, either... I'm just a hugger, and sometimes I get that might be misunderstood by people. He would have tried to explain the truth, regardless of what it would lead to, which is that though he deserves credit for being someone whose inclination is to find Republican policies revolting and to supports bills which will empower the American public, very much including women, he has used this long period where powerful Democrat men who support women's issues have been given a pass on their own predatory behaviour towards women, to in fact do.... what all it will come out that he has done. He should have said that this is a moment where what woman need are men who will not show that the preferred response of anyone who has been a predator remains to damage-control... and then only if the first option of not confessing to anything, of hiding, proves unavailable, but to lift the full redemption of their victims as genuinely harmed people to the forefront and to work away at means of portraying their activity that benefits from the old sense of it as no big deal; basically the way things are... so get a grip already. You don't do this by making it so that they'll have to fight through your cover as a "hugger" (his latest foray) or a guy who sometimes makes inappropriate jokes... even as it might prove to work for him politically. You admit that you intended to humiliate Tweeden. That you intended to make women you knew felt honoured to be by your side feel like spoils of the powerful: like people who if they raised a stir would find out what happens to people whom the Democratic establishment count amongst their most promising members if they speak up.

Brian, you're a populist. This whole past age has been about a few people really benefiting while the humiliations of those out of the limelight were ignored, and it makes you very angry. Why isn't your instant reaction to Franken one where finally people who could never of had their voice heard before are finally feeling safe and empowered to rise up and do so now? Why the calm? I just don't feel this from you, but rather your wondering what the heck this uprising is about, anyway... everything's being taken care of. Out of the kind of reaction you're having #metoo would never have happened. It's about people finding their way automatically into the victims, and not being able to pull away, in a way they just weren't before. Why in this case aren't you more in the victims? Delighted to know they won't have to suppress anymore... carry the humiliation? You seem so much so when it's people vs. rich. There's no, relax, there's a tribunal going on about that now, in that.

I said last week that what the powerful did to create victims was inevitable during the last period. I want people to understand why this was so... and I see means of encouraging some people to actually think on it in their having to come to grips with the fact that so many of the heroes they have loved could at the same time have been horrifying predators. They'll feel like it's right they are criminalized, but also wonder how it could be that men who are still clearly so good could at the same time be so brutal. Some will just fall for platitudes about human nature, but some will work further on the conundrum. I also think that deMausian psychohistorical understanding goes nowhere out a generation that is able to stifle accounts of victims' pain, especially that of the weak. If you're responsive to that... and #metoo suggests people are becoming that, then to me you're a person who could see a parent victimizing their children and not immediately find a way to rationalize it so that your own mother and father don't have the finger too squarely pointed at them, and also not to any longer decide that the collective effects of such abuse couldn't be so gross and massive to mean the shaping of the entirety of a subsequent society. You would see the effects of poor childrearing for what it is, and almost immediately decide that the form society takes of course owes to that. My response is about caught sight of a more self-aware and grown-up world, even as, yes, I think it inevitable that populists will win out over progressives for the next ten years or so and will use whatever they can get to shape our past liberal society, which couldn't ever not be an empowering but also a predatory one, so that it seems only a corrupt "Weimar" that requires cleansing. I hope here I've thought enough about your challenge. It is possible I haven't.

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Trevor Pederson

11/24/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

On Nov 24, 2017, at 4:03 PM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston <pmcevoyhalston@gmail.com> wrote:

>The spirit of metoo isn't about creepy guys, but criminal predators... there's a massive conception switch.

Here's how it is listed on the wiki page

"Me Too" (or "#MeToo", with local alternatives in other languages) spread virally as a two-word hashtag used on social media in October 2017 to denounce sexual assault and harassment, in the wake of sexual misconduct allegationsagainst Harvey Weinstein.^[1]^[2]^[3] The phrase, long used in this sense by social activist Tarana Burke, was popularized by actress Alyssa Milano, who encouraged women to tweet it to publicize experiences to demonstrate the widespread nature of misogynistic behavior.^[4]^[5]^....numerous people either used the "Me Too" hashtag or referenced it when discussing their experiences with inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature (including but not limited to harassment, assault, etc.) or gender discrimination.

When I've seen it used by women personally, the majority of them are telling stories about creepy guys. The common person isn't giving it an elaborate sociological meaning.

>Old Hollywood thought Weinstein creepy, even when it was common knowledge he was a rapist... used power over young people to force sex. So in any >forum the term should no longer carry authority... its history is of it enabling predators.

There's a big difference between being a creep and being a rapist. I'm not sure about this alleged history of whitewashing a rapist as a mere creep.

>Al Franken isn't being revealed merely as creepy (... he was just creepy? well then, stop being such a wimp/thin-skinned/sensitive and brush him off = old >think), but as a predator, whose behaviour would already be judged criminal in many states.

I'm not supporting Franken and saying the women should just brush it off. I expect people to rightly distance themselves from him socially, as opposed to inviting him to a party and telling any women there to suck it up.

>The philosophy of deMausian psychohistory is that through time things that become unacceptable and criminalized started off as everyday, essentially >expected, occurrences; abuse we criminalize now was once accepted behaviour: but it was always a big deal. I'm amazed that anyone could read >Tweeden's account and think, no biggie there... wonder what this is all about?... the problem must be with people who have a problem. This isn't any >longer 1990 and the Clintons... we've entered a new era where thought isn't first on what could happen to someone's career, but on what occurred to the >people that were humiliated and used. You want to know all about that, how that felt, then you think on what to do with the abuser. Personally I don't >believe in jails or prisons, but certainly on reform centres for the mentally sick.

Why are you twisting things, everyone said it was wrong, the only difference is that you think it should be prosecuted criminally and Franken should lose his career while some disagree.

Compared to many politicians who had affairs I thought it was strange that Weiner lost his seat for merely sexting. I was glad to see that he was going to come back in the race for mayor, but then he showed himself to be without self-control and insincere in apology and so he lost his career.

Analogously, Bill O Reilly will pay millions to settle sexual harassment charges (and deny them to the public) and will be returning to Fox news, but then you have a Franken who never serially harassed, threatened, etc., but was a minor celebrity who was hoping he could turn some of his fame into sex or doing adolescent humor on a woman who is asleep. Very different to me.

>I'm also fed up with the way he has responded. To gain my respect he would have admitted automatically that what he did to Tweeden wasn't really a once-only. He would not have said he was a guy who liked to hug, either... I'm just a hugger, and sometimes I get that might be misunderstood by people. He would have tried to explain the truth, regardless of what it would lead to, which is that though he deserves credit for being someone whose inclination is to find Republican policies revolting and to supports bills which will empower the American public, very much including women, he has used this long period where powerful Democrat men who support women's issues have been given a pass on their own predatory behaviour towards women, to in fact do.... what all it will come out that he has done. He should have said that this is a moment where what woman need are men who will not show that the preferred response of anyone who has been a predator remains to damage-control... and then only if the first option of not confessing to anything, of hiding, proves unavailable, but to lift the full redemption of their victims as genuinely harmed people to the forefront and to work away at means of portraying their activity that benefits from the old sense of it as no big deal; basically the way things are... so get a grip already. You don't do this by making it so that they'll have to fight through your cover as a "hugger" (his latest foray) or a guy who sometimes makes inappropriate jokes... even as it might prove to work for him politically. You admit that you intended to humiliate Tweeden. That you intended to make women you knew felt honoured to be by your side feel like spoils of the powerful: like people who if they raised a stir would find out what happens to people whom the Democratic establishment count amongst their most promising members if they speak up.

What does "genuinely harmed" mean? There are many people on the left who want to always bring up the potential harm of micro-aggressions or that using the wrong pronoun is tantamount to a hate crime. Many have not met a transgender person but they know that calling them by the wrong pronoun must "genuinely harm" them.

I'm suspicious of the "genuine harm" and see characterological motivations for people to use PCism for both reasons of power and for guilt.

When I see patients I don't already know what is traumatic or not, what is pathological or not. I apply certain techniques and then I see what memories from their past come up and I see how their character changes. You do this for a few years and you start to see patterns.

I also think it's naive not to see this as politically motivated. There's the real chance that they were paid to represent themselves as victims. Again, this doesn't excuse Franken, but it would play better to get the left to eat itself, while the left will stay quiet on real predators.

Everyone is aware of the problem of racism and scapegoating the other,

but what if the pathology on the left is to have the dead other, the weakened other, the one that we must tiptoe around lest we hurt his or her feelings, the one we must go out of way to welcome otherwise he or she will feel like they don't belong, the other we pity or don't want to hate us...

I don't see that as more grown up, but just as infantile as racism.

Trevor

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

11/25/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

I'll say too once again about Frederick Crews, if you don't mind, that one of the things I new immediately about #metoo was that the long overlordship of Crews (whom, as I said before, I still overall do like) over official opinion on the matter of Freud and psychoanalysis was now over (or at least very much positioned to be over; a lot will depend on how many Freudians really feel the spirit of #metoo, or if they're still left wondering how people could say such mean things about Woody Allen). He was the leading voice in arguing that the recovered memory movement was bogus... and associated both this and Freud's assessment that so many children in 19th-century Vienna had been sexually molested by their parents as doing incalculable damage to a great deal of actually innocent parents. As I remember it at least, his voice on this matter was taken seriously because he cooperated with the current spirit to mostly keep attention away from the wreckage powerful people were doing to the vulnerable, a spirit that owing to #metoo and to arising populist movements is now breaking. Now if someone were to argue that so many children ... so, so, so many children actually recalled real experiences of their parents molesting them, there will be loads more people automatically willing to accept that it was in fact as prevalent as that than would have been true during our just-passed period, where the role of the vulnerable was to suffer... carry the helplessness, carry the sins for growth, that everyone in society felt. Now if one labels a movement like this a witch hunt, you're not the voice of the NYRB, Frederick Crews, but Woody Allen... and you're very much part of the problem.

I'll expand a little bit more on what I said to Brian last night regarding how my "current turn" is consistent with my belief in growth panic. To believe in growth panic, that a whole society would turn away from growth... in believing fascism (mother country subservience) a remedy for it (!), one has to be able to imagine that the overall childrearing experiences of people in America is so bad, that they experience fears and terrors at the hands of their mothers (fathers are a dodge) that are so awesome and overpowering, that they will come to see their own individuation as worthy of some kind of total, apocalyptic punishment they'll do anything to escape. When people begin to hear instances, particularly relating to Tweeden (who seems to be the one people want to waylay, blow off), where she says the way Franken manoeuvred himself into forcing his way into her mouth, into making use of her, was so deeply humiliating she could never see him on television and not think of it again, but also with versions of the same being said by so many women of the men who accosted them... that this experiences lasted with them for decades, so that it remains so joyous to them, such a relief to them, that they can finally bring the matter up and not feel afraid, I think we're at the cusp of understanding once again that ostensibly innocuous experiences that one should be expected to get past if one isn't weak or thin-skinned, AREN'T that at all. The average experience... was actually horrible, and will historically find itself on the out just like every child's guaranteed previous experience of brutal beatings, stark abandonment, and sexual molestation was.

For me, deMausian psychohistory, to flourish, requires, not people who are the most historically literate (indeed, the very fact that you spent so much time in periods filled with less emotionally evolved people will be increasingly be seen as a bizarre desire), or psychologically literate, but the most emotionally healthy. They can't have maternal altars in their heads whom they'll ultimately pay heed to. #metoo might show me whom exactly is out there, and where they mostly are. Naomi Wolf strikes me for example as someone who is now essentially a deMausian (especially with her recent comment the average experience of women through history was to be raped repeatedly [and what kinds of mothers are born out of experiences like these?]), and though I know she's out of Yale literature studies I haven't a clue if she's read Freud.

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Trevor Pederson

11/25/17

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Some technological determinism

I hope you and Joel are right, and psychohistory is a simple linear development like this.

Sent from my iPhone

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bdagostino2687

11/26/17

RE: [cliospsyche] How are our journals ignoring hints of mature development ?

Joel,

I have always thought you were onto something with your “Christian Era” concept, but it has also seemed to me that your concept remains largely inchoate and needs to be further developed. The sexually repressive thrust of Christianity has been discussed by many other writers including Jung and more recently deMause. In developing your own ideas, it would be helpful for you to say in what ways they overlap with others and in what ways you are going beyond them.

I don’t think you are really answering Ken’s questions. One answer is that the whole concept of progress, which is really a modern notion, has its roots in Christianity. More precisely, it has its roots in the Judeo-Christian heritage, but it was through Christianity that this way of thinking became institutionalized in the mainstream of Western culture. This argument was made by Charles Norris Cochrane in Christianity and Classical Culture. Cochrane argued that classical Greco-Roman culture was essentially backward-looking in that it regarded the Athenian polis as a kind of Golden Age of perfection against which all future accomplishments would be measured and would never quite measure up. The Romans had their own version of this, in which the history of humanity culminates in imperial Rome, whose perfection—celebrated by Virgil and other Augustan writers—would never be surpassed. The crisis of classical civilization came with the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 CE, which shook the confidence of the Mediterranean world in this paradigm of history.

It was in this context that Augustine wrote The City of God, which propounds a fundamentally new paradigm in which perfection is projected into a realm beyond history (“The City of God”), while the earthly history of states (“The City of Man”) is viewed as a realm in which justice is only very imperfectly realized and which is in constant need of correction by the City of God. While the Church on earth is not to be confused with the City of God, the former has special access to the latter, an ideology that set the stage for power struggles between Church and State and limited the power of secular rulers in Europe in a way that was not the case in classical antiquity, Byzantium, China, or the Islamic states. This is what I get out of Cochrane, and I find it correct as far as it goes.

I would add that during the Christian Era, related to the development Cochrane outlines, the Greco-Roman cult of the hero is replaced by the cult of the saints. While the Greco-Roman cult glorified machismo, the cult of the saints glorified love and humility. Note that machismo is inherently a zero sum game that maintains a hierarchical social order—all the alpha males compete and in the end it is a winner-take-all system and there can only be one Alexander, one Caesar, etc. By contrast, if Christ is the measure of human excellence, that is an androgynous model to which anyone can aspire and the more one person succeeds in living the Gospel of love and humility, the easier they make it for others to succeed in living it. To the extent that Christianity made a contribution to social equality in Western history, this may be one of the pathways through which that occurred.

This is a vast topic, of course, but those are a few of my thoughts for what they’re worth.

Brian

bdagostino.com

917-628-8253

From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Joel Markowitz

Sent: Friday, November 24, 2017 3:29 PM

To: Clios Psyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] How are our journals ignoring hints of mature development ?

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Joel Markowitz

11/27/17

Re: [cliospsyche] How are our journals ignoring hints of mature development ?

Brian,

You’ve presented some rich ideas, with none of which I would argue, and which I can connect to the theories I’ve raised. I will find time to respond to your post very soon.

Joel

On Nov 26, 2017, at 2:57 PM, bdagostino2687@gmail.com wrote: