Imagine you’re a psychiatrist with decades of experience. In recent years, you’ve noticed a new category of patients who possess all of the following traits:
- They’re well educated, often with a master’s degree or more.
- They’re gainfully employed, often in prominent positions.
- Politically, they are always Left of Centre.
- When significant political events occur, which they don’t support, they embark on a tirade of expletives on social media, demonizing their political opponents.
- The aforementioned outbursts causes them to:
- Lose their jobs.
- Delete/Hide/Protect their social media.
The most recent example of this is Laura Helmuth, editor-in-chief of Scientific American. Her LinkedIn profile is still up but her Twitter page is now locked down. Young people are supposed to look up to the best and brightest, but then some of them publicly share things like this. Perhaps this episode exposed that she was neither the best, nor bright? Perhaps it’s proof positive that she was hired for reasons other than being intelligent and competent? Unfortunately, her tenure at Scientific American has destroyed the reputation of this once highly regarded magazine.
It’s easy enough to conclude that people like her are infected with TDS or the Woke Mind Virus but a new term is surely waiting to be launched, to describe such hateful, insane people. Do share your best ideas!
Make stupid decisions and win stupid prizes. Organizations, businesses, individuals, governments, they are all quite capable of being exceptionally stupid.
Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity applies to them.
We KNOW who these people are, and we mostly ignore them. But these EXTREMISTS have the NEED to be noticed. As the black activists used to chant … “We have to be LOUD to be PROUD”. These weirdos MUST regurgitate their OPINIONS in the Public Square. They will always OUT themselves.
They remind me of all the gay government employees and corporate exec’s. that James O’Keefe gets to pour out verbal diarrhea as they desperately try to connect with a new (fake) date. Their NEED to be NEEDED and “heard” overwhelms all common sense. They have no filter, and no discipline. That … and they honestly believe everyone else thinks just like they do.
It’s quite simple really, what we’re witnessing is reality slapping the participation trophy generation in the face and they are completely unequipped to deal with it. In other words, they’re spoiled rotten, little brats throwing a tantrum.
They’ve never been held to a deadline, been showered with praise for merely showing up, never had to put forth more than a token effort at anything, and never had to compete for any achievement given to them. Competition teaches a child many valuable life lessons, the greatest of which is how to lose with grace and be inspired to do better in the future.
So I guess that their brains are “atrophied,” which explains their enervating personalities.
Scientific American went to sheet long before the cow Laura showed up. SA was awesome in the 1970’s and stayed excellent through the 80’s …. although signs of the coming rot were likely there but escaped my observation.
I would put the real turning point starting in the mid to late 90’s and by the millennium the downward spiral was obvious.
Folks like Laura truly are nucking futs IMO and need therapy.
It was in the year 1993, I believe, that SA, on cue with the Clinton Admin’s effort to queerify the US military and push for the redefinition of marriage, published an article based on Dean H. Hamer’s paper published in either Science or Nature claiming to have found proof that male homosexuality was partially genetically determined. Hamer made the rounds of the MSM publisizing his work always without being seriously questioned about his evidence. I went to a research library, looked up Hamer’s paper, and couldn’t believe it had been published. It involved a genetic study of twins which did not even include a control group. The paper should never have made it past peer review. The scientific method is the philosophy that defines our modern lifestyle and the professional left keeps trying to wrap its narratives in science’s credibility.
Fifty /fifty odds there’s a Subaru with a kayak rack parked wrong in her driveway.
The Atlantic Council and the rest of the Blob will get her a new gig in no time.
rich
Or a saab 900, or square box box older volvo!
” The paper should never have made it past peer review. The scientific method is the philosophy that defines our modern lifestyle and the professional left keeps trying to wrap its narratives in science’s credibility.”
Amen to that. Peer review became pal review years ago, and is all but useless now. And there’s a reason that the ‘climate scientists’ completely refuse to apply the scientific method to any of their ‘research’, instead preferring to boast about “consensus” (as if that indicated science rather than politics).
Scientific American, like academia, destroyed its reputation decades ago. It’s a mouthpiece for Progressivism and hasn’t been scientific for a long time.
Pavlov’s dogs are now considered ‘highly educated’.
Pavlovian….I like that. Triggered, for sure.
Neuroelastic.
Many such cases.
I don’t care what they call it, just MORE PLEASE!
Chris, love this statement!
“It’s quite simple really, what we’re witnessing is reality slapping the participation trophy generation in the face and they are completely unequipped to deal with it.”
Going to steal that!
Chris, Strauss is going to steal that line of yours too. Good one!
These hapless souls have confused participation with accreditation. As Clif High of Halfpasthuman aptly puts it they get “smackereled” when reality asserts itself…
Mentaleft
Delusionistas.
Demon-rat???
When I see people displaying behavior like this I always think of the term “Radical Chic” coined by Tom Wolfe, or more recently, of such a person having “Luxury Beliefs”, as explained by Rob Henderson.
As for the neologism I would invent, hmmm…
I realize that this observation is based on a small sample size, but the people in my social media universe who have been shrieking both the loudest and the most frequently about Orange Man, and almost invariably on the subject of “reproductive rights” and “women’s bodily autonomy” – both code words for “abortion” of course – are good- and in some cases striking-looking women who are (i) past childbearing age; and (ii) never had children.
I was recently discussing this with one of the “MAGA Moms” from Toronto’s Annex neighborhood (they DO exist!) who has 5 kids and we both hypothesized that much of the anti-Trump rage exhibited by these women, especially around the subject of abortion – a topic they ALWAYS, like clockwork, go back to – is their own internalized and sublimated rage/guilt over their own never reproducing and it now being too late for them to do so (evolution has a plan and their genes are not part of it).
It’s almost as if by their not having children, they resent any woman who ever does and that they receive great psychic succor from the mere existence of abortion-on-demand provisions et al, knowing that such laws, at least in the abstract, are maximizing the same genetic dead-end for other women as they themselves have experienced either by circumstance, or in many cases, by choice. Ann Coulter – who is sometimes a bit too strident even for me – calls abortion they key “sacrament” in the Church of Liberalism, and I believe she has a good point there.
I also claim that this the main reason why many women loathe our Annex neighbor Jordan Peterson. I always ask the JP-haters, “if Jordan Peterson is right, then who is wrong? And how wrong are they?” This dovetails with JP’s own observation that by far, his most vicious hate mail come from young – i.e., 25-35 year old – women who take offense to his insisting – and he is one of the few public figures who say this – that they have a VERY short time to “get their sh*t together” and have kids or that they risk becoming, in J.D Vance’s parlance “childless cat ladies.” Peterson notes that although ‘we’ lie to young men, this pales in comparison to the extent that the culture lies to young women and so I suspect that much of this anti-Trump/reproductive rights/body autonomy-related shrieking by all these women on social media is also a manifestation of their own internalized rage at Having Believed The Lies.
Answer: if Peterson is right, them the Laura Helmuths of the world are wrong. And they are SO wrong that the consequence is generic oblivion.
I still haven’t fleshed all this out intellectual (do my observations resonate with anyone else?) but I will tentatively call the syndrome that we are trying to name here “Liberal-Woman-Sublimated-Childlessness, Believed-the-Feminist-Lies-and-Now-Here-Lies-Genetic-Oblivion Rage.”
Too big a mouthful?
Great post, Eric Strauss.
A highly plausible theory that resonates very deeply with me.
I am now constantly noticing the wimmin-sound of protest gatherings and and much else in the culter: wimmin in media, wimmin in academia with trivial topic PhDs, etc. The mental illness in this sector of humanity is palpable and stems, as you suggest, from their war on their own nature.
However, lol, you’ll need a catchier pared down sundrome name.
“Their war on their own nature”.
THAT’S IT
You’ve encapsulated my ramblings into one pity line
Beautifully written,
but during the whole time reading it, I kept thinking of the viral vid clip, of the woman who was screaming in the face of a toddler, at some recent protest. Yes, she looked young enough to still be of breading age, but why choose to scream at the child, rather than the father.
Simple. Guilt over her abortion. We’re not supposed to pretend that this is a “thing” but – and I get that what laws we should have regarding abortion is something about which reasonable people can differ – BUT IT IS.
So many women, after more than a few drinks, have – sorry to use this word that Kamala runied – “unburdened” themselves to me re their abortions. F*cks many of them up. It really does, Yet no one talks about it in public or (sober) even in private.
Suckered Cat-lady syndrome
It’s called evolutionary psychology. Human beings are evolved to be very good at surviving an environment very different than what we currently live in, and our psyches, men and women, evolved to drive specific behaviour patterns. When those drives are frustrated, or worse, exploited by cynical social leaders for their own ends, psychosis results.
This is just the female version. The male version is incel troons and guys who spend tens of thousands of dollars on e-girls because their drive to find and provide for a mate will not be denied.
Eric, i appreciate you thoughtful posts, I would enjoy responding in kind when I have time. My one observation i will share is that many of these childless women used birth control which is both effective and really hard to cleanse from their system, their personality.
So called ‘progressives’, who are really just socialists, want the world to look like Cuba and Venezuela.
DEI Doesn’t Equal Intelligence
I think Gad Saad refers to the phenomenon as a “mind virus” or something similar. Liberals really do behave like a virus. They don’t create anything useful, but they identify something that is high functioning and credible, infect it, turn it into a factory for further clones of themselves and in doing so run it into the ground and destroy it. Then they move on to another target. Liberals destroyed Sci Am ages ago. It used to be a serious lay scientific publication. Then the libs got hold of it and turned it into another left-wing rag at which point I cancelled my subscription. Likewise educational institutions, publications, NGOs like Amnesty International (which used to be a credible organization) etc.
Libtard.
Douglas Adams nailed these people.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy..”The ability to believe 6 impossible things before breakfast.”
We could refer to them as “Not Sees” for they will not see the obvious as they insist upon their delusions.
Their self worth and more often income,depend on these lies.
This ability to buy your own BS is the mark of the Zealot.
And being a True Believer of a fragile set of lies,makes for incredibly fragile people.
Stupidity is contagious,for these clusters of “Liberals” grow in urban enclaves.
They wither and die where reality is undeniable.
Of course “Liberal” now means the opposite of the principles laid out in “On Liberty” By John stuart Mill.
And the ability of the human mind to deny ..is hard to over estimate.
We could just use their own labels..
Because it is damn near impossible to parody the wisdom of our Progressive Comrades.
Progressive..like Rust..like Cancer..like Decay.
Mostly peaceful protest?
Assault style rifle?
Toxic masculinity?
” Stupidity is contagious,for these clusters of “Liberals” grow in urban enclaves. ”
That is really an interesting phenomenon.
Why “urban enclaves” ?
I used to think, that the “strangeness” that seemed to prevail in urban areas, was due to anonymity. There are just so many people who wouldn’t know you, and that would allow you to do things/say things that wouldn’t be said in smaller centers, because you’d be recognized, and face shame, or bring shame to your family. “Did you see what so an’ so said?”, “did you hear what Mary and Mike’s kid did?”
But I’m now theorizing that it has more to do with intuitional post secondary education, where children are being programed from 4, 6 or more years, of “higher learning”.
It’s interesting that polling breaks down “college educated” from “non college educated, with the college educated having the most radical and extreme left leaning views. And where antifa thrives as they recruit as students and work as profs.
The media like to look down on the “non college” as uneducated rubes that aren’t enlightened with the wonders of leftist policies, but really they are just a group, that haven’t been put through the propaganda machine.
They haven’t been reprogramed out of the values they learned from their family as a child.(of course, in families where the parents weren’t already programed)
Why urban enclaves?
Because they can just call someone else up to fix it.
There are specialists in everything needed to keep the lights on,the sewers clear and the water running..So no need to think and no consequences for failing to understand the basics.
Rural is a totally different world.
Either you know enough to improvise,or you suffer until/if a tradesman is available to drive to your problem.
Thus the fix it yourself method runs deep.
And ignorance of the realities can kill you,bankrupt you,,ie real consequences.
“It’s interesting that polling breaks down “college educated” from “non college educated, with the college educated having the most radical and extreme left leaning views.”
Methinks that socialist aristocrats that use the graduation want to shame those “college educated” that don’t agree with them. There is an assumption that a person that have not gone to university can’t possibly have a faculty to think.
There was this conservative talk guy, Michael Savage, one of the caller was “non college educated” that elegantly added to the conversation. The talk guy could not believe that the “non college educated” had the capacity to actually think.
He lost respect right there.
It already has a name. TDS. Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Leftist Mental Disorder
That character contributes to the meme, “If women run the world”.
Used to subscribe to the SA many, many years ago when they published stuff of science.
As it appears today, it is more of a scientology category.
Its a religion.
A religion that has killed more people than any other.
There’s never been anything worse, ever in history. Even the Aztecs with their pyramids of skulls were pikers in comparison.
Time we started calling it what it is.
Wilfully Woke Denier(s) of Reality
Adult children, never had to grow up, via actual hardship, so they didn’t. Too many safety nets do not allow Darwin to perform his work!
Nassim Taleb perfectly described these type of people as… IYIs , Intellectuals yet Idiots.
The “Elites” aren’t.
Jim Woke Law Practioners
MTPs – Magical Thinking Practitioners
They have been taught magical thinking through indoctrination, from kindergarten to PhD.
People who attended the School of Hard Knocks rarely have this problem
Veritasphobia – fear of the truth
Suiphobia -fear of self
Off the top of my head, here are my suggestions for a short label for the dysfunctional women you have been talking about:
Baby-less Suckers
or
Childless Suckers
Edu-Turdett’s Syndrome…