Barack Obama | The Clare Spark Blog

June 30, 2016

Disconnectedness

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:45 pm
Tags: "connectedness", Barack Obama, climate change, dumbing down, ecology, Hillary Clinton, pantheism

painting by Mark Henson

When Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama make the argument for drastic action to curtail “climate change” they will invariably deploy the term “connectedness” (implying 1. that “humanity” is “interdependent” and 2. that Mother Nature is imperiled and that all sensible creatures must take drastic measures to rescue Her: doctrines and recipes that may fit with “pantheism”).

This blog is about a disquieting dream I had last night in which the English language suddenly lost all meaning, being reduced to words that signified nothing. Perhaps it was triggered by the loss of facticity in the discourses of those “Greens” who swear by “settled science” (a contradiction in terms, as the heart of scientific method is ever “unsettled”, unlike, say, political ideologies/religions).

Or perhaps the dream had nothing to do with the latest shibboleths regarding “ecology”, but was triggered by the loss of focus and memory engendered by mass media, which never explores the connectedness of an event with history and context, but rather moves from one sensational event to another, with no overall analysis of what the series of experiences might have on various viewers or listeners. (See https://clarespark.com/2013/05/10/losing-focus-and-mass-media/.)

But above all, Hillary Clinton’s notion of “connectedness” is a feeling that evokes the “village” mentality she seeks to evoke, that fantasy of small town or family mutual caring before the anomie of the (heartless) Mammon-worshipping cities made the scene. (https://clarespark.com/2013/07/09/preconditions-for-hard-liberty/)

Or, have most words lost their meaning as “ignorant armies clash by night”?

Or, to protect my sanity, am I utterly disconnected from current events, feeling helpless to avert their threatening character?

Comments (7)

October 17, 2015

The October 2015 Political Scene in a few words

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 6:39 pm
Tags: 1960s social movements, aging women, anticommunism, bad mothers, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, black history, Black Lives Matter, Fox News Channel, Gorgon, Hillary Clinton, Holocaust politics, labor competition, McCarthyism, Medusa, Mid-East conflict, populism, right of return, statism, totalitarianism

Credit SodaHead

I apologize for the satirical, repulsive picture of Mrs. Clinton, but Hillary is turning into a hag/Medusa/Gorgon because aging women can’t yell as she often does. They are already suspect as crones. I noticed that the 1960s rallies featured speakers who hollered. The more feverish part of the Sixties are partly over, though their effects linger in the Democrat Party.

Hillary is also evoking the image of the unreliable mother: too many switches from smiling protector to scolding and disapproval, turning her opponents to stone. She has flip flopped frequently in her move to out-“socialist” Bernie Sanders: gay marriage, free trade, and the Keystone Pipeline (that the State Department approved under her watch as Madam Secretary).

Bernie. The idea that he is a communist or some kind of ultra-leftist boring from within is absurd; real communists abolish private property altogether, would never tweak the system as vindictive populists would. He is a regular social democrat, imitating the (failing) West European states. The Old “McCarthyite” Right was understandably confused. Statist New Dealers, statist Stalinists, and statist Fascists were all conflated in the notion of “totalitarianism,” a notion perpetuated by social democrats and other New Dealers. (On their secret thoughts see https://clarespark.com/2010/02/10/a-brooding-meditation-on-intimacy-and-distance/, retitled “Balance, equilibrium, and psychological warfare.”)

Black Lives Matter. Anyone reading the history of black people in this country may be tempted to erase boundaries between past and present. Our transformation to a non-racist society creeps along, but it is untrue that there has been no black progress. Dems still push the idea of white supremacy to mobilize the black base, all the while ignoring labor competition as a factor not to be ignored, lest they be labeled as Reds, which is a no-no for social democrats. For origins of the movement, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter. They don’t mention black nationalism, however.

Renee Jones Schneider Star Tribune 4/29/15 Minneapolis

The Mid-East. Fox News Channel continues its moderate approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, criticizing POTUS for not seeing that Israelis are victims, not morally equivalent perpetrators. But they don’t review the history of the region: Arab elites were horrified that Europeans were cooperating in parking modernizing Jews in “their” neighborhood. “Palestinians” still insist on the Right of Return, which would destroy the notion of a Jewish national home. Oil politics matter too.

October 2, 2015

Unasked questions about Chris Harper Mercer and Barack Obama

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 5:07 pm
Tags: Barack Obama, CBT, Chris Mercer Harper, devils, loners, mental illness, Oregon massacre

I am scratching my head in wonder that the press, fixated on the Oregon shooting (October 1, 2015) and all those that preceded it (committed by white boys in their late adolescence or early adulthood) is not asking the most obvious questions.

The first of these would focus on his specific family history, the most relevant being his half-black inheritance (as the Daily Beast and others mentioned). Where is his father? The media have mentioned a mother living in California, but we know nothing about her: her work, her values, how she raised her only child. How was he punished growing up, and who was responsible for disciplining him: the mother or the father? Did the father use corporal punishment? Or some other method, such as threats or grounding. Was there a divorce? Was mom even ever married?

I have an idea why such obvious questions are not being asked. The Right insists on the father-led nuclear family as the ideal unit to lift the masses out of poverty (and even the Moynihan Report did this with respect to blacks, and Moynihan was a staunch liberal). They also imply extreme sex-role differentiation. Supposedly, males are rational, females are irrational and likely to spoil the child, even feminize him.

Second, was it simply chance that Chris Harper Mercer chose a science classroom to embark on his killing spree? The first victim is said to be the science teacher. The hostility of some “Christian” sects to science is too well known to dwell upon. [Update: it was an English class, not a science class as had been reported earlier. Thanks for the correction, Jon!]

And who were Mercer’s victims? Were they all white people like himself? Or might there have been a sprinkling of Asians (at UCLA, nearly all the students studying science were some variety of “Asian”). [Also now irrelevant as the shooter was half black.]

Finally, we come to Obama’s almost instantaneous response to the event, not to speak of his startling passivity in the face of concrete threats to the nation. The media have emphasized his “passion” and opportunism. What if he is not merely a “narcissist” as even Krauthammer insists, but enraged about gun ownership because it signifies the rage at having been abandoned by his real father, and who knows how his grandparents disciplined him?

I attribute these glaring lacunae in the press coverage to the abandonment of depth psychology. Instead of taking specific family histories, noting traumas where they exist, mental health professionals are dedicated to downplaying the permanence of trauma, let alone such antique notions as Oedipal rage. It is all happy talk now along with CBT, in the short, cheap cut to rewiring the brain through the power of positive thinking, or maybe prayer: we should beat the Devil within all of us in this fallen world.

Don’t expect anything to change, or a return to supposedly discredited psychoanalytic explanations for deranged mass shooting events by young males, or even more obvious ones, such as adolescent rebellion against authoritarian parents. We are too dumbed down for that.

Our society indulges in escapism even as it fecklessly searches for a “motive.” Those who love “families” but refuse to look too closely into their inner dynamics, are bound to fail. (See related blog: https://clarespark.com/2013/01/17/bondage-and-the-family/) Or, since NPR is touting the (loveless, hence hate-filled) “loner” theory out for fame/revenge: see https://clarespark.com/2012/07/24/the-cracked-and-cracking-loner-as-mass-murderer/.

Comments (6)

December 29, 2014

The Leader Principle

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 9:25 pm
Tags: Barack Obama, civilian morale, Dr. Henry A. Murray, FDR, Gordon Allport, integral nationalism, New Deal leadership, planning state

In the late 1930s-early 1940s, Harvard psychologists tried to nullify the Führer-Prinzip (detestable) with an FDR version whereby Franklin Roosevelt would embody the Eros they attributed to Democracy, for Hitler was obviously a hater, while the FDR they were promoting was a lover of humanity, as was obvious (to them) by New Deal legislation and its concern for the “common man.” (Or as Barack Obama would say, the middle class.)

For instance, Gordon Allport and Henry A. Murray wrote worksheets for civilian morale that advised “Linking of Present Leader to the Idealized Leaders of the Past”: ”The more the present leader is seen as continuing in the footsteps of the great idealized leaders of the past, the better the morale. (Picture of Roosevelt between Washington and Lincoln would encourage this identification.) The more the present leader is seen as falling short of the stature of the great idealized leaders of the past, the worse the identification. By effective leadership the group’s latent communality may emerge through identification with the leader. If this smacks of the Führer-Prinzip, we would insist that identification is a process common to all societies, and that what distinguishes the democratic leadership from the Nazi leadership is not the process of identification but the content of what is identified with. It is the function of the democratic leader to inspire confidence in the democratic way of life, in its value for the individual or the society and not mere identification with his person, or the mythical Volk.”

[Clare:] Virtually the entire postwar program of “liberal” reform was foreshadowed in these pages. As formulated in the mid-nineteenth century, abolitionist and working-class demands for universal education, equal rights, and enforcement of the Constitution would be redirected into the quotas of affirmative action or multiculturalism. In worksheet #17, “Long Term Aspects of Democratic Morale Building,” a program of integration and deferential politeness would rearrange the American people’s community: “…far from ignoring or suppressing diversities of intelligence, the objective of democratic morale-building should be their conscious integration into an improving collective opinion. The techniques of such integration exist. They are inherent in the democratic tradition of tolerance and the democratic custom of free discussion. They exist, however, in outline rather than in any ultimate or perhaps even very high state of development. [sic!CS]

[Quoting Gordon Allport:]…Our pressure groups [the Jews complaining about Nazis?] are loud, their protests vehement and our method of electioneering bitter and sometimes vicious. In the process of becoming self-reliant Americans have lost respect, docility, and trust in relation to their leaders. Our habit of unbridled criticism, though defended as a basic right, brings only a scant sense of security to ourselves in an emergency, and actively benefits the enemies of the nation.”

[Clare:] Such are the imprecations of integral nationalism, brought to you by Harvard social psychologists who viewed themselves as fighting fascism while imitating its chief tenets. But we are not now, nor have we ever been, fascists, right?

Happy New Year! (For the complete blog see https://clarespark.com/2011/03/27/progressive-mind-managers-ca-1941-42/.)

Comments (9)

November 7, 2014

‘Cultural Marxism’ blogs and immigration reform

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 8:54 pm
Tags: "cultural Marxism", Barack Obama, Erich Fromm, Frankfurt School, identity politics, immigration reform, Leo Lowenthal, Max Horkheimer, political correctness, progressivism, Rerum Novarum, Soviet propaganda, T.W. Adorno, The Reformation, Wilhelm Reich, working class authoritarianism

[Update 11-11-14: The illustration that heads this blog is horrid racist propaganda, which I do not endorse. I posted it because it embodies the fear of miscegenation that dominates all ideologies that fear racial mixing.]

This is only a partial index on the subject that has dominated this website. I have been disturbed by those Facebook postings that blame a group of refugee [assimilated, “Marxist-Freudian”] Jews fleeing Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s (sometimes known as the critical theorists) for what is perceived as “identity politics” (“multiculturalism”) and/or “political correctness”. These men (plus Hannah Arendt) include T. W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, and Leo Lowenthal: each of these prolific social critics found sponsorship in already existing social psychology and cultural anthropology as emboldened by FDR’s New Deal.

By focusing on these “critical theorists,” the older revolutions in the West, that of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, have been conveniently ignored by conservatives and liberal Republicans alike, yet the fights between and within Protestantism and Catholicism are among the most portentous events in world history, encompassing a policy that remains current and hotly contested: immigration reform that would presumably increase the number of Catholics likely to support the Democratic Party. [E.g, the nasty aspects of capitalism and “Social Darwinism” are generally attributed to [Hebraic, puritanical] Protestantism, while social democracy, “compassionate conservatism,” and even some aspects of communist ideology echo much of Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891). This is not to ignore the liberal Protestants and secularists who supported the Social Gospel, and now the Democratic Party.]

Journalism, so-called “progressivism,” and even the writing of history could be drastically modified were Barack Obama’s plans to massively increase the Catholic population adopted.

Here is my index that 1. Highlights the stakes for writing about social movements and “change” in ignoring the Reformation; and 2. Clears up the misidentification of the Frankfurters as the initiators of PC, identity politics, and the culture wars. The Frankfurt School focus was restricted to “fascism” and Nazism, which they generally blamed on mass media and demagogue-loving popular culture (with its elevation of “social imperialism,” consumerism, bad taste, the Leader principle and celebrities in general). I.e., the supposedly revolutionary working class had been bought off with vanities and luxuries of every type. Such as Erich Fromm located the source of Hitler’s appeal, not in the racial state and the elimination of ‘Jewish domination,’ but in “working class authoritarianism.”

In other words, the critical theorists were bohemian philosphers and, upon closer examination, organic conservatives beholden to German Idealism who disliked the impetus that the Enlightenment brought to the self-confidence of ordinary “puritanical” naifs who pretended to understand “things as they are.” With such a stance, the refugees from Hitler’s Germany were welcomed and promoted by the liberal “progressive” establishment in the most prestigious American schools.

https://clarespark.com/2009/07/04/unfinished-revolutions-and-contested-notions-of-identity/

https://clarespark.com/2009/08/25/t-w-adorno-and-his-funny-idea-of-genuine-liberalism/

https://clarespark.com/2010/01/02/jottings-on-the-culture-wars-both-sides-are-wrong/

https://clarespark.com/2011/10/21/did-frankfurters-kill-the-white-christian-west/

https://clarespark.com/2013/05/30/nostalgia-for-the-middle-ages/

https://clarespark.com/2013/06/23/the-origins-of-political-correctness/

https://clarespark.com/2013/06/30/the-origins-of-political-correctness-2/

https://clarespark.com/2013/07/31/the-nefarious-cultural-marxists/

https://clarespark.com/2014/06/04/did-bureaucratic-rationality-cause-the-holocaust/

https://clarespark.com/2014/09/20/taking-responsibility-for-ourselves-and-society/

“Cultural Marxism produces matriarchy”

Comments (4)

October 24, 2014

Rescuing the black family: Harvard points the way

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:50 pm
Tags: Anita Hill, Barack Obama, Barbados, Craig Lambert, fatherless black families, Harvard Magazine, Heritage Foundation, Jamaica, Orlando Patterson, reggae, rep, reparations for slavery

Orlando Patterson, Harvard sociologist

The Harvard Magazine cover story on Orlando Patterson (November-December 2014) lauds Patterson’s glorious predecessors in sociology, social psychology, and progressive social nostrums (e.g., Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, David Riesman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and Patterson’s journey from Jamaican novelist to Harvard superstar professor and “the Caribbean Zola.”* (On his achievements see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Patterson.)

Dwelling upon the baleful effects of slavery on black family structure, the author of the long alumni magazine essay, Craig Lambert (deputy editor and a Harvard Ph.D.) drops such loaded terms as “freedom” (an attribute only of non-slave whites), “belonging/beloved”ness (the non plus ultra of social well-being: missing in slavery and the ostensibly non-existent slave family), “culture” and even more vaguely, “dynamic” “interaction” between “culture” and “structures,” lest Talcott Parsons’ fictional emphasis on structures and functions cast doubt on Patterson’s contributions to social peace.

[On Parsons and his cohort in sociology and social psychology see https://clarespark.com/2009/08/25/preventive-politics-and-socially-responsible-capitalists-1930s-40s/. On Harvard and the turn toward “cultural history” see https://clarespark.com/2009/12/12/switching-the-enlightenment-corporatist-liberalism-and-the-revision-of-american-history/. Or see https://clarespark.com/2014/09/08/why-progressive-social-psychologists-make-us-crazy/.%5D

Harvard, like other elite institutions, is worried about anomie or “atomization” in our society, and resorts to the time-tested clichés and Great Society programs of progressivism, which are abstract enough to please a diverse body of graduates, all of whom are adjured to seek belongingness in multiple, overlapping interest groups. Moreover Harvard can brag about the quality of its professors, especially those of color that underline the success of “diversity.” And in recent years, the “neo-Marxist” or “New Left” affiliations of its versatile professors (e.g. OP) are not a cause for heartburn. Indeed, Patterson’s life and work are appropriated to puff black supremacy, affirmative action, rap and reggae, Barbados democracy, and “democratic socialist revolution.” Yet he is portrayed as a maverick and an artist, having defended Clarence Thomas while under attack from Anita Hill (Hill did not note the changing context of CT’s language from ten years ago, Patterson wrote: see http://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/20/opinion/op-ed-race-gender-and-liberal-fallacies.html).

But there is a missing context to this cover story that includes 1. The upcoming midterm elections that will be a referendum on a black president’s social policies, and 2. The bipartisan fight over how to rescue inner city children from poverty. Here is the US Census report (2012) that would have to alarm pro-capitalist circles concerned with upward mobility in the multicultural society pushed by the white liberal establishment: “Black children (55 percent) and Hispanic children (31 percent) were more likely to live with one parent than non-Hispanic White children (21 percent) or Asian children (13 percent).”
And here is one conservative think tank’s solution to diminished prospects for minority inner-city children: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/09/marriage-americas-greatest-weapon-against-child-poverty.)

Despite one failed marriage, Patterson is presented as a happily married father: both wives (apparently) were or are white academics, which situates Patterson in a reassuringly integrated setting, though his sociology tilts toward the mandatory Harvard progressive line that emphasizes the lingering effects of slavery, justifying all kinds of reparations. By focusing on Orlando Patterson’s climb to fame and professional approbation despite his Jamaican “cultural heritage” of slavery (and in one sentence, linking Patterson to Obama), Harvard can avoid such practical problems as massive black unemployment, labor competition, or union domination of public education, defeating parental choice and lowering our expectations of the curriculum.

Illustration by Gary Kelley

* Note the comparison of Patterson the novelist to Emile Zola, whose “realistic” novels won leftist and anti-imperialist support for their depictions of social forces and the lower depths of society in turn of the century France.

Comments (1)

August 14, 2014

Understanding Obama’s ongoing appeal

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:01 pm
Tags: ambivalence, Barack Obama, Heinz Kohut, Herman Melville, illusion of unity, Max Beckmann, Melanie Klein, narcissism, Otto Kernberg, splitting

Ridha Ridha “Normal Ambivalence”

Many dark thoughts cross my mind as I contemplate the list of failures attributable to POTUS, but ranking the reason for his continued popularity in some quarters goes beyond his obvious appeal to recipients of state largesse, proud or despised minorities, and guilty liberals.

Why has no one mentioned his stirring speeches promising national unity that helped elect him in the first place? For his healing messages imply that not only warring sections of our country shall be reunited, but that the disunity that we feel inside ourselves, and inside our supposedly harmonious “families” shall also be resolved.

And yet ambivalence is part of the human condition, as Freud controversially alleged in his formulation of the inescapable Oedipus Complex. One old standard partly and incompletely expresses these mixed feelings that occasionally surface, but are usually quickly repressed. (Here is Nat King Cole singing the Vincent Youmans tune “Sometimes I’m Happy” 1957: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtPeknt0mBA.)

Psychiatrists Melanie Klein, Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg, in their studies of “object relations” and “narcissism” all explored the common practice of “splitting” in which we escape ambiguity and ambivalence by turning those figures (public or private) who arouse deep emotions into all good or all bad figures. I find myself doing this myself, and it is only in retrospect that I correct these black and white divisions. For like most other people, I am capable of either demonizing or hero-worshipping figures who are themselves sometimes benign, sometimes threatening, but always struggling to stay afloat.

Perhaps it is the greatest challenge we face as historians, as journalists, or as citizen-critics of our leaders to understand that each of us lives within a controlling, often menacing, context that we did not choose; moreover that we struggle to rationalize our own self-interest and to conform to the imprecations of our parents and siblings to be like them, to maintain idealized attachments, and indeed to like them without ambivalence.

We would rather escape into desolation or into the illusion of unity than face “things as they are” (Melville, speaking through the dubious (?) narrator of Pierre, or the Ambiguities (1852), or try his The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857)—if you can take the challenge to your amour propre.)

Ryoshimizu, “Ambivalence”

Here is a related blog: https://clarespark.com/2013/09/17/the-illusion-of-national-unity/, with a disquieting painting by Max Beckmann expressing alienation and lack of connection with others or “things as they are.”

Beckmann, Paris Gesellschaft 1931

Comments (2)

June 8, 2014

“Narcissism”: healthy vs. unhealthy

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:30 pm
Tags: Barack Obama, DSM-5, Echo and Narcissus, Heinz Kohut, narcissism, Otto Kernberg, sadomasochism, separation anxiety

Echo and Narcissus: Waterhouse

These sources are what I found in a quick search around the internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism
http://faculty.washington.edu/cbehler/glossary/narcissi.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_F._Kernberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Kohut
http://psychology.about.com/od/psychiatricdisorders/a/history-Of-narcissistic-personality-disorder.htm (NPD excluded from DSM-5.)

Click to access MillerWidigerCampbell20101.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22729454 (on narcissism and S-M behavior)

None of them steps outside of personal psychosexual development in the family to explore the institutional or ideological context in which “narcissistic personality disorder” either occurs or never shows itself.

My blog on the subject constitutes my personal experience and is not the result of clinical training, though the word “narcissistic” is thrown around in popular culture, sometimes to characterize women, but lately to characterize the grandiosity attributed by classical liberals and conservatives to Barack Obama. “Progressives” return the favor by describing all classical liberals and conservatives as heartless, uncompassionate individualists, oblivious to cries from their [imagined communities].

First, “healthy narcissism.” All my work has been driven by the search for creativity and how to impart it to students of all ages. In my view, such originality and discovery is linked to a healthy sense of self, that is, a person with healthy narcissism is not afraid to plunge into deep and uncharted waters to gain an accurate picture of ourselves and the institutions in which we function, no matter what pathology powerful professionals attribute to this search for truth.

But in the [neoclassical] Greek myth, Narcissus is so captivated by his image in a pond, that he is oblivious to the voice of Echo (society), so that he thoughtlessly falls into the pond and drowns. That is how Melville’s character “Ishmael” (the foil to narcissistic Captain Ahab) describes the tale in the first chapter of Moby-Dick: “Narcissus is the key to it all.” And indeed, Ahab does drown, strangled by the rope with which he would revengefully harpoon the White Whale, oblivious to the crew who will also perish. (The link to progressivism’s emphasis on social relationships as opposed to personal self-absorption should be obvious.) [Wikipedia dates the painting by Waterhouse as painted in 1903, after Ovid, in time for the progressive movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_and_Narcissus_(Waterhouse_painting.%5D

The insult of the narcissism label is often felt by women. On the one hand, women are supposed to be protective mothers and wives, attuned to the most subtle emotions and symptoms of their charges, while they are simultaneously driven to defy aging and yet to be well turned outward to the opinions of relatives and then future mates. When the late academic Christopher Lasch wrote his famous The Culture of Narcissism (Norton, 1979) I bristled. It was an obvious slap at the fashionable notion that “culture” had been “feminized” since the emancipation of women. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Narcissism which argues that Lasch was reacting to militant student activists and to the decline of the family.)

Narcissism and attachment theory. It cannot be emphasized enough that pathological narcissists are unable to form non-exploitative attachments to others, whether these be persons or causes. In order to maintain their self-images as high achievers, for instance, they need a steady stream of “narcissistic supplies” from an adoring public. Although they tend to vacillate between idealizing and demonizing other persons, they can’t take criticism, even of the most tactful kind. For as “perfectionists” in the face of deflating errors or rejection, they are incapable of soothing themselves, for they are devoid of internal good objects (i.e., the mother’s unconditional approval).

I don’t know what a psychoanalyst would say about my claim, but every mother knows that the management of separation from young children so that they may attend nursery school or play with other children (out of mother’s sight), is a challenge. This process gets even more complicated when weaning is premature, or when a succession of nannies are the primary caretakers of children, for “object constancy” is vital to building self-confidence in the child who is expected to stand “alone” apart from mother. The resultant “separation anxiety” can be experienced by either the child or the mother or both. (See my essay https://clarespark.com/2009/11/16/panic-attacks-and-separation-anxiety/.) I often wonder how many Sixties radicals embraced collectivist ideologies in hopes of finding a stable, nurturing family that would compensate for feelings of abandonment by parent(s) and society alike. Had socializing institutions not idealized authority, would these often privileged youngsters identified with causes that were seemingly designed to punish them by losing caste?

Second, which leads to me the question of narcissism and sadomasochism. I have known several men of high intellectual attainment who were 1. panicked at the thought of criticism but who sought punishment in sexual situations. (They might take the role of sadist or masochist, depending on their personal histories with mom), and 2. lived with simultaneous feelings of grandiosity and worthlessness in their psyches, hence were unable to enjoy their achievements in the eyes of others; moreover they were exceedingly manipulative in personal situations. Whether these symptoms were caused by particular family practices and configurations or are institutionally-induced, are beyond my capacities to identify. But here is one quote from my research in the Sadomasochism Collection at UCLA, that sums up the gratification that follows the beating administered by a mother-substitute:

[excerpt from a fantasy by Steadman Thompson, middle-management at the Armstrong Cork Company, Akron, Pennsylvania, in the Sadomasochism Collection, UCLA:] “As I stood up, she came forward with the silver collar. I was aghast at what I had said and done but I stood still and let her fit the cold metal around my neck. As the lock clicked with an icy finality my misgivings rose to an apex.
“Now look, Vivienne,” I whined.
The wand whistled and struck stingingly before I could flinch. “Speak when spoken to, slave and address me as “Mistress” unless I give you another title to use. Now take a hold of the back of my robe.
As I timidly obeyed, she raised her wand and from the wand and the ball on her crown came a light so intense it washed away all our surroundings.”

Steadman Thompson had been subjected to a magic wand, to a “switch” and after taking his punishment, he was returned to the lap of benignant authority, or what I have called elsewhere “Conservative Enlightenment” (a form of pseudo-enlightenment that fails to liberate us from illegitimate authority). How many of our “professionals” in middle management are sadistic with respect to the students (or others) in their charge, while being masochistic with respect to the orders and curricula dished out by their powerful superiors in administrative capacities?

Or, as Melville’s Ishmael queried? “Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that.” (https://clarespark.com/2011/04/10/who-aint-a-slave/, and/or https://clarespark.com/2012/12/02/index-to-sadomasochism-blogs/.)

Comments (3)

April 19, 2014

‘Totalitarianism’ (2)

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 10:40 pm
Tags: Andrew Cuomo, Arab-Israeli conflict, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Barack Obama, communism, Electoral College, Eric Hobsbawm, Ernst Nolte, fascism, finance capital, Hannah Arendt, Harvard Crimson staff, John Kerry, multiculturalism, Organization of American Historians, Platonic Guardians, totalitarianism

On April 17, I wrote this popular blog: https://clarespark.com/2014/04/17/totalitarianism/. It was preceded by a related blog that also was popular: https://clarespark.com/2012/09/05/proto-fascism-and-the-democrat-peoples-community. The blogs on ‘totalitarianism’ got lots of views probably because it was not widely known at that time that there was a pseudo-democratic movement afoot to eliminate the Electoral College and substitute the trappings of a popular democracy, in effect, reversing the Constitution and eliminating the notion of a constitutional republic in favor of [mob rule, urban domination]. In other words, such details as the marketplace of ideas, checks and balances, and separation of powers would be obsolete and “anti-democratic” because they are ultimately controlled and defined by “the big money”—or so such blue-state politicians as Andrew Cuomo would have to argue.

We have seen the signs of such a transition to authoritarian statism already: the expedited passage of the Affordable Care Act (and then lawlessness in its implementation), the increasing power of the executive branch, the takeover of academe by “Democrats” who shamelessly proclaim themselves the police force that will patrol dissident factions (i.e., the Tea Party and all those who fear Big Government: see https://clarespark.com/2014/04/12/the-organization-of-american-historians-taking-sides/), and the turnaround of Brandeis University in the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali—an insult supported by the Harvard Crimson staff, devoted as they are to multiculturalism, as opposed to the clash of civilizations thesis advanced by Hirsi Ali, who unequivocally states that there are no moderate Muslims. Similarly, the Secretary of State John Kerry’s deluded hope that he might broker a peace between Arabs and Israelis, reflects the assumptions of multiculturalism, as opposed to recognizing that there are some “differences” that are not only irreconcilable, but cannot be settled by mediation or “inclusion.” (And what the Left wants is a binational state, i.e., the end of a majority Jewish state, and the return of Jews to dhimmi status.) Soon we will all be requested to bow and scrape before our Platonic Guardians or the new nomenklatura.

Ever since I read Barack Obama’s two books in 2008, I have feared a bloodless transition to either fascism or communism. (Why bloodless? The population is so pacified/brainwashed, and force so unevenly distributed that I do not expect significant resistance.) BUT, I do not equate the two forms of statism, and have written extensively about this distinction in the past: The revolution of Communism promised to fulfill the promise of the Enlightenment with its ideal of individual emancipation, while Fascism (in all its variants) was a counter-Revolution that erased the Enlightenment, substituting the judenrein “people’s community” for the independent individual endowed with civil rights. Now look at the discourse of the Left and its stronghold in the Democratic Party: its key words are “families” or “the people” or “community”—entities that, in contrast to terroristic Republicans/Israelis/Goldfingers, are noted for their tender care and outreach to “the oppressed.”

One explicator of this crucial difference between fascism and communism was the late communist historian Eric Hobsbawm. See https://clarespark.com/2013/10/28/hobsbawm-israel-the-totalitarian-idea/. Sadly, Hobsbawm lacked the critical distance not to bash Israel and finance capital, as have other leftists, Karl Marx for instance in his early essay on “Money” as “the universal pimp.” But my most persuasive argument against the use of the word “totalitarian” is this: why are artists and dissidents murdered, locked up, or bought off in these omnipotent societies if it is so easy to impose total control on the population in societies with a tradition of cultural pluralism and at least a measure of free thought? Who but intellectuals benefit from this emphasis on the Soviets as compared to the Nazis and all their atrocities?

Two authors stand out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Nolte#The_Historikerstreit. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism (Hannah Arendt’s “great book”). Whatever their motives, such books and arguments take our attention away from the dynamics of Hitler’s rise to power and the unspeakable consequences of the Third Reich. As I write this, the factions that make up the right wing in America (not to be confused with the European Right) are still fighting with each other. Until the magnitude of the crisis that confronts us is broadly recognized and addressed in solidarity, excising those fringe groups and behaviors that really ARE racist, terroristic, populistic, and lawless (the Klan, Neo-Nazis, usually blamed by the Left on “the Right”), there is little doubt about who wins and who loses. If we get to 2016 without a coup (call it what you will), I will be the most surprised of anyone.

Comments (10)

December 1, 2013

Reflections on the Affordable Care Act

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 6:57 pm
Tags: ACA, Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, Democratic Party talking points, demonic possession, fallen flesh, femme fatale, hygiene, tort reform

“Obamacare” is rightly the domestic issue that is upsetting the nation, so although I am neither a lawyer, nor a physician, I will lay out some of the difficulties that I see in the debates to date. In no particular order, then

First, the Democratic Party’s obliviousness to the enforced changing of doctors is indicative of a pandering and incompetent mind-set: Compassionate beings that they claim to be, Democrats would never argue that it is no big deal to change mothers. The benefit of a doctor who knows your history, and is invested in your good health, is comparable to the trust we place in our mothers (and present loving fathers). How to explain this blind spot? Society (like the body) is not a machine, with interchangeable parts, though some political groupings seem to be.

Second, to what degree are we responsible for our health? With the body, we can choose not to drink to excess, not to smoke, to practice correct hygiene, to eat for maximum nutrition and to exercise. It is not so clear how we can control our mental states, which in turn impact our immune systems and the degree to which we take care of ourselves. I cannot understand why these matters are not taken up in our school curricula and in the media, though I suppose that religious diversity plays a large role, with some belief systems rejecting the physiological lessons of modernity.

Third, don’t look to the hip universities to be sympathetic to either medicine or psychiatry. At the university where I received my graduate training in history, the history of science encompassed the history of medicine and psychiatry, and the Foucauldians and the Left were in charge. Science was held to be a joke, and amusing, just as eighteenth century quacks were to be written about and mocked. The radical historicism I encountered at UCLA could not possibly distinguish between antique fads and misconceptions and modern medicine. Post WW1 German Expressionism has a grip on many academic mentalities–those sports who inhabit “the dark side” or, who are irresistibly drawn to the femme fatale.

Fourth, when I was much younger, I recall the responsibility that doctors and dentists alike felt for the poor. So they volunteered at free clinics, or might travel to the central valley in California to treat farm workers. Medicine, like dentistry, was held to be a noble profession, perhaps because parents or grandparents were immigrants. Nowadays, many doctors expect to be multi-millionaires; ironically, their wives and children benefit from a life of luxury, while the physician (male or female), is expected to care for too many patients. This is a world I did not know in my youth, and do not like now.

Finally, the chant from ACA boosters that the Republican Party is simply obstructionist and has no alternative proposals, is tiresome and ludicrous. Tort reform and competition across states lines for insurance companies are only two of oft-repeated suggestions. I would be even happier with the ACA opposition if they proposed changes in the curriculum that would put health, physical and mental, at the top of the list in curriculum reform. That will never happen here until outdated notions such as demonic possession and/or fallen flesh are finally banished from our public schools and related institutions.