The pathology of liberalism

By Joan Swirsky

From the inception of psychology about 140 years ago, medical conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, narcissism, Tourette’s syndrome, even stuttering, were thought to be psychological in origin––and with enough therapy, enough blaming inadequate parenting, enough talk, enough delving into “feelings,” the sufferer could be treated successfully or even cured.

We now know––thanks to tools like PET scans and pharmaceutical advances––that these conditions are largely biological in nature, more receptive to medications augmented with behavioral-therapy techniques, than to any of the other “therapies” that were utilized so ineffectually on multimillions of people over the past many decades.

These scans, in fact, have revealed the specific areas of the brain that show increased activity during anger, revenge, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders, stuttering, pathological lying, cheating, manipulation, obsessive-compulsive behavior, depressive disorders, even cravings for chocolate!

NATURE OR NURTURE?

How do we know these conditions are largely biological? Because in addition to the fact that medications have treated them successfully––for example, Haldol for psychoses, Lithium for bipolar disorder, Lexapro for depression, Xanax for anxiety, and other drugs––the conditions have identical symptoms, albeit some more severe than others, in people raised in luxury high-rises in Buenos Aires, slums in Los Angeles, kibbutzim in Israel, huts in rain forests, and penthouses in Manhattan. And also in people raised in both harmonious and dysfunctional homes.

What we also understand is that most intractable mental conditions seem to be genetically driven, rooted in centers of the brain that are still not fully understood. Perhaps this is why political affiliation––with exceptions, of course––seems to run in families.

It is also true, as Linda Goudsmit––author of The Book of Humanitarian Hoaxes: Killing America with ‘Kindness’––points out, that both biology (genetics) and the physical environment (epigenetics)––including foods, chemicals, air, water, and EMF pollution––have profound effects on human pathology.

Whatever school––genes or environment or something else––a person subscribes to, the symptoms displayed by liberals-leftists-progressives––whatever they’re calling themselves today––are obvious to even the casual observer.

SYMPTOM #1––THE GLUM FACTOR

Liberals are uniformly glum, both in their grim demeanors and bleak outlooks.

This is because their worldview is invariably negative. When things are good, they see only the bad and reach back decades to invoke the Misery Index cited routinely by Democrat President Jimmy Carter and resurrected not only by the dour wannabe-president––and today an alleged traitor, John Kerry––but in one way or another by every Democrat presidential, congressional, and local candidate to this day.

With liberals, the glass is always half empty, the sky is always falling. When things could be better, they see only that things could be worse.

• In the stellar economy that President Trump created––with the GDP, employment, housing sales, and consumer confidence at peak levels; inflation, the trade deficit, and the price of crude oil down; employment of blacks, Hispanics, women and youth sky high; and America achieving energy independence for the first time in history––the liberals among us were inconsolably miserable.
• In measurable and quite astounding educational successes of blacks through Eva Moskowitz’s 47 Charter schools in NY City, liberals see only “too much testing” and a threat to a huge source of their power and income––unions!
• In the face of 3,000 lives being exterminated by Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, and escalating Islamic terrorist attacks around the world since then, leftists only see the miniscule, if non-existent, threat of white supremacists.
• Worse, they see all of our country’s problems, according to Mary Eberstadt of the Wall St. Journal, as the fault of––ta da––America!

SYMPTOM #2: THE DEPENDENCY FACTOR

Liberals are emotional children––no matter their educational pedigrees, fancy credentials, lofty titles, prestigious positions, or economic well-being. That is why they believe in and defend and work for and donate money to and teach their children that there is nothing quite as benevolent and important as Big Government!

Proof is Joe Biden’s “American Families Plan” to provide––Venezuela-style––federal entitlements including two years of free universal prekindergarten, free childcare for all, paid family and medical leave, two years of community college, on and on and on.

While liberals pretend to fight for the “little guy,” those poor, oppressed illegal aliens, and “people of color,” et al, it is they themselves who feel needy and scared and inadequate and so project their desires to be taken care of onto people they believe have the same infantile needs.

Given their failure to grow up, it is almost predictable––as a Pew Research Center survey in March 2020 found–– that white liberals were “significantly more likely than other racial and ideological groups to be diagnosed with a mental health condition.”

The survey was inspired by an Evie Magazine article on the possible “scientific correlation” between progressive ideas and mental illness, and it noted that liberal ideology often “forces its followers to wallow in feelings of helplessness and victimhood,” as opposed to “building resiliency against hardship.…”

SYMPTOM #3: THE INFANTILE FACTOR

Liberals, like the children they are, live in a world of utopian dreaminess, clinging to an imagined reality and believing that if everyone would just be nice to each other, all the noisy death threats and pesky suicide bombings would go away, and all those grumpy grownups in Republican and especially Conservative circles would see the light.

And so they do what children do when they’re angry at grownups. They have temper tantrums and call names.

• Who but an adult with a child’s mentality could participate in the Women’s March on Washington the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration and think that wearing tasteless, cringe-producing “pussy hats” and spewing vulgarities in front of the entire world––and their own daughters!––would inspire even one person on earth to admire them, emulate them, and want to join their ranks?
• Who but an adult with an angry child’s lack of self-control would rip up a historical document––President Trump’s 2020 State of the Union speech––as did Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the quintessentially inappropriate temper tantrum of our century?

SYMPTOM #4––THE RAGE FACTOR

To understand the left’s treasonous rage, it is important to understand that the most cherished value in the life of children (read liberals) is to be “liked” by their peers, a theory that Judith Rich Harris has exhaustively documented in her best-selling and revolutionary book, The Nurture Assumption.

According to the evangelical religion of leftism, if America were not so strong, so powerful, so rich, so successful––so enviable to the rest of the world––things would be better. This is because liberals hate strength and power and wealth and success, except, that is, when they are the beneficiaries! It is significant to note that the richest politicians in Congress are Democrats!

This fantasy flourishes, says Evan Sayet, author of THE WOKE SUPREMACY: An Anti-Socialist Manifesto, because liberals are “wedded to the childish philosophy of ‘multiculturalism’…the fantasy that all cultures are equally good. It is why they “believe we should ‘celebrate diversity,’ as if all differences––say freedom of religion and massacring all infidels––are equally worthy of celebration.”

“We laugh at the stupidity of the Democrats who go after cartoon skunks, plastic potatoes and pancake syrups,” Sayet continues, “wondering if anything is too small for them not to be outraged about. The answer is no. Totalitarian means total––right down to the tiniest things. It’s the way it was in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and every other Leftist regime. It’s the way it is with the Woke Supremacist movement of today.”

The entire world, in fact, had a close-up view of this ugly trait while witnessing the four years of uncontrolled rage, fury, acting-out, and widespread criminal acts after the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016. This was the behavior of poor losers.

But even in the flush of electoral victories, liberals are unable to conceal their endemic rage and inevitably reveal themselves as sore winners! Even today, six months after the, ahem, election of Democrat Joe Biden, they’ve been unable to recover from President Donald J. Trump! No surprise….they still haven’t recovered from George W. Bush’s defeat of Al Gore in 2000!

SYMPTOM #5: THE JEALOUSY FACTOR

Nothing is quite as potent as the second-most powerful emotion on earth––jealousy! (The first, of course is fear, as the recent pandemic proved beyond a shadow of a doubt).

The Cancel Culture that liberals created is really about not being able to win arguments about political policy and philosophy with objective, empirical evidence and being so envious of their rivals that they resort to eliminating, annihilating, guillotining every vestige of opposition they face, or, as writer Larry Greenfield documents, “bullying, boycotting, pressuring, and punishing” anyone who disagrees with them. It’s also about:

• Tearing down historically important statues, including those of black heroes,
• Burning books, the greatest offenders being Dr. Seuss and Huckleberry Finn,
• Using athletes like Colin Kaepernick to take a knee and LeBron James to threaten a heroic policeman––both of them, as my diplomatic late mother used to say, “not overburdened with brains.”
• Applauding and encouraging criminals from Antifa and Black Lives Matter to continue to commit arson, theft, assault, and murder to further their cause.

But as journalist and author Parker Beauregard writes: “If all blacks are oppressed, how did we get a black president? Twice, for that matter? A black female vice president? How come Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Patrisse Cullors, and Ben Crump are millionaires while waging war in the supposed white supremacist legal system? Oprah and LeBron are worth billions. Throw in a few hundred thousand other examples, and suddenly the BLM contrivance is absurdly debunked.

“The message by the fraudulent, deceptive, and ultimately murderous black hustlers like Obama and LeBron,” Beauregard continues, “is that the rest of black America [are] poor and helpless, and need the ‘better’ blacks to lift them out. How has that been going for the past half century?

“Instead of selling oppression, what these morally bereft people should be packaging is the message that ‘If I can do it, you can do it too – and here’s how.’ How hard would it be for black leaders to exhort other blacks to follow their lead of hard work, perseverance, and goal orientation?’”

SYMPTOM #6: THE VICTIMS-R-US FACTOR

In their childlike eyes, liberals consider just about everyone––and often anything––as both needy and helpless, including three-inch-long delta smelt in California which inspired the insane leftist Democrats who run that state to lock down billions of gallons of water to its citizens for years to “protect”––instead of relocate––this teeny tiny plankton-eating minnow!

But they don’t stop there! There is not a gay or black or Hispanic or female or Muslim or illegal or criminal who liberals don’t consider victims. It’s an industry with them, to revile as they do the majority of Americans who value accountability, independent problem solving, and the central role of law and order in society instead of Big Government dependency.

To paraphrase poet Kim Addonizio, it’s as if liberals encourage the people they consider victims to “sew rhinestones on their traumas so they can wear them to a pain festival.”

This is because suffering, or perceived suffering, animates them, makes them feel useful, like saviors, and, of course, virtuous.

SYMPTOM #7: THE CONCEIT FACTOR

Liberals entertain the conceit that they are quite evolved and superior, both morally and intellectually. In their childlike minds, they are “good” and the people who set limits, demand accountability, expect empirical results, fight their enemies, and also make judgments about what is good and bad and right and wrong are “bad.”

Liberals also socialize with like-minded people and rely on the same “experts” to guide their thinking and, of course, feelings.

“Follow the science,” liberals bleat when anyone challenges the lies they tell themselves and others about man-made global warming––which has no science behind it and which writer Guy K. Mitchell calls the biggest scientific fraud in history!

In fact, it is why the editors at IssuesInsights.com write of “the smug arrogance of the ‘science’ crowd” and say that “in reality, they are the Party of Science Fiction,” and the reason they close down dialogue is because “they know their ideas are empty of substance and therefore [they] need to shout down, cancel, and indict those who dare think differently.”

“Listen to the experts,” liberals angrily dictate, when anyone challenges the advice about the coronavirus given by the World Health Organization (WHO)––which has admitted its erroneous pronouncements, or of the horrible choice of Dr. Anthony Fauci––who is almost always wrong––to be the major spokesman and “expert” about the Wuhan-generated pandemic, as journalist Roger L. Simon spells out.

“It says in the NY Times,” liberals pronounce with full intellectual pretense, and yet author Bob Kohn has exploded the myth of this newspaper’s integrity and accuracy in his blockbuster book, Journalistic Fraud: How the New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted.

Yet these snooty children in adult clothing continue to harbor the conceit that––in between their temper tantrums––they are the embodiment of integrity and righteousness. This comes, of course, with the infantile proclivity for fooling oneself.

SYMPTOM #8: THE INTOLERANCE FACTOR

“Since Trump was elected, my childhood best friend––going back 45 years––won’t talk to me,” a friend confided. Others report that even once-close family members sound more like CNN sound bites than blood relatives. This is because children do not know how to tolerate dissenting or conflicting opinions.

Not only do liberals call names, spew insults, and stamp their feet at any dissent, they also line up allies in the leftist media, left-wing think tanks, and Big Tech to crush any challenge of their fantastical lies.

Much worse, they’ve aligned themselves with America’s mortal enemies, as the Biden regime has just done with Iran.

WATCH FOR YOURSELF

Happily, you don’t have to take my word for it. Just turn to any of the network or cable news channels––with the exceptions of Fox, OAN, and Newsmax––and simply observe their commentators and anchors and other talking heads display their rather sinister pathology close up.

Observe the symptoms I’ve mentioned. Note the anger, the pessimism, the negativity, the name-calling, the bursts of rage, the gratuitous insults, the desire to present an image of “goodness,” the transparent attempt to be liked, the willingness to change an opinion if the old one isn’t polling well, and the eagerness to placate our nation’s enemies, the better to avoid a fight so those enemies will “like” us.

Bottom line, the entire world is now witnessing a regime of fixated Liberal-Leftist-Progressive children trying to run the most powerful country on earth, when what they really need is psychotropic medication, behavioral therapy, and a Congress with enough backbone to banish Voter Fraud forever!

© Joan Swirsky

Joan Swirsky

Joan Swirsky (www.joanswirsky.com) is a New York-based journalist and author who wrote for the NY Times for over 20 years. She has been writing columns on conservative issues for various internet sites for the past 30 years. She can be reached at joanswirsky@gmail.com.

Published with Permission of joanswirsky.com