Elon Musk working on Orgasmatron, part 2

Elon Musk better make sure that he doesn't try his Orgasmatron out on Jane Fonda. He will find that it won't be able to keep up with her.

(And this bimbo is, according to Colbert, the "icon of the Baby Boomer generation." How embarrassing if she is.)

The politicization of psychiatry, part 3

Andrew Sullivan, in a column entitled This Is What the Trump Abyss Looks Like, takes his cue from the Duty to Warn movement (see here and here), and attacks Trump as "psychologically unwell:"

And we know something after a year of this. It will go on. This is not a function of strategy or what we might ordinarily describe as will. It is because this president is so psychologically disordered he cannot behave in any other way. His emotions control his mind; his narcissism overwhelms even basic self-interest, let alone the interest of the country as a whole. He cannot unite the country, even if, somewhere in his fathomless vanity, he wants to. And he cannot stop this manic defense of ego because if he did, his very self would collapse. This is why he lies and why he cannot admit a single one of them. He is psychologically incapable of accepting that he could be wrong and someone else could be right. His impulse - which he cannot control - is simply to assault the person who points out the error, or blame someone else for it. Remember his excruciating pre-election admission that his foul racist lies about Obama’s birthplace originated with Hillary Clinton? That’s as good as you’ll get and it’s the only concession to reality he has made so far. And do not underestimate the stamina of the psychologically unwell. They will exhaust you long before they will ever exhaust themselves. [emphasis added]

And we are being asked to believe that it is Donald Trump and not the despondent person who wrote this who is psychologically unwell. Talk about unhinged, Andrew!

I would love to be a fly on the wall of the offices of psychiatrists in New York, San Francisco, and Washington these days to find out exactly how many Never Trumpers, even a year later, still cannot bring themselves to accept the reality that the Donald defeated Hillary and are reporting grievous psychological distress to their Duty to Warn shrinks as a result of it. "Doc, I feel like I've fallen into an abyss."

All I can say to the author is what I said to David Remnick of The New Yorker last year right after the election: Andrew, it's probably best just to end it all right now.

ROTFLMAO.

Elon Musk working on Orgasmatron

WSJ reports that Elon Musk is starting a company to meld brains and computers:

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Thursday confirmed plans for his newest company, called Neuralink Corp., revealing he will be the chief executive of a startup that aims to merge computers with brains so humans could one day engage in “consensual telepathy.”

Isn't "consensual telepathy" what up until now has generally been referred to as "conversing?"

I'm not so sure that I want to hear about other forms of human intimacy that Elon wants to "improve."

The politicization of psychiatry, part 2

For more context on the Duty to Warn movement, see the March, 2017 letter from the American Psychiatry Association reaffirming its support for the so-called Goldwater Rule:

Today, APA’s Ethics Committee issued an opinion that reaffirms our organization’s support for “The Goldwater Rule,” which asserts that psychiatrists should not give professional opinions about the mental state of individuals that they have not personally and thoroughly evaluated.

At least a few shrinks have some common sense.

Even if the shrinks' analysis were correct, they should never take sides in a political controversy. They run the risk of destroying the presumption of impartiality that psychiatry has. But, I am sure that, like all good liberals these days, they feel that speaking out is a moral imperative. After all, they have a duty to warn. Oh please!

The politicization of psychiatry

It is not enough that late night comedy, the Academy Awards, and the NFL have been politicized. Now even psychiatry has to be politicized, too.

In other words, a few shrinks disagree with The Donald's politics, so they are going to label him as psychologically unfit to serve as president.

The logical extension of this would be that these same shrinks should screen all political candidates beforehand since obviously only shrinks are qualified to tell us who is and who is not psychologically fit for office. I wonder what kind of candidates we would get as a result. Gee, do you think we would get many (any) conservatives? I wonder what the party affiliations of all the members of the Duty To Warn movement are. Would they screen me out if I said I was opposed to gay marriage? I know. I'm sick, sick, sick.

But what is truly astonishing is the utter tone deafness of these people to the political ramifications of their actions. Could anything undermine support for the Democratic Party in flyover country more than a bunch of pointy-headed, bi-coastal, whiny elites using post-modernist psychological gobbledygook (like "malignant normalization:" wow, such big words) to try to subvert a democratically elected president? Steve Bannon himself couldn't have come up with something better.

Hanoi Jane gave Harvey Weinstein a pass, but not American airmen

Compare these two resources (here and here) about Hanoi Jane Fonda.

In other words, in 2017 Hanoi Jane knew all about the sexual predations of Harvey Weinstein, but said and did nothing, whereas during the Vietnam War, this modern day Tokyo Rose broadcast over Radio Hanoi that all American airmen fighting in the Vietnam War were war criminals who should be executed.

Why she was never tried for treason and executed herself is something I will never understand. And this is the person that Jon Colbert calls "an icon of her generation."

Not even DiFi far enough left for Antifa California Democratic Party

Dianne Feinstein has announced that she is running for senator again from California.

At 84 years of age, Di, I think you probably should have hung them up. An 85+ year old senator from a young, vibrant state like California is as bad as a 60+ year old software engineer in Silicon Valley. Hopefully, DiFi will come to her senses and drop out of the race some time soon and spare herself the embarrassment of a humiliating defeat at the end of a distinguished political career.

That said, I also find it interesting how the left wing of the California Democratic Party has responded to Di's announcement, and seems to be turning against her not because she is too old, but because she is "out of touch with the progressive left." Dianne Feinstein has been a mainstay of California liberal politics for decades. Heck, the very definition of California liberal politics for many years has been: Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, and Nancy Pelosi. I can think of a lot of Democratic friends, in particular, older women voters, with whom attacks on Dianne as a right wing puppet are not going to sit well.

The fact that Dianne Feinstein, of all people, is being criticized as not liberal enough seems to be yet another sign of how out of touch the Antifa California Democratic Party is with the mood of many Americans outside the California echo chamber. Democrats are setting themselves up for a McGovern moment.

Trump should tweet:

Not even DiFi far enough left for Antifa California Democratic Party

This would accomplish several goals:

1. It would strengthen the narrative that DiFi is a Trump puppet, thereby weakening her among California voters.
2. It would strengthen the narrative that California Democratic Party has gone off the deep end.
3. It would drive a wedge between pro- and anti-Feinstein California Democrats.

Positioning himself against the Antifa California Democratic Party could turn out to work as well for Trump as positioning himself against NFL players who sit during the national anthem has. If the Democrats respond by saying, "Yes, we oppose Fascists like you.' Then, Trump responds by asking them whether that means Dems support Antifa violence against free speech on the UC Berkeley campus. If the Dems respond that they do not support that violence, then Trump should respond by asking them what they propose to do to stop it. Then, if the Dems seek to rein in the Antifa violence, Trump can claim that he has broken their movement; if they don't, every outburst of Antifa violence will simply reinforce Trump's narrative that the Democrats are just a bunch of black-shirted thugs.

In fact, Trump should come to Berkeley and seek to speak on the steps of Sproul Plaza, the cradle of the Free Speech Movement. When the protestors begin to shout him down, he should walk off the stage (just as Mike Pence walked out of the football game when the players protested during the national anthem), then announce that UC Berkeley has obviously become a "no-go zone for the President of the United States," where the ordinary rules of civility and free speech have been unilaterally suspended by the black-shirted, masked thugs of the Left, themselves the very fascists they rail against.

Such tactics could foment a civil war among California Democrats, accompanied by Antifa riots, that would move as many voters to the Right as the riots at the Democratic National Convention did in 1968.