"raise my taxes, and take care of everyone."
I think that doesn't work politically because "everyone" includes people who aren't white.
It's so fucking dystopian to have a fundraiser where the poor sick kid has to show up in person and be the center of attention all day at the faux-carnival-party designed to help their parents with a smidgen of the staggering weight of the health care bills.
(By all means have a party for the sick kid. Obviously that's not what I'm mad at. There's a very specific poster downstairs from my office about the bad kind of party for a sick kid.)
Also, what on earth are they possibly going to be able to raise, at this party? $1K? $2K? Nothing.
But if you do that, how on earth are you going to ensure that this 'everyone' deserves it?
(Seriously, though. This is a huge fundamental difference in mindset that I have no idea how to overcome.)
What if we went back in time and murdered the Puritans? I feel like that would make America less of an assholish place.
You could stop off on the way and murder baby Hitler while you're at it.
I wasn't going to post about this but since eliminationist rhetoric is topical: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/03/frank-rich-trump-voter-liberal-eliminationist-rhetoric.html
Stolen from Matt Bruenig:
At their best, [pieces like Frank's] say we should not care about Trump voters and, at their worst, they say we should actively wish them harm.
But do these authors actually mean this for all Trump voters, most of whom are women and people of color? Should we not care if a black Trump supporter (and there were some) gets harassed by a nationwide stop-and-frisk policy like the one Trump has said he supports? Should we not care if a woman Trump supporter (and there were lots) loses access to maternity care or contraception as seemed to be a definite possibility before the collapse of the AHCA? Is that really the position of these authors?.
The answer of course is "no." The liberal bent of these authors ensures that they would not wish (or be indifferent towards) gender-based oppression on the women who supported Trump. They also would not wish (or be indifferent towards) race-based oppression on the people of color who supported Trump. The only thing they feel comfortable doing is wishing (or being indifferent towards) class-based oppression on rednecks. I wonder why that is.
But do these authors actually mean this for all Trump voters, most of whom are women and people of color?
Is this performance art?
It is definitely artful. It isn't surprising that it happens to be true if you think about it. Trump won among white women after all.
The only thing they feel comfortable doing is wishing (or being indifferent towards) class-based oppression on rednecks. I wonder why that is.
The only thing? Where are middle-class white men in this analysis?
I see he does sort of address my questions in 10:
The same exit poll also says that whites without a college degree were 34% of all voters and 66% of them went for Trump. This means they contributed 22.44 of Trump's points, which is also a minority of his points. So, in addition to the above factoid, it's also true that most of Trump's voters are not white working class people. Should we also be indifferent to the non-WWC Trump supporters, i.e. most of the Trump supporters? Or still only the hill folk?
So: because white men make up such an outsized portion of the media and public speech in this country, we should be shocked to learn that they are only 34% of the country, and thus even though they are even more overwhelmingly the voice and face of Trump supporters, we should go strictly by the numbers when apportioning our ire and focus on the other, quieter groups.
The quiet Trump supporters are the most dangerous because they can sneak up on you.
I apportion my ire to the marginal Trump voter, not the base. His name is James Comey.
I don't think we should be mad at women or people of color and I'm pretty sure that wasn't Matt's point, but I knew people here generally wouldn't be sympathetic to his real point. Heck I'm not always.
I miss when it was just apostropher who posted links that you had to remember not to follow for the good of your mental health.
Why should any discussions whatsoever emerge from implications of the oeuvre of Frank Rich?
I kind of don't get the point of stuff like the article linked in 7. Among all the available injustices demanding righteous outrage, why is a presumably well-meaning lefty like Lambert Strether spending 1500 words castigating Frank Rich for "eliminationist rhetoric?" The impulse to want to see people pay the price for foolish decisions is pretty universal (see, "if you didn't want a baby you shouldn't have opened your legs for that boy" and "taking drugs was your choice so no way are my taxes paying for your rehab," "if you don't like AIDS maybe you shouldn't have been so promiscuous," etc.).
Okay, so Frank Rich is a big meanie for wishing the hillbillies get the healthcare they voted for, but I bet he still supports universal coverage. I don't think it's such a bad message for liberals that they should stop knocking themselves out to empathise with racist, xenophobic assholes and instead just keep honouring their humanity by continuing to pursue policies that benefit the assholes along with everybody else, whether they like it or not.
I haven't emailed anyone to propose it, but I'd like a thread discussing/dissecting the latest white-despair paper. Link to the paper on this site. Thinkpieces are everywhere; just search on "white despair."
In our account here, we emphasize the labor market, globalization and technical change as the fundamental forces, and put less focus on any loss of virtue, though we cer- tainly accept that the latter could be a consequence of the former. Virtue is easier to main- tain in a supportive environment. Yet there is surely general agreement on the roles played by changing beliefs and attitudes, particularly the acceptance of cohabitation, and of the rearing of children in unstable cohabiting unions.
They hedge their working theory a hell of a lot. I approach research like this with a great deal of skepticism, probably more than is warranted, but the ping-pong between economic moralism and lifestyle moralism was very wearying to read. I haven't seen a good critique, just a lot of "gee, that's super sad, the poor people, I guess the election was like white America's suicide note or something, kind of a shame for them to derail an entire passenger train tho."
If Trump voters want my sympathy, they need to stop behaving contemptibly -- that is to say, they need to stop being Trump voters.
I'm able to work up a bit of sympathy for uneducated folks who were misled by the media. But the answer to that is to communicate the truth to people: That Donald Trump is a disgrace, and that the people who support him -- and, incidentally, the ones like Bruenig who downplay the differences between Trump and the Democrats -- are complicit in his crimes.
5 I understand the sentiment, but if you look at who's doing what these days, maybe the better answer is to go back and, I don't know, make Protestants stay in Ireland or something.
It's funny how quickly we run from "Trump voters live in angry fear of somebody getting a sandwich he doesn't deserve" to "Trump voters will get my sympathy when they damn well earn it."
Concern trolling is bullshit. Surely we can all agree on that.
why is a presumably well-meaning lefty like Lambert Strether spending 1500 words castigating Frank Rich for "eliminationist rhetoric?"
I don't know, but presumably it's related to the fact that Atrios, when not posting about autonomous cars or failed mall projects, spends most of his time subtweeting Dems and mainstream liberals. There's great demand on the left for this all to be Democrats' fault, and so every time someone raises another culprit--Comey, Russia, Trump voters--there's a lashing out.
I'm not entirely sure why female and minority Trump voters deserve less opprobrium. They either exercised shitty judgment or demonstrated an odious character, or both, to disastrous effect, just like white dudes. What's the big controversy?
subtweeting
I'm just going to have to come out and admit that I don't know what this means.
There's great demand on the left for this all to be Democrats' fault
But anyway, I have observed this as well and fuck me is it frustrating. I know that pointing out enemies is big fun, but we have a perfectly good pack of sociopathic hyenas on the right enthusiastically and effectively doing that job already so maybe we could just let them do it. Isn't that a great strength of the free market, division of labour?
What's the big controversy?
It was a not very smart reductio ad absurdum, I think.
He idea that the reason people didn't vote for Hillary Clinton was their individual, immutable moral failings is the kind of explanation you look for when do don't want to do politics and deflect blame from your own sides failures. That said that Matt Bruneig piece is sorta-dumb, but people wishing harm on entire demographics are actively being shitty.
He idea that the reason people didn't vote for Hillary Clinton was their individual, immutable moral failings is the kind of explanation you look for when do don't want to do politics and deflect blame from your own sides failures.
I don't know about 'immutable', or, really, I actively disagree with 'immutable'. But 'moral failings' I'm good with. Someone who voted for Trump, if they're not individually rich enough to have a realistic hope of being genuinely helped by his tax cuts, was either being an idiot, or actively attracted by the idea that Trump would hurt other people.
That doesn't mean Democrats don't have to do politics, but the politics they have to do is, at least in part, appealing to voters to be morally better people, and pointing out that they can be both morally better people and serve their own self-interest at the same time.
There's great demand on the left for this all to be Democrats' fault. . .
See, for example, Corey Robin's latest at CT, which drives me slightly crazy.
Quoting uncharitably
As I mentioned, I took a long break from the internet after November, in which I thought a lot about what and why I got wrong in the election. I wrote about that here: ... In the end, I think what I got wrong about the 2016 election was not that I under-estimated Trump but that I over-estimated Clinton and the Democrats.
I can't think of anyone to mention in particular, but people who aren't up to date on the latest twitter jargon are the worst. Don't @ me.
It's not so much that people on the left yearn for this all to be the Democrats' fault; it's that they yearn for it to be the Democrats' fault because the Democrats are stupid and greedy and hypocritical, and not just the ones at the top, either. I mean, broadly speaking I think that a lot of this is the Democrats' fault, but the biggest reason for that is that the Democrats face difficult problems. I think that in general Democratic answers to problems of inequality are wrong, but there's not exactly a shining track record of left success on this score either, so I tend to assume that with the exception of the very wealthy and powerful, most Democrats are genuinely trying to solve hard problems while avoiding creating other problems.
I think that's what's driving me batshit about the left - of which I am ostensibly a part! - right now, the idea that the only reason you'd hew to Democratic approaches is because you're a terrible greedy liar who loves neoliberalism, not because problems of inquality are complicated and not super tractable. I'm much more on the "let's have gay space communism" end of the political spectrum, but even gay space communism has a lot to prove - it's not just that everyone who isn't evil and selfish should naturally be lining up to join.
29: Assuming I'm using the term correctly, it's where you write something* that is clearly a response to/criticism of something someone else has written without linking or naming. The original writing is presumed to be so widely read as to be understood, but there's a passive-aggressive aspect to it.
*obviously the term originated on Twitter, but I'm using it to talk about Atrios' blog
In democratic politics you have to either sell your message to enough people to win, or disenfranchise people that don't vote for you. When it comes to Trump voters you either have to like stop vulnerable demographics from voting (like rural whites which I would be on board with) or convince enough of them to vote for you. Whining about how evil the electorate is isn't politics, is just whining, even if it's true.
I also think you underestimate the appeal of Trumps positive message. Things are bad and getting worse, which is true for huge demographics in the United States and I'm going to fix them, you could say they were idiots for believing it, but you coud say the same thing about people who voted for Obama thinking he'd prevent their incomes from declining, or help unions, or whatever.
the idea that the only reason you'd hew to Democratic approaches is because you're a terrible greedy liar who loves neoliberalism,
Unfortunately, a side effect of Sanders' surprise success seems to have been an enormous increase in insufferability on the part of many on the left. It seems that having lost by less than expected has convinced them that, not only are they morally correct (which presumably they always believed*), but also that their position is such an obvious political winner that the only reason to oppose it is, as you say, evil greedy neoliberalism.
I saw some anonymously-created image touting Bernie for his sole sponsorship of soon-to-be-introduced Medicare for All legislation. It noted that he's the most popular politician in America. So let's set aside his political acumen in being unable to find a single co-sponsor for this not-at-all-symbolic proposal and just note the very obvious fact that he's really popular because, unlike literally every other pol you can name, he's never been attacked by the opposing party. But there's that needy, grasping superlative, as if obviously everybody should get behind him ASAP, since he'd probably have won the election by like 90-10.
It all just seems so hopelessly disconnected from the actual battles of the moment. Not because nobody should be advocating for left solutions, but because the rhetoric and stances don't relate at all to the moment.
*and rightly so; I'd hope that most activists aren't just bullshitting.
Agree completely with 35/38 and it explains my frustration with the Corey Robin piece. "The Democrats just weren't ready to win" is the laziest possible bit of analysis.
Whining about how evil the electorate Democratic Party is isn't politics, is just whining, even if it's true.
I'm undecided on the "Bernie would have won" vs. "Bernie would have crashed once they went after him" argument. But the argument that he was an automatic loser because the bad word Soshulist was attached to him I think is incorrect. The racist authoritarian 4x bankrupt sex abusing pigfucker label didn't stick to Trump even though there was ample evidence supporting it.
Things are bad and getting worse, which is true for huge demographics in the United States and I'm going to fix them, you could say they were idiots for believing it
So far he's done the racist stuff but none of the fixing thing stuff, and his core supporters--the ones who backed him in the primaries--don't have a problem with this at all. Which says to me that the fixing part was never the important part to them.
There seems to be this weird idea that Trump is the first pol ever to promise to make things better for the Rust Belt. That's not actually the case. He's the first one who's said that while also saying that he'd make things worse for blacks, Mexicans, and Muslims. It's absolutely true that, if you give a coal miner two candidates who say they hate minorities, but only one of the says he loves coal mining, then the miners will vote for that guy, but it's also the case that if you give a coal miner two candidates who say they love coal mining, but only one of them says he hates minorities, that's the one who gets the miner vote.
It's a package deal, and it's bullshit to pretend that the part you like is the decisive one.
43: What do you mean it didn't stick to him? That's why they voted for him.
True, I guess "weren't necessarily negative" is the more correct thing to say. When people were mad at big banks and Wall St. he arguably could have made socialist a positive label.
43: to what do you attribute Sanders' loss of the primary?
44. I don't think that's true at all: west Virgina went for the dems in 88, 92 and 96.
And no, I'm whining about how to do politics, it's second order whining and it's different.
Also inequality is easy to solve, you have high taxes on the wealthy that you use to fund universal public services. It can be hard to maintain a political coalition for, because the wealthy have more power than the poor.
I love 36, from the perspective of a dull, cautious liberal who kind of yearns toward gay space communism.
you coud say the same thing about people who voted for Obama thinking he'd prevent their incomes from declining, or help unions,
You could say the same thing about Trump voters and Obama voters, but you'd be right about the Trump voters and wrong about the Obama voters. Obama was very, very, very far from perfect, and I'm sure there were people who believed better or him than he deserved. But someone who thought he'd be better for protecting unions, or the incomes of poor Americans, than McCain or Romney would have been straightforwardly right -- he didn't do enough, but he did more than the alternative. Someone who thinks Trump is going to do more for them than Clinton would have is an idiot.
I love 36
Huh, I had lost track of comment numbers. I intended to second 36, not 35/38.
Sure, but the point is: winning elections by making promises you can't, or maybe even don't intend to, keep is a time honored tradition of both parties.
49 is right.
Also, high marginal tax rates increase employment for the marginally employable. If you are in a 90% marginal tax bracket, employing someone at $10 an hour only takes $1 out of your pocket and you use that cheap labor to buils capital gains that are not taxable wealth until sold. We have been through this before and it was a large part of why the 50's and 60's were pretty good times for employees.
Lumping together not keeping promises the way Obama didn't, and the way Trump isn't, is fundamentally confused. Obama's rhetoric had a meaningful relationship to what he was trying to do in office, and the positive parts of Trump's rhetoric don't.
I can sympathize with someone who thinks that Obama is far enough from ideal that it would be better if our entire political system were blown up and replaced with something better. But anyone who either thought Trump was likely to do that, or was likely to do them any good while maintaining a recognizable version of the current political system, is an entirely different kind of fool than someone who voted for Obama as their best available option.
"presumably well-meaning lefty like Lambert Strether"
You presume wrong.
I don't find that distinction between rheoric and action particularly important, Obama didn't keep his promises, and Trump isn't either. And whether or not the poor incomes decline less over the Trumo presidency than the Obama ones or whatever, is an empirical question we'll have to wait for.
That's not really the extent of the distinction. Trump's promises were literally impossible* (except the ones that are just fucking horrible like the wall). Obama's were in the range of what could have been done if he's won a bigger bunch of congress people.
* For example, his health care plan.
It also leaves aside the fact that Obama very visibly tried to keep the promises he made and was unable to keep where as Trump very obviously did not even try (for example, backing Ryan's health care plan).
I guess I should clarify I mean I don't think it's politically important. Are you more of a sucker for voting for Obama to pass card-check even though Obama surely knew it was politically impossible, then Trump and his bringing coal jobs back? I don't know. I'm also less conduct that you that Obama cared about stuff like declining incomes of the collapse of working class wealth in the forclosure crisis, I mean he didn't use the tools he was given.
Sorry that last post has multiple errors in it, iPhone. Anyways I'm not actually interested in litigating who is less honest (Trump) but pointing out its hard to blame people for voting for the guy who says he's going to help you.
Lumping together not keeping promises the way Obama didn't, and the way Trump isn't, is fundamentally confused. disingenuous
61: Is that all we're arguing about? Sure, it's hard to blame people for that specifically, but that doesn't mean there aren't other things that are easier to blame them for.
I don't know
You may not, but I do. Governance isn't a matter of one issue -- for all the things Obama failed to get done, he did get others done: the ACA is the obvious, but there's eight years of, e.g., running the EPA sanely. Beginning to do something reasonable about climate change, and so on. And all of that is what you'd expect from listening to the promises he made, even if he didn't fulfill all of them, so a voter who listened to those promises would be justified in thinking they hadn't been irrational in relying on them.
"Bringing coal jobs back," on the other hand, is just sheer fantasy. No relationship with anything that's going to happen. So, yes, the Trump voter is much, much more of a sucker.
And to the extent they weren't suckers, they weren't hoping Trump would help them. They were rooting for him to hurt other people.
And to the extent they weren't suckers, they weren't hoping Trump would help them. They were rooting for him to hurt other people.
A promise he has delivered on, to the evident satisfaction of that segment of his supporters.
"Bringing coal jobs back," on the other hand, is just sheer fantasy.
Brad DeLong just posted this editorial from the Roanoke Times
If Barack Obama-famous for waging a "war on coal"-could see fit to include more than $3 billion for clean coal research in his stimulus package, surely Trump would do even better, right? Wrong.... Trump's proposed budget cuts funding for energy research by almost 18 percent--$2 billion... with few details attached, [so] it's unclear just how much, if any, money would remain for the Office of Fossil Energy to spend on clean coal.... [The] Heritage Foundation, whose ideas formed the basis for Trump's budget... proposed eliminating the office entirely. The CEOs of the nation's three largest coal companies were so alarmed that they recently joined with the United Mine Workers to send a letter to Trump, pleading with him to preserve funding for clean coal research, something they never had to worry about under Obama. . . .
This 9:30 PM tweetstorm from Trump is a bit worrying. Like someone being drunk at 10 AM.
We can't ask single mothers in Detroit or coal miners to pay for those programs oh wait.
Nightshift coal miners were often drunk at 10:00 a.m.
67 I've been trying to resist the temptation but it's hard not to schadenfreude at that. It's all too much scorpion and the frog.
is to go back and, I don't know, make Protestants stay in Ireland or something.
On the one hand, if you're saying, Don't blame the English Puritans, blame the Ulster-to-Appalachia Scots-Irish, I guess I sort of agree with you.
On the other hand, Ulster Protestant emigration to Canada was pretty significant; and at one point in the late nineteenth century, there were actually more Orange lodges in Canada than in Ulster (I kid you not!). But today's Canadian descendants of these Ulster Irish (who didn't call themselves 'Scots-Irish' in Canada, interestingly enough) would no more join a Catholic-bashing parade than give up single-payer health care, so I dunno. There was nothing inevitably reactionary and Trumpian about these Irish Protestants, is what I mean to say. Which seems a glaringly obvious point, except that we now have all these thinkpieces which blame coastal elite liberals for not understanding the 'natural' roots of Appalachian resentment, which is sort of annoying, not to mention ahistorical.
Of the four founding British folkways described in Albion's Seed, they're all pretty shit except for the Quakers.
Combining various threads: an article in "AOL" linked from the Google news feed (I did not click through) with the headline: "Whites without a college degree are dying in America, that's why they voted for Donald Trump." DEAD WHITES SWELLED THE VOTER ROLLS WITH THEIR VENGEFUL COMMA SPLICES.
72: I think the experiences of the Scots-Irish north and south of the border aren't super comparable. Those who immigrated to the 13 Colonies came much earlier than those who went to Canada*, coming over during a different phase of the colonization of Ulster, and took on a new identity fairly early on. There's a large and persistent group of people who identify their ethnicity as "American"**; do yous have something similar? Likewise, I think there was much more room for the Orange Orderlies to be a powerful part of mainstream society; while we have had Scots-Irish presidents, I think Presbyterians have been historically more dominant in Canada than here?
Anyway, nothing "natural"; just I think there are real long term historical trends that are going to be hard to pull apart in the short term. I do think there is a strong reactionary force there that's tends to be opposed to non-local power and distrusts authority. I don't think that's necessarily Trumpian, and it really shouldn't be--he's a fucking rich boy from New York! But you're much more informed on this than I am and am happy to be called on my rambling bullshit.
* Or my own Scots-Irish ancestors, who didn't come to Pennsylvania until the 1880s and settled in what would become exurban Philly after a number of years in the city--not the usual flee-to-the-frontier path. Although I guess the foothills of South Mountain are still tenuously Appalachia.
** Scots-Irish isn't used here much outside of academic work, but that might be changing; Scotch-Irish seems more common. I hardly ever see Ulster Scots in North American sources. Self-identification is even worse since "Scots-Irish" is a weird and confusing identifier if you don't know the history, especially when "American" is right there.
"presumably well-meaning lefty like Lambert Strether"
The guy who spent days flipping out about an Obama hand gesture? There's a voice in politics we just can't do without. Let's all stop and discuss what he says right now.
OT: For people who've experienced chronic or treatment-resistant depression, are there any things you've tried that appeared to make a positive difference? Specifics appreciated.
67, 71: It's like Trump is pushing for the ownership society, but for petards.
75: When I was a small child, my dad took me to Richmond, Ontario, where a local building had a larger-than-life-sized mural of King Billy on a white horse. "Goddamn Orangemen," my dad said. "But I guess it's all ancient history," he added. (Well, not so ancient, since that mural had been painted within the past fifty years or so of our viewing). But the post-World War II consensus had made both Orangeism and Catholic revanchism look both silly and archaic. There was a new Canada in the making, and both Irish Catholics and Ulster Protestants were willing to sign on.
77 Hell yes.
Mostly behavioral as I never had success with medications that didn't have unwanted side effects or complications. Keep up with hygiene no matter what even non-basic stuff. Like I always try to shave every morning no matter what and going a few days without shaving is a clear danger signal to me. Stuff like brushing teeth even more so. If I'm in the middle of a bad time (and with depression I've been fortunate that it's been awhile) I'll force myself to go out every day whether I want to or not. When I went to a gym this would include regular gym going. Routines are good. Getting outside is good. Interacting with people is good. Doing something nice for yourself like going to a movie is good (sitting at home and watching TV all day - not good).
And having some life goal on mind that I was working towards even if a number of years in the future was also key.
I don't know what else to add and I know that's not much but feel free to email or DM my Twitter.
77: Regular unspectacular exercise is better than nothing. Bicycling, preferably with goals but pointful ones: ie going to places you have not been rather than going faster.
The deployment of willpower towards tiny tangible goals, even if only getting the washing up done or getting out of bed. This is about the only one which can always be resorted to, since there is always something which seems impossible but is not, along with all the other things which seem that way and are.
The avoidance of alcohol helps to stop things getting worse. An improvement in whatever life circumstance is making you miserable (since I regard depression as curdled unhappiness, which then takes on a life of its own) may help over time. But of course that's not often very realistic.
77: Kinda-sorta (never diagnosed or treated). Everything Barry says makes sense.
7: Just for the record, yes, I am indifferent to oppression of all Trump voters. They voted for it. Fuck them.
77 cont sitting quietly in old churches and just allowing yourself to feel what you do. Remembering that countless others have been there -- physically as well -- before you. Take no notice at those moments of any thoughts about what you're supposed to think or feel.
Carefully chosen reading of light books in which the characters never repine. Pratchett. Wodehouse used to work for me but no longer does.
Second Barry's remarks about hygeine.
Chopping wood and making fires in winter. Time by water. Whatever brings you into the present.
I fully endorse 82. I would just add to 82.2: "The routinizeddeployment of willpower towards tiny tangible goals"
But do not let it get to you if and when you flub it. Set your mind to the next tiny tangible goal. Always. Never follow a tiny failure down. Let it go and onto the next.
Forgot to add a space there.
Everything NW says.
73: And when do we get our sequels? It's going on 30 years now, and I would enjoy reading them.
77: No disagreement with exercise as a therapy, but telling a depressed person to exercise regularly can be like telling an overweight person to eat less: it would work if it could be done.
The unconventional medical therapy that worked for me is oxytocin,* traditionally prescribed only for pregnant women (I'm a dude). Most American psychiatrists never heard of it. You need a European-trained psychiatrist or possibly an American endocrinologist.
*Also known as the dyslexic's narcotic, after a veterinarian reported a break in and theft of the stuff. Actually unrelated to hillbilly heroin.
91: You don't need to pull out if you've had a vasectomy.
79: That sounds so different from here. But I guess our problems were never really the same on that front. For one thing, I don't think you've had as much geographical segregation (on the level of regions) along these ethnic lines.
92: Thanks for pointing that out; "my radical solution to depression...is opioids" seemed unhelpful.
If you have some, I'll try to crush it and snort it anyway.
Opioids can make a lot of problems seem to go away.
Thanks, all. I'm struggling with the routinized aspect, but I think putting some energy there might help a bunch.
77: Try to avoid avoidance. Letting things pile up leads to anxiety and paralysis. Crossing items off your to-do list, even minor ones, can help a lot.
I've always had difficulty mapping my Irish inheritance onto identities here, in the US: the concept is more sectarian here.
My grandmother thought of herself as Irish, although born in Canada in 1885. The family was from Ulster, but had few of the hallmarks of "Scotch Irish" culture as I've encountered it, or read about from Fisher and Webb et al. One tell is that they were Anglicans, Episcopalians as we would say, not Baptists or Presbyterians.
My Dad's family on that side cheered the early stages of the Independence movement, and would tell you how many leaders of that and of the literary renaissance before it were Protestants like themselves, with a family history going back long before Cromwell in Ireland. My father claimed their name was unheard of among the Scotch Irish.
As I say, Irishness has a sectarian quality in this country, and to a considerable extent in Canada also. It was hard to keep up, dissonant as an identity if you fell outside that sectarian definition.
I remember exploring all this with the late Frank Kinahan, my professor in grad school at U of C in the seventies, one of my happiest memories from that time. He died way too young.
99: Definitely. There's no conception of the Anglo-Irish in this country; I don't know if that's because so few came here--not that there were necessarily many to start with--or if they most just adopted a WASP identity.
Topically, I just got a GoFundMe request to contribute to surgery for a little girl's horse. I really like all of the people involved, but this is nuts, even leaving aside the idea of paying for somebody elses hobbies. $10,000 to fix a horse? Why not just get a new one that isn't hobbled?
since I regard depression as curdled unhappiness
That seems like a pretty limited understanding of depression.
Microdosing LSD is not the kind of thing I would ever do, but the anecdotal research is interesting.
One tactic I find really helpful is to line things up in advance so that I'm forced to get out of the house: buy movie tickets in advance, pay for a trainer so that not going to the gym costs me money, make plans with the kind of friend who won't easily let you blow them off, sign up for a volunteer shift, or sign up for a class.
Park in the street the night before street cleaning.
77: I know people who didn't respond well to SSRIS but had marked improvement from amphetamines/Adderall via telling a doc what they wanted to hear for an adult ADD diagnosis. And every so often it seems to work well to take a month off and resensitize by substituting modafanil.
That be tweaking.
Is John Wick 2 appropriate for a ten-year-old? I don't really want to see Boss Baby.
I'm going to assume that's a "yes".
I haven't read the whole thread but I'm impatient to join the 36 love heap.
109: That be a known effect from stimulants without a lot of the side effects the other medications bring.
99. I had a remote cousin in Canada who was Scots Irish and Anglican at about the same date. Didn't stop him being more orange than Donald Trump. I wonder if the CoI lost ground in the North to the various Presbyterian factions during the 20th century.
108: I am one of those people, although I thought of it less as telling the doctor what he wanted to hear and more like, well maybe this is my real issue. Disentangling the unsurprising comorbidity of ADD and depression is an interesting problem I hope someone will work out.
Late to the game on the depression discussion, but anecdotally I've found that 10,000 IUs of Vitamin D every morning has helped this winter.
Other than that, projects, getting involved in political stuff, commenting a bit more here, and so on have all also seemed to helped.
Less applicable for you, but a new romantic relationship has also helped. If I could just find a damn job I actually think I'd be in a pretty good place.
I was thinking that if we saw John Wick, it would at least convey to him how much responsibility it would be if he got a puppy like he wants.
108: Modafinil is expensive - unless it's come out as a generic. Consequently, a lot of insurance companies are loath to cover it unless you have a precise diagnosis from a sleep specialist.
How treatment resistant are we talking? ECT works. Depending on your flavor of depression, the timing of light can help. See this info on chronotherapy here and here.
More frequent therapy, if you can afford it, can also be helpful.
10,000 iu vitamin D is on the higher side, but when I added vitamin D (after my doctor checked my level) my winter depressions were not as bad.
My recommendations were for chronic, low-level grumbling depression, not for the really acute stuff.
As for the curdled unhappiness, when I look back on my own episodes, they have all been triggered by something external, even if the tendency to fold up that way is internal (or internalised, who knows?)
OT: The edge of Robber Baron U at four thirty on a Sunday morning is a weird place. Instead of drunk people drifting home, there are very sober-looking kids carrying model cars that have long handles.
I don't see how the intolerability of contemporary America could be any better demonstrated.
Guy next to me is explaining something called "universal algebra". He has the guy he's talking too convinced but not me. He said this was something that happened at Vanderbilt and I've met people from there.
Also, he's wearing a sweater vest without irony.
Also, there's a priest in the old-style collar plus the whole cassock. If this were a train, I'd be looking for the dapper Belgian.
Nobody stabbed. I guess point to the TSA.
Modafinil is expensive - unless it's come out as a generic
Of course in my job I could never tell that person to get it from somewhere like a/f/in/il/exp/re/ss/.co/m/
Great now the spambots are imitating real comments, or vice versa.
I know what universal algebra is.
We should talk about math more on this site -- it's the only time I don't think I'm in the dumb half of Unfogged.
Is Vanderbilt really known for it?
I don't know, but I blame them for the inability of Americans to punctuate Dutch names correctly.
134: It is. They have McKenzie, who is perhaps the top figure in the field.