Did we talk about the Tom Cotton NYT op-ed piece? Crossing fingers that Bennet and Bari get fired from the backlash.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/new-york-times-tom-cotton-staff-reaction.html

A pretty extraordinary BTS look at Times staffers pushing back vigorously against management and the publishing of that piece.

Why mass protest works to make your shitty leaders slightly less shit:

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/501035-gop-shifting-on-unemployment-benefits-as-jobless-numbers-swell — StreetlightX

This is great news, even if it's only slightly less shit.

One thing that frustrates me though is that the Republicans don't see the obvious solution to the problem of high unemployment pay discouraging return to work. Portman there is suggesting that "pay people to go back to work" idea, but if you're willing to do that and willing to give people unemployment money, why not just give people money unconditional of their work status? So that any money they make from work is on top of their "unemployment" money, and they have incentive to go back to work because it doesn't cost them to do so. I mean, if they want to call it a $450 unemployment boost plus a $450 back-to-work bonus, I don't care, it works out to the same thing, but it's dumb that they don't see it for what it is.

It's like some kind of income that's, at least at a basic level, universally available. Like a... a... universal... basic... income.

A pretty extraordinary BTS look at Times staffers pushing back vigorously against management and the publishing of that piece. — StreetlightX

I believe upper management stated that they didn't review the piece before it was published, although I wouldn't be surprised if that was an effort to save face (the alternative, reviewing it and publishing it being even worse). Certainly, there have been repugnant pieces published in the op-ed section of the NYT in the last few years under Bennet, but this piece in particular has the potential to shake things up.

BTS — StreetlightX

What is that?

Behind the scenes, sorry

Holy shit. The NYPD budget is $6 billion.

Is that city or State?

The Netherlands spends 4.5 billion per year for 18 million people. Budget is set to decrease slightly.
I do feel the Dutch police is not well equipped to handle large organised crime but on the other hand organised crime tends to stay in the shadows mostly. And obviously, if you're poor or even unemployed in NL, you're not as fucked as in the USA.

Did you know there's actually a very good economic argument to pay unemployed people well? Unemployed people are necessary to grease the wheels of the labour market. If everyone was employed, how are you going to replace that non-performing employee? You couldn't. So the unemployed perform the all important function of creating flexibility for companies and companies should be taxed for that opportunity so we can pay the unemployed a fair amount for their critical role in the functioning of the labour market.

so immigrants settling. But making the connections requires a global understanding that is rare. What one experiences are local events I'm doing badly, the town's doing badly, and the place is full of foreigners.

A perfect opportunity for the populist, the population feels desperate at the relentless economic decline in their area, while noticing a gradual increase in immigrants at the same time. The populists comes along a tells them that the former was caused by the latter. Bingo, the populist gets into power, the population feels empowered, with their grievances represented. What's not to like? Then the tabloids feed off this feeding frenzy and the social divisions become entrenched. Then the populist tells them to solve these problems we need to regain our sovereignty, take back control of our borders by, you've guessed it leaving the EU. Make Britain great again.

Then we get a feeding frenzy at the top where the tabloids (this includes the Telegraph) reinforce these lies and support the populists in return for more rightwing Britain first policies. All the billionaires and rip off merchants, investment bankers etc get into a feeding frenzy because they're going to make loads of money out of the economic and financial changes during the Brexit process and the workforce will become more pliant and desperate, so easier to control and exploit. Win win.

Then sell of to the US so they can pick the carcass clean, job done.

The country will be ok, they survived the war, they will survive this, it's the bulldog spirit.

It's just the city, from what I can find.

Did you know there's actually a very good economic argument to pay unemployed people well? Unemployed people are necessary to grease the wheels of the labour market. If everyone was employed, how are you going to replace that non-performing employee? You couldn't. So the unemployed perform the all important function of creating flexibility for companies and companies should be taxed for that opportunity so we can pay the unemployed a fair amount for their critical role in the functioning of the labour market. — Benkei

I'm familiar with these arguments! I'm curious as to how widely known they are. I've spoken to economists who have been against full employment on precisely these grounds: that unemployment has a structural function in maintaining a high quality labour force. The challenge is, as you've said, making sure they don't play this role without being, well, compensated for it.

A related interesting perspective I've heard is that - pre-COVID - the main social issue to tackle isn't unemployment, but good employment. Pre-COVID, unemployment - at least in developed nations - was trending to be at almost historically low levels. The gravity of the issue lay in precarious, unwaged, 'flexible' labour, with jobs but only barely - zero-hour contracts, lack of insurance, no holiday or sick leave, minimum wage jobs, etc. There's a whole thing to say here about the outsized role of finance economies (as opposed to industrial economies) in encouraging this sort of thing, but that's for another thread. In this connection, it means people are going to live shitty lives, and will more likely turn to - crime (with my Marxist hat on, this means that defunding police will work best with - a change in the mode of production).

And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game. — Bob Dylan

I think it's worth holding onto the idea that psychology as an industry is largely in the business of undermining any class consciousness, and supporting, in the first place the individualising and fragmenting of society, whereby poverty and unemployment is an internal psychological failure of ambition, and from there a reintegration along race and national lines and the projection of the internalised resentment onto the 'other'.

psychology as an industry is largely in the business of undermining any class consciousness, and supporting, in the first place the individualising and fragmenting of society, whereby poverty and unemployment is an internal psychological failure of ambition, and from there a reintegration along race and national lines and the projection of the internalised resentment onto the 'other'. — unenlightened

WTF? I'm guessing you meant to say psychotherapy or psychiatry right? (You'd be wrong even if you did, but would have at least a leg to stand on).

I've read some unlikely institutions being blamed for this deplorable state of affairs, but psychology....?

No. I meant what I said, and it is a generalisation about mainstream psychology. I don't think here is the place to defend it, but I am referring back to David Smail who I mentioned earlier, as a critic of conventional psychiatry in particular. The Origins of Unhappiness sets out his thesis fairly clearly if I remember right.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Origins-Unhappiness-Understanding-Personal-Distress/dp/1782202870

I am referring back to David Smail who I mentioned earlier, as a critic of conventional psychiatry in particular. — unenlightened

Psychology is neither psychiatry nor psychotherapy, they are themselves only branches within clinical psychology which itself is a branch of psychology in general. The only 'industry' around psychology in general is the academic one and its pretty unfair to accuse the entire enterprise of institutionally undermining class conflict and implicitly supporting racial division.

What recent papers in social psychology do you think have undermined class conflict?

Which prominent researchers in child psychology do you think are most responsible for re-integrating society along racial lines?

What recent papers in social psychology do you think have undermined class conflict?

Which prominent researchers in child psychology do you think are most responsible for re-integrating society along racial lines? — Isaac

I don't think here is the place to defend it, — unenlightened

And therefore I am not going to answer your questions. Your disagreement is registered.

I don't think here is the place to defend it, — unenlightened


And therefore I am not going to answer your questions. Your disagreement is registered. — unenlightened

So it was on-topic to assert it, but off-topic to defend it. What a neat trick.

The only 'industry' around psychology in general is the academic one and its pretty unfair to accuse the entire enterprise of institutionally undermining class conflict and implicitly supporting racial division. — Isaac

It's totally fair. There was a long conversation about this a while back.

The functional roll of psychology within capitalism, as an academic field and medical practice, is to continuously blame the individual, and coach the internalization of that blame, for social problems that they are exposed to.

In a sick society there can be no reference of what it means to be mentally healthy.

To be "normal" in today's society is to actively participate in the destruction of the planet and enslavement of fellow citizens around the world; i.e. orchestrate a mass suicide. The roll of psychology is to legitimize this activity and to tell you, if you start to figure it out, that maybe you need to take a chill pill.

A secondary roll is to make mad bank while accomplishing this first roll; a virtuous and "free" cycle from the perspective of maintaining the status quo.

The functional roll of psychology within capitalism, as an academic field and medical practice, is to continuously blame the individual, and coach the internalization of that blame, for social problems that they are exposed to. — boethius

OK, so since any long investigation of this issue would definitely be off topic, perhaps you could just point me in the direction of the research you're basing this assertion on, then I can make up my own mind.

OK, so since any long investigation of this issue would definitely be off topic, perhaps you could just point me in the direction of the research you're basing this assertion on, then I can make up my own mind. — Isaac

Well, the thesis would not be supported by psychological research, for obvious reasons. The foundation of the argument is whether our system is sustainable or not; so it would be ecology that is the first thing to look into. If our system is not sustainable, then it is simply madness to continue it.

But yes, maybe a tangent to the discussion at hand, as no one is (yet) accusing the protesters and rioters of having a mental disease that the state will need to "cure"; although, I am sure the general anxiety created by the situation for the middle and upper classes, psychology as a whole, will indeed intervene whenever and wherever possible to psychologize away both their personal anxiety as well as any larger political analysis of events (that the system is not to blame, young people are just mentally ill in one way or another and "let's see how we can try to focus on constructive things like working on that quarterly report").

So, I would not say it is off topic. I'm sure there is already far more discussion in the mass media about what the police "feel" than their roll in maintaining oppressive class relations.

However, please feel free to continue the existing conversation on this topic Psychiatrys Incurable Hubris.

My central thesis in that conversation is as follows:

Yes, this is my central contention, that psychiatry/psychology is a better tool of oppression than plumbing, that there will be more attention paid to who gets to be a psychiatry/psychologists (that their beliefs are compatible with state policy) than who gets to be a plumber. Plumbers are a group I would argue most oppressive states categorize as general population needing to be generally controlled.

For instance, using pharmacology to make bad working conditions more tolerable, I would argue is a mechanism of oppression in an oppressive state; part of the control system. From the perspective of psychiatrists implementing this policy, people feel better at work, they feel they've "done good". This is not to pass moral judgement, as they may not have any information (thanks to control of media) to criticize what they are doing; but from the outside analyzing such a situation we can very much doubt if they are really "doing good". — boethius

Well, this is my police department that he is referring to, and my internal affairs section that worked to weed out and prosecute these officers. — Wolfman

That's really cool! If what I'm reading is right though, you're about one of fourteen or so police departments out of roughly 18,000 who are involved in similar arrangements. And interestingly, under the order of Jeff Sessions - and hence Trump - federal oversight efforts were explicitly scaled back. And although I won't pretend to know the details, OPD reforms look like they are still ongoing. So all of this definitely seems promising, but the scale and drive to national implementation seem to have alot to be desired. Looks like Chicago PD's going your way though - as a direct response to these current protests.

Speaking for myself, I have been speaking, and more importantly, acting. — Wolfman

I misworded myself. You're right - it's not words I want. Nor performance, as with police taking knees and so on (). Especially when we've seen plenty of cases where knee-taking police officers then go about gassing protesters an hour later. It's advocacy and action for the kinds of things we've both spoken about. Calls by police, for police reform - institutional change. And I get this is hard. Much militates against it. Institutional change always meets resistance from vested interests. Usually change on this scale is motivated externally (as it seems was OPD's reforms were) - and right now things are 'external' as they might possibly get for a while.

And I don't want to dwell too much here on individual cases and actions. Always my imperative is to look outwards, at structure. The stories of the officers you wrote of are terrible, and it is obviously the case that tools ought to be available to deal with extreme situations when necessary. But that extreme situations are extreme is of enormous import, it seems to me. The kinds of things that we're seeing happening on American streets are not extreme, contrary to what certain sensationalist media is saying. The protesters are not roving crowds of murderers. And the force being deployed against them is disproportionate, widespread, and, it seems - reflective of deep rooted culture and training. If the standards you hold yourself to hold more generally, quite literally hundreds of cops right now should have their jobs on the line. And that's definitely not what's being seen.

What all of this amounts to is simply - I don't doubt your experience. I do doubt that it is generalizable.

However, please feel free to continue the existing conversation on this topic Psychiatrys Incurable Hubris. — boethius

Yeah, I don't think I'd have much to add there as I think most of psychiatry is a crock of shit.

None of this, however has helped explain your or unenlightened's comments about psychology of which psychiatry is just one branch. It's akin to blaming the whole academic field of Human Biology for the malpractice of the pharmaceutical industry.

Among the more publicised incidences of police violence that have been given airtime right now, among the most vicious is this one in which a grey-haired civilian is pushed over while talking to some cops, and then lays there, bleeding from his head and ear. The ear being a sign of severe head trauma. The news going around about it is that two officers have been suspended (just suspended?) over it. Cuomo himself called the actions a disgrace.

But that news is burying the lede. More horrifying still are the throng of officers - maybe 10 to 20 or so of them - who walk past this incapacitated man without so much as giving him a glance. A cop who bends down to help - after the initial assaulting officer simply walks away and out of frame - is pulled off the man by another cop, who encourages him to ignore the man with the head-bleed. He does, and also walks away. Every single one of those cops is a bad cop as far as I'm concerned. That just two officers were suspended is the story. Not that they were.

And most telling of all (@ssu):



These are not just uniforms that people are hating on.

Yeah, I don't think I'd have much to add there as I think most of psychiatry is a crock of shit. — Isaac

Yes, we fundamentally agree.

It's akin to blaming the whole academic field of Human Biology for the malpractice of the pharmaceutical industry. — Isaac

The difference is that biologists do not decide what is a "mental disease" that needs a cure (biologists in such a context have only the moral culpability, but there is no reason to doubt the intellectual tool of biology as such; if the brain chemistry is altered as desired, the tool is clearly working). Academic psychologists, at the end of the day, provide these definitions and (more importantly) the entire intellectual framework that removes all political analysis from discussion to begin with, as well as run the experiments to prove any particular "cure" for any particular "mental disease".

If the academics were not part of the problem, then they would be continuously denouncing the way their discipline is being implemented in practice and explaining why the element of politics complicates any mental disease diagnosis, much more definition. For, it is reasonable to be depressed in a self destructive society. It is reasonable to be violent in an oppressive society. It is reasonable to be schizophrenic in a gaslighting society. It is reasonable to be bipolar in an abusive society. It is reasonable to have a deficit of attention when fed a system of lies. It is reasonable to have disorder within the mind as an interpretive step in response to unjust state order without. Insofar as academics ignore such arguments, they are propagandists for state order, nothing more, and, indeed, far more powerful foot soldiers for evil than the police.

Academic psychologists, at the end of the day, provide these definitions and (more importantly) the entire intellectual framework that removes all political analysis from discussion to begin with, as well as run the experiments to prove any particular "cure" for any particular "mental disease". — boethius

Yeah, some do. The vast majority don't. They investigate how memory is affected by perception, how noisy environments affect learning in autistic children, how social heirachy affects bias formations, how neonates respond to object permanence... I could go on. The vast majority of psychologists are not even tangentially involved in the definition or treatment of mental illness. To accuse us of being somehow complicit in the propping up class and racial segregation because we share a department is ridiculous.

I said "they are part of the problem", just like the vast majority of police who are not trying to be abusive are part of the problem if they tolerate and cover for police that are.

As for the intellectual content of psychology as such: Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are.

I said "they are part of the problem", just like the vast majority of police who are not trying to be abusive are part of the problem if they tolerate and cover for police that are. — boethius

This is getting ridiculous. What evidence do you have that non-clinical psychologist don't speak out about ignoring environmental factors in diagnosing mental illness? And who said anything about 'covering' for them? Where the hell did that come from? Are there a large number of non-clinical psychologists who you think are somehow 'covering' for the conclusions of those responsible for categorising mental health? This is starting to sound like some tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy nut. We're all in on it are we?

If you're having trouble with these delusional thoughts I can recommend some effective medication to take care of that.

What evidence do you have that non-clinical psychologist don't speak out about ignoring environmental factors in diagnosing mental illness? — Isaac

Ah, such subtle bait and switching. Indeed you are powerful in the ways of psychology.

"Environmental factors" is not the same as "politics". "Environmental factors" is an abstraction to lead the gullible psychologist to believe that "all the bases have been covered", but they have not.

If you're having trouble with these delusional thoughts I can recommend some effective medication to take care of that. — Isaac

Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!

Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

OK... So what evidence do you have that ""Environmental factors" is an abstraction to lead the gullible psychologist to believe that "all the bases have been covered", but they have not."?

So far you've yet to cite a single paper to support your damnation of the entire field. To properly support this position you'd need to show that at least a large proportion of non-clinical psychology papers fail to take politics into account as a factor where it can be demonstrated to be one. Since most psychology papers are about rather dry attempts to correlate reported mental activities with external stimuli, I'm struggling to see how politics would be involved. Of course, I end all my papers with "up the revolution!" in bold, but that's just a liberty of old age.

Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!

Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

Help! Help! I'm being repressed! — boethius

Am I going to have to call an orderly?

None of this, however has helped explain your or unenlightened's comments about psychology — Isaac

You won't leave it will you?

Well while I wait for the mods to hive this off to a separate thread, I'll refer you to an old thread of mine that looks at the problems both moral and structural of the science of psychology.

There is a knot here; put very simply the theory of psyche is part of the psyche. It is as if the fundamental particles of physics changed their properties according to which laws of physics they decided to adopt. Psychologists have changed the way we think, the way we see, our whole culture, and in doing so, they give rise to a new psyche which needs a new theory. Fashion in psychology mirrors the fashion of youth that always has to be different to that of the previous generation. Today one talks of neural plasticity, and it is neural plasticity that makes this talk possible.

The knot is the bane of the psychologist and manipulator. The cleverer he is, the better the theory, the more it transforms the people it is a theory of. The more we the atoms see the manipulator scientist coming, the faster we adapt to his manipulations and frustrate his intentions. And we too are all manipulator scientists. — unenlightened