by Higgenbotham » Sat Jun 21, 2025 7:30 pm
Spotty, Greer's post this week, some of which is reproduced below, reminded me of your post from some time ago.
spottybrowncow wrote: Thu Aug 24, 2023 9:03 pm
I have spent a lot of time over the last few years trying to ascertain what makes otherwise intelligent people become liberal "wackos." I see this in some friends that I really like, and it truly upsets me. I don't know how they get there, but I know when they are there, because it becomes impossible to have a logical, coherent conversation with them about social or political issues, as they stop employing logical arguments and instead devolve into fits of emotion when they disagree with a premise. Mind you, some of these people have high IQ's, and yet they appear to have lost contact with reality. It really sucks watching this occur in people I care about.
I recently read some comments on an article in "American Thinker" which got my attention. The whole article is here
https://www.americanthinker.com/article ... rence.html, but I have copied and pasted the most salient comments below.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Lydia
1 day ago
The Libs all demonstrate schizophrenia. It distorts the way they express emotion, perceive reality, and relate to others. They have difficulty distinguishing what is real and imaginary.
Schizophrenia is most often affects young people. They are prone to delusions. Many have attention deficit disorder. It is believed that there is a genetic disposition for schizophrenia, along with exposure to environmental toxins, and drug usage. Many or most of the children experiencing true gender dysphoria are on the autism spectrum. They are given drugs like Adderall (amphetamines) to "treat" it.
The point is, there may be a physical component to the irrationality on the Left. It is an anecdotal observation, but there is a common look in the eyes of radical Libs--they look crazy, either wide-eyed blank stares or eyes bulging with hatred. Think of the looks on the faces of young Libs (and some older ones too) after Trump won in 2016, screaming at the sky, then demanding safe places because they could not accept reality.
We're dealing with mentally ill people who should receive institutionalized help, but the psychiatric organizations are corrupted as well.
Charles Tate
1 day ago
People formerly identified as liberals are at war with reality. They possess the parasite's fear of the host, and of being deprived of the host. Hence they fear the host and transform it into dangerous monsters. People who can produce things as opposed to those in teaching, public work, government, etc., are looked upon with fear. They are also frozen by terror into a permanent adolescence where the obligations and "laws" of moral conduct threaten to hold them accountable for their actions. What they ask the vicious government to do, is to defeat the "parent" of reality so they can go back to cartoons and masturbation, specific and general. Soothing rituals that keep reality, mortality, at bay.
The Russians!!! Apparently represent the forceful intrusion of reality. Like Trump and his supporters, who must be defeated through wiles and conjurings, sanctions, etc. As it becomes more clear that this bizarre theater is in actuality the brutal sacrifice of the Ukrainians with no hope of success, their hysteria and denial grows. They all know Trump won, which is why they are so fervent at denying it.
As the man said in the movie No Country for Old Men advised when his nephew the sheriff tries to opt out of unpleasant truths..."you can't stop what's coming...it ain't all waitin' on you. That's vanity."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFz-tgDq1OE
t.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I don't want to get "doxx'd", so I won't tell too much about my background, but I have a lot of training in STEM and medical sciences, and something about these comments rings true to me. I'd be interested in hearing others' opinions.
Spotty
A Brief Guide to Status Panic
June 18, 2025
John Michael Greer
The recent events just mentioned, and thus the insights, centered on a conversation I’d had recently with a friend and fellow blogger. The friend in question is one of the most intelligent people I know, with a broad knowledge of politics and international affairs, and a habit of incisive analysis that often impresses the stuffing out of me. Our conversations usually range over a dizzyingly broad landscape of ideas and current events, and I expected more of the same. What I got instead was a series of repetitive diatribes about Donald Trump.
Mind you, I have no objection if people want to criticize Trump—no politician should ever be immune to criticism, and I’ve got my own objections to some of the things the current US administration has done—but there’s a difference between thoughtful criticism and the endless rehashing of partisan talking points. My friend did the latter, circling back over and over again to the claim that Trump’s tariffs would result in economic catastrophe and empty store shelves within weeks. Of course he was wrong, and there was never any real danger that he would be right. Anyone who’s paid attention to Trump’s style recognized the initial round of tariffs as the negotiating ploy it obviously was. Governments overseas certainly got the memo and started negotiations in earnest immediately, and the store shelves stayed well stocked.
Yet my friend, usually so acute in his analyses, missed this completely. Instead, he insisted that this time Trump really had gone too far, and would be abandoned by his supporters and driven from office in short order. That gave away the game, of course. People in what we may as well call the laptop class—the people in and around the corporate, government, and nonprofit bureaucracies that dominate our society—have been saying that since Trump began his first presidential campaign back in 2015. They’ve been wrong every time, but that repeated failure somehow never keeps the same prediction from being trotted out every few weeks or so.
My friend isn’t quite a member of the laptop class, but he shares most of its values and interacts with that class frequently. Brooding over the sheer weirdness of our conversation got me thinking about the many comparable examples I’ve witnessed in recent years. Some of those had Trump’s antics as their common theme, but there are also plenty of examples that have nothing to do with the current US administration. It was while I was pondering this, and watching stations on the London Underground go rattling by, that it occurred to me that all these examples came from people from the same social sector: that is, the laptop class and its associated intelligentsia.
That, and another set of repetitive phenomena which I’ll discuss a little later, sent me on a deep dive into the underpinnings of social hierarchy among human beings. In order to forestall the inevitable misunderstanding, let me be explicit here: the positions occupied by individuals in a social hierarchy are assigned by society, not by biology. It’s the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional reactions that individuals have to the places assigned them by society that are hardwired into their nervous systems.
The point to keep in mind is that this same pattern can be expected any time any person or group of people undergo a significant rise in status over the short term. Beneath the veneer of rational thinking and the flurry of rationalizations it produces, their behavior is shaped by patterns of instinct that were age-old before the first dinosaurs, and it requires a massive effort of self-knowledge and self-mastery to overcome those patterns. The same is just as true on the other end of the scale. It’s when we turn to this of the picture, and consider the behavioral impacts of downward mobility, that we can circle back to my friend and his tirades about Donald Trump.
Status is not an abstraction. For most people, it’s an essential ingredient of their identity. Gaining status is disorienting and disruptive, but it has obvious benefits, and most people get used to it in due time. Losing status? Not so much. Rather, it’s felt as a catastrophe, both in practical terms and in the impact on identity. If you’re used to thinking of yourself as one of the important people, the ones whose opinions matter and whose needs and wants ought to be taken into account by everyone else, finding out that this isn’t the case any more is a shattering blow. We can describe the result as status panic. It’s a profoundly traumatic experience.
Status isn’t abstract. Losing it is an existential threat to the privileged.
What makes this especially agonizing is that the members of every privileged class end up thinking of themselves as the natural rulers of society, who deserve the unquestioning obedience and respect of the lower orders. They forget the mordant lesson Arnold Toynbee tried to teach them, which is that the rest of society tolerates privileged classes only so long as they provide effective solutions to collective problems. This is precisely what the laptop class has failed to do in recent decades. No matter what the problem is, the response is to hire more bureaucrats and commission more studies—a move that benefits the laptop class considerably, of course, but doesn’t do a blessed thing to remedy problems that are pressing down with ever more force on the rest of us.
That’s why every scenario spun these days by the laptop class and its penumbra of writers and bloggers ends with Trump being driven from the presidency so that the laptop class can return to power. No other outcome is imaginable to them.
https://www.ecosophia.net/a-brief-guide ... tus-panic/
Spotty, Greer's post this week, some of which is reproduced below, reminded me of your post from some time ago.
[quote=spottybrowncow post_id=82189 time=1692925394 user_id=3064]
I have spent a lot of time over the last few years trying to ascertain what makes otherwise intelligent people become liberal "wackos." I see this in some friends that I really like, and it truly upsets me. I don't know how they get there, but I know when they are there, because it becomes impossible to have a logical, coherent conversation with them about social or political issues, as they stop employing logical arguments and instead devolve into fits of emotion when they disagree with a premise. Mind you, some of these people have high IQ's, and yet they appear to have lost contact with reality. It really sucks watching this occur in people I care about.
I recently read some comments on an article in "American Thinker" which got my attention. The whole article is here https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/08/the_frame_of_reverence.html, but I have copied and pasted the most salient comments below.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Lydia
1 day ago
The Libs all demonstrate schizophrenia. It distorts the way they express emotion, perceive reality, and relate to others. They have difficulty distinguishing what is real and imaginary.
Schizophrenia is most often affects young people. They are prone to delusions. Many have attention deficit disorder. It is believed that there is a genetic disposition for schizophrenia, along with exposure to environmental toxins, and drug usage. Many or most of the children experiencing true gender dysphoria are on the autism spectrum. They are given drugs like Adderall (amphetamines) to "treat" it.
The point is, there may be a physical component to the irrationality on the Left. It is an anecdotal observation, but there is a common look in the eyes of radical Libs--they look crazy, either wide-eyed blank stares or eyes bulging with hatred. Think of the looks on the faces of young Libs (and some older ones too) after Trump won in 2016, screaming at the sky, then demanding safe places because they could not accept reality.
We're dealing with mentally ill people who should receive institutionalized help, but the psychiatric organizations are corrupted as well.
Charles Tate
1 day ago
People formerly identified as liberals are at war with reality. They possess the parasite's fear of the host, and of being deprived of the host. Hence they fear the host and transform it into dangerous monsters. People who can produce things as opposed to those in teaching, public work, government, etc., are looked upon with fear. They are also frozen by terror into a permanent adolescence where the obligations and "laws" of moral conduct threaten to hold them accountable for their actions. What they ask the vicious government to do, is to defeat the "parent" of reality so they can go back to cartoons and masturbation, specific and general. Soothing rituals that keep reality, mortality, at bay.
The Russians!!! Apparently represent the forceful intrusion of reality. Like Trump and his supporters, who must be defeated through wiles and conjurings, sanctions, etc. As it becomes more clear that this bizarre theater is in actuality the brutal sacrifice of the Ukrainians with no hope of success, their hysteria and denial grows. They all know Trump won, which is why they are so fervent at denying it.
As the man said in the movie No Country for Old Men advised when his nephew the sheriff tries to opt out of unpleasant truths..."you can't stop what's coming...it ain't all waitin' on you. That's vanity." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFz-tgDq1OE
t.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I don't want to get "doxx'd", so I won't tell too much about my background, but I have a lot of training in STEM and medical sciences, and something about these comments rings true to me. I'd be interested in hearing others' opinions.
Spotty[/quote]
[quote]A Brief Guide to Status Panic
June 18, 2025
John Michael Greer[/quote]
[quote]The recent events just mentioned, and thus the insights, centered on a conversation I’d had recently with a friend and fellow blogger. The friend in question is one of the most intelligent people I know, with a broad knowledge of politics and international affairs, and a habit of incisive analysis that often impresses the stuffing out of me. Our conversations usually range over a dizzyingly broad landscape of ideas and current events, and I expected more of the same. What I got instead was a series of repetitive diatribes about Donald Trump.
Mind you, I have no objection if people want to criticize Trump—no politician should ever be immune to criticism, and I’ve got my own objections to some of the things the current US administration has done—but there’s a difference between thoughtful criticism and the endless rehashing of partisan talking points. My friend did the latter, circling back over and over again to the claim that Trump’s tariffs would result in economic catastrophe and empty store shelves within weeks. Of course he was wrong, and there was never any real danger that he would be right. Anyone who’s paid attention to Trump’s style recognized the initial round of tariffs as the negotiating ploy it obviously was. Governments overseas certainly got the memo and started negotiations in earnest immediately, and the store shelves stayed well stocked.
Yet my friend, usually so acute in his analyses, missed this completely. Instead, he insisted that this time Trump really had gone too far, and would be abandoned by his supporters and driven from office in short order. That gave away the game, of course. People in what we may as well call the laptop class—the people in and around the corporate, government, and nonprofit bureaucracies that dominate our society—have been saying that since Trump began his first presidential campaign back in 2015. They’ve been wrong every time, but that repeated failure somehow never keeps the same prediction from being trotted out every few weeks or so.
My friend isn’t quite a member of the laptop class, but he shares most of its values and interacts with that class frequently. Brooding over the sheer weirdness of our conversation got me thinking about the many comparable examples I’ve witnessed in recent years. Some of those had Trump’s antics as their common theme, but there are also plenty of examples that have nothing to do with the current US administration. It was while I was pondering this, and watching stations on the London Underground go rattling by, that it occurred to me that all these examples came from people from the same social sector: that is, the laptop class and its associated intelligentsia.
That, and another set of repetitive phenomena which I’ll discuss a little later, sent me on a deep dive into the underpinnings of social hierarchy among human beings. In order to forestall the inevitable misunderstanding, let me be explicit here: the positions occupied by individuals in a social hierarchy are assigned by society, not by biology. It’s the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional reactions that individuals have to the places assigned them by society that are hardwired into their nervous systems.[/quote]
[quote]The point to keep in mind is that this same pattern can be expected any time any person or group of people undergo a significant rise in status over the short term. Beneath the veneer of rational thinking and the flurry of rationalizations it produces, their behavior is shaped by patterns of instinct that were age-old before the first dinosaurs, and it requires a massive effort of self-knowledge and self-mastery to overcome those patterns. The same is just as true on the other end of the scale. It’s when we turn to this of the picture, and consider the behavioral impacts of downward mobility, that we can circle back to my friend and his tirades about Donald Trump.
Status is not an abstraction. For most people, it’s an essential ingredient of their identity. Gaining status is disorienting and disruptive, but it has obvious benefits, and most people get used to it in due time. Losing status? Not so much. Rather, it’s felt as a catastrophe, both in practical terms and in the impact on identity. If you’re used to thinking of yourself as one of the important people, the ones whose opinions matter and whose needs and wants ought to be taken into account by everyone else, finding out that this isn’t the case any more is a shattering blow. We can describe the result as status panic. It’s a profoundly traumatic experience.
Status isn’t abstract. Losing it is an existential threat to the privileged.
What makes this especially agonizing is that the members of every privileged class end up thinking of themselves as the natural rulers of society, who deserve the unquestioning obedience and respect of the lower orders. They forget the mordant lesson Arnold Toynbee tried to teach them, which is that the rest of society tolerates privileged classes only so long as they provide effective solutions to collective problems. This is precisely what the laptop class has failed to do in recent decades. No matter what the problem is, the response is to hire more bureaucrats and commission more studies—a move that benefits the laptop class considerably, of course, but doesn’t do a blessed thing to remedy problems that are pressing down with ever more force on the rest of us.
That’s why every scenario spun these days by the laptop class and its penumbra of writers and bloggers ends with Trump being driven from the presidency so that the laptop class can return to power. No other outcome is imaginable to them.[/quote]
https://www.ecosophia.net/a-brief-guide-to-status-panic/