Just wanted to say that this is not most definitely NOT what I had in mind
When I said that faith in the social sciences didn’t provide the left with as firm a foundation as history and learning from experience I didn’t expect to read this a few days later:
Peter Michaelson: Think Economics is Bad -- Take a Look at Psychology
Just one example of modern psychology's disservice involves its marginalization of Sigmund Freud. He discovered that we all experience everyday situations through the dynamics of transference, projection, identification, displacement, defenses, and denial. These factors influence our capacity for self-regulation of behaviors and emotions, and also affect to what degree we're being rational or irrational. Thanks to modern psychology's refusal to accept the importance and the truth of these psychological tenets, only a small minority of Americans can see and understand the operations of these dynamics in themselves. This limits our intelligence and hinders our evolution.
Counting the eclipse of Freud and his more cockamamy ideas as a very positive development, I want to make it clear that I’d never advocate a return to that mythology. What it would do to women, lesbians and gay men alone would be a complete disaster. Two words, Woody Allen. Enough said.
Field Guide To Total Jerks: a series, perhaps.
1. People over the age of 12 who make “Kids on the short bus,” “jokes” are being total jerks. “Adults” who say those kinds of things are bigger jerks than teen jerks who might grow up someday.
The smug 30 something guy who said it yesterday within the hearing of a disabled child came about as close to getting my fist in his mouth as anyone has in forty years.
If The Republicans Use The Impending Collapse
as a political tool, Democrats in the House and Senate should put it in their laps and let the thing go. We can't give up the next four years anymore, we've been giving up terms of office to this kind of blackmail for too long. If McCain and his fellow political gamesters don't explicitly, publicly and loudly sign on, let them take the blame for the consequences.