“Hegemony How-To”: Rethinking Activism and Embracing Power
Occupy Wall Street insider Jonathan Smucker’s recently published Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals (AK Press, 2017) is the post-Occupy guide for how to be smarter about politics. Smucker, a long-time grassroots organizer, does not dismiss what Occupy did right but is honest about its failures. The 99% remain just as powerless as ever, and […]
“Hegemony How-To”: Rethinking Activism and Embracing Power
Occupy Wall Street insider Jonathan Smucker’s recently published Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals (AK Press, 2017) is the post-Occupy guide for how to be smarter about politics. Smucker, a long-time grassroots organizer, does not dismiss what Occupy did right but is honest about its failures. The 99% remain just as powerless as ever, and […]
Stripped of False Realities: Americans’ Political “Psychotic Break”
Stripped of the false realities of democracy, legitimate media authorities, and American exceptionalism, U.S. society is having a “psychotic break” of sorts. What many Americans have previously believed to be “reality” is disintegrating. Science provides us with no monolithic explanation for what is commonly called a psychotic break, but for some people who have […]
Stripped of False Realities: Americans’ Political “Psychotic Break”
Stripped of the false realities of democracy, legitimate media authorities, and American exceptionalism, U.S. society is having a “psychotic break” of sorts. What many Americans have previously believed to be “reality” is disintegrating. Science provides us with no monolithic explanation for what is commonly called a psychotic break, but for some people who have lived […]
Naked Cynicism—Can I Be Bribed to Vote for a Phony, Hedge-Fund Warmonger?
Back in 2000, when the evangelical, chicken hawk, smirking frat boy—another rich kid, spoiled brat—grabbed the presidency, the Democrats blamed (and never forgave) Ralph Nader and the Green Party. If Trump wins, a similar scapegoating will not work, not if we remember the unequivocal realities of the polls.
Naked Cynicism—Can I Be Bribed to Vote for a Phony, Hedge-Fund Warmonger?
Back in 2000, when the evangelical, chicken hawk, smirking frat boy—another rich kid, spoiled brat—grabbed the presidency, the Democrats blamed (and never forgave) Ralph Nader and the Green Party. If Trump wins, a similar scapegoating will not work, not if we remember the unequivocal realities of the polls. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party establishment, and […]
Would We Have Drugged Up Einstein? How Anti-Authoritarianism Is Deemed a Mental Health Problem
In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them […]
Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill, and How This Helps America’s Illegitimate Authorities Stay in Charge
In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them […]
Thinking Critically About Scientology, Psychiatry, and Their Feud
For many Americans who gain their information solely from television, all critics of psychiatry are Scientologists, exemplified by Tom Cruise spewing at Matt Lauer, “You don’t know the history of psychiatry. . . . Matt, you’re so glib.” The mass media has been highly successful in convincing Americans to associate criticism of psychiatry with anti-drug […]
U.S. Mental Illness Epidemic
By 2003 in the U.S., 1 in 50 had been classified as disabled mentally ill, an increase from the 1987 rate of 1 in 75 (based on Social Security Administration payments for the mentally ill). This was reported in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry in 2005 by science writer Robert Whitaker who also noted that 1 in 300 were considered disabled mentally ill in 1955, an increase from 1 in 500 in 1903 (1955 and 1903 statistics based on U.S. mental illness hospitalizations).
