Putting the "Psycho" in Psychoblogging

As you know, there are a number of fine conservative or old-fashioned liberal psychobloggers out there, such as Dr. Sanity, ShrinkWrapped, Neo-neocon, Assistant Village Idiot, and Sigmund, Carl and Alfred. In fact, ever since I started blogging last year, I’ve been looking for a leftist psychoblogger to ridicule when I don’t have anything else to write about, but couldn’t find any.

It is somewhat surprising that there aren’t more moonbat psychobloggers, since the vast majority of my colleagues are default leftists. Most of them know nothing at all about economics, political philosophy, or theology, but this hardly stops them from having strong opinions. But their opinions simply mirror the drearily predictable leftist subculture in which they were indoctrinated. Not only do you know all of their opinions ahead of time, but they are almost always felt and not thought. This is not surprising, as most people who study psychology are more irrational “feeling types.” Intellectually deep psychiatrists and psychologists are somewhat few and far between.

This morning I found a leftist psychoblog linked to dailykos, Psyche, Science, and Society, run by psychoanalyst Steven Soldz. It is a goldmine of leftist foolishness, cant, and cliché, and you understand in a second why this man would be linked to the breathtakingly infantile dailykos. This blogger vividly demonstrates the axiom that education has nothing to do with wisdom. More often than not, the two are inversely related.

In his “about me” page, Soldz sets the tone, making reference to how the American public has “rallied around a mythic ‘war on terror’” which “is built on a simplistic duality of good versus evil.” In other words, the terrorists are not actually evil. Rather, it is just that we have projected all of our “undesirable characteristics” into the so-called “evil” other. Evidently, it is we who actually want to chop their heads off and murder their children just for the hell of it.

This arrogant moral equation is so amazingly simplistic that one hardly knows where to begin. First of all, it reflects the boilerplate leftist idea that evil does not actually exist. Rather, there is only “so-called evil”; there are only “undesirable characteristics” that we project into others. Apparently, people who project evil are evil, but evil behavior isn’t. So Americans are evil projectors, but the terrorists who slashed the throats of stewardesses and flew airplanes into the Twin towers were not evil. No, it’s just our projection.

If that is true, one wonders why Dr. Soldz focuses only on our so-called projection of evil into the terrorists, but not on their projection of evil into us. After all, they started it. I promise to stop thinking they're evil if they promise to stop trying to kill me. (By the way, you'd think Soldz might take a bit more offense at the idea that the terrorists also want to kill him merely for believing in "Jewish psychoanalysis." After all, they're not going to give him a pass just because he appeases evil. In fact, they probably won't even extend the professional courtesy of killing him last.)

Soldz rhetorically asks “Why does this trick [of projection] work? Why are people willing to put their critical faculties to sleep and line up behind their side in the ‘clash of civilizations?’ Ah, there’s the question! Simplistic answers won’t do.” But what could be more simplistic than believing evil only exists in the mind of the person who perceives it, or that there is really no clash of values between Western civilization and whose who openly wish to destroy it? Talk about somnolent critical faculties. Soldz does not have to project. His overwhelming denial of reality makes it redundant.

Amazingly, Dr. Soldz welcomes the launch of al Jazeera in America, stating that “I, for one, wish them well. I hope they will continue offending the powers-that-be by telling the truths that others suppress.” In other words, Dr. Soldz not only aligns himself with this invaluable propaganda tool of our terrorist enemies, but regards it as a courageous conveyer of suppressed truth. No, people aren’t offended by al Jazeera because -- like virtually all of the Arab Muslim world -- they are steeped in vile lies about America and Israel. Rather, they are offended because they do not want to hear the suppressed “truth” about Jewish conspiracies and genocidal Americans.

This man is beyond simplistic. He is beyond ignorant. He is even beyond stupid. I have no compunction whatsoever in saying that he is, at the very least, a moral imbecile.

Speaking of which, his views on religion betray a level of hermetically sealed ignorance that is truly astonishing. He muses that “As we ponder the spectacle of America legalizing torture, some wonder why the religious community doesn’t come out gung ho against torture.” He notes what should be a truism, that the more religiously inclined actually “support torture in some cases,” while “secular people have the lowest rate of support.”

Naturally, like all lying, agenda-driven leftists, Dr. Soldz willfully and misleadingly conflates torture with any number of techniques that do not deserve the term. But even then, what moral person would not waterboard a known terrorist to try to stop a massive terror plot? Thousands of people are only alive today because these techniques worked on people such as the number three man in al Qaeda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Soldz would rather see thousands of innocents murdered than to have frightened this poor beast of depravity into telling us what he knew about active terror plots. Our moral compasses are obviously quite different. I think his is broken.

In a stunningly ignorant statement, Dr. Soldz opines that “One might hypothesize from these data that religion fosters barbarism and that Secularism fosters humanism. Of course, a psychoanalyst might wonder if religion, rather, was a defense against one’s barbarous tendencies. If so, the people attracted to religion may have more brutal impulses evan than are here suggested.” Brilliant insight, Doc! This would explain the humanism of secular and atheistic societies such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Castro's Cuba, and Mao’s China. And it would explain the barbarism of Mormons, the Dalai Lama, Quakers, and those genocidal Amish.

However, “Another possibility is that religious people are more likely to trust authority, such that they believe the authorities know what they are doing when they torture. If this view is true, one might conclude that religion is antithetical to democracy.” Right. Like most so-called “intellectuals,” Dr. Soldz won’t allow reality to interfere with a good theory. Never mind that the greatest democracy the world has ever known, the United States, is also the most religious, or that the most authoritarian and totalitarian places have been the most secular.

Like that other brilliant intellect, Dr. Elton John, Dr. Soldz proclaims that “At a minimum” we have “no reason to believe that the world would be a better place if people were more religious. But, given the state of the world, I can’t imagine anyone seriously arguing that, anyway. Can you?”

Who, me? Gee... let me think a minute...

Just imagine the vacuity of of this man’s impoverished imagination. Dr. Soldz cannot even imagine anyone seriously arguing that religion has any beneficial effect. No, he says -- un-ironically echoing the words of that beacon of morality, Karl Marx -- it is just an “opium that deadens the moral sense.” Indeed “We all know” -- yes, all of us who have received an authoritarian secular brainwashing via graduate school -- that “there are plenty of Christian and Jewish killers too. Is there any evidence that religion has a net positive effect in the world? Perhaps the amount of killing would decline if we had more atheists? I can’t see any contrary evidence.”

No contrary evidence. None!

Imagine the mentality of someone who “cannot see” the 200 million souls murdered in the 20th century as a direct result of atheistic ideologies. They are “invisible” because they do not fit into the twisted template of his ignorance and bigotry. What an imbecile.

But on the positive side, I now have a ready source of inspiration when there’s nothing else to write about.