January 7, 2024

This idea that the politics of the other is a mental disorder — literally.

66 comments:

rhhardin said...

It's just women's thinking vs men's thinking, with hangers-on on each side.

Get all the feelings right for the moment (complex women's thinking) vs structural stability (abstracting, men's thinking).

Sebastian said...

Let's see Fetterman vote against Dem budget busters and for effective invasion prevention before we declare his therapy successful. Even then, we need to watch for relapses.

jim said...

My senator right or wrong.

Fetterman is explicitly for the working class, rather than conformity to the lame opinions of the fake left. He wants more unions, more money (not just credit) in the hands of workers, and rebuilding the glorious small towns of Pennsylvania. With him 100%.

Leland said...

Agree with Sebastian. I'm happy to hear official voices on the left that can still call out "elites" at Harvard acting badly. But before I accept Fetterman as "red-pill", let's see his voting record. Fact is, Fetterman's position was a normal Democrat position just 15 years ago.

MadTownGuy said...

His voting record will say more than his protestations, but if he's a true maverick, like Joe Manchin, it could be a good thing. Knowing something of his history before he came to the US Senate, outcomes could be a bit unpredictable.

rwnutjob said...

Well, the left thinks you can choose your gender & that men have periods.

Gender dysphoria is a mental disorder and a 1000% increase in transsexuals in the US ONLY is evidence the mental disorder is endemic.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

No Cenk Uygur tag? His tweet criticizing Fetterman launched many witty replies in this vein. Heidi’s tweet is suggestive but nothing so direct as various right wing pundits who say, “Progressivism is a mental disease.” Or the huge number of elected Democrats and those who parrot their claims that Trump is leading a “cult” of followers who are somehow compelled to vote for him because of his hold on them. Hillary loves this theme and has returned to it repeatedly, recently suggesting MAGA voters need “deprogramming” and we see similar things from the slow witted progressives on this blog.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

LOL.
I'm just laughing.

Right up there with the left's embrace of the Cheney's.

Buncha *uckers.

Yancey Ward said...

I second Sebastian's comment above. Actions are more meaningful than words.

Yancey Ward said...

However, I just love watching the Democrats turn on their own this way- fucking hilarious.

Christopher B said...

To be taken neither Literally or Seriously.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

I have no idea if Fetterman actually authentically ditched his progressive democrat commie thinking.

If it's real -then good. Sucks you be you, leftists.

Remember when the left were fine with his post-stroke mental disabilities. We do.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

a big LOL to Heidi here. perfect.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Agree with Sebastian. It's the votes that matter.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

I agree with many who say Fetterman is voicing Classical Liberal views, many of which were shared by Democrats just a few years ago. But notice how Cenk can brook no dissent from hard Left progressive “orthodoxy” as it stands now. Hard to call the shapeshifting whims of progressives orthodox when they can be reversed easily by the leaders at any time. But standing up for free speech is definitely “right wing” in the popular culture now, as is supporting Israel’s right to exist or opposing discrimination on the basis of skin color.

Cenk would have made a good Maoist or Third Reich soldier with his zeal for conformity to the doctrine de jeur.

Mr. D said...

Lotsa people used to praise Daniel Patrick Moynihan for his sage observations about his party's foibles. But when it mattered, Moynihan never deviated from the party line. Those of us who grew up in Wisconsin also remember the career of William Proxmire, who regularly inveighed against government excesses, but greenlighted them when it came to a vote. Caution is in order.

Roger Sweeny said...

Back in the 1980s, there was a respected group of psychiatrists who said there was a disorder called "nuclearism". If you weren't scared of nuclear destruction and you didn't support disarmament and oppose Ronald Reagan, you were literally crazy.

Quaestor said...

October 7th, or more specifically, the thunderous progressive applause that welcomed that barbarous atrocity, is what cured Fetterman of progressivism, not a hospital stay. Furthermore, the senator received and continues to receive neurological treatment for the strokes he has suffered. To my knowledge he has never been treated by a psychiatrist, so what this Heidi person has to say about a mental hospital strikes me as puerile bullshit.

That said, a stroke can precipitate personality changes, generally for the worse — mild people become irritable, active people become lethargic, curiosity devolves into apathy. If Fetterman’s reformation is the result of a stoke, it may be the first since Paul’s trip to Damascus.

gilbar said...

serious question: How Long, before the left Rise Up in outrage! against that fascist Fetterman?

Quaestor said...

Mike writes, "Cenk would have made a good Maoist or Third Reich soldier with his zeal for conformity to the doctrine de jeur."

It goes deeper than that. The visionary boot stamping on a human face forever has Cenk Uygur's foot in it.

Christopher said...

I took Heidi's Twitter/X post as mainly a jokey kind of thing, though I don't follow her or know what her deal is. That being said, some of what's become standard talking points in Progressive circles is insane.

I was outrageously outraged about Fetterman during his campaign and thought the way they handled his disability was a farce. But especially since Oct. 7, he's been striking me as an old-timey kinda moderate Dem of the type I used to vigorously disagree with on certain issues in between beers and family talk. I like it.

Pittsburgh-area columnist Salena Zito said on X, OTD IN 2017 I did an interview with @SenFettermanPA titled “John Fetterman is the kind of Democrat a Trump voter can love” at his home in Braddock; in it he said a lot of things that are now surprising the press & observers.

Here it is, John Fetterman is the kind of Democrat a Trump voter can love. It's pre-Senate campaign.

He recalls an interaction he had with a woman in a Mon Valley supermarket who was weighing which package of hotdogs to purchase for her home.

"I knew in my heart she was going to vote for Donald Trump, because he had found a way to cut through and reach voters like her who could barely afford a package of hotdogs, and we hadn't," he said.

"That voter should be in our wheelhouse," he said after asking her who she was supporting for president. Her answer was, Trump.

"We have spent too much time in our urban planning to gentrify cities or create organic gardens in Portland and San Francisco. We've not spent time in cities like Youngstown, Ohio, Gary, Ind. or McKeesport, Pa.," he said.

"Essentially we have been leaving too many people behind, the people who really need us," he said.

Barry Dauphin said...

How long can a 53 yr old be considered a "young" Turk?

Eva Marie said...

“To my knowledge he has never been treated by a psychiatrist, so what this Heidi person has to say about a mental hospital strikes me as puerile bullshit.”
We really do live in an age of that’s not funny.

Ampersand said...

Uygur is just doing the work. The party line won't enforce itself.
Fetterman will return to the fold.

tim in vermont said...

It's like that episode of The Simpsons where they find a pencil up his nose and remove it, and he becomes a super genius. Eventually though, everybody insists that they put the pencil back in.

Bob Boyd said...

Fetterman, like many, is waking up to the fact that there is a huge difference between a Progressive and a liberal. Progs have taken over his party and he's not liking it.
Here's my half-baked thumbnail of Prog history: The Progs in the first half of the 20th century gave progressivism such a bad name what with their locking up opposition leaders as political prisoners and with horror shows like eugenics, the logical extension of which was the Holocaust, that they could no longer use the term Progressive. It had become toxic.
But by the time lovely and gracious Hillary was running for President, the Progs had taken over the Dem Party from the liberals and started calling themselves progressives again. Hillary even called herself "an old school progressive" in her campaign. Many liberals just went along with the switch thinking progressive was just a cool new word for liberal. It's actually the polar opposite for the most part.
I've observed many Dems have changed their long-professed values 180 degrees without even seeming to realize it because they simply follow their party and its propaganda blindly. Examples of this values change would be, free speech to censorship, colorblindness to open racism, concern for the poor and working class to smug elitism, equality before the law to pure partisanship and an almost feudal sense of entitlement.
IMO, it's very important for Americans to distinguish between liberals and Progs. Perhaps that's what Fetterman is doing. He's got issues, who doesn't? But he clearly has far more situational awareness than a significant percentage of Democrats who have been seduced by the pose of moral and intellectual superiority cultivated by the Progs who are straight up totalitarians.
Americans came to despise the Progressives once, and rightfully so. I hope they will do so again, and soon, before the evil bastards do too much damage.

Joe Smith said...

Something about stopped clocks...

rcocean said...

This is just word games. Fettermann votes with Schumer 99 percent of the time. He supports all of Genocide Joe's agenda. So, how is that different from "progressivism"?

Fettermann talks about "Working class" voters. So what? How does that translate into anything for them? Did he vote for billions for war in Gaza and Ukraine? Yes. Does he support securing the border and enforceing the immigration laws? No. Is he doing anything to help working class people losing their jobs through outsourcing and globalization? No.

Like all the D Senators, no matter what they SAY, they all line up vote with schumer. Like robots.

Republican senators are the same. Rand Paul is supposedly some "radical libertarian" but he almost never does anything except hold up a spending bill for a day or two. Miss Lindsey is the master of "Talk Conservative" and "Vote Moderate". He was just jabbering about chik-fi-le in NYC and "securing the border" but in reality he will do NOTHING.

Joe Bar said...

C'mon. It's a good joke.

hombre said...

To name a few: Open borders are okay. "Climate change" is real and manmade. Mutilating children is healthy. 60 million+ abortions are acceptable. Men can get pregnant. Gas stoves, plastic straws, plastic grocery bags, etc., ought to be banned. It's not unfair for men to compete in women's sports. Trump threatens Democracy. J6 was an insurrection. And, terrorism is okay if the victims are Jews.

Nothing abberational about those credos of leftist Democrats. /sarc.

Big Mike said...

Three out of 49 Democrat senators — Sinema, Manchin, and Fetterman — have chosen to distance themselves from Democrat Progressivism. Tester is likely to be a fourth, given that he’s running this year in Montana. More than balances the two Independents — who caucus with the Dems to push them ever further leftward.

But it says something about the populist evolution within the GOP that to an extremist like Uygur any alignment with working people makes one a Republican in his eyes.

Joe Smith said...

Extra bonus points for 'Pinko.'

Next he'll be ranting about the Chicoms : )

Joe Smith said...

'How long can a 53 yr old be considered a "young" Turk?'

The same way I'm an underwear model when in Wisconsin, or a young stud on a cruise ship.

Compared to his peers, he's jail bait...

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Fetterman is likely just working the John Fetterman brand. I wouldn't count him as anything other than lockstep Democrat yet.

That being said; I'd cheer if he beat Cenk Uygur's ass, but then I'd cheer for anyone who beat Cenk Uygur's ass.

Michael P said...

I agree with Christopher at 9:44AM (EDT): I think the top Twit is a jokey or trolly one that plays on Cenk Uygur's implication that someone with a (D) after their name automatically is -- or should be -- a "progressive".

To the extent that Fetterman has recovered more from his stroke, the only people to blame for not understanding his positions and principles during his campaign were the ones pushing the candidacy of someone who just had a massive stroke.

wendybar said...

I concur!!

Paul Zrimsek said...

Stand by for lots of articles about how the after-effects of his stroke make him unfit for the Senate.

jim said...

Christopher gets it.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“Gender dysphoria is a mental disorder and a 1000% increase in transsexuals in the US ONLY is evidence the mental disorder is endemic.”

The truly dysphoric deserve compassion and understanding. The ones who believe (or more likely, say they believe) that the dysphoric belief is in fact reality, deserve merciless ridicule.

Like the poor, the mentally ill are always with us. It’s the otherwise-sane who reject observable common-sense in favor of hysteria and a blatant force feeding of Two-MinutesHate who I find so easy to write off.

stlcdr said...

The left consider what you call yourself more important than what you do. That is borderline a mental disorder in and of itself.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I worked a t a psychiatric hospital for over forty years. The staff are nearly all liberals, even radicals. I would find it amazing if someone "taught" him to become conservative there. If his reordered thinking suggested a more conservative approach to him, I would think that an objective mind would want to know how that occurred.

robother said...

Near death experience may cause some reevaluation of what's important, or, could simply be a doctor telling him "fat, dumb and progressive is no way to go through life, son." Most likely, though: polling in PA.

Skeptical Voter said...

So Cenk Uygur--aka the jerk who's a Turk--gets all wee wee'd up about Fetterman. It just proves that with a little mental therapy you can turn a Democrat into a Republican.

Frankly I think the whole kerfuffle on Cenk's part--and the "mental health" responses to it, is one of more amusing bits of political theatre this month.

Iman said...

dat cenk uygur stank
it jus’ don’t come natural
It’s turkish daffy

mikee said...

The jokes write themselves. But I was under the impression that Fetterman, like Joe Biden, was a candidate run for the service of those who, well, ran him for office. Is it possible the forces behind his Senate seat are having a change of heart as they watch the progress of the Biden administration week by week?

NMObjectivist said...

"This idea that the politics of the other is a mental disorder — literally."

It is possible that one side does have a mental disorder -- or is deeply wrong. But proving that seems impossible.

NMObjectivist said...

Having a stroke and surviving it can occasionally have startling results.

See: The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World Paperback – March 1, 2023 by Iain McGilchrist

cfs said...

Skeptical Voter said...
So Cenk Uygur--aka the jerk who's a Turk--gets all wee wee'd up about Fetterman. It just proves that with a little mental therapy you can turn a Democrat into a Republican.

Frankly I think the whole kerfuffle on Cenk's part--and the "mental health" responses to it, is one of more amusing bits of political theatre this month.

1/7/24, 12:33 PM

-----

Just wait, the month is yet young! We are only on day 7! This kerfuffle may fall out of the top twenty-five of "amusing bits of political theatre" by the end of the month.

hpudding said...

Fettermann talks about "Working class" voters. So what? How does that translate into anything for them? Did he vote for billions for war in Gaza and Ukraine? Yes. Does he support securing the border and enforceing the immigration laws? No. Is he doing anything to help working class people losing their jobs through outsourcing and globalization? No.

Hahaha. Sounds like “rcocean” is a progressive!

Fetterman didn’t yield anything against working class voters or issues important to them. He just realized that tomorrow’s elites are using their college incubation period in the progressive bubble to bring down civilization and cheer on barbarism. Doing Russia/Iran/China’s bidding in the Middle East doesn’t make America stronger or help America’s working class. If “rcocean” ever got out of his bedroom he’d realize that too. Giving in to barbarians who will block global shipping lanes on the high seas doesn’t help anyone’s pocketbook.

For decades, working-class voters have been increasingly switching to the Republican Party. Fetterman realizes why, “rcocean” has no clue.

Go hook up with some social justice warriors, rc. I’m sure they can trade their tales of revolution averted with whatever (obviously inadequate) life experiences you have to share with them. I guess age doesn’t always come with wisdom. You and they can plot to take on the corporate elites together over a $12 fancy coffee at the local Starbucks! Hahahaha. Whatever.

hombre said...

Fetterman (apparently): '"Essentially we have been leaving too many people behind, the people who really need us," he said'.

If "we/us" are the Democrats and it were 40 years ago, I might agree. Today, nobody needs the Democrats, they are corrupt and mostly insane.

hpudding said...

If you want to see some real entertainment from Chunk Anger Yogurt - or Cenk Uyghur, or whatever his name is, watch Douglas Murray eviscerate his sorry @$$ live on Piers Morgan’s show. The ignorance from that guy was stunning - acting all like Israel had never offered peace or statehood to the Palestinians. And then he started going ballistic like he was Khrushchev about to bang a table with his shoe.

It’s not the Fettermans or even the Bernie Sanders (yes, they hate him now too) who have abandoned anyone. It’s the morons who insist on still identifying with “progressive” causes after October 2023 who have abandoned all pretense of reality or common sense. These people just don’t live in the real world. If your politics can’t prioritize the civilization above everything else and the sometimes ugly things that self-preservation requires, then you need to stay on TikTok and contain your emotions away from normal people. DIrect your feelings instead through a closed-loop of online narcissists who live for the satisfaction of the self-righteous rage du jour.

The Qumran community divided the world up into the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. Civilization currently is divided between those who value self-preservation and those who value self-promotion. The latter can march merrily into the barbaric destruction that they clearly favor. They should call themselves Jihadis for Justice.

BTW, you could really get Chunk Anger to burst an aneurysm if you called him that. He calls his PAC “Justice Democrats” and identifies as an atheist who hates Sam Harris. It’s funny that the most pernicious thing he finds about religion is belief in a deity, whereas doctrines that can be used to “smear” Muslims such as jihad and all the other crap that they actually believe he’s less concerned about. What a fraud. He’s also running for president, ya know? ROFLMAO.

hpudding said...

Chunk Anger co-hosts his “Young Turks” show with an Armenian lady named Ana Kasparian. I’d be surprised if they covered the recent ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh for 7 minutes. Actually, the MSM seems to have whitewashed the whole thing. Much more exciting to see how the Jews are supposedly over-reacting in their supposedly unjust campaign of self-preservation and giving the TikTokkers loads of war porn.

Anyway, what kind of historical Stockholm Syndrome must those two have? Chunk used to deny the Armenian genocide and if I’m not mistaken the real Young Turks that inspired the name of his show may have been reconstituted elements of the same Ottomans who carried out the killings. The guy is more of a janissary or a pasha than a justice-seeking Average Joe. It’s funny how easily some people revert to type. Culture matters, for real.

Dave Begley said...

I knew the Left was off the rails when voting for child mutilation was the new litmus test.

Iman said...

heidi high hey hey
whole darn world feelin’ dat way
this lady’s spot on

Drago said...

hpudding @2:04 PM offers much with which to agree.

narciso said...

he made his town of bradford, a greater crime ridden hell hole, because sky dragon

H said...

I'm surprised that no one has raised the possibility that "leftist Fetterman". was a puppet of his staff (or possibly his wife). A return to mental health meant Fetterman began making decisions for himself again.

Gospace said...

If you search google for -“liberalism is a mental disorder “ bumper sticker- there are lots of results for where to buy them, including Amazon. Change the word liberalism to conservatism and you you get a page full of results on “liberalism is a mental disorder “ bumper stickers and one link to Cafepress with the result you’re looking.

Is there any truth to liberalism being regarded as a mental disorder? Aside from Admiral Levine? And former DoE official Sam Brinton? Ellen Page? People who support Drag Queen Story Hour? People who state their 3 year old knew he was a girl and start pumping his body full of hormones? And the “doctors” who go along with this? And the doctors who cut healthy breasts off confused teenage girls? Aside from these few examples is there really any evidence or proof?

rehajm said...

Is Heidi single?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

What if Fetterman pulled the wool over everyone’s ears?

It’s a foolproof campaign strategery.

Right now I don’t believe anybody and only a few things.

Big Mike said...

Let us not forget that in 2013 the then-mayor of Braddock, PA, pointed a loaded shotgun at the face of a man for the “crime” of jogging while black through Braddock. You cannot blame that on Fetterman’s stroke, which wouldn’t happen for another 9 years.

You could blame it on racism, but everyone knows that classical liberals are never racist. Why, some of their very best friends …

Rich said...

I know there are many takes and opinions on this, but for me, this makes me proud. I see a man who has a problem and told someone and got help, and in doing so, he sets an example for many others in a similar situation. I hope things work out for him.

Bunkypotatohead said...

TRUMP/FETTERMAN '24. The national reunion campaign.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

I think at first I overlooked the significance of Althouse including that “Literally” in her headline. I think she was using it ironically to call attention to the Tweet that used “literally” in a figurative sense. Unless Heidi really believes Fetterman was in a mental hospital. Then she was being literal and is mistaken. There has been a periodic discussion here about people using literally in a figurative sense.

Witness said...

Fetterman's still a Labor Democrat, just like Joe and Donald.

Yancey Ward said...

"I know there are many takes and opinions on this, but for me, this makes me proud. I see a man who has a problem and told someone and got help, and in doing so, he sets an example for many others in a similar situation. I hope things work out for him."

Good, I encourage you in your quest for mental health- do you need some recommendations for mental hospitals, Rich?