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Those liberal white women with the mental health diagnoses

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve seen lots of articles lately of this sort:

More than HALF (56.3%) of liberal white women age 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. That’s more than DOUBLE the percentage (27.3%) of conservative white women in the same age bracket.

If you look at the charts at the link, the same is true of other age groups (although the differences between liberal and conservatives in other age group are considerably less, they follow the same pattern) and it’s also true for white men. In fact, the differences are even more stark for liberal white men versus conservative white men, and there’s a huge disparity in all age groups for that population.

Most of the speculation on this seems to focus on women; I’m not sure why. And I’d be curious if this effect is only found among white people.

I have my own theories about it, which involve propaganda and the use of the mental health care system. Leftist media and pundits are constantly drumming up fear in their readers and listeners, whether it be about global warming or our racist society or whatever. Therefore, they appeal to and draw people who might naturally be more prey to certain kinds of fear, and then they labor to augment that fear. It’s not that conservative media doesn’t prey on fear at times also, but I think the leftist message is more constant and generally more catastrophic and more likely to attract those who are more inherently fearful in their psychological makeup.

But being more fearful in general isn’t the same as having a “mental health condition.” However, being more fearful, plus perhaps having better health insurance and being part of a culture or group that is friendly to the idea of going for therapy – probably drives more liberals than conservatives to seek the help of some sort of mental health counselor in the first place. And counselors themselves are far more likely to be on the left as well, which can discourage conservatives from going to one for help.

Then, once a person goes to a mental health counselor, even if that person is merely having ordinary problems in relationships or in life, the person is extremely likely to receive a mental health diagnosis of some sort. There is a very practical and simple reason for that: reimbursement. A diagnosis is necessary for third-party payment. And almost any problem in living can be shoehorned into a diagnosis.

It’s not the whole explanation, but I bet it’s a significant one.

Comments

Those liberal white women with the mental health diagnoses — 69 Comments

  1. Is the study based only on biological women? Or on all people who “identify” as women?

  2. “Counselors”, once termed “therapists,” are largely leftist, as Neo points out, and are usually quacks. Pay someone $200 per hour for nonsense ‘therapy’ for self-inflicted problems and insecurity? Nonsense. It is not the American Way.

  3. They’re needy and they have a ‘co-dependent’ relationship with someone who earns insurance reimbursements from it. Take away the third party payments and restructure primary, secondary, and tertiary education so these broads spend less time in school and have to pay for rent-a-friend out of pocket. They’ll do what my mother’s generation did: talk to their friends, talk to their mother, talk to their sister, and get back to their daily tasks when the irritation response exceeds the sympathy response.
    ==
    Some of them would benefit from having husbands, who are willing to listen if you have a discrete problem and need their help solving it (but are otherwise bored by your emotional states). The propensity of the young to marry in a given year has dropped by about 30% in the last generation, so fewer women have husbands.
    ==
    Incentives matter.

  4. This is a huge, huge problem in the West. Nothing against therapy or going to a therapist, but the number of people suffering from depression and anxiety in the West is alarming. There are some very basic things that work for the vast majority of people, yet it is nearly impossible to get people to do them; 15 – 30 minutes of meditation a day (yoga, sitting and breathing calmly, prayer, tai chi, “counting your blessings…”), some form of exercise (walking, weight training, cycling, swimming, skipping rope, push-ups, sit-ups, yoga, tai chi…), social contact (bridge club, bunko, community service, bowling league, VFW, Elks, bingo…), don’t overeat, over drink, take drugs, don’t sit and watch a screen 6+ hours/day, every day.

  5. Well, I’m thinking that leftist white women take their own emotional turbulence as a sign that they are compassionate and caring – it’s the only proper reaction to what they regard as a cosmically unjust world. These are the types who furiously end friendships if their beliefs are countered in the slightest. This might be anger and depression in the abstract, but because it’s shared, it has real power and real effects on the psyche.

    This might be true especially for single women who look to the government as their chief provider.

  6. Art Deco,

    A lot of women in my mother’s generation were unhappy also, including my mother. Working full time was going to cure that. It didn’t.

    We need to be honest with people that unhappiness is a fairly common state of affairs for people. Studying philosophy, especially the life and parables of Jesus helps me to understand and accept that. But I think far too many people in the West, especially women, believe that if they are not happy most every waking moment something is wrong.

    I try to remember to use the word “joy” in place of “happiness.” Pursuing happiness too often leads to misery.

  7. My law office building has about a dozen mental health therapists in it. 95% of the patients are women.

  8. Will M,

    I think it has more to do with hate and ostracism. There is pleasure in perceiving an outgroup and castigating others to it. “Mean girls.” “Cliques.” Feminists and Leftist women are the embodiment of the high school cheerleaders with the exclusive lunch table they imagine they are better than.

    Few of them would be perceptive or open enough to make the connection, but the “Pick a Little, Talk a Little” song and scene in “The Music Man” encapsulates them perfectly. They are the spinster, village scolds passing negative judgement on everyone else for their moral inferiority. It is exactly the same phenomenon.

  10. Rufus T,

    Good points, those should be factored in. But “mental health conditions” would have to include chronic depression along with anger, and the Heathers are noted for their prideful exclusivity, not depression,

  11. When everything’s diagnosable and none of it’s your fault… who’s surprised?

  12. Cornhead:

    See Jordan Peterson on why women are more emotionally sensitive. It is most likely a mechanism to foster nurturing and human survival.

  13. Visit a pot store. 1/3 of the customers are 40+ women seeking relief from anxiety. They get it, too.

  14. I am reminded of the time 20+ years ago when, at my dad’s insistence, I go to see a doctor to get a physical. My mom had just died, and I am sure dad’s thinking was that he could not bear to lose another person close to him.

    It didn’t go well. The doctor noted that my blood pressure was on the high side, and I offhandedly said something about salting my french fries before tasting them. He immediately blurted out “I don’t want you eating french fries.” I said “excuse me?” He said, “I mean it, I don’t want you eating french fries.” (Interestingly enough, much later I understood the point he was trying to make when my new doctor here in Boise put me on a keto diet. The difference is, my new doctor took the time to explain why he was recommending the change and what benefits I would see.)

    Anyway, I mentioned that (a) my mom had just died, (b) my marriage was breaking up, and (c) my small business was in danger of going under. Next thing I know, I’m in an examination room filling out a questionnaire to see if I was depressed or not. Once that was done, I was back with the doctor. I told him “look, the things I can change I am working to change, and the things I can’t I am working on accepting.” “Oh,” the doctor remarked, “that’s a pretty sensible attitude.” Ya think?

    He gave me a prescription for my blood pressure, which he told would have nightmares and ED as likely side effects. I crumpled up the prescription and threw it away on my way to the parking lot.

  15. Well, given how many women nowadays have chosen not to have children ….. I’m not sure that emotional hypersensitivity is a survival trait. I not sure about much, really.

  17. Our daughter is a therapist, and a conservative. Her practice is humming. She can’t possibly fit in the number of people who are calling for appointments.

    She has quit talking transgender children. The medical doctors and parents were pushing her to affirm her patient’s transgender status. She refused to do that without clear evidence. So many young women are confused, have body image issues, think their unhappiness’ is because they’re the wrong sex, etc. She refused to be a part of the effort to normalize nodical treatment of young girls.

    Climate change and the fear of abortions being made illegal are common issues causing anxiety and depression. She gives her clients homework to research about some issues on Prager U. and Watts Up With That. Doesn’t always work (a mind is a hard thing to change), but sometimes it does.

    She is getting burned out. Imagine listening to people talk about these issues several hours a day five days a week. She has her successes, but the tide of clients does not recede. So much to do, so little time to do it. She has her horse that she rides several times a week to help her stay sane.

    Our son had a philosophy of life that he developed on his own. He learned that you couldn’t always do what you wanted to and what was fun. That life entailed obligations, setbacks, disappointments and pain as well as happiness. He said it was like eating a sandwich that doesn’t always taste good, but you have to eat it anyway. So, you might as well develop a taste for it. He was 15 when he told me that. I was impressed.

    People may think therapy is nonsense, but it helped me when I needed to discover the reason I was so angry. I went to a therapist who specialized in anger management. He made a lot of difference in my life. I’m a believer in it, but you have to be motivated to deal with your issues to achieve some success. The therapist can only guide you, it’s you who must do the work.

  19. Leftism is one doom and gloom world ending crisis after another. Leftists probably tend to believe these predictions. Also they live for Leftism.
    That they have more mental issues would not surprise me.

  20. This might be true especially for single women who look to the government as their chief provider.
    ==
    Government does not provide for single women unless (1) they’re on the payroll or (2) elderly or (3) disabled or (4) a widow to a man who qualified as ‘fully insured’, or (5) were subject to layoff in the last six months. There is TANF for women with dependent children. It’s a term-limited program and the total number of beneficiaries (mothers and children summed) is about 2 million at this time. I think there are about 64 million women over the age of 21 who are not currently married, and 21 million government employees out of 157 million employed persons.

  21. In our society, conformists are more likely to be Democrats/Leftists, since that would be perceived as that the ‘best people’ are in most circles. And conformists seem especially vulnerable to the kinds of social pressures that are applied, especially to women, on social media.

  23. Rufus T,

    Can’t argue with that, but as for the cheerleader/mean girls analogy …… doesn’t it seem to you that a fair sized, maybe a majority of leftist white women go out of their way to appear unattractive? And, sad to say, *were* unattractive to begin with, weight probs, etc. Many of these women, lacking a social life, prbly threw themselves headlong and with a religious dedication into leftist politics, which was something that could hold back depression for a time, but only for a time. They’re mean and perpetually angry, yes, but behind perpetual anger there’s always a deep grief or shame.

  25. Will M.,

    I think we might be saying the same thing. The point I’m making is it is a trap that many people slide into, especially women; hyper-judgement and degradation of others. The purple-haired antifa woman with a nose ring believes she has ascended beyond such mundane, human instincts, but she wears a uniform and ostracizes others; just like the Heathers in your example.

  26. Will M. May have worn out, but when I was in college in the Sixties, women who took care for their looks, who were attractive, were considered by the left to be shallow and not particularly bright. Maybe as a reaction, many women on the left went max frump. There are sandals and…there are devices the size of small showshoes made of uncured water buffalo hide with strap ends flying all over the place. Hair….. Could still be a clan signal.

    You have to have a problem in advance to be askeered of things like AGW, to need to be afraid, to be afraid of having to give up your fear. Why the attraction to fear except to prove to oneself and others that your sentiments are genuine and deep. If you were Seriously Concerned and it didn’t make you fearful, are you Seriouisly Concerned enough?

    And the therapist knows only what he is told and that means talking about yourself. And much has to do with the therapist’s experience. For example, here in west Michigan, I don’t have a fear of going out to the woodpile in the dark. If I were in the southwest and multiply if I were in Australia, I’d be nuts to do that. So whether one’s reluctance to go fetch firewood is rational or not depends on the therapist’s own experience.
    I found jump school. boring. Do I have a screw loose? Depends on the therapist’s own issues with heights.

  27. Griffin,

    That hotair article begins with this quote:

    “If you think about every 10 teen girls that you know, at least one and possibly more has been raped, and that is the highest level we’ve ever seen,” said Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, who said the rise of sexual violence almost certainly contributed to the glaring spike of depressive symptoms.

    Possibly more than 10% of teen girls have been raped?!

  30. Possibly the CDC gal has been brainwashed, and has internalized the Liberal Woman Syndrome. Something about lunatics running an agency, cough, an asylum?

    The same CDC that is hot and bothered about gun control and racism, but totally has no credibility when it comes to actual diseases.

  31. Rufus T – true enough.

    Richard A – it strikes me that many leftist women flaunt their – well, let’s just call it ugliness – in the same way that leftist artists flaunt ugliness as a weapon to batter “normative” senses. I’ve seen even the attractive leftist women render themselves ugly via tats, nose rings, green hair, etc. Its another manifestation of their anger. But again, behind this kind of ongoing, unreasoning anger, there has to be a terrible grief.

  32. For what it’s worth, the one woman who completely broke relations with me over Woke politics is a lifelong depressive who moves from one therapist to another and who was institutionalized for a time. She adapted Woke politics with a vengeance and uses it to channel her anger and grief.

  34. I wonder if conservatives are also more likely to seek out religious , non official therapy from pastors, priest and Rabbis that never shows up on any books ? Now there are official Christian Counselors that go to college for just such a degree. I would guess there is often a paper trail there. One of my younger relatives is working on her Master’s in Christian Counseling.

  35. The study observes, “More than HALF (56.3%) of liberal white women age 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.”

    neo points out that, “the differences are even more stark for liberal white men versus conservative white men, and there’s a huge disparity in all age groups for that population.”

    Unlike Classical Liberalism, which has been rejected by today’s ‘woke’ liberals, ‘progressive’ liberals reject and/or dismiss objective reality. A necessary requirement in the embrace of progressive ‘reality’.

    Their dismissal has a profound and personal consequence.

  36. I hope someone reads this who could benefit from it. It’s too long, but it might save someone.

    I never thought I would write this in a comment, but I think’s worth hurting myself to help others.

    I was abducted from the playground when I was seven, and almost murdered. My father died young two months later of a heart attack and we lost everything. For almost two decades afterward I was hurt by a family “friend” who stressed that if he went to prison he would hurt my family.

    I have lived in fear for most of my life.

    I finally told my family and they rallied around me and found me psychologists, psychiatrists, and group therapy. (The damage was too great, it barely helped.)

    Thirty years ago I was prescribed medicines for my deep mental conditions. One was Imipramine and the other was Lorazepam (aka Ativan). They know now that Lorazepam shouldn’t be taken longer than about 6 weeks. I took them for 30 years.

    Before I took them, I wrote for pleasure three Regency Romances, a mystery, and a science fiction. I thought up plots for 12 mysteries based on semantic misunderstandings. I discovered, without lessons, I could paint (and be paid for) doing pastel animal portraits, and do animal drawings in pen-and-ink for actress Tippi Hedren’s “Elsa Wild Animal Appeal”. Koh-I-Noor Rapidigraph pen company did a two-page ad in American Artist Magazine that said that “Minta Morze, who has a degree in Math from UCLA, draws ink animals from life!” They thought my work was good enough for pages of my writing about my experience and my drawings in a paid ad that was 2 whole pages.

    I write this because after I started taking the medicine, FOR 30 YEARS I did NO OTHER art work or writing. I helped at home, and helped my brothers, but I DISAPPEARED! My family thought I was a basket case, and helped me live.

    A few times I managed to do something when the impetus came from someone strong outside. A man who wrote a great blog called the Conservative Cat paid for a blog for me (A Few Shiny Pebbles) after he read my comments. (That stopped when I came downstairs to help my Viet Nam vet brother wrap his leg in the morning and found he had died during the night. Basket Case again.

    I joined Toastmasters because someone I knew was in it. I wrote two speeches, both of which I gave before joint meetings (one with Vandenberg Air Base), and got standing ovations. I quit because I just couldn’t handle admitting to be a failure when people asked me about my accomplishments.

    I read the books of a brilliant thinker, professor Jacques Barzun, and heard that Columbia University was honoring his 100th birthday with a banquet, and they were asking for letters from all over in three categories: Academe, Publishing (he wrote a zillion books), and the Reading Public. At the banquet they read three letters, one from each group. Mine was the one from the Public. It’s at 1 hour and 6 minutes into the banquet.

    I write all this to say that it isn’t just me who thinks I might have accomplished something in those 30 years. I have some abilities.

    My mother’s sister, my aunt, came back into my life and encouraged me to do a pastel of a dog to get me doing things. With her deep love, one thing followed another and I finally discovered that I had been hiding in my head all this time and that the medicine was destroying my life.

    I have been going through the Hell —and it is HELL—of going OFF both mind drugs in the past several months. I face a lot more hell, because I’m doing it myself. I am DOING THINGS to get back into life, even though I’m still struggling with the nightmare of what happened when I was a child. I am still LOST.

    But now I have a chance.

    I am writing all this because I think the psychiatric drugs may be extremely helpful in some ways—they helped me not be terrified all the time, though life still scares me every day — but at what price?????

    Maybe some of what is strange about the way some people act is because there are so many such drugs out there and they don’t do what they think they do. I am a significantly different person now that I am off them.

    I would rather find life terrifying and ACTUALLY DO ART AND WRITE AND SPEAK than be “a dolphin floating in the sea” as one doctor told me.

    My abilities are highly visible ones, math, physics, art, speaking, writing. Mine manifest themselves in ways I can measure, so I see their absence in all those years. But everyone has capabilities. What were we losing as a society, as a culture?

    This isn’t against such medicines. It’s to say: shouldn’t we be more careful? Shouldn’t we know more about their usage, their operational aspects, husbanding them, etc. (Within the past few years they decided Lorazepam shouldn’t be taken for more than about 6 weeks; yet, a lot of doctors prescribed it to me for daily medicine for 30 years.) I didn’t even realize I did no art work until my aunt asked me to do one of those animal portraits I used to do a long time ago and I got my pastels out of the box they’ve been in for years.

    This comment is too long already. Please, God, let someone see it who will ask questions, who will wonder.

    If you study the histories of medicine, of science, of technology you will find out how unspeakably young they are. We know so little.

  37. Part of dealing with reality is accepting the fact that life has it’s share of trouble. If you are screaming against the wind that life should be perfect, you are setting yourself up for problems. ( And maybe finding yourself voting for ” utopia” )

    ” These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

    John 16: 33 KJV

    https://www.gabc.org/episode/counted-worthy-dr-connor-bales/

  38. The study observes, “More than HALF (56.3%) of liberal white women age 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.”

    The other 44% have not been diagnosed.

  39. Will M.

    I suspect you’re right. But, as you point out, some of them degild the lily.

    Someplace, somewhere, something comes first. And it drives them leftward. But I continue to think that being Seriously Concerned to the point of mental difficulties–or at least the appearance of such–regarding the prescribed issues is required both socially and personally within that cohort. Did the mental difficulties come first and draw the phenomenon to them, or did the deliberate, to a point, absorption of such looming catastrophes for some more or less mundane reason cause the difficulties?

    Why would conservative women be doing better? Possibly, they’re in better shape and don’t need to make themselves mentally ill.

  40. A big reason I think is that conservative women (and men) are blinded by all the claims by conservatives that mental health problems don’t exist and they should just “get over it”, whereas liberals tend to seek help with them earlier.

    This alone will seriously skew the numbers, even without taking into account the very real reason of liberals being more likely to get anxiety and depression from all the scare stories and doom and gloom predictions they believe religiously.
    Then again, conservatives religiously believe in another bunch of doom and gloom predictions, mainly about how anything and anyone they don’t like is done by Soros (or name your boogeyman) to “destroy democracy”.

  41. Richard A,

    It’s my impression that conservative women, conservative anybody for that matter, simply tend to see the world, themselves, realistically. Earthly life is unfair, inequities abound, human nature can easily fall to base drives, etc., and you do what you can to spread a little light in your own little arena, but you can’t change reality. Leftists, the extreme sort so plentiful today, believe they can change the nature of reality. They are at loggerheads with reality, something’s gotta give and it won’t be reality.

    As far as I can fathom it, the one indispensable key to a spiritual life is simple *acceptance* of one’s own suffering and that of the world’s. This the leftists won’t do, and thus their self-destructive schemes go on and on. So yeah, at root, I believe it’s essentially a spiritual problem.

  42. @ JJ > “The therapist can only guide you, it’s you who must do the work.”

    How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb?
    Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

  43. Levity aside, thanks to everyone for the discussion and insights.
    And especially thanks to Minta Marie.

  44. Maybe the depressed fearful leftists (liberals are not necessarily mental cases, if they are classical ideologists) need to watch more good movies.
    https://thecinematherapy.com/
    “Cinema Therapy was started in 2020 when two friends, a licensed therapist and a professional filmmaker, teamed up to share mental health and relationship skills while geeking out about movies.”

    Best if you’ve seen the films first, but not absolutely necessary.

  45. A big reason I think is that conservative women (and men) are blinded by all the claims by conservatives that mental health problems don’t exist and they should just “get over it”, whereas liberals tend to seek help with them earlier.
    ==
    A big reason for what?
    ==
    Someone’s subjective distress certainly exists, but you’re stealing two bases here. One is the notion that their subjective distress is its own justification. The other is that the mental health trade accomplishes something salutary.
    ==
    The one fairly secure result of therapy / counseling is that the service provider gets paid. It’s the unspoken assumption of this guild and its exponents that if your issues are not relived by therapy / counseling, it’s your fault. It’s also the stated view of this guild and its exponents that ‘seeking help’ is a sign of ‘strength’, or whatever. Not everyone subscribes to these views.
    ==
    Those of us who take a more sociological perspective are going to ask whether the efflorescecne of talking cures and the casual distribution of psychotropic medications has been associated over time with actual declines in indices of social pathology or personal distress. (Or is it your contention that there is some essential vector at work that would leave us in even worse shape than we are now if we did not have all these mental health tradesman collecting insurance reimbursements?).

  46. Possibly more than 10% of teen girls have been raped?!
    ==
    Of course that’s ridiculous. (Heather MacDonald has written about this discourse as it applies to life on college campuses). CDC employees not only fail badly when asked to address problems posed by disease, they spout sociological nonsense about the manifestations of human behavior they do want to discuss. It’s a hopeless agency. Salvage some fragments of it and fire the rest of them. (IIRC, the characters responsible for the test-kits fiasco at the beginning of the pandemic worked for the FDA, however).

  47. Then again, conservatives religiously believe in another bunch of doom and gloom predictions, mainly about how anything and anyone they don’t like is done by Soros (or name your boogeyman) to “destroy democracy”.
    ==
    Soros is a destructive force in the common life.

  49. Minta Marie Morze:

    To echo Rufus T Firefly and AesopFan, may God bless you and keep you in the palm of his hand in this latest struggle.

    Thank you for the reference to your comment above in the other thread.

  50. Personally, I believe the “mental health crisis” amongst liberals is just a symptom of what makes them liberal in the first place.

    Liberals have no agency. In my experience, they are unwilling to accept responsibility for themselves. Everything bad that happens to them is the result of someone or something else. It is not within their purview to make their lives better, that’s up to someone else…usually the government.

    Is it any wonder that people who are so helpless and dependent have psychological issues as a result? I’m pretty sure I would.

    I much prefer the way I was taught to view the world: The only person responsible for me, is me.

    What I always told my kids when they started trying to tell me how it was some other kid’s fault, or the teacher’s fault, or the coaches fault, or the rules were unfair or whatever: It doesn’t matter how you got where you are; It only matters that this is where you’re at. So, decide where you want to be, figure out what you need to do to get from here to there and get started. The longer you sit around feeling sorry for yourself, the longer it will take you to get there.

  52. Minta Marie Morze, it takes courage to share what you did, and it takes courage to live what you are living, to try to go off the psychiatric drugs and return to who you are. I wish you every success. The human ability to change is remarkable, but it’s also very very hard to do it. It sounds like you have the determination and the motivation to do so, as well as loving support.

  53. Liberals have no agency. In my experience, they are unwilling to accept responsibility for themselves. Everything bad that happens to them is the result of someone or something else. It is not within their purview to make their lives better, that’s up to someone else…usually the government.
    ==
    I’m sure you can find people like that, but you also find leftoids who are vain about their professional accomplishments and family life.

  54. Will M @ 1:44am said:
    Earthly life is unfair, inequities abound, human nature can easily fall to base drives, etc., and you do what you can to spread a little light in your own little arena, but you can’t change reality. Leftists, the extreme sort so plentiful today, believe they can change the nature of reality. They are at loggerheads with reality, something’s gotta give and it won’t be reality.

    And thus we have EQUITY as a ‘goal’ of every HR department – even as unrealistic as that is.

  56. Hello.

    Scanning Neo’s blog at lunch I noticed a topic I have been focused on for some time for its political ramifications; and with a good deal less interest in the etiology of the phenomenon or potential charity for those manifesting the symptoms, than Neo is showing. But that is not why I am dropping this comment, and I don’t intend to discuss it.

    It’s because of this:

    ” I could paint (and be paid for) doing pastel animal portraits, and do animal drawings in pen-and-ink for actress Tippi Hedren’s “Elsa Wild Animal Appeal”. Koh-I-Noor Rapidigraph pen company did a two-page ad in American Artist Magazine that said that “Minta Morze, who has a degree in Math from UCLA, draws ink animals from life!” They thought my work was good enough for pages of my writing about my experience and my drawings in a paid ad that was 2 whole pages.

    Now, I know nothing much about art other than what I picked up in college while suffering through non-elective humanities classes taught by annoying professors I wanted to punch to the ground rather than listen to.

    But recently, when looking for a gift for a “kid sister” who is into “Mid Century Modern” I stumbled across an entire commercial niche wherein illustrators and artists produce product designs based on either old commercial images or their own interpretations and styles.

    One image that had stuck in my mind from a childhood encounter with a Christmas card or something, was a modernistic and rather geometric illustration of a bright red cardinal, done, I learned, by some commercial artist who did work for Ford Motor Company’s magazine and maybe Grosse Pointe publications as well. I tracked his name down at the time but cannot recall it now.

    You do birds too, apparently.

    Anyway, I thought I could pick up a high quality litho for just a few bucks for her. After all, “Who remembers any of that stuff” anyway.

    Well, apparently lots of people do and it’s an effen blooming industry of sorts. They must be making some profits off of it. Heck, I’ve seen the stuff on highball and double old fashioned glasses.

    So …. why not do your own stuff and issue some numbered prints?

    Couldn’t hurt. Might even sell a couple. Might snowball.

  57. Want proof? Just look at the people attending these drag queen performances, it’s almost all women–including young moms bringing their little kids–and they scream like they’re at Chippendales.

  58. Minta Marie Morze, thank you for sharing your story. God bless your pursuit to heal and live your best life.

    So many good comments. “As far as I can fathom it, the one indispensable key to a spiritual life is simple *acceptance* of one’s own suffering and that of the world’s. This the leftists won’t do, and thus their self-destructive schemes go on and on. So yeah, at root, I believe it’s essentially a spiritual problem.” Will M.

    This resonates with me. As a Catholic I believe we are spirit, soul and body–a trinity in nature. As I offer emotional support to my adult children, raising children in these times, I often cite “the fellowship of sufferings” that we are assured in belonging to God. One must put one foot in front of the other, keeping your eye on the goal, in their case, sustaining one’s marriage and raising the next generation being the call and the goal. This applies to male and female alike. As for our generation, the same truth applies, but now as a support apparatus to the up and coming. By and large, thinking about others in your life’s sphere as opposed to the macro is much healthier and more constructive.

  59. }}} Most of the speculation on this seems to focus on women; I’m not sure why. And I’d be curious if this effect is only found among white people.

    Speculation: Women are less tied to reality than men** (as I understand, males tend towards sociopathy and psychopathy, women are more prone to schizophrenia — one reason most serial killers are male), so it makes more sense that, when a society is prone to feed one’s own unrealities — e.g., “Biological males can menstruate and get pregnant”, women would get the shorter end of the stick, and get their schizophrenia fed rather than diagnosed and treated. And I’m going to guess that leads to all manner of more severe issues later on.

    Not saying that this is unique to women, only that it is a noted quality, and we are feeding things like schizophrenia these days, aren’t we?

    Moreover, conservatives are more likely to have hard-reality professions — engineering, blue collar work, and so forth. So they are better tethered to reality than many of the artistic types that make up the PostModern Left, even more so, given that the PML has an entire philosophical basis in destroying classical notions of “reality” based on the Inheritance of Greek Thought and Ideal.

    ====
    **Also speculation: This schizophrenia is a genetic survival trait. Any woman strongly attached to reality would look at child birthing death rates in pre-modern society and say, “Dying in agony? Fuck that shit! Get yourself away from me, I’m not having any kids!”.

    Only if they were able to deny that notion would they reproduce and have kids. So an ability to create your own mental reality at odds with the actual reality would result in greater reproduction than a solid grasp of reality would.

    Yes, that’s utter speculation, but it does make a lot of sense.

  61. }}} OBloody:

    Your entire premise is incorrect.

    Males are more likely to be schizophrenic. See this.

    OK, I stand wrong on one aspect of the statement. I would still assert that women are allowed to be so, men are told to buck up and do what they are supposed to. Women are socially encouraged to do as they wish, and the consequences are someone else’s fault. Men are usually given no such pass, and are often responsible for things they had no authority over, or even the same level as a woman not held responsible.

    Yes, many exceptions to both, but it’s the way to bet, and has been for quite a while.

    Come on, Neo — the whole of the Left’s position in general is to “avoid reality, we’ll help!” This feeds it no matter the gender, and most of postmodern 3rd/4th wave feminism is directed in the same way — give women more power, while not adding any responsibility.

    So, I concur: you have disproven one aspect of my basis for reasoning, but not most of it.

    I’m also very curious about the age breakdown on those statistics. Curious how much of that is associated with younger people raised as millennials, and if that’s changed much from the post-WWII decades to the last three decades covered. I honestly don’t know. I did encounter that statistic quite a while ago. Either the original source was wrong or it’s changed.

  62. }}} I’m sure you can find people like that, but you also find leftoids who are vain about their professional accomplishments and family life.

    True, Art, but how often is that conceit rather than arrogance? And how often are those professional accomplishments devoid of any real significance? Akin to “Kaitlin” Jenner winning “Woman of the Year”.

    Or ANYONE winning Time’s “Person of the Year”… EVER?

    Or the Peace Prize, for that matter…?

    I’m sure they crow about those as major accomplishments, but a short review of the winners shows they are anything but.

  63. Sharon W,

    Your entire comment is thoughtful and well thought out, but this part seems especially apt, regarding why so many people are depressed and/or bitter:

    “…thinking about others in your life’s sphere as opposed to the macro is much healthier and more constructive.”

    And, as you stress, the “thinking about” is how one can be service to them on their path of struggle. NOT, thinking about how one can find a human target or targets to hate and punish.

  64. This isn’t a mystery. The best therapy for getting over depression or a phobia is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Well, for a phobia.that combined with exposure therapy. You confront your fears. You don’t dwell on your emotions, your victimhood.

    What passes for our ?education system is the opposite. It teaches that victimhood is power. If you really absorb the lesson mental illness will follow like night follows day.

  65. OBloody:

    You write “women are socially encouraged to do as they wish.” That’s not a world I recognize. Yes, on TikTok or something like that, there are some women who act out mightily. But in real life, the women I know certainly don’t “do as they wish.”

  66. Minta Marie Mortze,

    My comment came right after yours only because of when we posted. It was not aimed at you.

    It sounds like you are very smart. The traumas you suffered may have triggered something that was already there. I do think highly intelligent people often have underlying issues that can surface. It seems to be some kind of trade off between high intelligence and some kinds of issues.

    Based on an IQ test I had in the seventh grade, my IQ is significantly above average, yet OCD and / or intrusive thoughts , at key moments in my life, have helped to created all kinds of issues for me. It is easy to get caught up in the ” what ifs? ”

    There was a link I posted on my earlier comment. It was from a sermon a guest preacher gave at my church last Sunday. A sermon about personal tribulations in this life. This pastor has two disabled daughters that were born with some kind of genetic defect.

  67. Perhaps liberal women have no more mental issues than conservative women but are more likely to worry about such things and go to a therapist where, as has been described, a diagnosis is pretty much guaranteed.
    If so, why the difference in being concerned with one’s own mental and emotional well-being?
    There have been times in my life where I’ve been subject to very serious, even appalling, external issues. And in the following time, maybe a year or so, what I was expected to do had frequent reminders of what had happened. It was tough. But I had stuff to do and separated the two. Compartmentalized, maybe. Is that good?
    So I was able to manage what I was expected to do. In retrospect, I may have passed over a couple of possibilities for being excused from some of it.

    It wasn’t courage, it was….compartmentalization or something.

    Maybe conservatives compartmentalize better and so the hard times don’t affect their lives as much. Then there’s the chicken/egg question.

  68. The mental illness comes from cognitive dissonance.
    They are good people – most people are. This is their self-image. Imagology.
    More Blacks are being punished – must be racism.
    More Blacks commit crimes – must be White systemic racism.

    Electing Obama failed to end racism. Must be systemic racism.
    Higher crime rates because more Blacks are committing crimes, is because of …
    White systemic racism.
    Must be.
    But isn’t. But all their friends are Democrats! and against racism!

    They are against racism. Reality is racist.
    Believing you are for and against reality causes mental illness.

  69. To all of those above who responded to my comment:

    Thank You!

    You made my day!

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