Taking the Vote Away from White People: Tea Party Populism and Elite Intentions

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Tuesday April 01, 2014 · 3:29 PM PDT

2014/04/01 · 15:29

About 30 years ago I wrote about the disfranchisement campaigns after the Civil War and during the Populist movement of the 1880s-1890s. Leafing through some old papers, I realized that the topic was more relevant than ever, given the rabid Republican revival of the disfranchisement movement. It's the same story, over and over again. Except, the last time around the Democrats were at the helm. Then again, back in the Old South, Democrats were just Democrats because they couldn't be Republicans. Follow me below the fold for a history lesson, heavy on the irony....

hepshiba for RaceGender DiscrimiNATION

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Sunday September 29, 2013 · 11:25 AM PDT

2013/09/29 · 11:25

Sexism and racism (and homophobia and classism and ableism—add your own identity oppression here) are so woven into the fabric of our daily life that that the barrage wears even the most open-hearted member of a disadvantaged group pretty thin. Think of it as a sort of space dust: it's not a huge meteor that will smash your little space ship to pieces; it's tiny fragments of sand and rock that will, at the speed of life, fatigue and erode even the hardest metals. Or, if you like to keep your feet on Planet Earth, it's the wind and water erosion of the mental world, that wears away even stalwart mountains. This constant wear and tear on the psyches of members of oppressed groups has a name: microaggressions.

hepshiba for RaceGender DiscrimiNATION

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Sunday August 25, 2013 · 11:07 AM PDT

2013/08/25 · 11:07

This is an essay directed at allies--all allies, in all struggles for justice and equity. My presumption is that you want to be good allies, and that you earnestly believe in the causes for which you struggle. You don't want to be a racist, and you don't want to be a sexist, or an able-ist, or a classist, or any other sort of enforcer of systematic oppressions. Instead, you want to liberate others and yourself from the chains of institutionalized oppression. Today I want to talk about why our own brains make that a difficult thing to do, how we cannot trust our own memories and perceptions. I also want to discuss the importance of basic principles in guiding behavior, the need for us to struggle for coherence, and to fight our tendencies to ignore, rationalize and excuse oppressive behavior.

hepshiba

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Thursday August 22, 2013 · 10:54 AM PDT

2013/08/22 · 10:54

There was PTSD news about more than veterans today! This news roundup includes a discussion of the racism of RoseChasm's widely read CNN article about her experience of sexual harassment in India; an organization that makes money off of vets and their families, and gives a little bit back; a new clinical trial that (finally!) looks at treatments for PTSD comorbid with substance abuse; a new war movie; and, another diagnosis of PTSD from the media, which misreads a coroner's report.

All the roundups are also available at my argumentengine site.

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Tuesday August 20, 2013 · 1:57 PM PDT

2013/08/20 · 13:57

A couple of folks complained that all I seemed to cover was combat-related PTSD. That's because almost all the PTSD-related news stories that Google serves up are about that population. So, to try and catch any other stories, I broadened my search terms to include "traumatic stress". One thing this exercise shows me is how under-reported and discussed other populations of survivors are, especially since soldiers make up the minority of those with PTSD. So let's see what Google offered us yesterday and today...

hepshiba

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Sunday August 18, 2013 · 11:06 AM PDT

2013/08/18 · 11:06

It wasn't genocide! It was PTSD!

The story that wins the prize for the Most Loathsome Example of Exploiting Sympathy for PTSD to Excuse Egregious Behavior is... "Excessive drinking, PTSD plagued Thomas Weir."

Not all of the fatalities of the Battle of the Little Big Horn took place on the battlefield.
After the defeat of George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876, Lt. Thomas Weir went into a deep depression (now defined as post-traumatic stress disorder) and died Sept. 28, three months after the battle.

I'm not sure where to file this except under "frickin' unbelievable." This is a sob story that's supposed to leave us feeling deeply sympathetic towards Lt. Weir, who survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Weir was an instrument in the U.S. government's genocidal campaign against Native Americans and participated in the Washita Massacre, where Custer's troops murdered women and children. (The article describes the event as "the Battle of Washita, or as many call it, a massacre" -- "many" apparently not including the author of the article, Curtis Eriksmoen.) Though the article lauds Weir, it's impossible to tell his story without admitting that he was a drunk, well before the Battle of the Little Big Horn. This is the first of a two-part story, so we're left hanging without evidence for the premise of the story, which is that poor Weir developed PTSD as the result of his failed attempt to save Custer at the Little Big Horn, which contributed to his demise. What the authors don't consider is that Weir's PTSD might instead have been a result of his participation in the slaughter of innocents. A fine example of misusing PTSD in the cause of right-wing revisionism.

More stories follow, under the orange squiggle. The original, and archives of earlier PTSD News Roundups can be found at my argumentengine site.

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Saturday August 17, 2013 · 2:33 PM PDT

2013/08/17 · 14:33

Sometimes the names of the trauma-focused therapies that folks come up with make me shudder all by themselves, they're so weirdly Orwellian. That's the case for "reprogramming therapy," of which Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) is being hyped as the latest and greatest "cure." Here's the headline: "Scottish nurses are to be trained in a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder that works by reprogramming the brains of combat veterans." Though it sounds like a kind of Orwellian brainwashing, it's yet another version of Francine Shapiro's endlessly "promising" (no-longer-so-)new therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). EMDR and its variants have proved no more effective than any other trauma-focused therapy, which means they're moderately effective at relieving clinical symptoms in the short-term, for a very small segment of the population that suffers from PTSD (the 20% of women, and about 12% of men with no co-morbid psychological disorders). The description of how ART works is pretty weak: "The patient is asked to move their eyes back and forth while recalling traumatic events, a process which is thought to “unlock” the memory and enable the therapist to start a discussion aimed at detaching the associated negative emotions."

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Friday August 16, 2013 · 2:13 PM PDT

2013/08/16 · 14:13

Google News sends me a notification each day with all the day's stories related to PTSD. Usually I just read them and scream, or cry, or hit my forehead with my hand. But for the last few days I've started writing them up into blog posts. The original are published over at argument engine, but I thought it might be more convenient for some to read them here. Today's features: transcendental meditation for PTSD; surviving killing; art therapy; nostalgia for the days when soldiers were manly guys doing manly things with other men.

Feel free to repost to relevant groups. You'll find the full blog post under the orange scroll...

hepshiba for White Privilege Working Group

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Tuesday February 26, 2013 · 9:52 AM PST

2013/02/26 · 09:52

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by Scientific American to be a Guest Blogger on the subject of PTSD. The result is now online, and I hope you'll have time to take a look. Summary is below the orange squiggle.

hepshiba

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Tuesday August 14, 2012 · 9:40 AM PDT

2012/08/14 · 09:40

"But advertising exploits men, too! Look how stupid they are in so many commercials! That's as bad as objectifying women!" Yes, it's equally bad. But for the women. Not for the men. And here's why....

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Monday August 13, 2012 · 5:08 AM PDT

2012/08/13 · 05:08

Half-naked women in bikinis! Olympic athletes montaged into soft porn! Ads that promise the girl along with the car! What's the problem with objectification, anyway?

hepshiba for White Privilege Working Group

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Wednesday April 18, 2012 · 12:08 PM PDT

2012/04/18 · 12:08

Sweden's minister of culture, Adelsohn Liljeroth, who claims to be an antiracist, was caught on video in an egregious demonstration of racist stupidity. An enormous cake decorated to look like a stereotypical black African woman was the centerpiece of an art installation at a Swedish museum on World Art Day. Liljeroth began to slice the cake, starting at the clitoris, all the while joking about "cannibalism" and obviously having a good time. Video below the fold....

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Taking the Vote Away from White People: Tea Party Populism and Elite Intentions

Racial and gendered microaggressions and hypersensitivity, or one last straw after another

Prejudice, Lies and Memory Tapes: How to Stop Trusting Yourself and Learn to Be a Good Ally

22 August 2013, PTSD & Trauma News Roundup

20 August 2013, PTSD and Trauma News Roundup

18 August 2013 PTSD News Roundup: Therapy Dogs, TV tropes, homelessness, race, & the Little Big Horn

17 August 2013, PTSD News Roundup: Bad Science edition

16 August 2013: PTSD News Roundup, with commentary

PTSD: The Futile Search for the 'Quick Fix'

Selling Stupid Men: Advertising and the Myth of the Incompetent Male

What's the Matter with Sexy Ads?

Want Milk With Your Racist Circumcision Cake?