Geoff > Status Update

Laura wrote: "We need to make humanity great again..."

I think a strong reaction to him, ending in his removal from office and shaming, along with Bannon and the whole sick crew, would go a long way toward this.

Laura wrote: "I hate Donald Trump... We need to make humanity great again..."

I have contacted Dr Pangloss, who surprisingly is still alive and well, and he assures me that Trump will be just like the Martian invasion in Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan. The whole world will unite against this person who could have been invented as a symbol of everything that's inhuman, hateful, irrational and just plain disgusting. Jews and Muslims will join hands and dance together in the streets. We will enter a new Golden Age.

His friend Martin is less positive. But I refuse to listen to the old killjoy.

I like Martin better than Dr. Pangloss. Do you think that Trump is Hitler reincarnated?

Interestingly, Manny compared the author of Er ist wieder da - a brilliantly insightful work of satire and prophecy on this theme - to someone making light of paedophilia.

Without having read the book, I might add. Sorry Manny. I'm still a bit sore about that.

howl of minerva wrote: "Interestingly, Manny compared the author of Er ist wieder da - a brilliantly insightful work of satire and prophecy on this theme - to someone making light of paedophilia."

I was only supporting Lilo, who seemed very upset. As an actual survivor of Hitler's regime, I felt her views should be respected over those of us young and ignorant people.

I think my German is now good enough to be able to read the book in the original. When we get back to Switzerland, I'll see if I can find a copy.

"young and ignorant people."

I'm only one of those things, but I'm not sure which.

I notice that Lilo has no hesitation in comparing Trump to Hitler.

howl of minerva wrote: ""young and ignorant people."

I'm only one of those things, but I'm not sure which."

I'm happy to claim both, at least as far as first-hand experience of nazism is concerned. Though soon I will be older, and I may be less ignorant too.

howl of minerva wrote: "I notice that Lilo has no hesitation in comparing Trump to Hitler."

Lilo is clearly happy to make this comparison. She just thinks that the way it's being done in Er ist wieder da is inappropriate.

Note btw that I reviewed the book twice.

Without having read it once...

I mean it's fine, review it however many times you like by all means...

I'll be most interested in the post-reading review.

Just wait until you see my third review! It's gonna be beautiful.

It's gonna be YUGE.

It's gonna be the best review. All you haters are gonna say you're tired of reading such amazing reviews.

Geoff wrote: "This, too. Mental illness is, to a great degree, a symptom of capitalism."

Why?

Yes, in the kind of society you envisage I assume that bad practices by employers, or pressure to work for people who can't quite manage it would be absent. As would, hopefully, the pressure to have all the right Stuff. But that wouldn't remove the consequences of abusive parenting and other violence, and innate predispositions meaning that some individuals experience high levels of distress catalysed by events that wouldn't bother average people.

I also think that way too much is pathologised and stigmatised and that is certainly a symptom of a capitalistic medical system which has decided some quirks are illness, because it means that money can be made from treating them. But there are obvious high levels of distress which, where people would themselves like to be free of them (not just because others say they ought), and people who are a problem in ways that seriously harm others, where it does seem a legitimate concept.

I've known a couple of people who were unable to work solely because of mental health issues, no physical illness involved, and who had no financial worries (one via private income, the other in a Scandinavian country with excellent welfare that they could actually live on properly) and whilst they were remarkably less distressed about getting by day to day, and had better access to therapy, compared with people on benefits in the UK, (such as an old friend of mine who has had severe depression her whole adult life and never been able to work), it didn't mean that they didn't have any problems in the first place, which in all cases were rooted in traumatic events in their past.

Seriously, what the fuck

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-s...

Antonomasia wrote: "Geoff wrote: "This, too. Mental illness is, to a great degree, a symptom of capitalism."

Why?"

Well, I'm not saying that all of what we consider or label mental illness has capitalism at its root, but the hyper-competitive, high-speed, high-pressure, high-stakes, hyper-connected technological sort of post-human society we live in certainly creates anxieties, neuroses, and exacerbates already existing conditions to a horrible degree. But moreso, my point is that whatever prevailing society/culture one historically lives under defines what mental illness is, how it is treated, what access is available to treatment, to what degree it is stigmatized, how excluded or included the sufferers are in the sociopolitical sphere, etc. - since we live under near total capitalist domination in all aspects of our lives (even those of us out of the cycle of traditional employment still exist on terms defined by capitalist society, economy, etc.) then capitalist ideology is what defines and treats mental illness. It sets all the parameters - so we have something like 8.5 million kids in the US on psychiatric drugs, something like 20% of adults in the US on antidepressants, however many on antianxiety meds, etc. Are all of these people actually mentally ill? Pharmaceutical companies sure hope so, and doctors often collude with them.

But clearly depression and anxiety and worse things like schizophrenia have always existed - but how people suffering from those illnesses are treated by society changes. Now they are subject to the profit motive - so more and more people are diagnosed as ill, fall under the definition of "mentally ill" than ever before, because money is to be made. And often I think, especially with children, the culture of the cure creates the problem. We are essentially a huge population of guinea pigs being experimented on by big pharma. Hyper-capitalism creates inherent existential anxieties, neuroses, through its manically paced high-stakes ultra-competitive atmosphere that pervades and defines all human interactions, and then sells us the cures at exorbitant prices. If you genuinely suffer, and can't afford to be cured, the result is total exclusion (un- or under-employment, hospitalization or institutionalization if it can be afforded, homelessness if not.) And we haven't even broached the topic of suicide and homeless rates among veterans, and their lack of access to help, often barred by the very government that inflicted the trauma to begin with...

So yes, people do suffer mental illness that is not rooted in the capitalist dynamic, but their fate is in the hands of that dynamic. And it is in the interest of that dynamic that there are ever more of them.

David wrote: "Seriously, what the fuck

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-s..."

I am torn between two responses:

a) This is tragic and very scary.

b) This is extremely interesting from a philosophical point of view. Philosophers are always advocating these positions of systematic doubt. (Cartesian demons, etc). Usually, they are considered as academic exercises. But for an increasingly large part of the US, they are no longer academic. People are in all seriousness doubting the existence of large parts of conventional shared reality, and (I would say) are only a few steps away from doubting everything: that other people exist, that they themselves exist, that the whole world is not an illusion being projected by a malevolent intelligence. Philosophers need to start taking a more active interest in what's going on.

geoff: so you'd prefer it if people with serious mental illness weren't diagnosed and treated? Because what the pharmaceutical companies and therapists are making their money from is treating conditions that in the past would not have been treated. Now, the efficacy of those treatments varies, but overall they demonstrably have a positive effect on mental health. So it seems to me that offering people treatment for their illness is a good thing, not a bad thing, even if you happen to make a living out of it. [and, in the process, chemists and psychologists find congenial employment, which is better than unemployment, or employment in a career that fails to make use of their skills and that they find unpleasant - not everybody is cut out to be a manual factory worker.]

Now, it's true that here and there there is probably overdiagnosis. But it seems bizarre - and indeed somewhat offensive - to suggest that most, or even a substantial proportion (enough of a proportion to merit the claims) of cases of mental illness are somehow imaginary or the product of advertising campaigns by big pharma. If anything, I think many more people could benefit from mental health treatment than currently do.

---

I'm also surprised by your descriptions of modernity - they sound like how Trump sees modern America. High stakes, ultra-competitive, anxious...? try living outside of paradise for a while!
We live in societies in which, for the first time in history, food security is assured for almost everybody. In which our likelihood of being the victims of violent crime is at or near the lowest it has ever been in the history of our species. In which almost all our children have, for the first time, access to education - and extensive education at that! In which our life expectancies are increasing. In which half of all our children do not die in infancy. In which entire classes of people who previously, even just a century ago, were condemned to inevitable, painful, premature death, can now live healthy and rewarding lives. A hundred years ago, Tolkien's mother was remarkable in surviving to her mid-thirties - because she had diabetes. Tolkien's father died of rheumatic fever - a complication from a sore throat, easily preventable with modern medicine. Scriabin, as mentioned earlier in this thread, died of a small sore on his upper lip. Thank the gods for hypercapitalist big pharma. You think we have high-stakes lives now? In the past, the slightest cut or scratch or abrasion could lead within days or weeks to agonising death. Pregnancy was accompanied with terror. And it's not just acute diseases either. Big pharma's relentless desire for profit has led to us having the ability to manage long-term conditions like high blood pressure. My mother has severe asthma - outside of our modern capitalist hellscape, she'd have been dead for decades. My father has high blood pressure - he'd probably be dead too if not for medication, or at least he'd have had a stroke or a heart attack or something. Instead, he's in his seventies and lives an active and rewarding life - something that would have been unimaginable a few generations ago and that now is commonplace.
High-stakes? If we fall ill, most of us can get treatment. In many capitalist countries, it'll effectively be free. The law offers unprecedented protections to help us keep our jobs. If we do lose our jobs, we benefit from welfare states that were not seen before the rise of modern capitalism. Information technology and modern transportation technology makes it easier and easier to find congenial employment. If you're anxious about losing your job today, imagine being a farm worker, with the lord of the manor being the only employer in town, and also your landlord. [Landlords! We benefit today from unprecedented protection from the abuses of unscrupulous landlords. For the most part we live in safe and healthy accomodation, and we cannot be thrown out at a moment's notice on a whim - if we are, we can almost always find new housing.]

In almost every respect, the modern era offers you both opportunity and security - from the economy, from nature, from disease, and from other people - to an extent that would astonish - no, would seem inconceivable - to visitors from any other point in history. The costs of failure are lower than they have ever been, and the rewards of success as great. Our freedoms are unprecedented. We may have anxiety, but it's an anxiety that has replaced the default state of bedwetting terror.

Come on, Geoff, you were the guy who recently was talking about creating a multimedia environment performance-exhibition based on extreme musical repetition! You think LaMonte Young could have lived in the 17th century? Or even the 19th? Mozart was perhaps the greatest musical genius in history, and the world knew it - he was famous, a celebrity, a popular performer from childhood and the composer of operas to which the masses flocked. But he never would have had the chance to develop an experimental, avant-garde multimedia environment, not just because the technology did not exist, but because everything he did had to immediately please the public, or else he'd starve to death. And he still had to work as a piano teacher on the side. And he was in debt. And when he got ill, he still forced himself to work on a commission, even though he knew the guy who was paying him was going to take his name off it and pretend to have written it himself (and he demanded some of the money up front because the guy had a reputation for not paying up at all). He did this because he damn well needed the money. And he died of what today isn't even a disease, in his mid-thirties, and was thrown into a mass burial pit without ceremony, and he's an example of success for the era. If only he'd had late-stage capitalism, with its flourishing multimedia performance subcultures, all somehow financially viable! Late stage capitalism means that there are more art galleries in a small country town today than until recently there were in the whole of England. We have shops that sell nothing but CDs of randomly-generated static, and fashionable bars that just sell cereal and milk.

High-stakes? I don't think so. Fewer people than ever face terrible poverty in the West, and even the poverty they face with ameliorated in comparison to the pain and danger faced by their predecessors.

Now, of course, modern society is deeply flawed, and can be improved. I certainly don't intend to argue that capitalism is a perfect system. But let's not get all O tempora O mores about it: we've never had it so good.

aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "I have asked this question before, but usually all that happens is the sound of crickets:

For example - I vote for abortion rights vs. they vote for laws to make abortion criminal. I think they sh..."

There are certainly a few issues where conceptual compromise is indeed impossible. And, I suspect, where any argument is impossible. Notice, for instance, that while other 'culture war' issues, like attitudes toward drugs and homosexuality, have gradually shifted toward liberalism, attitudes toward abortion are exactly the same that they've always been.

Freedom of religion isn't something there can be much of a compromise on, but there can be argument. Most theologians agree on the importance of freedom of religion, and arguments can be made from that direction. [And there are compromises. The UK, for instance, compromises by a) allowing freedom of religion, and b) giving a slight advantage to Anglicanism by making it the only official state religion, while c) exerting a degree of government power over the church as payment for the benefits of official status. I'm not saying that's necessarily a compromise the US ought to emulate, just pointing out that it is a compromise - people who want to not be Anglicans have that option, while people worried about Anglicanism being eradicated by foreign faiths have the comfort of official state protection. And most developed countries have compromised the state support issue by giving tax breaks to religious groups.]


But mostly, compromise is compromise by balancing different issues. That can be closely related issues - like, demanding that fundamentalist christians allow the freedom of other religions and the absence of overt religious argument from the law, while at the same time granting them freedom to practice their own religion and not assist others in doing things they find immoral. Or they can be unrelated issues, like "you let us legalise gay marriage, we'll give you more subsidies for farms", and so on.

I guess as I'm in the field I should say something. I think Geoff's concerns are entirely legitimate, particularly in the US. I commented on this in my review of "Psychiatry Under the Influence", which is a good and serious book.

@howl, agreed.

There has been a lot of extra medicalisation in recent decades (e.g. all these kids on tablets for ADHD who wouldn't have been 30 years ago), and less leeway for people with minor problems to just be themselves, because of the stringent expectations of employers (compared with a few decades ago in Britain, I mean); but on the upside, far fewer people are institutionalised now than were up to the mid twentieth century (to which, yes, I think doing nothing would be preferable unless they are a major danger to others), and far more is known about effective psychotherapy, and the pathologisation of minority sexualities has decreased in the West. There are distinct bonuses to contemporary conditions.


I don't really find anything to disagree with in your post, Geoff, I think it's just looking at the same things from different angles and with different emphasis - because I've met (both socially and in old work) a lot of people whose lives would be *better* with a more humane, less capitalistic system, but that would not eradicate their problems.

Wastrel wrote: "geoff: so you'd prefer it if people with serious mental illness weren't diagnosed and treated?."

I have no clue how you came to that conclusion from what I wrote.

"So it seems to me that offering people treatment for their illness is a good thing, not a bad thing, even if you happen to make a living out of it."

I agree, and only a complete idiot would disagree.

"If anything, I think many more people could benefit from mental health treatment than currently do."

I disagree. I think our society is exceedingly over-diagnosed, over-medicated, over-prescribed. I think a lot of especially milder forms of anxiety and depression would disappear if people felt more loved by their families and friends, included in the processes of society, trusting of the norms of society, at ease in their workplaces, and secure in their futures. Because we were talking about anxiety and depression, not the thousand tangents you went off on. The furthest I got away from that was a quick mention of schizophrenia, which, yes, should be treated.

"I'm also surprised by your descriptions of modernity - they sound like how Trump sees modern America."

I have said many, many times throughout this thread and other places that Trump supporters had legitimate claims about modernity and how neoliberalism has failed them. But my analysis of the cause and roots of the problem, and why it is so endemic, is the exact opposite of what Trump believes. Try living outside paradise? Have you ever lived in the US? People here are hurting, confused, violent, desperate, addicted, angry, stupid, deluded, obsessed consumerists with tiny attention spans and narcissistic disorders, not to mention ill-fitting clothes. Point me to paradise, I'll scale the walls to get in. But it ain't here, friend.

"If we fall ill, most of us can get treatment. In many capitalist countries, it'll effectively be free."

This is ludicrous. Now I'm beginning to question if we exist in the same reality. If this is the case in the UK, I'm on my way!

"our life expectancies are increasing"

Check the numbers. American male life expectancy is decreasing.

"Tolkien's father died of rheumatic fever - a complication from a sore throat, easily preventable with modern medicine. Scriabin, as mentioned earlier in this thread, died of a small sore on his upper lip.

Again, this wasn't in any way what I was talking about, at all, in my post. I never once said we should stop modern advances in medicine (where did you get that, anyway? I'm fairly certain I only ever mentioned mental illness, which is what the original question addressed, but, you know, here I am, writing a 90,000 word reply to a 400,000 word response from you that was mostly off-topic anyway... think of all the other things I could be doing with my Saturday morning!) - I think the medical industry should be socialized, that it should be much, much cheaper, much much more available to lower income families, and much much less motivated by profit.

High-stakes?... technological society, Lamont Young, burial pit, etc. etc.

Look, Wastrel, I was going to try to do a piece-by-piece response, but you went off the rails, man. It's just too much too respond to, and I haven't even had my fucking coffee yet! I'm not anti-technology, I'm not anti-medicine, nothing I posted would lead anyone (who isn't trying to be blatantly, aggressively contrarian) to that conclusion. I want the medical industry much more decoupled from corporate profit interests. I want fewer children diagnosed with psychiatric problems, when a lot of them are probably just being children, who at their nature don't know what conforming to societal norms even is... I want anyone with serious mental problems to have insurance, to have universal access to help, and to be able to afford that help when they need it. You apparently think this is already happening. I guess this is a situation where our facts disagree, because I don't see this paradise of medical care flourishing in my country. I see the rich being able to survive AIDS while the poor lose their jobs if they have a flu for too long.

"we've never had it so good. "

I think this says a lot about your personal experience. Good for you!

Also, Wastrel, you want more proof that the capitalist dynamic has wriggled into the very framework of our beings? You seem to not even be able to conceive that medical advances could still happen outside of a corporate profit-motivated system. What is the thing Zizek always says? It's easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism...

Have to agree with Geoff that you must be in some alternative universe version of the UK. The gulf in access to good psychotherapy for people who can't afford anything but the NHS postcode lottery, and people who are able to pay as much as they need and to travel to major city centres where there is as much choice and variety as anywhere in the world, and find a therapist of the right modality who they are personally comfortable with, is absolutely staggering and for people with severe problems who really want to be better makes the difference between being able to work, have a decent social life, and being left to rot with the occasional sticking plaster.

And let's not get on to the more recent deterioration of NHS care for physical illness and injuries. That belongs on an equivalent Brexit thread which doesn't exist on here.

"So-called judge"...what the ever-loving fuck.

Actually most medical advances are paid for by the public, who fund the research. The results are immediately privatised, so the public pays again.

"Mad in America," by the same author, is another wonderful book.

Filled by really amazing tidbits of knowledge. Schizophrenic patients without access to anti-psychotic drugs routinely recover more successfully than those put on drugs.

What we think of as 'schizophrenia' is, to a degree, a product of the drugs used to treat it. This is actually acknowledged in the DSM, where it's noted that the so-called negative symptoms of schizophrenia are actually the side effects of anti-psychotic medication.

On the other side of the spectrum, major anti-depressants have had to specially lobby the FDA for approval because their product failed to outperform placebo.

Also, I would argue, the philosophical basis of 'mental illness' is just extremely murky. Thomas Szasz has been good at making this case for decades.

As to the question of whether we live in the best of all historical eras, on the one hand it seems like sort of an academic question. Obviously no one has the freedom to choose where in history they'd like to live.

Try telling that Trump supporter profiled above, Well at least you're not a peasant dying of the plague in the middle ages. I doubt you'd get very far.

As you seem to acknowledge, Wastrel, anger and despair have a huge purchase on vast swaths of the population in the US right now. Well, why do you think that is?

It's true that our crisis right now is not one of absolute biological need (ie, people aren't literally starving to death), but that doesn't make it any less real.

Yeah, I am very interested in the Szasz / Laing take on it and the social construction of it all. I've met far more people - again both socially + old work - who felt crippled or even permanently damaged by medication side effects, than those who found whatever stuff it was truly helpful. (Which isn't to say that there are *none* of the latter.)

If I'd been (physically) well enough to qualify & practice, I've often thought that I'd have ended up resigning in short order, because I disagree with too much in current practice that I'd have been required to uphold. (And if you're going to do a job you don't entirely believe in, better something semi-bureaucratic in an office than counselling and therapy, because if your heart's not in *that*, it has a much bigger effect on those you're trying to help.)

David wrote: "As to the question of whether we live in the best of all historical eras, on the one hand it seems like sort of an academic question. Obviously no one has the freedom to choose where in history the..."

Yeah, I am pretty convinced (from inner personal experience as much as anything) that one has to feel relatively okay to reach the point of considering one might actually be in the best of all historical worlds, and that it's not possible when all someone knows is ongoing distress and pain.

I think that for Western and other affluent people with many chronic medical issues, round about now or the very recent past, or - depending what exactly the illnesses are and where they live - a bit of time before or after, theirs is probably the best quality of life someone with that condition has ever had in human history. (I do think systems are likely to deteriorate in future, and that isn't a new idea for me, I already thought it WRT global warming before I was 10, but expected such collapses to be further in the future than I do now. And of course there are other spectres like antiobiotic resistance which will have knock on effects on transplants and all kinds of operations.) But yeah, you have to feel relatively safe at least for a while to accept that, and it is very hurtful - just makes people feel a whole lot worse - to tell someone they ought to be grateful if they haven't got to that place, which they may never do, it's not something that can be forced.

I think that woman is bloody lucky she didn't have to deal with victorian/1950s asylums. But that doesn't mean that her life in the present wouldn't have been massively easier if she'd been related to someone as rich as Trump, or if society had been kinder, and that she isn't surrounded by inequality.
If you've got a medical condition that doesn't have adequate treatment available / affordable, whilst Theresa May can be prime minister because she can get insulin, or very wealthy people can pay for what you need whilst you can't, that's embittering and divisive too, even if things are better for you than they would have been in the past.

So am at dinner with someone who was one of Trump's lawyers back in the day. Apparently the first thing he asked her on a case was "what colour is the judge". He also complained about his lawyer being a lesbian. And was, in general, a patronising dick. So, in essence according to someone who I am currently sat at a table with, and who has spent a chunk of time with him, he is a racist, anti-gay douchebag. And I have had enough beers at this stage to think that sharing with you guys from the restaurant toilet should be my priority...Lolz

really interesting, but also 0% surprising!

Intentionally not quoting you, in case you are unsure about leaving the post up later.

Many of psychiatry's most effective critics are (like Szasz was) psychiatrists. There's definitely room to practice in whatever way you're comfortable and there's definitely suffering out there that you can help people with. It's not just about drugs. There's psychotherapy, group therapy, art therapy, mindfulness, you name it...

Of course I'm biased.

@howl, sorry, realised that may have been somewhat opaque; the "counselling and therapy" in following lines was supposed to explain what I'd been training in before I stopped (around the same time also did part of a psychology MSc). I am related to medics, but I never had the stamina (or the A-at-A-level Maths skillz) for medical school.

Without sidetracking the thread too much, I realised there were various things in modern practice in the field that would have clashed too much with strongly-held opinions I have, whereas I'd been able to sidestep these when helping similar client groups in a different occupaion. It's all academic now tho; if I'd been able to I'm sure I'd have tried further with it.

Going to comment here just so as to get this page turned. It's been like forever between comments 1701 & 1750. More than 20 hours.

Hey guys. Just stopping by to drunk-post. Every morning for the last week or so one of the first things I check is Trump's twitter. I still can't quite believe the stuff he posts is actually real. I also am half expecting to see he has declared war on China or something via a 3am toilet-time tweet. I am not sure if the anxiety I feel each morning is because I came off my meds over the summer or if it is because the world has gone to shit.

I do, however, love that this is post 1752 on this thread, and that it has become some sort of weird free-form art piece

anyway I should probably go pass out.

Jonathan wrote: "I do, however, love that this is post 1752 "

What's going to happen on the 2017th post? Maybe we can rewrite history beginning on or before the 1938th or maybe the 1917th post.

[your drunk spelling is impeccable!]

The 1781st post will see the publication of the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft.

Give us back our eleven days!

ETA: Nathan's unexpected second post there making this one more accurate than I intended, viz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calenda...

All I know is, post 1789 better be a Jacobin article.

David wrote: "All I know is, post 1789 better be a Jacobin article."

It'll be Kant's fault.

Don't post no more in this thread but that you tip the hat to the year of the number of the comment in which you posted ::

1758 :: Charlotte Lennox pubs Henrietta ; but is better known for The Female Quixote. The latter on my shelf ; will read this year, 2017.

1759 - Candide is published - the British Museum opens and... Guinness brewery is established !!

@Jonathan, well, a lot of people who aren't in that situation are also feeling more anxious or depressed than they used to.

I'd feel significantly less anxious if I had your life, but that's only because I've been me (goes back to the post earlier, people feel as they do based on their own experience). Though I would also be making more plans and adjustments in case things got worse. (Where possible I tend to act and look at solutions rather than sit there and worry, e.g. worried about trouble at work, look at job ads).
And the things that worry me are basically selfish, i.e. things I'd have been worried about anyway, but which seem signficantly more likely to be difficult / go wrong because of Brexit and /or Trump. Other stuff is sad, and I'd want to do what I could to help, but it wouldn't make me scared in quite the same way as certain things that could affect me personally but leave lots of other people okay.

1760: accession of King George III of Britain
(yay, got one I could do from memory)

Now that a judge has stopped the ban (for now) and "bad hombres" are being allowed back in our country, should we expect the "terrorist attack" that will be the cause of emergency rescinding of civil liberties within the next week or so?

Doesn't that idea risk being too much like the left's equivalent of the Sandy Hook deniers?

Antonomasia wrote: "Doesn't that idea risk being too much like the left's equivalent of the Sandy Hook deniers?"

Oh certainly! (Except for the historical precedents...) But again, I hope to god this is hysteria on my part. We shall see.