Bullshit.

The latest massacre in Kentucky prompts a local pol to wonder why why why. So here you go:

Kentucky’s gun laws are among the worst in the country, and the state’s gun death rate is above the national average. Kentucky has none of the foundational policies in place—after legislators repealed its concealed carry permitting requirement in 2019.

Kentucky is Gonzo Gun. It doesn’t just like them — it goes to a lot of trouble to make sure everyone gets plenty of them.

That doesn’t just mean lone loons blasting away. It means effing shootouts. Enjoy.

A cop working the fair last Saturday saw a man beating up his wife.

When the deputy intervened and identified himself in an attempt to de-escalate the situation, [Thomas] Smith reportedly told the deputy it was “none of his business.” Smith then pulled out a loaded 9mm pistol, pointed it at the deputy’s head, and threatened to “blow his brains out.” 

Nineteen years old, armed with a big gun, out and about at 1:30 AM. Ready, aim, fire.

How did Virginia State security let it happen?

Does VSU have security?

**********************

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19MNJ2aaye

‘Dr. Arday … worked hard to silence any questioning of his credentials. When a journalist for Times Higher Education, a respected academic industry publication, asked about plagiarism last year, a prominent British defamation law firm helped kill the article, the journalist said. Dr. Arday later reported the journalist to the police.

When a scholar from another university questioned his work, Dr. Arday turned the tables and filed a racism complaint with the other school…’

The education faculty at Cambridge, according to this heavily sourced NYT article, bears much of the blame. It hired, and defended hiring, a fraudster. Its behavior was bizarre — as if motivated by a desire to destroy the field of sociology.

Twelve years ago, UD expressed amazement at the incredibly, endlessly, violent Virginia State University:

Virginia State, where only a few months ago two students were hazed to death, should definitely come with a warning. At a recent event celebrating its athletic conference, its football team beat an opposing quarterback so badly the game that had been scheduled for the day after the banquet has been called off… Wow. Yet more violence at Virginia State University.

An update: Last Friday night was a big back to school event featuring Cam Newton; Saturday morning, multiple shooters went at it in front of one of the dorms and a whole bunch of students were shot. But hey they might all live!

*****************

Story behind this latest bloodiness? Not yet announced. But this is what it often is: One group of students fights with another over

a woman

a drug deal

one group being refused admission to another group’s dorm party

money

an object stolen by one or more of the students.

Duh. But young-man-in-a-hurry Ross Barkan thought he’d give plagiarism via hyperlink a try.

It worked for awhile. Eventually some of the writers whose words he lifted got pissed and called him on it.

He’s been fired.

… aggravated assault with a firearm, disrupting public schools, receiving stolen property, possession of a handgun by someone under 18 and possession of a gun in a school safety zone.’

They grow up so fast!

Deprescribing. A new word, and not a pretty one; but we can expect to see it a lot as the 17 percent of Americans on antidepressants begin to wonder why it’s so hard to get off of them.

The New York Times.

When I read this observation the other day, it seemed correct. “[Jason] Arday is a serial fabulist who seems quite unwell.”

True, true. Access has been denied. But we do know antediluvian Islamist Farah Ahmed works there, and her personal page still allows us access.

What about the rest of the Arday/Ahmed/etcetc crew? What else ya got?

In the dear dead days beyond recall of this blog, we covered paltry neighborhood pill mills as we traced America’s addictions from sea to shining sea.

Now, along with education and religion, Mother’s Little Helpers (see pharmed-up poster girl Lindsay Clancy) are going online, so you don’t have to wait all day in squalid parking lots with fellow deadheads/pushers for your oxy. Now – just like UD when she wants a dragonfruit lemonade from Starbucks – you press a few buttons.

They grow up so fast!

If you’ve been missing Tariq Ramadan – update on this Oxford U professor here – there’s always the latest pride of Cambridge (they had to let Jason Arday go), Farah Ahmed.

Unlike the innocuous Arday, Ahmed’s the real thing, a real intellectual who likes terrorists and hates democrats. I mean to say she’s an authentic radical Islamist, promoting veiled enchainment of little girls, along with the death of the liberal state.

In short, she’s a stunner! It don’t get more titillating than a real live Sharia firecracker to give a pop of color to the old place.

Yes, it’s another visit with UD’s guru (who desperately doesn’t want to be anyone’s guru, and is very insulting toward anyone pathetic enough to want a guru), British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. He has an awful lot in common with UD’s other guru, Richard Rorty.

Hint: It’s about pragmatism.

*******************

The thing I’m most wary of is one’s wish to be controlled. I’m interested in how ingenious people are at finding ways of being controlled, either by people or ideas, or whatever.

Wanting a guru is wanting to be controlled, says Phillips; but I think the observation also gets us back to the academic story of the day (of the month? It keeps going.), Jason Arday. Tyler Austin Harper is describing Bates (and Cambridge) professors absolutely controlled by, suffocatingly in the grip of, a maniac’s understanding of white supremacy. This understanding makes them a joke. It makes them hire Jason Arday.

They have given themselves over to a turgid universalism, to Casaubon’s Key to All Mythologies. They bow before it the way Pyongyang robots bow to Kim Jong Un. They seek dehumanizing and debraining control by a viselike idea.

********************

The thing I least like is people having inner superiority. That’s the death of sociability, really. In psychoanalysis, I want to free people to lose interest in themselves—not entirely, but enough to be able to be absorbed in other people and things in the world.

So this is why rabid social justice warriors seem – ironically – narcissistic: Much more than improving the world (this is Harper’s point about the Bates people’s lack of interest in actual progressive activism, like militating for campus unions), they are about feeling superior to you, and displaying that superiority in more and more melodramatic ways. The death of sociality here means everyone retreating in disgust, fear, and incredulity from the Self-Regarding Robot show.

*******************

I’m really uninterested in self-knowledge. This is not the sort of thing I should be saying as a psychoanalyst, but I’ve never found self-knowledge very interesting or engaging. It doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts about myself, but I don’t find it fascinating. I don’t find it very useful. Self-knowledge is very useful if you want to vote, but it’s not really useful if you want to fall in love or write a poem. So it’s really a question of what you want to do. Self-knowledge is a decoy. The thing is to have experiences, and the risk is that knowing oneself becomes a way of preempting experience. I think it’s the wrong project.