It’s a backward world that treats those who intervene to halt an addiction as the addicts themselves, but MSNBC is nothing if not the most backward network on cable. This afternoon, in order to make even less sense of the debt deal, Martin Bashir hosted a psychologist to talk politics and tar the Tea Party as “delusional.” Stupidity ensued.
BASHIR: What is the effect giving people their way all of the time? How does it shape our thinking behavior if by being adamant and dogmatic we get our way?
PEELE: Well, the way I think about it is they are pursuing goals that can’t be achieved. It’s sort of like a child who has some kind of fantasy, and they keep asking you to give them things to acquire that, but it’s impossible to arrive at the goal that they want. The idyllic paths that they are pursuing probably never existed and certainly not something we can reach right now.
BASHIR: So you’re saying that they are delusional about the past and adamant about the future?
PEELE: They are adamant about achieving something that’s unachievable, which reminds us of a couple of things. it reminds us of delusion and psychosis. It reminds us of addiction because addicts are seeking something that they can’t have. They want a state of happiness or nirvana that can’t be achieved except through an artificial substance and reminds us of the Norway situation, when people are thwarted at obtaining something they can’t, have they often strike out and Norway is one kind of example to one kind of reaction to that kind of a frustration.
BASHIR: But going back to the Tea Party in this country. Do you think that having achieved their goal, no new taxes. instead of this actually making them think about compromise in the future? It’s actually simply going to harden them so this kind of battle this, kind of standoff, this kind of face-off is just going to become routine in Washington.
PEELE: Well, i’m looking at one beyond. they want no new taxes because they seek some kind of idyllic past. No new taxes won’t bring them, won’t bring them economic recovery so they will have to turn their attention to some other supposed method of attaining that until they go through all of them. Perhaps they can push through all of them. perhaps people become discontented and perhaps they will become discontented and people are likely to get riled up, and it could become a very angry movement could, potentially become a violent movement.
If I’ve read a less informative passage of text in my life, I don’t recall it. Dr. Peele’s vapors have precisely nothing at all to do with anything that exists beyond his own mind. I suppose it might be evidence of projection, though.
The only delusional people involved here are those who think we can just keep spending and spending without ever encountering any negative consequences. And, anyone who hires Martin Bashir. The man has no discernible talent as an interviewer and brings no knowledge or substance to any discussion. He got Michael Jackson to sit in a tree or something years ago, and has been running his career on those fumes ever since.
Un-freakin’-over-the-top-believeable.
The underlying insanity is this: The “Tea Party” really didn’t do much of anything or even “get their way.” This narrative is a complete fabrication, and is not helped by alleged “Tea Partiers” bragging about their “success.”
This is a superb example of the Big Lie.
The left was not able to put this one into the “solid win” column, so they’re treating it as a complete loss.
Fine by me. Makes the next time easier. Maybe we’ll actually be able to cut spending some day.
If you do a simple find-and-replace swapping “Progressive” for “Tea Party” and “more spending” for “no new taxes” it makes perfect sense.
Wow! – Jonah Goldberg described this perfectly in his book “Liberal Facism.” Goldberg described how the Left latched on to psychological theory and psychotherapy in the 1940′s and 1950′s as a tool for reviving what was becoming a discredited Marxism. The “Frankfurt School” led by Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse put forward the “theory” that antipathy to Marxism was actually a form of mental disease since socialism was so self-evidently superior to capitalism that no sane person could possibly choose the latter. Under this view any and all arguments against a Left social agenda could be dismissed out-of-hand because the proponents of such views were “mentally ill.” This reached it’s popular zenith with the publication of Adorno’s “The Authoritarian Personality” which I remember from my college days as a liberal sacred text. According to the distinguished social critic Christopher Lasch…..
“The Authoritarian Personality” had a tremendous influence on……liberal intellectuals, because it showed them how to conduct political criticism in psychiatric categories, to make those categories bear the weight of political criticism. This procedure excused them from the difficult work of judgment and argumentation. Instead of arguing with opponents, they simply dismissed them on psychiatric grounds.”
Nice to see that MSNBC has resurrected this pernicious and much-discredited doctrine for it’s intellectually challenged viewership. According to Bashir and his ilk Tea Party members are not just wrong, they’re mentally ill. How very compassionate of them!
ME: (Slaps hand on table) Dr. Peele, are YOU an economist?
Dr. Peele: No, I am not.
ME: Okay, then.
This so-called expert should be re-evaluated by his peers. To say his rantings are nonsense is an insult to nonsense.
Back during the 1980 campaign when I still watched CNN, they brought on a Harvard professor of psychology who repeatedly made the point that Reagan was a delusional uber-militaristic storm trooper who was gonna nuke the whole world and make everybody watch Jerry Falwell. She babbled on incessantly and ignored the host’s gentle prompts to shut up so he could go to commercial break and finally the guy had to yell at her on camera to shut her up. So, this kind of crap is nothing new. These jerks are great at using high-sounding nonsense to dump on whatever they don’t like, but that’s all it is.
I may be wrong but Jeff Dunham (sp.?) based Walter on Joe Biden. They look enough alike to be twins. I think Biden deserves as much respect as a ventriloquist’s dummy, and I think he gets that much respect.
I wonder what he’d say about “Hope & Change”, and all that, since 2008.
Seems Peele should be the one in the straight-jacket. (Pompous POS)