I mean the creation of cultural institutions as well as art. Cultural institutions include religion, politics, education, military organization, govt., distribution of weath (class system), etc. — uncanni

I don't think women are from Venus and men are from Mars, and Saturn really should have been named Athena to Zeus's Jupiter. Pluto could have been named Persephone, and Neptune Demeter. But... those damned patriarchal astronomers.

It seems very unlikely to me that in the penultimate stretch of human evolution (modern homo sapiens wandering the Veldt for 300,000 years, at least, hunting, gathering, and living an exceptionally sustainable lifestyle, men and women were in constant war with each other. It wasn't the Peaceable Kingdom, if Steven Pinker's theory about the state lessening violence is right, but it had to have been been fairly good, because archeological/anthropological evidence indicates that they were reasonably healthy and long-lived. An inhospitable, inharmonious society living where willing cooperation and fellowship was a requirement would have difficulty surviving and thriving as well as they did.

10-12-14 thousand years ago life changed dramatically -- the agricultural revolution. We settled down on the land. Now, there are some interesting theories about how and why that came about. With agriculture came the tilled fields, the city, and the state. Some anthropological historians suspect that there was a conspiracy. Agricultural was promoted vigorously by the state (initially consisting of one family stronger than the rest living in a bigger rock pile than everybody else) because surplus food could be TAXED, and the tax would feed the state. Compared to 300,000 years of amicable wandering the earth, agriculture, the state, and the city took off like a rocket. It wasn't long before family life (the prime reason for humans existing) was severely altered by work, religion, politics, trade, economy, state, garbage heaps, shit piles, (what happens when people stay in one place), and then domesticated animals in addition to our canine alter-egos, writing, etc.

All this happened VERY FAST. Agriculture brought with it the need for control and regulation and our cultural inventions turned on us -- not in the 19th century a.d. but in the 10th millennium b.c. I don't know what life was like back then for ordinary people. Probably a mixed bag.

We know more about the high culture of ancient Greece in the age of Pericles. If not patriarchal, it can certainly be described as male-oriented. Women were expected to stay at home. Important men were the public eye (unimportant men were irrelevant). But it was also a harsh society, despite the high levels of culture. The punishment for unpaid debts (not a dollar owed for a cup of wine, but more like bankruptcy) was enslavement for one's entire family, and not a symbolic slavery either.

But then, there are a few plays that survived like Lysistrata or Antigony where women play important cultural roles.

Our view of ancient cultures, or for that matter our own culture several hundred years ago, is pretty limited because the lives of ordinary people just aren't recorded. The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England by Barbara A. Hanawalt suggests a reasonably happy existence of men, women, and children. The Decameron by Boccaccio and Canterbury Tales by Chaucer aren't anthropology, of course, but suggest a reasonably decent society for better-off people in the late medieval-early renaissance period. (Nobody wrote Tales of the Proles, unfortunately.)

Putting together 10,000 years of 'civilization' practically had to involve everyone. Well, that's my take on it. I don't imagine any period of women's liberation that would resemble the current time, but it doesn't seem reasonable to impose a ghastly tale of universal, unending female oppression, either. Yes, there are ghastly practices imposed on people: foot binding, castration, female genital mutilation, circumcision, etc. But those weren't universal.

Sounds like you agree that what is generally understood to be the definition of patriarchy exists, you just don't like the label. — Artemis

I suppose that's a possibility. I'll have to think about it more.

↪Bitter Crank Your hostility is such a turn off that I can't be bothered to read your response to me. You are a hater. — uncanni

You feel what you feel, but disagreement with your views really shouldn't be taken as evidence of hostility or hate.

Women can partake in this just as much as men. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But the assumption always seems to lurk in the second row (not in the distant background) that it is women who suffer, whether women partake in the oppressing or not.

It seems clear that in the history of capitalism--hell! The history of the world--the suffering has been abundant for both sexes, whether women have participated in oppressing or not. Capitalisms concern for the family is two fold: One that they consume, and that they reproduce the culture--maybe capitalist bosses are concerned about reproducing patriarchy, but mostly it seems like they are concerned with reproducing a population who fit into the capitalist system of production--eager consumers and docile workers.

I'm not a female or a feminist, so... I probably don't get "patriarchy", or maybe I have patriarchal genes or a patriarchal biome, or something.

There's no current need to neuter the term when men systematically kept women outside of all spheres of power and cultural creation — uncanni

All spheres... That's too sweeping a term, particularly in the area of cultural creation. Hollywood isn't the world.

Women have gained a great deal of purchase in politics in some large constituencies, like the European Union. Women played a much larger role in the sciences, for instance, and in government in the USSR. True enough, there were once zero women voting in the US and UK, but that has changed, you probably noticed (though I'm not claiming the vote is much access to power, if it is access at all). Women played a zero to almost no roll in government in the US up to 1920, but over the last century that has changed. Around a quarter of congress are presently women. that's a huge change over 50 years ago, when there were 15 altogether, and zero a century ago.

Power is conservative and change in who wields power is slow. Progress is being made.

What do you mean by "cultural creation"?

It seems like women do play a a fairly large role in culture--from creation to criticism. The contribution of women in cultural production has certainly increased a great deal in the last century, last 50 years, last 25 years.

I don't know what you meant in saying women are not oppressed. In some contexts they are clearly not oppressed; in some contexts they are very much oppressed. The same could be said of men. I'm not denying that women are oppressed here; I'm saying that "patriarchy" isn't real. What oppresses men and women these days are the usual culprits: corporations, churches, and states--all large institutions with domination-of-everything-else on their agenda.

I perceive many patriarchal characteristics in most public women: patriarchy is the master brain-washer. — uncanni

It brainwashed you, apparently.

Which is why "patriarchy" is meaningless. If a few women are just as patriarchal as men and oppress most women, if a few men oppress most other men as much as they oppress women, then clearly there must be some other principle at work besides hormones and genitals. At the present time (present = last 400 years, more or less) human economic function has become dominant. The kind of work we do defines us, and most of us are defined as the class which labors to produce surplus value, and outside of that function, we have little value to the elite. We (about 95% of the male and female population) are oppressed by a small minority of men and women. Capitalism isn't patriarchy.

In Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times – 1996, Elizabeth Wayland Barber asks the question, "Why were women at home taking care of children and spending much of the day weaving, when men were out and about hunting, chopping, and digging? Her answer is that weaving was safely compatible with child rearing, in ways which hunting, chopping, and digging were not. (20,000 years ago is towards the end of the hunting / gathering stage of activity which had gone on for maybe 300,000 years.). She notes that at least some women developed economic independence in this model. We know this from 4,000 - 5,000 year old records on clay tablets from Babylonia (et al) recording directives of "business women" to male trading agents in other cities, telling them what to buy.

Later on after agriculture and animals came together, and horses, cows, goats, pigs, etc. were domesticated, and tillage and harvesting replaced hunting and gathering, men's work was more dangerous for children because of the large animals and tools involved.

Primate males evolved into larger and stronger animals than primate females. That's our pattern too. Men have tended to do heavier, harder, more dangerous labor, the activities of which would put little children at risk.

Feminists hate the idea that biology is destiny. In some ways it is, like it or not: pregnancy and lactation are just not fairly distributed between men and women. At least some of what is biologically sensible for men isn't biologically sensible for women.

You can't have it both ways. Either "patriarchy" exists or it doesn't. Indeed, some religions restrict women more than others, but even within Islam, there is a fairly broad range of relationships between males and females with respect to women's independence.

There is no debate that males tend to be more powerful, more dominant, and so forth. Biology makes it difficult for the male of any species to assure his genetic contribution. In humans this has resulted in women being controlled by men. Yada yada yada -- you know the drill.

But "patriarchy" is the practice of an ideology, projected backwards onto history. It's a great theory because it is vaporous and can claim anything it wants. (And patriarchy is by no means the only vaporous theory that gets regular use.)

Minds without bodies do not exist. We have bodies that produce mind. The personalized god, the bearded fellow Jehovah, or the voluptuous Aphrodite, or the powerful female god Athena have bodies and mind, therefore gender. It's hard to relate to the formless spirit. The Logos, the Word, isn't embodied, isn't gendered.

My shtick is that our best take on god puts IT (not him, her) beyond gender. Jesus had a body and gender. God did not. Apparently the Archangel Michael or Gabriel, which ever one was responsible for fucking Mary and leaving her a virgin, was embodied enough to get the job done, but let's not get into angelology.

It just depends on how you look at god(s). Indian gods like Shiva or Vishnu are embodied and gendered -- they actually exist in their temple forms (or so I have read). That's fine, nothing wrong with that. It just depends on what culture you are operating from.

The mills of the economy grind away without consulting ideologies.
— Bitter Crank

The economy is the most concrete form there is of how ideology is operating in a given society. I don't know about feminists "blaming" patriarchy; the ones I've read describe its operations in a given social realm or institution. — uncanni

Your formulation is spot on Marx.

But Capitalism isn't about men exploiting women. It's about capitalists exploiting everybody -- men, women, and children -- the earth itself -- for the purpose of maximizing profit. Capitalism is the equal-opportunity abuser, and whether men or women are on the board of directors or in the executive suite makes little difference.

For a god who is all knowing, ever present everywhere, all powerful, gender is irrelevant. The 'personalized' god is likely to be gendered, because we can't relate warmly to an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient eternal being who is spirit to boot.

Our most elevated conceptions about god (God) are beyond gender.

women might feel unwelcome in certain churches — Hanover

Some women might feel unwelcome in certain churches... because most churches have large numbers of women as members.

Hey doc, sounds great. How long does the effect of a dose last? How many years can one stretch out the 100 doses?

Medical doctors seem like pretty good people, for the most part. There are a minority, let's say 10%, who are incompetent, insensitive, irresponsible, etc. Eventually the worst cases get weeded out, but new incompetents fill in the empty slots. Still 90% of doctors are competent, sensitive, responsible, and caring individuals.

As you know, the medical industry is a huge sector of the economy. It is inconceivable that bad things will never happen even under the best of circumstances. Patients get infections in hospitals and die; they get the wrong medicine and die; they get the wrong treatment and die; they have the wrong foot amputated, are misdiagnosed; some patients are prescribed opiates and they get addicted. etc. etc. etc. But the bad news is dwarfed by all the effective treatment, good care, and cures people receive.

That this huge system is occasionally subverted should not come as too big a surprise.

God as a man. Genesis 1:27 states, “So God created mankind in his own image — Bridget Eagles

There are few choice that fit human experience: Either God is male, female, or neuter. Most gods are male or female.

You should known that "mankind" and "man" when it is a general reference, is a gendered Anglo-Saxon term that applies to all humans, male and female.

I still think “patriarchal” is a valid adjective though and has application outside of feminism. — NOS4A2

I still think "patriarchy" is a noun naming a non-existent phenomenon which is the Number One imaginary Bogeyman of feminists.

I think Paglia's statement is stupid. To suggest that patriarchy produced birth control pills seems tantamount to saying that all science is patriarchal. — uncanni

I think you are focusing on the wrong part of the sentence

“Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself.” — NOS4A2

The significant point is that birth control pills, were liberating for women, and were invented by several men. So, big deal. Background: The research was paid for and sponsored by Planned Parenthood (founded by Margaret Sanger), and funded by a Sanger associate, Catherine McCormick, who inherited the international Harvester fortune.

Some feminists do seem to blame the entirely symbolic "patriarchy" for everything from economic oppression to bad hair days. These same people exaggerate the accomplishments of feminism. The mills of the economy grind away without consulting ideologies.

Is science patriarchal? One would think that it was from reading some feminists. But "patriarchy isn't real (IMHO). Science and technology are dominated by men, which doesn't make these fields patriarchal, any more than fields which are dominated by women are matriarchal.

It has been known for several decades that doctors (who are not pharmacists) rely heavily on drug salesmen (who are not pharmacists, either) for their information about a drug's effectiveness, appropriate targets, and side effects. Salesmen have an obvious bias. Apparently a lot of doctors were just taking salesmen's word for it.

Still, a lot of untrained, non-medical people know that opioids are addicting. It's a very good question as to why a doctor wouldn't know that too. But then, most people don't have patients sitting in the office complaining about bad pain and asking their doctors for relief.

Another factor is 'doctor shopping' and pharmacy shopping. Once an opioid seeker has exhausted the trust of one doctor, they go looking for another. Once one pharmacy has been "burned down" (refused to fill any more Rx for opiates) an opioid seeker looks for different pharmacies. The State does not keep track of Rx, so doesn't know that a patient has filled maybe 15 doctors' prescriptions several times. The "pain clinics" (fake ones) don't give a rat's ass about how much drug a patient is getting, as long as the "patient" keeps revenue flowing.

You know, if you like downers like heroin, morphine, codeine, oxycontin, Xanax, Ativan, Valium or whatever... you have to either get it through illegal suppliers (aka pushers) or from licensed providers (aka doctors). The doctor-pusher route gives you safe, clean, and wholesome products (until they get cut on the street). Uppers are available too, both ways.

People think the FDA is highly proactive and very thorough. They are not. (They get their marching orders from authorizing legislation.). New drugs arrive on the market with a minimal amount of human testing. So what happens? The public becomes the test group. The new arthritis or depression or weight loss or heart medication or whatever is approved for sale, promoted to doctors, and then prescribed. Drug companies collect adverse outcome information, but their threshold of concern might be a lot higher than yours. The drug companies react most strongly to people dropping dead. "Oh dear, corpses. Very bad PR." A drug that just doesn't work very well, or causes adverse outcomes that take maybe two to five years to show up doesn't amount to shit hitting the fan. Negative outcomes that can be blamed on the patient (the case of opioids) are the patient's problem, not the drug company's.

Opinions vary on just how bad the medical establishment is. It's at least a mixed bag.

the vast difference in the pay gap for women of different races and ethnicities (with Hispanic women making 53 cents to the white man’s dollar — Bridget Eagles

At first glance it would seem that hispanic women were grossly underpaid compared to white men. However, there is an intervening factor: On average, hispanic women are not engaged in the same categories of work as white men (or for the most part, white women). Anyone working in the lower-skilled layers of the service sector is going to be paid a lot less than anyone working in the skilled or professional layers of the service sector.

The current fad (or big mistake) is to sequester every conceivable identity in pigeon holes AS IF there was no commonality across the species. So white gay men are in one pigeon hole, gay black men in another; middle class white women go into one slot, middle class white men into a different one. Disabled "cis-gendered" middle class white women go into their hole; disabled transgendered lower class people of color go over there, and so on and so forth.

There are clear historical reasons why hispanic women would be paid much less than middle class white women and men. The same goes for black people, native Americans, and so on. None of the pay gaps are going to be eliminated by anything short of huge changes in the social/political/economic structures of the country, which nobody thinks is going to happen in the near future.

Labor has always been layered from management at the top (high pay) down to unskilled labor at the bottom (low pay). If you take all cis-gendered white male workers, you find the same layering from top to bottom. MAYBE race, gender, and ethnicity aren't the critical factor.

What I have gathered from the news [NYT for example is that Purdue Pharma (and the Sackler family) did two things:

1) they misrepresented oxycontin as "less addictive"
2) and "less likely to be abused"
3) and they promoted the drug very vigorously
4) for two decades

when, in fact, the company was aware from 1996 that oxycontin was as addictive as any other opiate and immediately became a drug-of-choice for addicts (it could be crushed and snorted, like cocaine).

It isn't clear to me how a high-dose opiate could be described as "less addictive"; opiates are by definition "addictive", and anybody in the medical field with a pulse knows that. (Opioids are addictive because opioid receptors in the brain become tolerant to the drug fairly quickly; this results in a need for more of the drug to achieve the same effects as previously. When used for terminal cancer or other patients, addiction is irrelevant. For young-to-middle-aged-chronic-pain-relief-patients (such as pain resulting from bone/joint injury or arthritis patients) addictiveness is a major issue.

Oxycontin became a street drug at once -- because the tablets could be easily re-sold, then crushed and snorted in several sessions--like cocaine.

Purdue Pharma became immediately aware of all this soon after the drug was introduced. Salesmen's reports from doctors reported street sales. Despite known abuse, the company continued intense promotion of the drug.

Drug companies and distributors know about how much of a drug a given pharmacy is likely to sell, and likewise how much of a drug a given community or county is likely to need. When sales from pharmacies, and in specific communities or counties grossly exceed expected use, abuse is obviously afoot.

There is nothing wrong with opioids; they are critically important drugs. They just happen to be addictive, and manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies, and doctors have to be alert to abuse.

Purdue Pharma, wholly owned by the Sackler family, apparently decided to make the most of abuse.

in addition to all that, there were bogus 'pain clinics' and cooperating pharmacies moving huge quantities of Oxytocin.

Do you believe that massive political change is possible? The older I get, the more I worry that massive political change would require such a huge change in worldview for most people, that they are unwilling to even consider the possibility. — ZhouBoTong

Of course massive political change is possible. "Possible" does not mean "probable". Massive political change seems quite improbable, unlikely, remote, etc. It will probably take something like Arthur C. Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END to trigger massive political change. Have you read it? Great story. Aliens arrive and things start to change.

Short of that...

I am a product of the last 40 years — ZhouBoTong

All of us are products of and captives in our own times and places. There just isn't any way around that. What saves us all from irrelevance is that our own time and place generally works by the same rules that most other people's times and places work.

What will happen? Man... I wish I knew!

Clever S. I didn't get his joke right away.

prosthetising — DingoJones

Were you aiming for "proselytizing" or "prophesying"?

Would you add "I might have wanted to lie with other men; but that's just not how it's done"? No. — Banno

I did so wish, and fulfillment of the wish had to wait years for the arrival of a suitable time and a place. Had the opportunity "to lie with other men" arrived as early as I wished, the experience would most likely have not been good. Was the long delay frustrating? Of course.

With the 'general' child in view we can confidently propose a sensible course of action. Given the case of a particular child, an 8 year old somewhere in Australia, "sensible advice" might not work. We don't know anything about the history of this 8 year old, or what possible solutions might be available. For blanket statements, Saying "eight year olds should wear whatever gendered clothing they want" seems as ill-advised as saying "eight year olds should never be accommodated on gendered issues." If the choice is suicide vs the girls' pleated plaid outfit then... pleated plaid it is, I suppose. But the pleated plaid option might not work out well in the end, either.

I find it odd that you of all those here are happy to have the contents of one's underpants determine one's social role. — Banno

Being gay or lesbian isn't a form of being transgendered.

The contents of our costumes (underpants and all) have a lot to do with determining who/what/how we are. As for me, I have never thought it was possible for me, or any one else, "to be anything we want to be". There were many things that I might wanted to have been but there were constraints preventing fulfillment. That's just life. There are possibilities and potentials that we can pursue, sure, but we encounter hard constraints. No matter how much I might have wanted to be a heavy-weight boxer, I didn't have the build for that. I might have wanted to be an astrophysicist. I just didn't get an astrophysicist brain. I might have wanted to be a heterosexual macho man, but it wasn't in the cards.

So, there are people who want to want to play the part of the opposite sex. Sure, go ahead WHEN one has the capacity to mastermind the show before one makes one's public debut.

There's just no chaos, anxiety, and starvation to propel a dictator into power right now. — frank

For which we can be very grateful. But... maybe later.

Source?

No. Not accommodating an inappropriate behavior isn't punishing the child.

Here we are talking about quite young children deciding they are the opposite gender and demanding to wear clothes (or behave) in the manner of the opposite sex. Young children don't go clothes shopping by themselves (one would hope) so how does this problem arise? By the parents providing the clothing the child wanted to wear. Why would an adult take their 6 year old's clothing preferences as a directive, let alone something as major and complex as identity?

We do not (or at least we should not) allow children to marry, have sex with whomever they wish, smoke, drink, use recreational drugs, chew tobacco, play with guns, and so forth. Children are expected to defer such activities until they are 'of age' like, 16, 17, 18 to 21. It is reasonable for people to defer some behaviors and delusions until they are old enough to manage the complexities which come with these activities.

I have doubts about transsexualism, gender dysphoria, and so on, when these terms are applied to adults. Many more doubts when applied to children.

No. Not accommodating an inappropriate behavior isn't punishing the child.

Here we are talking about quite young children deciding they are the opposite gender and demanding to wear clothes (or behave) in the manner of the opposite sex. Young children don't go clothes shopping by themselves (one would hope) so how does this problem arise? By the parents providing the clothing the child wanted to wear. Why would an adult take their 6 year old's clothing preferences as a directive, let alone something as major and complex as identity?

You can be a masculine woman i.e tomboy and/or an effeminate man i.e bobcat. — Shamshir

Yes, and these aren't examples of gender confusion either.

The American Journal of Preventive Medicine says that most gender-minority students report having mental health problems. At the same time, a Johns Hopkins professor says on the child transgender trend: ‘Many will regret this’. He argues that doctors are doing treatment without evidence: — alcontali

One could say that ALL gender minority students have mental health problems, if lacking a firm and biologically consistent gender identity is a disorder. I tend to view gender confusion or gender fluidity as a disorder --not as a mere variation. This is not a popular view in many circles; it is probably not a popular view here.

There is variation in sexual behavior, of course. Sexual orientation, for instance, ranges between exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality. Orientation, however, is not the same as gender confusion. Persons who are in the middle of the hetero-homo distribution are not confused about their sexual identity.

A very small portion of the population are sexually ambiguous from birth. They are a category apart from what we are discussing here. A larger portion (less than 1% of the population) express varying degrees of gender ambiguity. That they think they are something other than what their physical body says they are is a significant delusion. It seems like this delusion is becoming more common, which suggests that the act of expressing gender confusion may be a learned behavior and a front for some other neuroticism.

Physical treatment for a psychological disorder would be as wrong as lobotomies. Young children, for instance, should not be allowed to cross-dress for school; they should not be allowed to claim they are the opposite gender than their biology indicates and need to use toilets of the opposite gender. And they should not be given hormones of the opposite sex.

Needless to say, children should not be punished for exhibiting delusory ideas. Delusions should be overcome, not punished.

"Does neurophilosophy signal the end of 'philosophy' as we know it ?"

One might hope.

Philosophy certainly has its uses, but over the millennia various products of philosophy have superseded the parent. Physics, for example; literary and art criticism; psychology and neurology. The ur-philosophers are now 2500 years in their graves. It makes sense to return to the foundation--especially in religious thought and practice, but in studying knowledge?

Sorry, but your soul just Died. — Wayfarer

Thanks for the link. Wolfe is always a good read.

Of course, wars tend to end economic downturns -- unless the "hot war" is really, really hot -- but then there wouldn't be anybody left.

Something bad: A very severe west coast earthquake (the BIG ONE) during a year when agricultural production falls precipitously (drought, heavy rain, late frost, insects, disease--all quite possible) Maybe a pandemic following a really big natural disaster. Maybe a huge and sudden influx of people from Mexico, Central America, and Northern South America caused by Global Warming and a pandemic (perfect timing). Let's say that whatever the huge crisis is, the Federal Government proves unable to mount a response. Part of the population is desperate; part of the population is deeply resentful; everybody is angry and looking for someone to blame. People on the west coast (maybe 25 million) are in bad shape. Lots of people are very worried.

A group within the military, perhaps possibly, comes forward and seizes the government. Let's say they actually prove somewhat adept at dealing with the crises. Voila! a dictatorship.

Or maybe somebody like Trump, only more evil. Much more evil. (It's not that I love Donald, or anything like that. I just don't think he's spent the last 25 years planning, plotting, and preparing to take over the government and become a dictator. Hitler and Mussolini worked at it for quite a while. Trump is an asshole but he's too self-absorbed to make a good dictator.

Agreed. So what to do about them? — schopenhauer1

We cope as well as we can. (Not much option, really.). I spent a number of years being somewhat dysfunctional. Not so dysfunctional that I couldn't work, but dysfunctional enough that I wasn't working close to standard. Dysfunctional enough that I was a problem to myself--hard to live with. I was fairly reckless for a time--not a good example of self-control and probity.

I took anti-depressants and Xanax or Ativan for decades. I received psychotherapy. I "coped" more or less. I never did find THE WAY to feel really good. But... I did get better, eventually. I can't claim credit because the relief came long after psychotherapy and I still take a low dose of antidepressant (Effexor). Maybe 8 or 9 years ago or so, I just started to feel a lot better. It wasn't anything I did that made it better. It was like a switch was thrown and all the sturm and drang evaporated.

If I could put whatever it was in a bottle and sell it, I would have a blockbuster drug. Alas.

Four more years of Trump? But then, in comparison to having eight years of VP Cheney skulking about, Trump is probably not a serious threat.

Trump displays a few mild aspects of fascism: strong-man or one-man rule; crass service to heavy industry (coal, oil, gas, for example); appeals to racial hostilities (even if subtle); what could be a deliberately confusing communication policy which undermines rational discussion; a limited interest in civil rights--all that sort of thing. Fascism has been usefully described as "more of a method than a doctrine". So, it's the disruption of democratic government that is fascistic. Trump isn't the first one to do this, of course.

Trump is a mild sample -- not the real deal, however. The Republican Party has played around with the subversion of democracy. The Senate's refusal to consider Obama's Supreme Court nomination Merrick Garland is the sort of thing that happens in crypto-fascism.

A highly dissatisfied military seems to be a requirement for fascism. We seem to have a reasonably contented military, which is a good thing. Fascism needs a major crisis -- either a real or a manufactured one. Not since the simultaneous attack on the Philippines and Pearl Harbor have we had a sufficiently opportune crisis for American fascism to take off. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 unfolded too swiftly for it to be an opportunity for a fascist attempt.

The People need to be suffering enough and looking for fascist relief. Americans are not suffering enough to spring for a fascist dictator. The vast majority of US citizens are at least reasonably well-fed, clothed, and employed. We may have various unsatisfied longings, but these are not the sort of dissatisfactions that lead people into adulation of the Maximum Leader.

We are not in a 1930s European moment.

Phillip Roth's novel The Plot Against America (pub. 2004) is an interesting take on a fascist takeover. If I remember correctly, it was set in the 1930s and Charles Lindbergh (first to fly Solo across the Atlantic) was the fascist candidate.

Madelaine Albright published a book recently: Fascism - A Warning. Haven't read it.

Given a BIG PROBLEM, and given a powerful core group who were willing to make a play for a coup d'état dictatorship, and given a sufficiently dissatisfied military, we could end up with a dictatorship. It probably won't look like Nazi Germany, the USSR or Cuba. I would expect it to have a distinctly American flavor (which is deep-fat-fried).

You seem to have a lot of familiarity with the details of OCD thinking -- are you OCD?

I am quite certain that OCD is real and can be disabling, but an interesting aspect of most mental illnesses is that most of the features of MI are manifested in mild form by people who are not, by any definition, mentally disturbed. OCD is a good example. Take your spoon: you have to decide what to do with it. I've had to pause to think about it -- is the spoon I measured baking powder with still clean, or not? The answer is an irrational "no". How about the tops of canned food; after using the can opener on them, some of the juice gets on top of the can, then runs back into the can. Oh oh, is that still clean?

Some of us have scarcely conscious obsessions about 'ritualistic purity', superstitions about what can be touched by what. One sees this in young children, sometimes -- the potato can't touch the carrots on their plate. Children often dislike texture contrasts -- so horror of horrors, no shredded vegetables and chopped nuts mixed into the Jello. These superstitions can resemble the kosher rules of the ultra-orthodox--all sorts of restrictions.

I am annoyed at church events when someone collects the unused silverware from the tables and wants to put it back in the drawers. NO! NO! Look, it's been handled at least twice (putting it on the table, taking it off) and who the hell knows how many more times. Just run it through the wash. Same with glasses. Here comes somebody carrying glasses with their fingers inside the glasses saying they are clean. The machine is doing the washing, and it doesn't care if it has a few more to clean. I just follow the rule of "once touched, into the washing machine".

We make irrational exceptions to our cleanliness rules. We may worry if someone's hands were washed before slicing a loaf of bread, but aren't worried enough about cleanliness to prevent us from having sex with a stranger.

Point is, despite what we may think we are, we are pretty irrational, frequently given to thoughts and behaviors which do not pass muster as "rational", "reasonable", or "sensible".

All of these conditions exist on a continuum, of course. Over on the left side of the continuum are habits and practices that are helpful. On the opposite side, these beneficial habits and practices have become crippling compulsions. On the left side one has a few superstitious behaviors like not walking under ladders (probably a sensible precaution anyway). On the other end of the continuum superstitions become threatening delusions.

Brains turn repeated behavior into habits, strongly followed practices, rote behaviors, and so on. It isn't just us -- it happens to other animals too. Domestic animals develop habits that can become minor problems -- the dog's insistence that a snack be handed to her in a certain way, and no other way. Typing is a very rigid habit -- so rigid that one can feel an error in one's fingers (if one does enough of it). Back when the telegraph was an important communication tool, operators could identify each other by the way their hands operated the equipment. This was useful during WWII when intelligence officers listened to radio-telegraph transmission from German-occupied countries: the identity of the telegraph operator was recognizable by the habitual way the telegraph key was operated.

So maybe it isn't surprising that habit prone brains sometimes go overboard and turn habits into compulsions.

I'm not sure what tips a habit (checking to make sure the stove is off, the car is locked...) into a compulsion; I suppose it is stress. We experience stress when many aspects of our lives start becoming unhinged. Too much chaos; too many unpredictable events happening; disturbing events popping up all over the place. Establishing a secure zone (one's apartment) by multiple checks to make sure everything is OK when one leaves relieves stress a bit, so the checking becomes fixed.

I think we are farther away now. There are reasons.

#1, the post-WWII economic boom ended in the early 1970s. For the working classes (85-90% of the population) economic conditions have declined since then. Stagnant wages and steady inflation (at times quite high) have whittled away a large share of the prosperity that working class people enjoyed between 1946 and 1973.

Booms don't last, of course. The business cycle rises and falls.

#2. there has been a concerted effort to roll back union power for the last 40 - 60 years. A good share of labor suppression has been through law. For example, the 'Taft-Hartley' law was passed in 1947 over the veto of President Truman. It restricts union activity. A lot of other less famous laws and administrative rules restricting workers rights have been put into place. If labor is hobbled (or castrated), then that sets the whole progressive agenda back a long ways.

#3. Conservatives were unhappy about Social Security, Unemployment, and Disability programs (1930s), and challenged the programs in court. They hated Medicare and Medicaid (1960s) and did their best to get those programs ruled unconstitutional. They failed. In the 1990s the old AFDC program (aid for dependent children) program was repealed--"ending welfare as we know it". Welfare recipients were given a time limit on benefits. About the same time there was a drive to privatize Social Security. This idea is rolled out every couple decades or so. Obama's Health Care Act was received by many people as if it had been delivered from Hell by Satan himself, and for whatever it was actually worth, it was set upon by the Republicans.

Trump (curse his black heart) wants to undo all sorts of environmental regulation too. "Get government off our backs" they said.

So yes, I think we are farther away from substantial reform now than we were during Nixon's administration.

Like a lot of people in the United States, I grew up with pretty optimistic expectations about the future. Those started to change during the Vietnam War when we saw that major social unrest (huge demonstrations, etc.) didn't make any difference. Watergate was very disappointing -- here we discovered that the President and his inner circle were doing things that were both blatantly criminal and unconstitutional. Successive administrations and changing economics have further eroded those optimistic expectations.

However, the US isn't alone in all this. I think a lot of people in other countries have also had very disappointing experiences in the last 50 years. The US isn't an exception to the rest of the world.

People who have very rigid habits can make it work for them. They get to work on time, they get their work done. They get to the gym on time, they swim a mile, they bike 100 miles. They sleep well.

I don't know what all fits into the category of neuroses these days. I guess depression, anxiety, OCD, phobias, compulsions, etc. I've never understood what "borderline personality disorder" was -- is that counted as a neurosis?

"Neurosis" may be an obsolete word, but it seems to me useful to describe the set of screwy ideas that many people haul around, especially the self-defeating ideas, beliefs, habits, etc. that cause some people to fail again and again at projects that are well within their reach. (I know first hand of what I speak.) I've failed at a lot of stuff that was well within my operational capability.