Sharen's Story

uch is Victim Correction as a Panacea~

As the above says, this is Al-Anon approved literature, for Alateen. You couldn’t make this stuff up! Persuasion to think like this works best with Groupthink, but if you, on your own, must deal with a devastating reality in order to fit in and function, then you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, and our self-responsible cultural norms would provide the Groupthink. As Addiction: Why Can’t They Just Stop?, by John Hoffman and Susan Froemke, says, in a survey of addicts’ family members, “...the words that everyone used were powerfully negative: ‘devastating,’ ‘abusive,’ ‘horrible’.” Serenity, indeed!

Whether or not you live with an addict, etc., whatever you must do to take care of yourself, is whatever you must do to take care of yourself. Self-help means that if it’s your problem, then you provide the help. Victim-blaming doesn’t require a belief in a just world, and is most important when someone must self-motivatedly take response-ability for injustices. As Dr. Thomas A. Harris wrote in the preface of his I’m OK—You’re OK, “To many people [psychiatry] is like a blind man in dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there,” but Al-Anon-style psychology-psychiatry, neo-Buddhism, is productive, does produce contrived serenity and courage, whereas telling addicts’ family members, “You’re OK, even if his addiction really bothers you,” wouldn’t. Attention must be systematically focused on how the victims could most effectively take response-ability for their own welfare, since attention given to anything else would be unpragmatic. For an exemplary alkie’s kid who looks like Archie, to preach, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, should seem like wryly Kafkaesque theater of the absurd, but instead that seems very pragmatic and honorable. They’re just trying to help him take care of himself better, which he really needs. No self-responsibility for victims sounds nice, but all of it would help them. No matter what any Al-Anon or Alateen members may whine about, one could respond, “But to look at yourself instead of blaming others would benefit you, by changing what you can and accepting what you can’t!” Even if this requires more Stoicism than some Stoic saints had, if that’s what reality requires, then that’s what it requires. (These saints’ self-control shows that it’s possible, and Al-Anon-style self-control isn’t moralistic.) To end the description of each and every traumatic experience with, “So now I’m supposed to just shut up and deal with this reality, since doing so would benefit me,” might sound like the punch line of a sick joke, but the bottom line must always be pragmatic and well-adjusted. That’s how victim correctors are supposed to operate, since correction is good, and a lack of it is self-defeating. This is the language of letting go. Unless what happened was so extreme that this would sound untenable, trying to correct the person who caused the problem could very easily seem: unrealistic, conditional, optional, limited, judgmental, troublemaking, moralistic, controlling, whiny, maladjusted, negative, blaming, subjective, emotionalistic, manipulative, passive, etc., while trying to correct the person who has the problem in ways that would help him “take care of himself” better, could very easily seem: realistic, necessary, vital, limitless, forgiving, peace-making, trendy, self-empowering, gutsy, well-adjusted, hopeful, solving, objective, practical, self-reliant, active, etc.

(Cartoon generated by “Build Your Own Meat”)

“Archie” was taught to have great confidence in the self-reliance and self-determination of the individual. Instinctively, Americans would tend to be a lot less offended by Al-Anon-style victim correction, than by the whining and the victim-power that it corrects. That self-help formula feels right, helpful, beneficial, self-empowering, resilient, self-efficacious. Victims’ counselors care about them. This empathy requires correcting them, saving them from their own negativity and passivity. After all, “Oh, you poor thing!”, treats people as things. Victim correctors only want addicts’ kids, etc., to be more self-efficacious, serene, etc. The nescient majority has no problem with this level of victim correction, with just expecting people to “get on with life” despite realities this lurid, which seem to be just acceptable losses. The middle-class approach is about solving problems self-reliantly and realistically, so we should teach the same self-responsible ideas that it does, instead of the petty bourgeois approach, which is palliative. Coping with reality means overlooking some realities, and such pragmatic and red-blooded cultural norms have to be very powerful. As White House press secretary Ari Fleischer unabashedly said after Bush admitted that the Iraq-Niger-uranium documents are fake, “Yes, the president has moved on. And, I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well,” a top-notch professional attempt to get the public to conform to letting go regarding Bush’s Machiavellianism. (Fleischer is rebelling from his petty bourgeois family, who obviously can afford not to adequately appreciate why, in the real world, sometimes when others cause you problems it’s necessary to move on rather than whine and intellectualize.) Caring about social problems is so passé, so 1960s, even caring about our rampant depression. During the Vietnam War, defending it by telling opponents to move on, would have seemed morally bankrupt, rather than unconditionally resilient. As Al-Anon shows, it’s possible for pragmatists to expect someone to move on from, let go of, etc., literally anything that he can’t change.

That’s how all cultural conditioning and social pressures work, including that of all those strange foreigners who can’t think for themselves. (BTW, those who think for themselves wouldn’t conclude that for 15% of the adult population to suffer a serious depressive disorder in any given year, is only natural.) Depression is the only dread disease of which many of the causes seem sacrosanct.

Nothing that an Al-Anon or Alateen member could possibly say, could possibly counter expectations that are based on what the real world objectively requires. This moral bankruptcy requires you to toe the line, even when the choices that caused the problems have nothing to do with addiction. No matter what any problem parent might do that could traumatize his kid, he absolutely could change himself, and absolutely can’t change anyone else including the parent, which is all that the zeitgeist of The Serenity Prayer cares about. A priori, that’s all that you could care about. That mustn’t seem repulsive. You mustn’t really care about “the elephant in the living room” if you can’t change the elephant. If you think that that’s revolting, then that would be very unserene, discouraging, etc. Obviously, that, like Bontsha the Silent, is far from a natural way to think, though it could be called “cognitive therapy” (“Behavior Therapists and Cognitive Behavior Therapists... concentrate on a person’s views and perceptions about their life, rather than personality traits.”), which has been called, “a natural alternative to anti-depressant medication.” The above is the fully-approved outlook, since it’s very effective in preventing depression. All that you’d need to give self help advice, would be a tape recording that says, “It would really do you a lot of good if you changed what you can and accepted what you can’t! That’s just the way the real world works!”, and you’d play that over and over as the person describes his own trauma. Any reasonable alternatives to victim correction as a panacea, could seem too unrealistic, fallible, subjective, passive, defeatist, untermensch, etc., for the realities that one must deal with. Pragmatism leads to happiness. Victim-correctors, therefore, are the ones who really care about victims.

If one were to apply what On Speculation and Manipulation in Therapy says, “When it works, justice is always very particular. It proceeds on a case-by-case basis with a careful weighing of the facts and an equally careful examination of the underlying logic of key arguments,” certainly the specifics of what addicts’ kids must deal with, would argue for someone else being to blame. Yet blaming others wouldn’t accomplish anything, and would divert attention from solving one’s own problems. It’s your problem, so what are you going to do about it? You’d better just serenely surrender to the inevitable. If we showed an understanding acceptance toward everyone, including the people who have the problems and aren’t dealing with them adequately, nobody would solve them, and the victims would be weakened in the long run. For these people to get on track in taking care of themselves, is the only thing that really matters. If everything must be pragmatic, nothing can be sacred. “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, is inculcated humility, expedient and well-adjusted, without coercion or authoritarian obeisance so this is pro-freedom. Even if the reason for the “negative thoughts” that the victim is washing his own brain of, is that he was unfairly overpowered, that wouldn’t be an authoritarian brainwashing, so his sincere opinion could still seem to be dirt that’s to be washed away and replaced with what he’s supposed to believe. The October, 2007 issue of Counselor, the Magazine for Addiction Professionals includes an article that says, “rigid fidelity may produce an adverse effect,” but for those who must deal with realities like this, rigid fidelity is as necessary as are adequate resiliency and coping skills. Naïveté doesn’t work. Victim-blaming optimistically and determinedly looks for very necessary self-motivated solutions, so, in the words of the Downing Street memo, “the intelligence and the facts” must be “fixed around the policy.”

Reductionism is key. Ambrose Bierce defined platitude as, “A moral without the fable,” and the self-reliant, self-responsible, morals of victim correction sound a lot better without the fables, which would have told of what the people had to deal with self-reliantly. The central message of any self-help approach for people in trouble is that to help yourself: No matter what caused your problem, you absolutely must focus your attention on correcting yourself, since you absolutely can change yourself, absolutely can’t change anyone else, and absolutely must make your life productive (whatever that requires). The real world requires certain things. Everyone must play their part. The only choice that you have is either you do whatever it takes to deal with your problem, or it doesn’t get dealt with. The only legit question is, “Can I change this?”, so no injustices could seem profound. As long as they happened in the past, they’re past history. Addicts’ friends and loved ones are the ones who are motivated to correct themselves, and they need more motivation to: change, empower themselves, accommodate to reality, be well-adjusted and productive. That’s only natural. Everyone, not just fundamentalists, must take this sort of spirituality literally. Focus on self-responsibility. Only the person who has the problem, is reliably motivated to deal with it as well as possible. We could live without moral responsibility (which we can’t count on), abstract principles like morality, etc., but can’t live without victims taking response-ability for their own welfare. Some things are luxuries; some are necessities. Addicts’ kids shouldn’t feel bad about themselves, guilty, etc., but when dealing with what their alcoholic parents do the kids should look at themselves rather than blaming others, so as they do this they should choose not to feel self-blame, and, of course, simply looking at themselves means simply looking at what they should have done better. Their self-help mentors would simply check to see how well they’re doing in following these instructions. (It’s no wonder that Should Statements are one of the single-mindedly self-responsible cognitive distortions of modern Western depression!) If one rationale for victim correction doesn’t work, it’s replaced by another. As “Mary Smith” wrote in her suicide note, “All [my psychologist] could do is nitpick about how I need to feel small + helpless,” though Mary obviously had a gutsy personality, which is typical of the self-empowering “thinking” of victim correction: plenty of all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filter, and disqualifying the positive. To paraphrase British prime minister David Lloyd George, such teens cannot conquer the chasms in their own lives by gingerly taking one step at a time.

And, of course, when they look at themselves to see if they have the “defects of character” that AA’s Big Book really goes into, i.e. resentment anger and/or fear, then alkies’ kids would probably find that they feel plenty of untermensch feelings, but Al-Anon doesn’t consider correcting them to be self-blame. As British author Douglas Adams wrote, “When you blame others, you give up the power to change yourself.” As Susan Faludi wrote in Backlash about writings on codependency, “Norwood’s self-help plan, modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous’s twelve-step program [through Al-Anon], advises women seeking the source of their pain to refrain from looking beyond themselves, a habit she calls ‘blaming.’” Self-responsibility is necessary for victims. Backlash mentions “puerile serenity,” though contrived serenity is what’s pertinent! And we’d better not have a backlash against this knee-jerk, unconditional absolutist one-dimensional uncompromising and unquestionable (but very self-helping and self-motivated) victim correction! As Bush said in May, 2005, “In my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

Though this conviction and ideology expects people to accept a laissez faire self-responsibility that’s as extremist as the self-responsibility that Enron propounded when it seemed so red-blooded, not only would Al-Anon not seem to be extremist wing-nuts, but if you firmly disagreed you could seem to be an extremist wing-nut. As Enlightenment-era economic philosophers wrote, being productive must override everything else. Most victim-blaming (a.k.a. self-responsibility) can’t seem bad. Those who deviate from these expectations are those who’d seem to be the authoritarians, the judgmental controllers. One can’t say “no” to realism, including, “Like Archie, you should stop blaming others and look at yourself, to improve yourself and your chances!” As Libertarian Ron Paul explained Social Security,“ ...we have taught them to be dependent,” and a single-minded blaming and correction of any victims would have the same unconditional, gutsy and pro-freedom appeal. Social Darwinism protects us from all parasitism, which could only hurt the parasites. No doubt this thrilling philosophy also regards the Americans with Disabilities Act as tyrannical, so either handicapped people get jobs without the ADA, or they’ve been taught to be dependent. Realists can see the dangers that the weak would pose, unless they make great efforts to be self-reliant anyway and succeed. We mustn’t reward failure, victimhood, etc., or the weak could get what they wanted without earning it and the strong might not be motivated to achieve, so we must assume that the weak wanted to fail. This isn’t absolute power; “Archie” and those who are just as helpless can change some significant things. Such “imperfections” don’t seem nearly as scary as do comparable problems from the guv’mint. Helplessness isn’t tyranny.

The Al-Anon formula for self-help, laissez faire Social Darwinist ideology, and what “self-help” must mean in a society with rampant depression, are based on the same ideas, and come with the same frame of reference. While “Archie’s” situation is certainly atypical, a society that has rampant depression yet stresses response-ability for one’s own welfare would have to make that personal response-ability, that unconditional (though each situation gives opportunities for rationales for this personal response-ability, that victim correctors could focus on). All of the advantages of “the invisible hand,” apply to the lives of “Archie” and everyone else in trouble. (If you weren’t aware of our rampant depression with self-blame, you might think that things just take care of themselves.) All of these supposed forms of individualism must indoctrinate their followers into believing in counterintuitive absolutisms such as the above, the Al-Anon “Serenely accept and courageously change” formula applied to any realities. That’s living in the real world. You do what you can. “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” etc., are, in the end, Social Darwinism that resolutely ignores its own consequences. You get whatever you get. Things simply have to keep functioning. If you don’t successfully deal with your own problems, who will? We must think realistically, so whatever shapes our realities shapes how we must think. Whatever is necessary for one to deal with his own realities self-reliantly becomes absolutely necessary, so otherwise he’d be inadequate, dysfunctional, etc. Everyone must conquer their own doubts, their own “negativity,” for their own good, focusing on correcting themselves. Success and failure are objective, and questions of, “What’s unacceptably wrong?”, aren’t. (You’re expected to have realistic coping skills, so simply proving that what happened was wrong, isn’t enough.) That’s the real world; sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don’t. You could have done plenty, yet not done enough to deal with your realities, so you’d still be inadequate. Acting pathetic is the old (pre-Reagan) way of doing things. Coping with reality means overlooking some realities. You don’t deserve more than what you won. Your attention would be on what you should be doing better, not on the magnitude of the social problem. Self-help programs like this, even those that apply to situations of unambiguous victimization, are top sellers. This is the exciting self-reliant freedom, can-do courage, and failsafe well-adjusted forgiveness, that we’ve gotten to know and love. If it feels good, believe it. (Fighting and/or caring for the underdog might feel good, though, but we must understand how this would mollycoddle them.) Addictive personalities would feel right at home. Hans Johst said, “When I hear the word culture, I release the safety catch on my revolver,” and intellectualism could cause similar feelings, even when the supposed intellectualism is a concern about the sociology of what leads to our rampant depression. We must all be motivated to deal with our own problems independently resiliently and resourcefully. We’ll get more chances to succeed. That simply is the unconditionally self-responsible role that we must play, to keep our society functioning with plenty of self-motivation, unconditionally. Simply being morally right, has never earned or achieved anything. Many want to correct victims (who can’t afford intellectualism) because they ♥♥♥ care ♥♥♥ about them, more than do the petty bourgeois who say vaingloriously that they care, but aren’t realistic or confident about the individual’s self-reliance. We must stand up for self-reliant freedom. You can’t prove most manipulative, passive-aggressive, codependent, etc., machinations, so “presumed innocent of machinations until proven guilty” is out of the question. Whenever tenable, see problems as the victims’ free choice, eagerly believing that we have self-determination! Before the Reagan/Thatcher Era, caring about the causes of our rampant depression would have seemed only natural, but now, truly caring about most of them would seem to reflect a dangerously untermensch character. Even if it had been proven what normalized helplessness contributes to our rampant depression, those who are well-adjusted would have to respond to it with, “Sure, what’s happening to you is the sort of thing that’s been proven to contribute to our rampant depression, but everyone knows that when that sort of thing happens to you, you’re just going to have to deal with it.” The red-blooded, pro-freedom, and pro-self-reliance cultural norms behind this are sacrosanct, so naturally we accept the consequences. Both the logic and the consequences, are predictable and stereotypical. As “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” says, we mustn’t try to re-engineer aggressive human nature, and must re-engineer passive human nature. Expecting believers to give up victim-blaming, would be like expecting addicts to give it up. Sure, William Styron wrote, “To most of those who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression, hence the frustrated sense of inadequacy found in the work of even the greatest artists,” but if we were guaranteed safety from what causes our rampant depression, anxiety disorders, etc., we wouldn’t have enough motivation to earn and achieve. Faith in anything would make one happier, including faith in this. People tend to believe what they want to believe. No matter what happens to you, if you didn’t have faith in your opportunities to succeed you’d seem unpatriotic, while, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, is patriotic. (“The weak are at fault,” is the last refuge of both the scoundrel, and the sociopath.) Optimism that you’d succeed if only you were good enough, seems mandatory. Response-ability for one’s own welfare would work for everyone, and keeps everyone self-motivated. All three of these forms of responsible “individualism” would preach the basic ideas of the same self-reliant and self-responsible platitudes over and over again, like a dogma or cult since free thought regarding this would allow untermensch weakness and manipulative strength, and who’d fix the consequences of that? All this mustn’t ever seem repulsive. Motivate, motivate, motivate!!!

Self-responsibility along the lines of the law of the jungle, works: eventually, if you try hard enough (which is along the same self-motivated lines as, “Greed is good. Greed works.”) As Gordon Gekko said, this must be The American Way, since anything else would rely too much on altruism and/or opinion-based restriction, coddle the whiny losers too much, etc. The law of the jungle protects us from untermensch manipulation, parasitism, quitting, etc. The dangers that are feared, are thoughts, feelings, and actions of the weak, the victims. Social Darwinism destroys, but protects us from failures in fixing destruction, and from whiny “weak characters.” Very little pragmatic victim-blaming would seem undoubtedly bad (especially to those who aren’t intellectualist). If your nephew died young because his priest had molested him, you might even put The Serenity Prayer on the homepage of his memorial website, since that prayer tells you how to cope with literally anything. Endurability might seem very basic to life, but in some situations, expecting endurability would be unrealistic. One depression is a tragedy; millions of depressions is a statistic. Victim-blaming develops a life of its own, since that simply is how things must be taken care of, with plenty of reliable self-motivation. The real world will make its demands! Objectivity, Objectivism, means might makes right, since might and victory are objective, and moral wrongness is both subjective and emotionalistic. Sure, Helen Keller wrote, “I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace,” but when we’re in trouble, what we do and don’t want is a bunch of BS. Whatever applies to addicts’ kids, also applies to oppressed minorities, etc., since inadequate adjustment and adaptation to one’s own realities, would cause the same sorts of problems for anyone. When it comes to moral responsibility, the slate is basically wiped clean. The more that you’d care about your own helplessness, the more helpless you’d become. Such realism is tautological, begging the question, “Your dad’s addiction is reality, so if you don’t adjust to it and function with it you’re maladjusted and dysfunctional, since that’s reality.” Everyone must get on with life. As Fleischer, Al-Anon, the beginning of Lee Greenwood’s Reagan-Revolutionary patriotic praise song God Bless the USA, etc., take for granted, victims who don’t do their best to “move on” would seem to be going against basic American expectations for resilient: self-reliance, self-responsibility, maturity, realism, etc. Some things seem to matter, some things don’t, and it soon becomes very obvious that the pragmatic ones do.

As you’d live your life, you’d naturally focus on how you could correct your ineffective reactions, efforts, etc. In the entire world, few could afford not to deal adequately with their own realities, and become losers; problems happen. All three forms of “individualism” would predictably hold that in reality, the ultimate reason for our unnaturally high rates of depression, anxiety disorders, etc., is a whiny and negativist victim culture, and or something else that’s simply mollycoddle. (Anything could be ultimately blamed on the victim not stopping preventing or dealing with it well enough. He’d also have plenty of victim-power.) This offers the hope of unconditional solutions, and in the real world, we can’t afford conditions. This is optimistic that the person who really wants to solve the problem, has self-determination. Satisfying winners’ SELF-WILLS is productive; satisfying losers’ runs the risk of parasitism, controlling, etc. People must be motivated to win, not whine. If the government didn’t cause it, then it’s a part of freedom. This self-responsibility, and figuring that winner equals worthy, are always objective, but other conceptions of personal responsibility and worthiness, aren’t. That’s the role that good victims will play. As is typical for dogma, the more that you’d disagree, the more that you’d seem to be one of the dreaded, omni-responsible, whiny negativists and mollycoddles. Wanting to be productive, optimistic, etc., is very important. The Fundamental Attribution Error, automatically attributing problems to the victims’ supposed faults, is the same whether the poor are blamed for their own poverty, or Al-Anon members are blamed for their own resentment. “There are no victims, just volunteers.” Each of us must do whatever he must do, yet that’s life, not slavery. Nothing that disagrees can really matter. If the only alternatives that a society had were either rampant depression, or its people not being adequately motivated to try to earn and achieve, then the rampant depression would be the realistic alternative. Victim blaming is always pro-freedom and pro-self-responsibility. Defying this, isn’t [all-American] defiance. All this is very predictable, even when it sizes up addicts’ families. Self-reliant realism, no matter what one’s own realities are, is non-partisan, objective, Objectivist. This is for the individual, even when the individual ends up devastated. No matter how high the rate of depression gets, this wouldn’t seem to be a social experiment, attempt to re-engineer human nature, etc. In the words of William Ryan’s Blaming the Victim, “All of this happens so smoothly that it seems downright rational.”

A study funded by the US government, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, found that conservatism is rooted in such neuroses as, “fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity,” and that Hitler, Mussolini, Reagan, and Rush Limbaugh all “preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality.” Yet the self-help Newthink would have to say that all of these neuroses are good, even necessary. After all: Working with fear and aggression is realistic when that’s reality. Nazism seemed exciting in its day, very uninhibited and self-confident, fitting Freudian conceptions of normal human nature, which are basically German. Might makes right, since helplessness means that you must serenely accept. “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, shows how easy it is for weakness-makes-wrong to come naturally and seem obligatory. Your beliefs should make you fit in. All this must be done dogmatically and absolutistically, since half-measures will avail us nothing, and no abstractions (self-justifying opinions) could seem as important as realism. This personal responsibility must be as out-of-control as are the realities that one must deal with. “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it.” Someone absolutely has to take responsibility for each and every problem, no matter how many reasons he may give for why this is morally wrong, since every problem must get solved. Realism gets first priority, and this isn’t just somewhat. The proponents are our friends, our allies, since they fight for self-reliant freedom. No one has a right to defend themselves from personal response-ability for their own welfare. Only strength is material. As Reagan said on April 7th, 1970 about that era’s protesters and activists, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with,” and a non-violent version of this would apply to the victimologists and other losers. We must return to a self-responsibility like the pioneers’, old-fashioned übermensch pride and shame (old-fashioned yet exciting enough to attract a staunch, aggressively energized, and anti-“repression,” audience and following). “Archie” believes what he’s supposed to, which is self-empowering. Inequality is realistic and pro-freedom, and loves winners (without caring why they won). A big fear is of the supposed cunning “victim-power” of the untermenschen. They could have so much victim-power, that it’s scary! If you object to sinfulness, that’s really your will-to-power. Strength looks honorable, or at least forgivable. Tough, is good. Populism sounds very folksy and spontaneous. Moral re-armament, standing up for strong self-reliant principles, etc., sound exciting, have plenty of vitality. Being pre-occupied with sexual morality, as our Fundament Christian leaders are, can’t be called whining, victimology etc., though caring about morality that isn’t victimless, can be. A lot of problems could ultimately be blamed on the weak, who should therefore try to empower themselves (which is good). Gutsiness seems exciting and mentally healthy. It sounds sexy; caring about our rampant depression doesn’t. Confidence feels good. Sturm und drang speakers sound exciting, whether from a podium like Hitler, or on the radio. (Yet this aggressiveness also sounds obviously very depression-genic.) Caring about moral wrongness, other than what religious rules say, could very easily seem WILLFULLY emotionalistic: resentful, manipulative, melodramatic, self-righteous, whiny, etc. (the supposed triumph of the manipulative will). If you object to the irrationality and tunnel vision, you could seem to be looking down on the lower-middle-class (which was the Nazis’ main base of support), and outrage about that doesn’t seem to be appealing to pity or playing the victim role. Populism trusts the mediocre. It doesn’t matter that real common sense wouldn’t accept what causes rampant depression. Lower-middle-class people in any country, including Germany, are up against certain (whiny) sorts of people and could seem to be up against others, and must be stolid realists. As cognitive therapists would tell you, having the “wrong” opinions (not just aberrant ones) washed from your brain, could let you fit in much better. Reagan’s “We begin bombing in five minutes,” joke, and his statement of 1965, “We should declare war on North Vietnam... We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it, and still be home by Christmas,” showed that he had plenty of spark, which is what made him so popular! Attack politics works, in pressuring people into taking response-ability for their own welfare. Only the (dreaded) intellectual elite could afford to care. Gutter tactics are catchy. Banalities really have to matter. “Utilize, don’t analyze.” (As Hitler said, “How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”) Without that self-empowerment, you might not succeed in taking care of yourself. Defying this, is parasitical (one of Nazism’s favorite words). One could be on a single-minded mission to correct victims, whether this be to fight the ignominious and parasitical untermenschen, or to maximize their very necessary self-help, self-reliance, and well-adjusted emotional strength. Weakness is bad, and that’s not judgmental in the Christian sense, or repressive in the Freudian sense. Conventional beliefs mean fitting in productively. “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” is Wagnerian realism, and Wagnerian judgmentalism. (We can’t have one without the other, since someone has to deal with each reality.) Such aggression looks very unexciting to those on the receiving end of it, and they don’t have a choice.

The cognitive distortions of modern Western depression, basically consist of absolutist self-responsible and “I’ll change what I can: myself,” victim-self-blaming. One could really see this Wagnerian level of self-responsibility, in discussions of codependency, which became popular in the 1980s. Self-help means self-reliance. Victim-blaming leads to self-motivated solutions. You’d rather count on greed, response-ability for one’s own welfare, etc., to motivate what needs to be done, than count on moral responsibility, which could also seem manipulative, unchecked in its victim-power, etc. As Reagan said, “Unemployment insurance is a prepaid vacation plan for freeloaders.” “Realism” would require ignoring untermensch realities, which would dishearten, give excuses, divert efforts, manipulate, etc. No matter what hardship, sinfulness, etc., impacts each person’s life, he must deal with it productively; we mustn’t be unrealistic. Realists accept war, and this. A lack of this realism is what would seem neurotic: unrealistic, counterproductive, self-defeating, immature, passive-aggressive, passive, resentful, manipulative, mollycoddle, etc. No matter what are your realities (including extreme ones, hardship, sinfulness), if you have an outlook of, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, you’d be most likely to succeed in life. Realism cares only about what is, and what must be.

“Archie’s” realism is along the lines of economics, which is called “the dismal science,” since people tend to want to be more productive than they have the opportunities to be. To both “Archie” and economics, if you win you win, if you lose you lose, and we all must accept playing whatever roles our wins and losses will assign us. All must accept and work around inexorable human imperfection, including addictions. Only expecting people to take response-ability for their own welfare, works reliably with no mollycoddle side-effects such as parasitism victimology and pessimism (“You should choose to have a positive attitude, to benefit yourself.”). Whatever realities one must deal with, he must deal with, and whatever he must do to deal with them, he must do. When reality requires that this go to the point of a reductio ad absurdum, then that’s what reality (and self-motivated self-reliance) require. That isn’t the sort of inefficiency, inadequate reward for effort, irresponsibility, parasitism, self-denial, etc., that economics cares about, since people are always motivated to: solve their own problems, optimistically believe that they’ll get what they deserve, take response-ability for their own welfare, serenely accept whatever they’re helpless to change, deny their own maladjusted desires, etc.—and motivation is everything. That’s also the (morally bankrupt) main idea of therapy for codependents: You’re motivated to solve your problems, and that behavior problem isn’t. This is results-oriented, objective, non-manipulative. One’s self-motivation maximizes the efficiency, productivity, utility, chances for success, etc., in his own life, including “Archie” and those in even worse situations throughout the world. They all have autonomy and are taking response-ability for their own welfare, and their helplessness is too isolated banal and “personal” to qualify as real issues. All must work with whatever they’ve got to work with, or they won’t produce enough. Cost-shifting is only natural, if it means personal response-ability for one’s own welfare. Ignoring this realism constitutes a big danger. Learned helplessness leads to great inefficiencies, and we do try to stop these. No matter how natural learned helplessness is, in an adversarial society we must overcome it, since just because you’ve been helpless doesn’t mean that you’ll always be helpless, and you’ll have more of a fighting chance if you’re confident. If we didn’t have these everyday norms, people could get what they wanted through untermensch cunning (which would only weaken themselves in the long run), rather than through earning achieving and winning it. “We are all victims of victims.” Those who are preaching these “shoulds” and “musts” aren’t official authority, but disagreeing would seem heretical. All three of these self-empowering worldviews would insist that no one is entitled to endurability. If your life is with an addict, or is anything else, that’s life on life’s terms! Sure, this only holds the victims responsible, but no one is only a victim. Reality is reality, even when it’s reprehensible. You get whatever you get. Idealism, on the other hand, doesn’t work. This helplessness doesn’t come from the guv’mint. ~~We must take into account the threshold of human endurance.~~ As William Sloan Coffin said, “One of the attributes of power is that it gives those who have it the ability to define reality and the power to make others believe in their definition,” and that would include, “I’ve stopped blaming others, and I’m looking at myself!”, if those power dynamics had made this self-responsibility pragmatic. We might as well be telling the millions suffering from depression, “You’d better just fix your own choices, since if you try to fix others’ choices, the following is wrong with you....” Facts are stubborn things.

You could always count on victim correction. We can re-engineer untermensch human nature, since victims want to react more serenely and courageously. Realists can’t object to blaming the victims, since they’re the ones with the most reliable motivations to solve the problems. Blithe means well-adjusted. No matter what caused your problems, if we tolerated and/or mollycoddled your passivity, weakness, failures, pessimism, victimhood, etc., that would only hurt you in the long run. “I don’t have a problem unless I think I do.” Fairness, or even endurability, isn’t going to happen by magic. This anti-intellectualism, like the anti-intellectualism that led to the Iraq war, is common sense. (As Robert Novak said, “Weapons of mass destruction or uranium from Niger are little elitist issues that don’t bother most of the people.” Elitist means unrealistic.) Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison’s book Exuberance says, “The result of a Pew Carter poll conducted in 2002 of 38,000 people in forty-four countries found that more Americans [65 percent] than respondents from other countries disagreed with the statement ‘Success in life is pretty much determined by forces outside our control.’”

Sure, during that interview of Ron Paul, he was told, “...there are a lot of people that describe you as a flake. And that’s a quote,” and coaching addicts’ kids to believe, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!” might sound just as flaky, but if one has to succeed in a society with rampant depression, that sort of unconditional self-response-ability is necessary. Either handicapped people, etc., do whatever it takes to deal with their own problems, or they’re too parasitical to deal with reality. Ex-Nazi Hermann Rauschning wrote in 1939 about the Nazis’ anti-Semitism, “All these elements, so primitive and threadbare in their psychology, are nevertheless thoroughly effective in practice,” and the same goes for treating other wide swaths of people as manipulative and parasitical untermenschen, even if the intent is to pressure them into acting more übermensch.

As Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind says, “At very best, self-determination is indeterminate.” Yet motivation is EVERYTHING, and we all know who’s most motivated to solve any problem. Some nihilistic acceptance is bad; some is realistic. Since few on social security, etc., are cynically parasitical, “We taught them to be dependent,” would require only that we taught them not to solve their own problems well enough that they’d succeed, as “Archie” succeeded. And of course, to care that “I’ve stopped blaming others, and I’m looking at myself!” could teach these others to evade moral responsibility, would weaken those red-blooded self-reliant efforts to succeed. Victim correction gives us objectivity.

Even the most caring person could teach this “independence,” so you could always count on getting victim correction. (It would really do you a lot of good, of course. ♥♥♥♥♥) Especially if one is in trouble, his having a productive attitude toward his taking care of his own problems, isn’t a dispensable luxury, while any fairness, is one. We mustn’t coddle maladjustment. Realists accept reality. Reaganomics doesn’t allow for excuses. In the Reagan era, James Watt seemed sane, too.

James Watt’s official Department of the Interior photo

This was also the same Reagan Administration that arranged for many varieties of deadly germs, as well as other military help, to be exported to Saddam, our ally against Iran. Once, Reagan’s ideas seemed extremist, but now they seem as realistic and necessary as, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, which, after all, would make anyone more likely to succeed.

As Aldous Huxley wrote, “The ends cannot justify the means for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.” The ends of, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” might seem good, even necessary when the person must pragmatically deal with hardship and/or others’ sinfulness ad infinitum. Yet the means, the requirements that one unquestioningly adjust to hardship and/or sinfulness, are this excessive and pitiless. As Huxley also wrote, “[The psychological revolution] will really be a revolution. When it is over, the human race will give no further trouble.” If everyone serenely accepted whatever they’re helpless to change, no more trouble.

As Emily Dickinson wrote, “Opinion is a flitting thing But Truth outlasts the Sun.” Or, as Homer wrote, “Once the harm is done, even a fool understands it.” Trust your natural instincts (without focusing on your übermensch instincts), that don’t accept what causes rampant depression! Just imagine how different your life would look if those who now respond to the sorts of normalized helplessness that contribute to our rampant depression, anxiety disorders, etc., by saying, “But everyone knows that when that sort of thing happens to you, you’ll just have to deal with it!”, realized how unfit for human consumption it really is!

“The aim of the Gam-Anon program is to aid the individuals involved with a compulsive gambler to find help by changing their own lives.... Living or being associated with a compulsive gambler creates its own kind of hell. For most people, it is a devastating experience... At any moment the house might be lost or the furniture repossessed. There may not be enough money to put food on the table or clothe the children.... The meeting is opened with a moment of silent meditation and closed with the Serenity Prayer.”—from the Gam-Anon chapter of Gamblers Anonymous’ handbook