Comrades, we have assistance in our fight for the Progressive World of Next Tuesday. The American Psychological Association has stepped into the breech. You would think that the APA would concern itself with the treatment of mental disorders. Depression, psychosis, and whatever keeps the proles from doing the work that they ought to do. This is worthy work, but humdrum work--useful but not glamorous, much like a plumber.

The APA has decided that people shall be green. People shall use CFLs instead of incandescent bulbs, ignoring the health risks. People shall conserve in approved ways--always approved ways--because it's the right thing to do. In fact the APA has decided that merely helping people is entirely too boring and therefore they'll be helping all the good little totalitarians, read the Party, along by expanding their brief:
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APA wrote:We know how to change behavior and attitudes. That is what we do.

Now <i>that's</i> something to bring a tear to an old socialist's eyes. How much more efficient than a death camp. I mean, you have to pay for the death camp and whatever food you grant them. The APA expects payment. This is like making an inmate at a death camp come with an empty AmEx card.

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Just to reassure the more devout members like Hillary, before you start throwing brickbats at me let me hasten to add that under no circumstances would I <i>ever</i> abolish a good gulag for there's nothing like the sight of the sun rising through the barbed wire on a frosty morning. When you're not in the camp yourself, I hasten to add. Stand upwind of the graves.

I haven't been so impressed since the old Soviet psychiatric hospitals and the diagnosis of "sluggish schizophrenia." It was a very useful diagnosis, for the comrades, of course, if not for the patients. And also, do you remember, as I fondly do, all the work that was done on sensory deprivation and psychoactive drugs used to get information that people, foolishly and sometimes terminally, did not want to give for the Greater Good of the Party? Silly, silly people.

Who would have thought that we'd get such help, unbidden, from the APA? There are others who help a great deal: unions, trial lawyers, and the various pressure groups. But from the APA? I feel so lucky.

And we've had other help. The National Educational Association has been so proficient in not teaching our children to read while absorbing more and more money that if someone calls this latest bull from the APA Orwellian, we may be sure that no one will get it.

Another group has also joined us in the battle.

The Lumination Organized Society of Engineered Re-education (L.O.S.E.R.'s) has also endorsed the use of CFL's.

Of course. And when they burst on being dropped, we get to sue the makers for the spread of mercury, and then have to clean up using toxic-waste disposal methods. Bruno, take a note. Invest in toxic-waste stocks before that Peloskiy's bill takes effect.

Commissar Theocritus wrote:

APA wrote:We know how to change behavior and attitudes. That is what we do.

Commissar, if I may commit heresy for a moment, judging from the psychological conditon of the subgroup of society which has probably undergone the most therapy (i.e. the celebrity community) I'd say there is no empirical evidence to support the above claim. On the contrary, many therapists would argue that the old joke (ironically enough, a lightbulb joke) is true:

Q: How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Just one, but the bulb has to really WANT to change.

Likely, the APA is simply tooting its own horn in hopes of securing a larger vodka ration from the Party or perhaps just trying to make themselves feel better about themselves as so many other like-minded folk are wont to do. Ah, excuse the ramblings but I am just an old TV set and not Party-qualified to make psychological babble.

Opiate wrote: I am just an old TV set and not Party-qualified to make psychological babble.

Ah, Opiate, you are immanently qualified to say anything about anything with as much authority as you want for it will not be checked. Recall Dan Rather. Was he right about anything? No. Did it stop him? No. What a man. Now his milliner went through the entire output of Alcoa for a year but still, what a man.

But I think that I see your point. The APA spends its energy in telling people that it is successful hoping that people will believe it. I once read, in <i>The Spectator</i>, an article of a woman who had undergone an initial audit by the Scientologists and she understood its appeal. When you sign up you're given an auditor, who listens to you as you talk about yourself. What a wonderful change from most religions when you take instruction from something else.

If you're a scientologist you get to believe that life came from an alien spaceship which dropped things into a Hawaiian volcano, and then you get to talk about yourself and how you feel, and only for the price of paying the auditor, who will no doubt be very impressed by what you have to tell him.

So they are not cut-price totalitarians after all? I'm <i>so</i> relieved. I have my hands full fending off the grasping claws of Meow and getting Bruno's attention off shiny objects.

Aaah, Dan Ratbag, I was wondering why it was so hard to get tinfoil back then! I once had to go to black market underground economy and barter entire collection of Cosmonaut trading cards for small square of foil big enough to wrap my yearly bread ration. Curse you, Dan Ratbag!

Y, but he also illustrates another point; there was a time when Comrade Walter spoke and people BELIEVED! If he said UFO was coming to revive Lenin, tomb would have been swarming with workers holding bottles of vodka so he could have drink after long sleep. Dan Ratbag and others like him destroyed that valuable gullibility, although rise of cursed internet had much to with this too. Today, when authority like APA speaks, it is like cricket chirping in ear of the masses. They say "Huh?", throw a shoe at it and switch channels. Maybe if Orwell's glorious vision of telescreens had come true (one channel and it's ALWAYS ON) the APA's threat might have cut some ice. But these days, APA is just another poop flowing into the sewerage plant. If great minds like Algore and his Nobel Prize and Oscar cannot convince the masses of global warming, APA has as much chance as the proverbial snowball did in Stalin's boxer shorts.

How much more efficient than a death camp. I mean, you have to pay for the death camp and whatever food you grant them.

If they are reintroduced to society, they can help in the glorious tractor factory or something like that!

If they have the strength to do so. Death camps are <i>so</i> debilitating. Ask Pinkie just how many of them are worth a damn with a shovel.

But Opiate, the strength of the APA is that people will come to them for help and walk out--programmed. This is even better than one channel on all the time.

"Doctor, I have anxiety attacks."

"There, there. You'll be fine as long as you recycle and vote straight Democrat."

"I will?"

"And my rate is going up to $500 an hour. Just so you'll know."

Commissar Theocritus wrote:If they have the strength to do so. Death camps are <i>so</i> debilitating. Ask Pinkie just how many of them are worth a damn with a shovel.

But Opiate, the strength of the APA is that people will come to them for help and walk out--programmed. This is even better than one channel on all the time.

"Doctor, I have anxiety attacks."

"There, there. You'll be fine as long as you recycle and vote straight Democrat."

"I will?"

"And my rate is going up to $500 an hour. Just so you'll know."

Hahah. . .

Commissar Theocritus wrote:If they have the strength to do so. Death camps are <i>so</i> debilitating. Ask Pinkie just how many of them are worth a damn with a shovel.

But Opiate, the strength of the APA is that people will come to them for help and walk out--programmed. This is even better than one channel on all the time.

"Doctor, I have anxiety attacks."

"There, there. You'll be fine as long as you recycle and vote straight Democrat."

"I will?"

"And my rate is going up to $500 an hour. Just so you'll know."

Would that be so, the Party's job would be so much easier and we would not have to employ overpaid useless hacks in the MSM. My wife and I have a friend who is a therapist; she longs for the day someone actually takes the advice she gives. Most patients come in, complain for an hour and leave. It's not that the therapist is incompetent or does not wish to help; it is simply that improvement requires change and change is work. Change we can believe in???? Ha, ha, ha, ha. As the old saying goes, easier said than done. Real change comes down to personal responsibility, which we in the Party do not believe in.

My wife has a friend whose therapist kicked her (the friend) out of his office; he told her she is wasting her time and money because she obviously is not listening to his advice. She found someone else less professional and more willing to take her money while she blathers on. Y, I guess the APA thinks they can change people's habits and the Marxists think they can change human nature and make society into the utopia they crave without having to march millions off to death camps. So far, neither has been correct. Advice: not good idea to be holding breath while waiting.

Opiate, you're utterly right that change takes work and that people confuse talking about their problems under the guise of getting help with actually taking the help. Once the county clerk came to me and asked, "Theocritus, I have a problem and I know you'll give me good advice."

There were mistakes, lots of them, in this small office and they were being made by Tencha. Sweet, lovable, dim Tencha whom I'd hire in a moment to be a practical nurse. But not to do recording of deeds. I said, "Diane, the problem is Tencha. Fire Tencha." She asked me over and over for over an hour and left, satisfied that she'd taken advice when all she'd done was complain.

In six months Tencha was gone, fired. Not because of incompetence but because she got a boyfriend before Diane, her boss, did.

But the programming for greenery is more insidious. Real change--in a relationship, destructive behavior--takes work. But if a therapist tells someone who is resistant to work to switch out the incandescent bulbs and he will be more virtuous, that's an easy, and cheap, and lazy man's way to be virtuous. Much easier than doing actual work, for it doesn't face a real problem.

Comrade_Elliott wrote:

How much more efficient than a death camp. I mean, you have to pay for the death camp and whatever food you grant them.

If they are reintroduced to society, they can help in the glorious tractor factory or something like that!

More than likely "reintroduced to society" as fertlilizer, comrade...to everything a purpose, no?

Or with a lobotomy, to work on my yard. Or in TxDOT, where they (I swear this is true) think that water flows uphill.

Private Pravda wrote:

Comrade_Elliott wrote:

How much more efficient than a death camp. I mean, you have to pay for the death camp and whatever food you grant them.

If they are reintroduced to society, they can help in the glorious tractor factory or something like that!

More than likely "reintroduced to society" as fertlilizer, comrade...to everything a purpose, no?

Absolutely, all of us have something to give to The Party, whether it be shovel work or fertilizer, we all have something to give.

I gave the Party my undying devotion and my strong will to work.

And my intelligence. That was one of the first things I gave to the party. I wasn't using it anyway....

Don't give away your intelligence, Betty. Then you'll have trouble in college. And we need your intelligence here because in the bunker we're having fun with some someone.

Too late. The party can put it to better use than I can.

Premier Betty wrote:Too late. The party can put it to better use than I can.

Should. . . I. . . speak. . . sloooowly. . . than. . .?

You can <i>mortgage</i> your intelligent to the party. Witness Obamania.

Mortgage is a big confusing word. And having anything to do with a word like that probably means lots of confusing paperwork and stuff that will make my head hurt... more.