The Worst Week Yet: July 17-23, 2022
Posted By Jim Goad On In North American New Right | Comments Disabled
[1]A screen grab from one of Chinese filmmaker Lu Ke’s Jokes About Black People videos.
2,392 words
Study: Antidepressants Don’t Work
I have seen the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by pills intended to cure their sadness.
I’ve known several people, a few of whom were very close to me, who decided to take antidepressants. I’ve never known anyone who got observably less depressed as a result. Even more disturbingly, despite the fact that neither their mood nor their lives had improved, down to the last person they insisted that they needed their medication and couldn’t live without it.
Since the 1960s, we’ve been endlessly battered with the idea that sadness is not caused by sad situations, but by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Despite the fact that there was almost no evidence to support this notion, four out of five Americans say they believe it. As a result of believing it, an estimated one in six Americans is on antidepressants. Whites take them at nearly three times the rate that non-whites take them, and twice [2] as many women as men gobble these happy little pills.
I tried Paxil [3] once — for about two months — and that was more than enough for me. I was prescribed it without ever having a blood test taken to determine my serotonin levels. To my knowledge, this is standard procedure. For the past 30 years or so, all one needed to receive a prescription for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) was to tell your doctor that you’ve been sad.
The high and holy sage Ted Kaczynski nailed what was wrong with antidepressants way back when they first started being prescribed and long before every sixth American was doddering around with SSRIs coursing through their veins:
Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.
In other words, antidepressants attempted to treat the symptom of sadness rather than its root cause.
In a new study [4] published in Molecular Biology titled “The serotonin theory of depression: an umbrella review of the evidence,” the authors state that not only does the available literature not support the idea that depression is due to a chemical imbalance, but long-term use of antidepressants might actually be causing lower serotonin among those who use them:
The main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations. Some evidence was consistent with the possibility that long-term antidepressant use reduces serotonin concentration. . . . Our comprehensive review of the major strands of research on serotonin shows there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity. . . . We suggest it is time to acknowledge that the serotonin theory of depression is not empirically substantiated.
In a summary of their findings, co-authors Joanna Moncrieff and Mark Horowitz write [5]:
For three decades, people have been deluged with information suggesting that depression is caused by a “chemical imbalance” in the brain — namely an imbalance of a brain chemical called serotonin. However, our latest research review [4] shows that the evidence does not support it. . . . In fact, drug trials show that antidepressants are barely distinguishable from a placebo [6] (dummy pill) when it comes to treating depression. . . . Stressful life events in themselves, however, exerted a strong effect on people’s subsequent risk of developing depression. . . . Some of the studies in our overview that included people who were taking or had previously taken antidepressants showed evidence that antidepressants may actually lower the concentration or activity of serotonin. . . . The serotonin theory of depression has been one of the most influential and extensively researched biological theories of the origins of depression. Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence. It also calls into question the basis for the use of antidepressants.
There’s nothing more dangerous or subject to abuse than giving doctors free rein over managing the human mind. Despite this, I’ve always been bemused to find that many people who are typically skeptical of the government, media, and even the medical industry suspend all disbelief when it comes to the psychiatric industry’s medications and the psychological industry’s arbitrary and unquantifiable diagnoses.
Sadness is a human problem rather than a physiological problem. As such, it needs a human rather than a pharmaceutical solution. At the risk of waxing hyperbolic, I’ve said for years that the worst thing to happen to American culture over the past generation was the mass dosing of the populace with antidepressants and painkillers. Perhaps the powers that be saw it as a simple pacification program and didn’t anticipate that people would wind up sadder and crazier than ever.
Through the Sheer Force of Their Hatred, Conservatives are Forcing Gay Men to Give One Another Monkeypox
As if everything that happened in every nanosecond of the last two and a half years wasn’t bad enough, the newest treat on the dessert menu is a zoonotic pathogen with a racist-sounding name that affects gay men almost exclusively.
Making things worse is the fact that when AIDS first emerged in the early 1980s, a common rumor was that it was originally transmitted to humans via sex with monkeys.
Although rats provide the main reservoir of transmission for monkeypox, the virus got its name because it was first identified among monkeys in Denmark in 1959. There are two main variants, a West African and a Congolese one, with an average fatality rate ranging from 1% to 10%.
[7]You can buy Jim Goad’s The Redneck Manifesto here. [8]
This latest outbreak has infected nearly 20,000 people worldwide. Victims are almost exclusively adult males, with those identifying as gay or bisexual accounting for about 95 to 99% of those affected. According to a recent study [9], “The strong likelihood of sexual transmission was supported by the findings of primary genital, anal, and oral mucosal lesions, which may represent the inoculation site.”
Great, so we have a potentially fatal virus that originated in Africa and is named after monkeys, and it’s primarily transmitted through oral and anal sex between men. This new monkeypox scare is almost like the AIDS crisis all over again, but if they’d referred to AIDS as NIGS.
I remember when the AIDS crisis first broke, sodomitical apologists insisted that it was not a gay disease — but if you were afraid of catching it, you were not a germaphobe, you were a homophobe.
The tireless caretakers of the public welfare over at Media Matters [10] have rung the alarm bell that “Conservatives’ homophobia is putting gay and bisexual men at greater risk of monkeypox”:
Right-wing media outlets and pundits have responded to the rise in monkeypox cases in the United States, which have been found almost exclusively [11] among gay and bisexual men, with a mix of homophobia, misinformation [12] about the origins of the disease, or outright dismissal [13] of the threat [14] it poses. The right has also pushed the conspiracy theory [15] that monkeypox health precautions are either a pretext to surrender U.S. sovereignty to the World Health Organization, or a liberal hoax [16] to tyrannically control citizens through fear. . . . Monkeypox is a real public health risk that for now is almost exclusively affecting men who have sex with men. Local, state, and federal government agencies have legitimately failed these populations. Homophobic attacks from conservatives only serve to stigmatize them and put them further at risk, both of monkeypox and broader anti-gay violence.
It’s the damnedest thing — I thought that having unprotected oral and anal sex was putting gay men at risk of monkeypox. Now I find out that “Homophobic attacks from conservatives” were to blame all along.
In three years, after we’ve all received our fourteenth monkeypox vaccine, they’re going to warn us about the coming wave of gorillapox.
Chinese Filmmaker Forced African Kids to Say “I’m a Black Monster, I Have a Low IQ” in Chinese
Since I’ve dedicated my life to fighting racism, I must preemptively confess that it’s a bit racist to suspect that when the Chinese are done extracting everything of value from Africa [17], they will have made King Leopold look like a Cub Scout. Having examined Asians over the long arc of my life, I find that they are tremendously susceptible to guilt-tripping, provided that other Asians are doing it. But the wails of a billion agonized black mammies throughout the Dark Continent will fall on deaf Chinese ears.
Lu Ke [18] is a Chinese filmmaker with what might be the shortest combined first and last names in history. He was recently arrested in Zambia and extradited back to Malawi “to face charges relating to racism and child exploitation” due to a series of videos he made in Africa and sold to a Chinese website that had a page called “Jokes About Black People Club [19].” In one video, he is seen instructing a group of joyous and coal-black children to gleefully shout, “I’m a black monster! My IQ is low!” in Chinese. Ke would then allegedly sell the short videos to the Jokes About Black People page for up to $70 each. Think of it not as TikTok but rather as NigNog.
I have a sense that Malawian authorities will be roughly as merciful with Mr. Ke as the Chinese will be with the entire continent of Africa. We can learn something from these blacks and yellas.
Study about “Racialized” Dog Names Fails to Cite a Single Funny Racist Dog Name
I once adopted a black kitten I named Tyrone. Three years later, I decided he’d joined the Nation of Islam, so I rechristened him as Abdul. Great cat. I suspect a recent study called “When a Name Gives You Pause: Racialized Names and Time to Adoption in a County Dog Shelter [20]” was written about people like me.
The authors, both of whom are white and thus have no excuse, write:
Racialized names carry both penalties and premiums in social life. Prior research on implicit associations shows that racialized names tend to activate feelings of racial bias. . . . We find that as dogs’ names are increasingly perceived as White, people adopt them faster. Conversely, as dogs’ names are increasingly perceived as nonhuman (e.g., Fluffy), people adopt them slower. Perceptions of Black names are likewise tied to slower times to adoption, with this effect being concentrated among pit bulls, a breed that is stereotyped as dangerous and racialized as Black.
They pretend to have scientifically arrived at the ten whitest-sounding and blackest-sounding pet names:
White: Ben, Austin, Maggie, Beth, Molly, Ryan, Karen, Lizzy, Luke, Steven
Black: Rihanna, Tyson, Kemba, Drey, Shaye, Tyene, Leroy, Precious, Kobe, Jazzi
. . . and arrived at the following problematic results:
When 0 percent of the public perceives a dog’s name as White, that dog is expected to spend about 7.6 days in the shelter. Across the range of perceived Whiteness, however, time to adoption declines substantially. When 90 percent of the public perceives a dog’s name as White, that dog is expected to spend only about 6 days in the shelter (p < .05).
When 0 percent of the public perceives a dog’s name as Black, that dog is expected to spend about 6.3 days in the shelter. Conversely, when 90 percent of the public perceives a dog’s name as Black, that dog is expected to remain in the shelter for 8.1 days — a difference of about 2 days.
Although they temporarily entertain the idea that it would be more humane to simply give all dogs reliably white names such as Ken and Howard and Percival, the authors resist for the following reasons:
If White-sounding names have the potential to accelerate adoption (especially among pit bulls), should we just give all the dogs White-sounding names? Given our results, this might seem like a “quick fix” that allows shelters to guard against any latent prejudices that clients bring with them onto the adoption floor. But in the long run, this would do nothing to combat the beliefs that allow these inequalities to persist, both in the context of the dog shelter and in the wider world.
Whoever happens to chance upon this article 100 years from now, I want you to know that this was written in the year 2022. People were actually being paid to conduct studies such as this. And some people — not everyone, but even one is too many — thought that society at large would be harmed if you named your dog Deontay rather than Lance.
Guitarist for Super-Macho Heavy Metal Band Sentenced on Kiddie Porn Charges
Manowar is indisputably the most cartoonishly masculine heavy-metal band of all time. They are so masculine, even the statues of eagles [21] on their album covers have a ripped-six pack of abs. They like to do virulently manly things such as posing in loincloths [22] with their bulging muscles oiled for maximum visual satisfaction. They made the Guinness Book of World Records for the loudest performance of all time — and then broke their own record twice. They even hold the world record for longest heavy metal concert of all time, lasting one minute over five hours at some Bulgarian rock festival back in 2008.
With such a track record of improbable machismo, it comes as a surprise to many, but as no surprise at all to others, that Manowar’s longtime guitarist Karl Logan has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for possessing child pornography and six counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. As Wikipedia tells it:
Evidence revealed that Logan was in possession of several videos depicting young girls between ages 4 and 12 years old being engaged in a variety of sexual acts with unidentified men. According to arrest warrants, the offenses took place between June 18 and August 2, 2018.
Immediately after his arrest, Manowar disassociated itself from Logan and decreed before their rabid hordes of emotionally challenged and possibly closeted fans that having sex with prepubescent girls has never represented the Berserker spirit of true heavy metal.
As a gesture of goodwill as well as a portent of their inability to sexually prey upon anyone due to their advancing age, the band would be wise to consider changing their name to Manopause.
* * *
Like all journals of dissident ideas, Counter-Currents depends on the support of readers like you. Help us compete with the censors of the Left and the violent accelerationists of the Right with a donation today. (The easiest way to help is with an e-check donation. All you need is your checkbook.)
For other ways to donate, click here [23].