DSM V is the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The book first appeared in 1952, and the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes DSM, calls it “an authoritative volume that defines and classifies mental disorders in order to improve diagnoses, treatment and research.” The glib might call DSM V the psychiatrists’ bible. The cynical might view it as a retail catalogue for the big pharmaceutical companies.
Tag: elites
-
Greg Johnson joins Fróði Midjord on the latest Guide to Kulchur to discuss Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), which is about elite societies involved in occult sex rituals in modern-day New York. (more…)
-
2,363 words
A man from Mars visiting the United States at the beginning of 1997 might have thought that the country was wobbling on the brink of political crisis. He would have learned that the White House was occupied by a gentleman immersed in so many scandals that even supermarket tabloids could not keep track of them and that this same gentleman, having been re-elected without a majority of voters behind him, faced a Congress controlled by an opposition party sworn to working a revolution in government. (more…)
-
May 23, 2018 Samuel Francis
Behind Democracy’s Curtain
2,244 words
One of the more exciting prospects for the Dole-Clinton presidential contest should have been the “presidential debate,” which, ever since the Kennedy-Nixon slugfest of 1960, has titillated the mass electorate with the delusion that the voters actually have a real choice between two different viewpoints. The only reason a Dole-Clinton debate ought to have been exciting, however, is that it should have been interesting to see what the two participants could possibly disagree about. What exactly were they supposed to debate? (more…)
-
One of the ironies of American political discussion in the last generation or so — indeed, of the last century — has been that, for all our boasting and braggadocio about being a nation founded on the proposition that all men are created equal, it is almost impossible to find any significant American social thinker who really believes it. (more…)
-
One good way to ruin your Christmas this year would be to spend the holidays reading a new book entitled Abandoned: The Betrayal of the American Middle Class since World War II, by two law professors at the University of South Carolina, William J. Quirk and R. Randall Bridwell. Maybe you don’t want to ruin your Christmas, and that’s understandable, but if you do read the book, you will at least be prepared to understand what is likely to happen to you and to what remains of your country in the coming years. (more…)
-
With a whoop and a holler, politicians have suddenly discovered that there’s a wild animal called the American middle class prowling around the voting booths, and officeholders are pounding down the stairs to make sure the rough beast does no damage once it gets inside the house. (more…)
-
-
3,338 words
Some day a wonderful book will be written on the art of persuasion, a new sophistic. One may suppose that psychology will ultimately become as complete a science as geometry and mechanics are now. It will be possible then to predict the effect of an argument on a man’s mind as surely as one can now predict the eclipse of the moon. On the basis of this developed science will be built an infallible set of rules for converting a man to any opinion you like. (more…)
-
3,172 words
Ronald F. Musto
Apocalypse in Rome:
Cola di Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003A young Italian nationalist leads his followers on a march through Rome, seizing power from corrupt elites to establish a palingenetic regime. Declaring himself Tribune, his ultimate aim is to recreate the power and glory of Ancient Rome. However, a conspiracy of his enemies topples him from power, and he is imprisoned. (more…)