ODD and Proud
Recently Bruce Thornton riffed on a WSJ piece about the “Dontells,” people who don’t want to be told what to do. These people have been labeled as suffering from “Oppositional Defiant Disorder,” or “ODD.” (I’m sure that acronym is not a mere coincidence.).
This is officially recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-5. It’s supposedly treatable but incurable.
This smacks of Soviet psychiatry, which labeled those who opposed the regime as mentally ill. (Putin has resurrected this heinous practice. But hey, so has Germany which is forcing an 85 year old Holocaust survivor to be institutionalized for refusing to be “vaccinated” against COVID.)
Can’t wait until hooliganism is an officially recognized DSM condition.
The reason that ODD is running rampant is that THERE ARE LOTS OF PEOPLE IN GOVERNMENT, CORPORATIONS AND MEDIA TELLING PEOPLE WHAT TO DO. About everything. Such a mystery, right?
And the fact that people being pushed by the pushy are pushing back is precisely why the pushy in government, corporations, academia, and the media are so intent on diagnosing them as mentally ill. (Of course, someone born with a Y chromosome who wants to ignore that fact and cut off his junk is the epitome of mental health and you are a hater–and probably mentally ill yourself–for harboring any doubts about this!)
I am not a religious person, but one theme in the New Testament that resonates deeply with me is Jesus’s imprecations against the Pharisees and teachers of the law. He was obviously suffering from ODD. Which is precisely why the Pharisees were hell-bent on killing him.
This resonates because we live in an increasingly pharisaical world, with priestly classes claiming a monopoly on authority and truth condemning, persecuting, and often prosecuting those who dissent. Cancel culture is just one manifestation of rampant pharisaicalism.
More prosaically, they are just so many Cartmans, demanding that you respect their authoritay and delivering a beat down if you resist.
The disgusting display of Davos is perhaps the most prominent congregation of modern day Pharisees. A self-anointed group of global control freaks who just know better, and who condemn those who reject their superiority–and their commands–as heretics and blasphemers. Except they use slightly different terminology, like extremists and purveyors of misinformation and disinformation.
The most outré Davos Pharisees were of course European, and many of their most bitter condemnations were directed at benighted Americans (e.g., the Euro who said that Americans were going to have to dispense with free speech and pass hate speech laws–how dare the hoi polloi be able to say mean things about us! Oh, you have no idea how much I hate you, woman. Or maybe you do, which is why you insist on such baleful laws.)
Unfortunately, there were many, many Euro-adjacent Americans there (John Kerry being the most egregious, with Al Gore giving him stiff competition in that regard), and the pharisaical class is firmly in command in American government (at all levels), corporations, academia, and media.
If you watch even a few minutes of what transpired at Davos, I am sure that you agree with me that nuking the place in mid-January would make the world a far, far better place.
The fact that the United States is the target of Europharisees is hardly surprising, given that the very reason that millions came to America in the first place was to escape the suffocating oppressions of the “elites”–royalty, nobility, and the established church. There was an obvious sorting process. The non-conformists were the most likely to leave. (Small example: I recall a study showing that Scandinavian emigrants to America were more likely to have unusual names.) Thus, Europe became more conformist, and American more heavily populated by those who bridled at authority.
Over the years, the United States has become more Europeanized, but Europe has not become more American. There has been convergence, but most of the movement has occurred in the United States, especially with the growing dominance of progressivism in government, media, academia, and corporations.
Progressives are Pharisees without God. And like the Pharisees of old they cannot brook dissent, and strive to use authority–including the authority of the state–to crush it. In doing, they label dissenters as possessed by demons or the Devil, only now their condemnations are tarted up in pseudo-scientific psychiatric jargon.
As for me, I’m ODD (by the psycho-Pharisees’ definition), and I’m proud. It manifests itself in small things (e.g., musical taste for punk and outlaw country) and large things (politics). I despise the modern Pharisees and rebel against them. I’m no Jesus, for sure, but I fervently embrace that part of his message.
Aside. In a Twitter scrape some years ago, I mocked the eminently mockable Pharisee wannabe and all around insufferable douchebag Tom Nichols. He responding by saying that I was “odd.” I guess he was right! Thanks for the compliment, Tom!