The idea that Russia is part of the West is exactly the opposite of what Vladimir Putin believes. There is a longstanding debate among Russians about whether Russia is part of Europe. The first principle of Putinism is that Russia is decidedly NOT part of Europe. Attempting to bring Russia into the European fold is the essence of what it means to be anti-Russian, according to Putin's worldview. So, Putin does not see himself fighting in a civil war with fellow Western nations. He sees himself as fighting a war of preemptive defense against decadent Western liberalism, an ideology alien to Russia.
Until a few weeks ago, Jordan Peterson was a champion of Western liberal values, such as freedom of expression. I find it the height of irony that he is now defending Putin, a self-declared enemy of those same values.
Are you sure about your analysis? They literally refer to themselves in Moscow was the 4th Rome. That seems very much amenable to being the final outpost of the West. Russia sees themselves as the last remaining bastion of Christendom, and in that sense, they are as West as Christendom was.
In its original context, in the late 15th century, the Third Rome notion (not Fourth Rome) was an apocalyptic narrative about the collapse of Christendom, with Moscow being the last outpost of "true" Christian civilization following the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. But it is premised on the idea that the Western Church, headquartered in Rome, had "fallen" through apostasy when it broke communion with Constantinople. And then Constantinople had fallen to the Turks as a divine punishment for its many attempts at reunion with apostate Rome. So, the Third Rome rhetoric is anti-Western at its core.
In the view of Catholics, the first Rome still stands. They don't even like the idea of Constantinople as the New Rome, despite the fact that it is enshrined in various canons of Ecumenical Councils that Catholics otherwise affirm. And, of course, Constantinople is still regarded by Orthodox Christians as first in honor among Orthodox churches, the pretensions of Moscow notwithstanding.
Russian paranoia about invasion from the West is kind of a national tradition. It doesn't require any particular historical context, nor is it much impressed by the fact that every invasion across that particular border since Operation Barbarosa has been a Russian invasion of Western neighbors. Sure, it's irrational. But then, for a long time American foreign policy was motivated by the equally bizarre notion that our own independence was threatened by a Communist government coming to power in a small country on the other side of the world.
And this is a time of great social, spiritual, and philosophical change in the West. Not all of it is positive or beneficial. Petersen and those like him are (ahem) not wrong when they suggest that not every change in cultural attitudes is automatically positive, and that tradition and cultural values may not be altogether worthless. To be sure, in Putin's mind the West about which he is predisposed to be paranoid often seems these days to regard moral and cultural change in and of themselves to be positive things.. In Putin's mind, the connection between the destruction of traditional values may combine with his cultural paranoia about the West to convince him that aggressive war and systemic war crimes are justified by it. There is a certain similarity in the tendency of the NatCons see any moral price as worth paying if it obstructs the flood of historical change. Just look at the way so may religious conservatives have been willing to trash the Ten Commandments and virtually everything Jesus taught in order to better oppose abortion.
The thing is, the connection doesn't exist. Just as opposition to abortion shouldn't logically (or ethically) translate into Trump-worship, neither does the lack of thoughtfulness of which we in the West are sometimes guilty in embracing social and ethical change justify the crime Putin is committing against Ukraine. Petersen may very well be right in at least some of his critique of contemporary Western culture. But that certainly doesn't translate into justification of or even sympathy for what Putin is doing in Ukraine.
No need to be bewildered. First, Peterson rests his bizarre case on another claim, that Russia is already “a part of the West” and is defending itself against people who cannot define the term woman, blah, blah, blah. That, to him, makes an invasion and horrifying murder and torture and looting and destruction “not wrong.” Second, NATO does not incorporate other states through conquest and genocide, as Russia doe, but considers requests to join the alliance after democratic deliberation in countries about whether to request membership. NATO does not extend itself to absorb other states; democratic states request to be admitted. And why do they do that? 🤔 Because Russia invades its neighbors.
NATO does not “push” its borders anywhere. You are confusing the NATO alliance with the Russian dictatorship, which does just that.
Are you suggesting that there is something “unlibertarian” about the Netherlands and Belgium being allies against an invading force?
The other matters are matters of empirical examination; is Russia invading neighboring states?; would reasonable people fear Russian invasion?; etc.
To return to Jordan Peterson, about whom this little essay was written, do you agree that it was not wrong, I.e., right, for Putin to invade Ukraine to defend “the West” against moral degeneracy?
Thanks for clarifying. Asking a question makes one dishonest. Interesting, but whatever.
I presented no straw man. I asked whether it was “unlibertarian” for states to sign collective defense agreements. The “NATO expansion” of which you wrote was driven by the governments of recently colonized and brutalized countries requesting to join; they were not invaded by NATO. Does that make a difference to you?
Past U.S. government crimes are legion. It does not follow that Estonia was either forced into NATO or wrong to request admission. Come to Estonia and talk to the people who lived under Russian and Soviet imperial control. You might understand why they sought protection. And while you’re at it, look into the U.S. encouragement of Ukrainian disarmament and the 1994 agreement signed by the governments of the U.S., the UK, and …. wait for it ….the Russian Federation to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” Hmm… When did Russia invade Ukraine most recently before February 24 of 2022? Is anyone reasonable in fearing Russian armed force? (I was recently in Tbilisi, feom which Russian tanks are a very short distance…on forcibly taken Georgian territory.
About my views on U.S. intervention in Iraq, I opposed the invasion and I favored a more rapid withdrawal than did, oh, say, the former member of Congress Ron Paul. Withdrawal is not instantaneous, but takes time. I favored expeditious withdrawal— faster than others.
I'm bewildered as to how anyone can swallow the Putin line so completely as to completely ignore what is actually going in in favor of patent lies. Your argument is disingenuous beyond belief.
The US hasn't pushed Russia's neighbors into NATO. Russia has pushed its neighbors into NATO by repeatedly invading them. This is a pattern that has continued ever since WWI! How many times have Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia or its Ukraine invaded Russia since then? How many times has Russia invaded them? You'd have to go past the Civil War to find the US invading
Mexico, and back to the War in 1812 to find the US invading Canada, and in fact both of those countries already have military alliances with the US!
Russia's historic paranoia that it has to control its neighbors in order to be "secure" is not only inherently imperialistic rather than defensive (no matter what it may claim) but has been the foundation of its foreign policy since time immemorial. There is no comparison with the Monroe Doctrine. The increasingly nutty and authoritarian American Right is led by a man who openly admires not only Putin but every other dictator and tyrant on the planet, routinely sides with them against our democratic allies, and in short has values more in common with dictators than with the Founding Fathers or historic American values. We have never had a more intellectually erratic, factually clueless, and generally irresponsible president than Donald Trump, and letting him into the Oval Office again even on a guided tour would be even worse than re-adopting the long-discredited foreign policy that arguably played a huge role in causing World War II by obsessing about not making Adolph Hitler feel "threatened.."
As for Jordan Peterson, I have all the sympathy in the world for his plight as regards the authoritarian position toward him the Canadian psychiatric establishment has taken toward him But he tends to become rather off-the-wall when he strays from his field of alleged expertise, and even his professional position on issue such as ADHD totally ignores the evidence to the point of being absurd. In both cases, your apparent position is hard to square- like Peterson's on ADHD- with an informed and thoughtful consideration of the facts.
1. I was talking about Peterson specifically, not "anything genuinely diverse"
2. I'm not doing it because anyone in power told me to
3. You need to learn to read better :P
The reason I stopped listening to Peterson is because he is mentally retarded and his vapid logic infuriates me, as he has amply demonstrated for several years now. As a result of avoiding his conspiracy-laden tweets, my life is much happier and more stress free.
What is the point of paying attention to Peterson?
But I have to push back on "there are no mass graves filled with the victims of the culture wars". Graves no, but thousands of mutilated and sterilized children, yes. Which is why, at age 66 and having voted straight Democrat all my life, I am now voting straight Republican.
Oct 8, 2022·edited Oct 8, 2022Liked by Shikha Dalmia
Mark, I won’t debate the primary point about transgender surgery and whether it is right or wrong. Your beliefs are established, and way too much time on social media is spent by people shouting back and forth at each other to no purpose. But I will offer a viewpoint that single issue voting is how we ended up with Trump, as millions of evangelical voters justified their vote for him through the prism of single issue voting. They got what they wanted, but at a terrible, terrible cost to the fabric of democracy. In terms of voting Republican, you buy the ticket you’re taking the whole ride. Critical race theory BS, voting rights limitations, book banning . . . all of it. Perhaps there’s a better way to work toward what you believe than joining the crazy train that the Republican Party has become. And I say that as a 65 year old who until 2016 had voted for the Republican candidate for President in every election in my lifetime.
I am willing to take all of it, especially because I also think you're wrong about CRT: many many kids ARE being taught that they are divided into oppressors and oppressed based on skin color, there is no question whatsoever that this IS happening in many schools. If you deny this, you are simply refusing to look at the well established facts. As for "fabric of democracy", I would be hounded out of my job (if my identity were known) by left-wing activists. So much for "democracy". I will take the christianist fascists over the woke totalitarians any day of the week.
None of that is even remotely relevant to the issue at hand: whether Putin's invasion of Ukraine is either justified or understandable simply because trans-activists. He isn't. In any case all you've done here is make a bunch of claims with no real evidence at all.
I'm not unsympathetic to a negative response to kids being physically transitioned before there brains fully mature. I can't begin to imagine why it would move me to not fight as hard as possible to fight the assault on democracy coming from the Republican party. The only political vehicle for that opposition is the Democratic party.
Mark, you’re talking about a minuscule percentage of damage - if indeed those kids 1) come to regret their choices and 2) would have survived the suicides so many choose bc they can’t live the gender they want. It’s so far from a meaningful comparison that it belongs in a completely different post.
Not at all miniscule, and the suicide rate is actually higher among those who transition after other confounding factors are taken into account. You can read up on this if you like.
Those teenagers are transgender, meaning they were born with the condition where they sincerely feel they are in the wrong body. The feeling can be so extreme that it leads many to suicide.
The surgical interventions can lead to sterilization and mutilation. But it is what they want. There is a wide consensus amongst every professional health authority, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American society of Pediatrics, that so long as this decision is made together with a licensed doctor, psychologist, and parent or guardian, it overwhelmingly leads to better outcomes for the teenagers who choose this operation.
If you don't believe me, take a look at the NYTimes linked article you posted. Where they write "condemned" near the start of the article, you should see a clickable link to a statement by USPATH on the issue which details all the evidence in favour of transgender care.
Transgenderism is a real mental health issue, and at the moment, this is the only way to provide relief
Your claim that "this is the only way to provide relief" is simply not known to be true, and furthermore goes against treatment protocols for other body dysphorias (eg anorexia).
Most youth with gender dysphoria or who are gender nonconforming desist during adolescence and many of them realize they are same sex attracted, provided they're not exposed to gender identity indoctrination.
Thanks. Great piece. Peterson is another alt-right fascist at heart. Nothing surprising at all. Murder and mayhem in the pursuit of some cultural purity is core rightwing ideology these days.
Peterson seemed more grounded in his job as college professor than political pundit. I kind of see his weakness is his intuition which is very good at lining up unrelated things into a pattern which is NOT a pattern, but one little random aspect of reality, and "seeing patterns" is what allows you to raise up bullies as heroes and ignore everything that doesn't fit the pattern.
I recall a some years ago, before the gender wars, his pet peeve was postmodernism, which apparently contained moral relativism that allows anyone to do anything they like as long as they can rationalize it. So, sure, sounds problematic. But then he has a weird debate with Sam Harris and fights tooth and nail for the idea that there is no absolute truth (same as his dreaded postmodernism) , but some sort of evolutionary truth that is basically "If it helped your ancestors survive and propagate, its truth, because the losers are not here to defend themselves." So I could try to see what he was trying to say, and I think there is probably a "mythic truth" in the sense of Joseph Campbell's "Myths to live by" and maybe in the long run, moral degeneracy is self-limiting, and we can safely trust higher spiritual values, like the Jesus parable sort, that turn the world upside down and make the weak strong, and the strong weak, can win in the end, if only because they give meaning and people are willing to die for meaning, and the willingness to sacrifices is somehow higher than the mere selfish gene that says the powerful always win, which is still statistically true.
I think there's only so many contradictions and nonsense a person's brain can hold until it breaks under the pressure. A pressure made worse by pretending to be an intellectual. I think he medicated for quite a while to deal with it, did his coma detox (in Russia funnily enough) and here we are.
I previously enjoyed some of Mr. Peterson's straightforward advice, a number of years ago when he was just getting started with his University of Toronto lectures being uploaded to Youtube. Some of his discussions about Disney and various archetypes were absolutely fascinating.
I think that his venture into global geopolitics might be a bit misguided and it's for that reason that I also stay away from Political Discussions as best that I can.
Jordan Peterson is no one's "useful" or "useless" idiot, and the fact that the author frames his disagreements with Peterson in such a manner says much more about the author than about Mr. Peterson.
Just so you know, authors virtually never compose the titles of their articles. That said, how would you characterize endorsement of a genocidal invasion?
Excellent piece Tom! And thank you for your efforts to help Ukrainians!
He is not an intellectual anymore, and not even a lifestyle coach. He is now into right-wing culture warrior collectivism and Patreon opportunism
The idea that Russia is part of the West is exactly the opposite of what Vladimir Putin believes. There is a longstanding debate among Russians about whether Russia is part of Europe. The first principle of Putinism is that Russia is decidedly NOT part of Europe. Attempting to bring Russia into the European fold is the essence of what it means to be anti-Russian, according to Putin's worldview. So, Putin does not see himself fighting in a civil war with fellow Western nations. He sees himself as fighting a war of preemptive defense against decadent Western liberalism, an ideology alien to Russia.
Until a few weeks ago, Jordan Peterson was a champion of Western liberal values, such as freedom of expression. I find it the height of irony that he is now defending Putin, a self-declared enemy of those same values.
Are you sure about your analysis? They literally refer to themselves in Moscow was the 4th Rome. That seems very much amenable to being the final outpost of the West. Russia sees themselves as the last remaining bastion of Christendom, and in that sense, they are as West as Christendom was.
Yes, I'm sure.
In its original context, in the late 15th century, the Third Rome notion (not Fourth Rome) was an apocalyptic narrative about the collapse of Christendom, with Moscow being the last outpost of "true" Christian civilization following the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. But it is premised on the idea that the Western Church, headquartered in Rome, had "fallen" through apostasy when it broke communion with Constantinople. And then Constantinople had fallen to the Turks as a divine punishment for its many attempts at reunion with apostate Rome. So, the Third Rome rhetoric is anti-Western at its core.
In the view of Catholics, the first Rome still stands. They don't even like the idea of Constantinople as the New Rome, despite the fact that it is enshrined in various canons of Ecumenical Councils that Catholics otherwise affirm. And, of course, Constantinople is still regarded by Orthodox Christians as first in honor among Orthodox churches, the pretensions of Moscow notwithstanding.
Russian paranoia about invasion from the West is kind of a national tradition. It doesn't require any particular historical context, nor is it much impressed by the fact that every invasion across that particular border since Operation Barbarosa has been a Russian invasion of Western neighbors. Sure, it's irrational. But then, for a long time American foreign policy was motivated by the equally bizarre notion that our own independence was threatened by a Communist government coming to power in a small country on the other side of the world.
And this is a time of great social, spiritual, and philosophical change in the West. Not all of it is positive or beneficial. Petersen and those like him are (ahem) not wrong when they suggest that not every change in cultural attitudes is automatically positive, and that tradition and cultural values may not be altogether worthless. To be sure, in Putin's mind the West about which he is predisposed to be paranoid often seems these days to regard moral and cultural change in and of themselves to be positive things.. In Putin's mind, the connection between the destruction of traditional values may combine with his cultural paranoia about the West to convince him that aggressive war and systemic war crimes are justified by it. There is a certain similarity in the tendency of the NatCons see any moral price as worth paying if it obstructs the flood of historical change. Just look at the way so may religious conservatives have been willing to trash the Ten Commandments and virtually everything Jesus taught in order to better oppose abortion.
The thing is, the connection doesn't exist. Just as opposition to abortion shouldn't logically (or ethically) translate into Trump-worship, neither does the lack of thoughtfulness of which we in the West are sometimes guilty in embracing social and ethical change justify the crime Putin is committing against Ukraine. Petersen may very well be right in at least some of his critique of contemporary Western culture. But that certainly doesn't translate into justification of or even sympathy for what Putin is doing in Ukraine.
No need to be bewildered. First, Peterson rests his bizarre case on another claim, that Russia is already “a part of the West” and is defending itself against people who cannot define the term woman, blah, blah, blah. That, to him, makes an invasion and horrifying murder and torture and looting and destruction “not wrong.” Second, NATO does not incorporate other states through conquest and genocide, as Russia doe, but considers requests to join the alliance after democratic deliberation in countries about whether to request membership. NATO does not extend itself to absorb other states; democratic states request to be admitted. And why do they do that? 🤔 Because Russia invades its neighbors.
NATO does not “push” its borders anywhere. You are confusing the NATO alliance with the Russian dictatorship, which does just that.
Are you suggesting that there is something “unlibertarian” about the Netherlands and Belgium being allies against an invading force?
The other matters are matters of empirical examination; is Russia invading neighboring states?; would reasonable people fear Russian invasion?; etc.
To return to Jordan Peterson, about whom this little essay was written, do you agree that it was not wrong, I.e., right, for Putin to invade Ukraine to defend “the West” against moral degeneracy?
Thanks for clarifying. Asking a question makes one dishonest. Interesting, but whatever.
I presented no straw man. I asked whether it was “unlibertarian” for states to sign collective defense agreements. The “NATO expansion” of which you wrote was driven by the governments of recently colonized and brutalized countries requesting to join; they were not invaded by NATO. Does that make a difference to you?
Past U.S. government crimes are legion. It does not follow that Estonia was either forced into NATO or wrong to request admission. Come to Estonia and talk to the people who lived under Russian and Soviet imperial control. You might understand why they sought protection. And while you’re at it, look into the U.S. encouragement of Ukrainian disarmament and the 1994 agreement signed by the governments of the U.S., the UK, and …. wait for it ….the Russian Federation to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” Hmm… When did Russia invade Ukraine most recently before February 24 of 2022? Is anyone reasonable in fearing Russian armed force? (I was recently in Tbilisi, feom which Russian tanks are a very short distance…on forcibly taken Georgian territory.
About my views on U.S. intervention in Iraq, I opposed the invasion and I favored a more rapid withdrawal than did, oh, say, the former member of Congress Ron Paul. Withdrawal is not instantaneous, but takes time. I favored expeditious withdrawal— faster than others.
As to my published views, use Google. (Type www.google.com into a browser URL. Or try www.duckduckgo.com.)
You’re doing a fine job of making yourself look foolish without any help from anyone else. You might consider how to stop doing that.
Cheers,
Tom
I'm bewildered as to how anyone can swallow the Putin line so completely as to completely ignore what is actually going in in favor of patent lies. Your argument is disingenuous beyond belief.
The US hasn't pushed Russia's neighbors into NATO. Russia has pushed its neighbors into NATO by repeatedly invading them. This is a pattern that has continued ever since WWI! How many times have Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia or its Ukraine invaded Russia since then? How many times has Russia invaded them? You'd have to go past the Civil War to find the US invading
Mexico, and back to the War in 1812 to find the US invading Canada, and in fact both of those countries already have military alliances with the US!
Russia's historic paranoia that it has to control its neighbors in order to be "secure" is not only inherently imperialistic rather than defensive (no matter what it may claim) but has been the foundation of its foreign policy since time immemorial. There is no comparison with the Monroe Doctrine. The increasingly nutty and authoritarian American Right is led by a man who openly admires not only Putin but every other dictator and tyrant on the planet, routinely sides with them against our democratic allies, and in short has values more in common with dictators than with the Founding Fathers or historic American values. We have never had a more intellectually erratic, factually clueless, and generally irresponsible president than Donald Trump, and letting him into the Oval Office again even on a guided tour would be even worse than re-adopting the long-discredited foreign policy that arguably played a huge role in causing World War II by obsessing about not making Adolph Hitler feel "threatened.."
As for Jordan Peterson, I have all the sympathy in the world for his plight as regards the authoritarian position toward him the Canadian psychiatric establishment has taken toward him But he tends to become rather off-the-wall when he strays from his field of alleged expertise, and even his professional position on issue such as ADHD totally ignores the evidence to the point of being absurd. In both cases, your apparent position is hard to square- like Peterson's on ADHD- with an informed and thoughtful consideration of the facts.
At this point I have just stopped listening to anything Peterson has to say and my life is better for it.
Yes, refusing to listen to anything genuinely diverse is now kewl. After all, those presently in power tell you so.
1. I was talking about Peterson specifically, not "anything genuinely diverse"
2. I'm not doing it because anyone in power told me to
3. You need to learn to read better :P
The reason I stopped listening to Peterson is because he is mentally retarded and his vapid logic infuriates me, as he has amply demonstrated for several years now. As a result of avoiding his conspiracy-laden tweets, my life is much happier and more stress free.
Have a wonderful day!
What a strange rationalization of an obviously brutal and violent aggression.
I wonder if he'd make the case for Palestinians invading Israel because of its degenerate western values.
I dunno. Maybe he's back on the yam yam.
What is the point of paying attention to Peterson?
But I have to push back on "there are no mass graves filled with the victims of the culture wars". Graves no, but thousands of mutilated and sterilized children, yes. Which is why, at age 66 and having voted straight Democrat all my life, I am now voting straight Republican.
Mark, I won’t debate the primary point about transgender surgery and whether it is right or wrong. Your beliefs are established, and way too much time on social media is spent by people shouting back and forth at each other to no purpose. But I will offer a viewpoint that single issue voting is how we ended up with Trump, as millions of evangelical voters justified their vote for him through the prism of single issue voting. They got what they wanted, but at a terrible, terrible cost to the fabric of democracy. In terms of voting Republican, you buy the ticket you’re taking the whole ride. Critical race theory BS, voting rights limitations, book banning . . . all of it. Perhaps there’s a better way to work toward what you believe than joining the crazy train that the Republican Party has become. And I say that as a 65 year old who until 2016 had voted for the Republican candidate for President in every election in my lifetime.
I am willing to take all of it, especially because I also think you're wrong about CRT: many many kids ARE being taught that they are divided into oppressors and oppressed based on skin color, there is no question whatsoever that this IS happening in many schools. If you deny this, you are simply refusing to look at the well established facts. As for "fabric of democracy", I would be hounded out of my job (if my identity were known) by left-wing activists. So much for "democracy". I will take the christianist fascists over the woke totalitarians any day of the week.
The best way to beat the "but CRT is only taught in law schools" dodge is to substitute "applied CRT" for "CRT."
If you really believe all of that you are a fool.
One of us definitely is.
Here is what your side supports:
https://substack.com/inbox/post/88974508
None of that is even remotely relevant to the issue at hand: whether Putin's invasion of Ukraine is either justified or understandable simply because trans-activists. He isn't. In any case all you've done here is make a bunch of claims with no real evidence at all.
I'm not unsympathetic to a negative response to kids being physically transitioned before there brains fully mature. I can't begin to imagine why it would move me to not fight as hard as possible to fight the assault on democracy coming from the Republican party. The only political vehicle for that opposition is the Democratic party.
Friend: You need a brain transplant, not a new political party
Mark, you’re talking about a minuscule percentage of damage - if indeed those kids 1) come to regret their choices and 2) would have survived the suicides so many choose bc they can’t live the gender they want. It’s so far from a meaningful comparison that it belongs in a completely different post.
Not at all miniscule, and the suicide rate is actually higher among those who transition after other confounding factors are taken into account. You can read up on this if you like.
What is the death rate compared with that of Ukraine civilians?
Not relevant, as you very well know.
I sincerely doubt any of this is true.
Every word is true.
Do you need data on the mutilations and sterilizations? Here, for example, is a recent NYT article about the mutilations: "More Trans Teens Are Choosing ‘Top Surgery’" https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/health/top-surgery-transgender-teenagers.html
No, I doubt you ever voted Democratic, you're just a weird crank.
How about we actually debate their arguments instead of turning them further against voting democrat ever again?
My contention is they are dishonest and never voted for a democrat.
Not only have I voted exclusiively for Democrats from age 18 in 1973 up through 2021, I've also worked as a volunteer on multiple Democrat campaigns.
But I am now a single-issue voter on fighting medically unwarranted mutilations of children, and for women's sex-based rights:
https://womensliberationfront.org
https://womensdeclarationusa.com
https://www.lesbians-united.org
Dear MarkS
Those teenagers are transgender, meaning they were born with the condition where they sincerely feel they are in the wrong body. The feeling can be so extreme that it leads many to suicide.
The surgical interventions can lead to sterilization and mutilation. But it is what they want. There is a wide consensus amongst every professional health authority, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American society of Pediatrics, that so long as this decision is made together with a licensed doctor, psychologist, and parent or guardian, it overwhelmingly leads to better outcomes for the teenagers who choose this operation.
If you don't believe me, take a look at the NYTimes linked article you posted. Where they write "condemned" near the start of the article, you should see a clickable link to a statement by USPATH on the issue which details all the evidence in favour of transgender care.
Transgenderism is a real mental health issue, and at the moment, this is the only way to provide relief
The medical consensus is not based on science, but on ideology. A recent Reuters article delves into the actual, verifiable facts: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-care
Your claim that "this is the only way to provide relief" is simply not known to be true, and furthermore goes against treatment protocols for other body dysphorias (eg anorexia).
You should also read some of the stories of detransitioners, like this one: https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name
More from detransitioners: https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/detransitioners-respond-a-letter
Most youth with gender dysphoria or who are gender nonconforming desist during adolescence and many of them realize they are same sex attracted, provided they're not exposed to gender identity indoctrination.
Peterson did his drug rehab in a Russian hospital. I think he may have allegiance issues.
Thanks. Great piece. Peterson is another alt-right fascist at heart. Nothing surprising at all. Murder and mayhem in the pursuit of some cultural purity is core rightwing ideology these days.
Peterson seemed more grounded in his job as college professor than political pundit. I kind of see his weakness is his intuition which is very good at lining up unrelated things into a pattern which is NOT a pattern, but one little random aspect of reality, and "seeing patterns" is what allows you to raise up bullies as heroes and ignore everything that doesn't fit the pattern.
I recall a some years ago, before the gender wars, his pet peeve was postmodernism, which apparently contained moral relativism that allows anyone to do anything they like as long as they can rationalize it. So, sure, sounds problematic. But then he has a weird debate with Sam Harris and fights tooth and nail for the idea that there is no absolute truth (same as his dreaded postmodernism) , but some sort of evolutionary truth that is basically "If it helped your ancestors survive and propagate, its truth, because the losers are not here to defend themselves." So I could try to see what he was trying to say, and I think there is probably a "mythic truth" in the sense of Joseph Campbell's "Myths to live by" and maybe in the long run, moral degeneracy is self-limiting, and we can safely trust higher spiritual values, like the Jesus parable sort, that turn the world upside down and make the weak strong, and the strong weak, can win in the end, if only because they give meaning and people are willing to die for meaning, and the willingness to sacrifices is somehow higher than the mere selfish gene that says the powerful always win, which is still statistically true.
Thank you. Did not know this. I was made aware of the low level of mental capability that Peterson really has. Still, shocking how crazy this is
Whatever may or may not be the harm or benefit of transitioning, the harm to kids from Republican policies is orders of magnitude greater.
He is so far gone now (Peterson). Was it the all meat diet?? F*cking guy looks visibly physically ill...😳🙄 too.
I think there's only so many contradictions and nonsense a person's brain can hold until it breaks under the pressure. A pressure made worse by pretending to be an intellectual. I think he medicated for quite a while to deal with it, did his coma detox (in Russia funnily enough) and here we are.
Don't overlook Jordan Peterson's whiny voice and his perpetually indignant and self-righteous delivery.
I consider the source, but this doesn't sound like a diatribe.
https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/sex-reassignment-doesnt-work-here-the-evidence
I previously enjoyed some of Mr. Peterson's straightforward advice, a number of years ago when he was just getting started with his University of Toronto lectures being uploaded to Youtube. Some of his discussions about Disney and various archetypes were absolutely fascinating.
I think that his venture into global geopolitics might be a bit misguided and it's for that reason that I also stay away from Political Discussions as best that I can.
Jordan Peterson is no one's "useful" or "useless" idiot, and the fact that the author frames his disagreements with Peterson in such a manner says much more about the author than about Mr. Peterson.
Just so you know, authors virtually never compose the titles of their articles. That said, how would you characterize endorsement of a genocidal invasion?