edwarner – Ed Warner

Freud Today – Does He Still Matter?

Freud is food for indigestion. Indigestion! What a mistake. That’s not what I meant to say, which was “food for thought.” Are you sure about that? asks Freud. In fact, you have committed a Freudian slip, whereby you unintentionally reveal your true thoughts through a slip of the tongue. And you are not alone. Everyone does this sooner or later. It can’t be helped. In his Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud catalogues the instances. It makes amusing if discomfiting reading – the stumbles of the mind.

Not even the Washington elite are immune from such stumbles. At a lavish dinner party, Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush, started to talk about a recent encounter with her boss. “As I was telling my husb…as I was telling the President.” The slip, suggestive of an affection beyond the political, was the talk of the cocktail circuit for many days.

Yet speaking of Freud in terms of indigestion is not wide of the mark. That’s how many people feel when they first read him. His unsparing search of the unconscious turns up many items you would just as soon not know about. That’s his method. By removing the repressions that conceal your thoughts and desires, he lets you live more comfortably with yourself, no longer burdened with memories of past abuse, particularly from childhood. Freudian psychoanalysis is liberating, not only for the individual but also for society. After the trauma of the First World War, people were ready for the emotional release that Freud offered. His theories caught on in America more than anywhere else.

In fact, he didn’t much care for America – too egalitarian. He had a lofty view of his own role as leading humanity to the promised land of psychoanalysis much as Moses led the Jewish people from Egypt to Canaan. In fact, defying tradition, he identified Moses not as Jewish but as a gentile Egyptian, which was one iconoclastic act too many for his once adoring public. Enough of his theories of psychosexual development. They didn’t pan out and were scientifically invalid. He was overly concerned with self, said critics, especially the sexual self. And psychoanalysis didn’t seem to be of more help to the mentally disturbed than other kinds of treatment. Freudianism was a fad. Its time was up.

Yet Freud persevered. He was aways open to change and refinement of theory. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he acknowledged that pleasure or happiness is not necessarily the main goal in life as he had once thought. He struggled to describe what he termed the death instinct in human beings, made all too vivid by the carnage of the First World War. He abhorred the resulting communism and was imperiled by Nazism.

There is something inherently aggressive in human life, he decided, regardless of circumstance or system. Love is not a solution since love for one group implies enmity toward another. Reality is a permanent “struggle between the instinct of life and the instinct of destruction as it works itself out in the human species.” Freud says he is no prophet and cannot offer the consolation that everyone demands from the “wildest revolutionaries no less passionately than the most virtuous believers.” It’s not the stuff of lullaby. The warring instincts are within us all and we must choose. It’s not easy, but then neither is life. Civilization and its Discontents is Freud’s last disturbing word. With that he is finished …oops, a slip… he is forever.

The Woman Who Said No

By now it’s conceded that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a mistake or much worse. It was based on the fear that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction he was prepared to use and ties to al-Qaida, the terrorist group responsible for the 9-11 attack. He didn’t. The war was meant to lead to a democratic Iraq and a more peaceful Middle East. It didn’t. Instead, a devastating, prolonged conflict took 4,600 American lives and as many as half a million Iraqi ones. It set the stage for other equally dubious invasions that roiled the Middle East and North Africa, creating more than a million refugees. Today the fighting still continues for reasons that remain unclear.

In his new book, “War Made Invisible,” political analyst Norman Soloman recalls the enthusiasm with which Americans, the media in particular, greeted the war. Cheerleading doesn’t quite convey the coverage. It was a kind of exaltation, the lone superpower bringing justice to the world. Setting an example, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called the war “one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad.” Iraq must be bombed, he said, “over and over and over again. Blow up a different power station in Iraq every week so no one will know when the lights will go off or who’s in charge.” For this inspired commentary Friedman was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Amid the clamor for battle, writes Solomon, there was one sober voice. Ashleigh Banfield was an up-and-coming TV star who reported from war zones in a casual, winning manner. TV producers and critics were delighted by a captivating blond so comfortable in front of a camera. Said MSNBC President Eric Sorenson: “She’s the age of the audience we want and she’s a great communicator in the authoritative energetic way this generation wants.”

But in contrast to the producers back home, Banfield actually experienced the war and decided it should be made more visible. A few weeks into what seemed to be an overwhelming victory, she gave a speech noting some of the grim realities of war. “What didn’t you see? You didn’t see where those bullets landed. You didn’t see what happened when the mortar landed. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war. It was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news. But it wasn’t journalism.”

Attuned to invisibility, TV management was aghast. What was this outrageous blond up to? NBC stalwarts said she didn’t speak for the network and must choose her words more carefully. Not that she was given the chance. Later she described how she was treated for many months after her unacceptable speech. She had no work or office or equipment. A kind of solitary prisoner, Soviet style, she begged to be let out of her contract. But NBC President Neal Shapiro wouldn’t hear of it for fear she would take her brand to another network and make a success of it. “Maybe that’s why he chose to keep me in a warehouse,” she concludes. When she finally left, she went on to other TV journalism while NBC continued to report its invisible war.

Today the mainstream media has found another war to act in unison on – Ukraine. But it doesn’t enjoy the monopoly it once had. Dissent is easily available on the internet, and significant public figures like Donald Trump and Robert F. Kenedy Jr., have expressed their opposition to the war. Maybe Ashleigh Banfield set an example.

Drug Cartel Ties to Washington

Hunter Biden’s wandering laptop seems to have an inexhaustible supply of information, much of it damaging to the user and his father President Joe. The latest revelations published by The London Daily Mail indicate prolonged business dealings with prominent super rich Mexican businessmen, notably billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel Aleman Velasco, who made many visits to the Vice President’s office in 2014. Hunter was continually excited by the prospect of investing with these heavies in Mexico and Latin America, not that it always worked out, leading to his heartfelt complaint: why are you so silent after all I’ve done?

On one occasion Joe flew with Hunter on Air Force 2 (at taxpayers’ expense) to meet Aleman’s son to consummate a deal considered “flippin’ gigantic.” Relations were congenial, if not in fact cozy, with rest and fun on Caribbean beaches and ample time to discuss such things as the flow of Mexican drugs to the U.S.

Former VP Joe and son Hunter Biden with Carlos Slim in 2015

President Joe and Hunter would probably indignantly deny this. The meetings were all about business. But business is not conducted in a vacuum in Mexico. Everything revolves around the drug trade of which wealthy businessmen form a part, like it or not. Along with all other Mexicans they belong to the cartels from whom they take their instructions and make a lot of money. They will not do so if they go astray, and their lives will be forfeited as well. The cartels react briskly to signs of disaffection. Consider the Mexican homicide rate and the bodies hanging along the highways.

So, the Bidens may as well shake hands with the cartels. They have put their stamp of approval – their brand – on the true enemies of the U.S., which will be used to their advantage. The cartel chiefs are reassured. Nothing to worry about from the U.S. So, it’s business as usual with the satisfaction of paying off top officials. Not that this is apparent to the American media which continues to describe the cartels as separate from the government with no-up-to-date analysis of the actual workings of the government – who’s in charge? who does what to whom? We know more about Syria or Somalia, where we are actively intervening, than about next-door Mexico, which we leave alone.

Why this reluctance to face the reality of the cartels? Qui bono? Mexican drug sales in the U.S. may amount to as much as 100 billion dollars a year. No one knows for sure. While most is laundered back to Mexico – easily done – enough remains in the U.S. to fill obliging pockets. It can be said that the Bidens’ dealings are done openly compared to far greater behind-the-scenes operations.

These carry grave risks, the cartels are poisoning more Americans than ever with their drugs, especially lethal fentanyl. They are also spreading what can only be called armed camps by the tens of thousands around the U.S. These are illegal marijuana farms complete with an armed guard or two to keep neighbors at a distance. Put them all together and if properly coordinated, they constitute a veritable army. Colonel Douglas MacGregor told Tucker Carlson that we will eventually be fighting them here in the U.S. May the best man win.

But have no fear. The drug cartels have made it known they favor peace. Notes Mexican President Lopez Obrador, as he anticipates the upcoming talks on the Ukraine war in Saudi Arabia: “We don’t want the Russia-Ukraine war to continue. It’s very irrational. The only thing that benefits from it is the war industry.” Mexico will stick to its kind of war.

The Fate of Journalists in Mexico

On a sunny afternoon in seaside Acapulco, Journalist Nelson Matu was getting out of his car in a shopping center parking lot. Gunmen – we don’t know how many – quickly moved in to pay their respects to journalism in Mexico. They fired, killing him, and fled never to be apprehended. They never are. Killing offending journalists is a licensed activity, as it were, among the drug cartels that rule Mexico. The death of journalists is collateral damage. Matu had been a longtime irritant, covering violence for fifteen years and directing a group of journalists similarly inclined. He had survived two previous assassination attempts. The third succeeded. The cartels are persistent. This is why Acapulco, once the famed playground of the rich and famous, is now shunned. The U.S. State Department warns not to go there.

The body of another journalist, Luis Martin Sanchez, was found in a village north of Acapulco in the violence-ridden state of Guerrero. There were signs of possible torture and two messages on cardboard attached to his chest explaining their action, a typical cartel ploy. Sanchez had been a correspondent for La Jornada, a newspaper in Mexico City that had already lost two other newsmen to cartel violence. Sanchez’ death brings to seven the number of journalists murdered so far this year. It’s estimated that over 150 have been killed since 2000. The figure is imprecise because some just disappear and never turn up. It’s reasonable to fear the worst.

Missing persons bulletin for Luis Martin Sanchez Iniguez issued by the Mexican state of Nayarit Attorney General’s Office

It doesn’t take much to arouse the cartels. Israel Vasquez usually wrote about neighborly goings on. He wasn’t on the violence beat. But one day he got involved in a story about a group of dismembered bodies discovered in a church in the town of Salamanca. As he was preparing a broadcast for Facebook on the subject, two men on a motorcycle pulled up and shot and killed him. No stone can be overturned in the cartel view.

If Mexican journalists are fair game, their American colleagues are not a target. Few go to Mexico, but those who do are treated with care. The cartels know that while Americans are indifferent to the slaughter of Mexicans, they’re outraged if an American is harmed. The media follows suit. That means bad publicity for the drug business. A day of reckoning can be put off. Meanwhile, the cartels are making much progress in the U.S. The latest round of immigrants are mostly robust young men who obviously don’t need asylum in the U.S. Indeed, we may need asylum from them since many will doubtless link up with the vast drug distribution network stretching from coast to coast. When I was recently on the border, they seemed anxious to get on with their journey and not at all apprehensive.

One destination might be the many thousands of drug cartel marijuana farms springing up in the American west. Though clearly illegal and undercutting legal American growers, they seem strangely tolerated. They are virtual armed camps since if anyone gets too close, out comes a threatening armed guard. Invasion, anyone? People in the area are terrified and local law enforcement can’t cope. The cartel farms are better armed. Surely, this is a national problem, but where are the feds? Could the FBI set aside its current preoccupation with classified documents to get involved? Unlike Mexican journalists, U.S reporters don’t have to worry about being killed if they come to take a look. This is America. So what’s keeping them?

Can We Be Stoics Today?

In the early years of the first century of our era a popular playwright and politician named Seneca lectured and wrote about a philosophy called stoicism. Here in one of his many letters to a young friend he sums it up: “The only safe harbor in this life’s tossing, troubled sea is to refuse to be bothered about what the future will bring, squaring the breast to take without skulking or flinching whatever fortune hurls at us.”

*The Death of Seneca*, Luca Giordano (1632-1706)

This outlook is not only life fulfilling, he assured readers and listeners, but the road to happiness. He wrote at a time of political upheaval as Rome changed uneasily from republic to empire at the cost of many lives and social disorder. Thus, he chose as an example of stoicism the champion of the republic Marcus Cato who, confronted with two warring parties for control of the empire, stood his ground against both and fought to the last at the cost of his life. Content with empire, Seneca nevertheless paid tribute to the man who more than any other symbolized the esteemed republic.

On the Grecian sides there was famed philosopher Socrates, who spent his life under various wars and was eventually sentenced to death for poisoning the young with his opinions. He was appropriately executed by poison. Seneca writes that this brutal end had “so little effect this on Socrates’ spirit that it did not even affect the expression on his face. To the very last no one ever saw Socrates in any particular mood of gaiety or depression. Through all the ups and downs of fortune his was a level temperament.” If this was the behavior of a man in extreme stress, stoicism can support those in far less trouble.

Seneca’s stoicism was sorely tested by his times. A popular figure in Rome, he aroused the envy of the violent emperor Caligula, who sentenced him to death, then had second thoughts. The following emperor, the more subdued Claudius, considered execution but decided on an eight-year exile to the island of Corsica, where Seneca wrote some of his plays depicting the horrors of excess passion. Then suddenly came a change in fortune. Agrippina, the ambitious mother of the newly installed emperor, sixteen-year-old Nero, chose Seneca to be his tutor. In that post he failed to tame unruly Nero, who eventually killed his mother along with innumerable others. At the same time, aided by a military commander, Burrus, Seneca skillfully captained the ship of state through perilous times, enacting various legal and fiscal reforms. The later great emperor Trajan commented that Seneca’s five years in charge were among the finest in Roman history.

This abruptly changed when Nero went on a murderous rampage after learning of a plot to overthrow him in which Seneca was involved. Massive executions followed with Seneca drawing the blood from his veins to end his life. Some of the plotters had wanted to elevate him to emperor with the overthrow of hated Nero. Considering the centrality of Rome, that could have effected a change in world history – a dedicated stoic in command of events.

*Nero and Seneca*, Eduardo Barrón (1904)

Today’s passions are also intense, though hardly matching the lethality of ancient Rome, at least not yet. One full scale war is under way between Russia and Ukraine, amply supplied by the U.S. Others are threatened, with smaller wars taking place in Syria, Somalia and elsewhere. Stoicism would suggest damping down the passions that lead to these wars as well as staying in self-control as they continue. Stoics are not pacifists, but they want to act rationally, not emotionally. Passions undo us, says Seneca. A good life can be maintained by not giving into emotion. Stoicism to the rescue.

Was Stalin Mentally Ill?

Soviet ruler Josef Stalin caused the death of some twenty million innocent people in his storied career. Some had challenged him, others had offended him and still more just simply existed. That was reason enough. He had the power, and he enjoyed using it and frankly, took pleasure in killing. He never showed any regret for his atrocities while he held sway over a good chunk of mother earth and its people. What can we say? Was he mentally ill, a category to which we assign today many malefactors?

Let’s say the great dictator assembled a group of psychiatrists to tell him what was wrong. They dutifully examined his words and deeds and came to the unanimous conclusion that he was mentally ill. Unfortunately, the psychiatrists got the remedy, not Stalin. They couldn’t even make it to a labor camp in Siberia. They couldn’t even escape the room. “I may be mentally ill,” said Stalin as he quickly disposed of them, “but you’re dead and I’m alive.” And ready to go on to greater glory and renown as arguably the most effective ruler of the 20th century.

That’s psychiatry Stalin-style. But what does it say about our world today? Is mental illness congruent with remarkable statesmanship and the ruthlessness that accompanies it? If so, we may have to reconsider the casual way we equate mental illness with crime. It can be inaccurate and misleading. Crime speaks for itself. Today’s drug cartels gained control of Mexico some years ago, yet they are as violent as ever, displaying their joy in killing fellow Mexicans and maybe planning the same fate for Americans. The only cure is getting them somehow out of the picture.

Mercy and compassion alone will not do. As long as it’s not punished, crime will spread. What happened in Mexico is a wake-up call for the U.S. Over and over mental illness is cited as the cause for the rapidly increasing crime in the inner cities where drug cartels prey on local gangs. But does sympathy for the addicted also explain the inattention of the media and the U. S. Government to the drug trade? Do they think it’s a system that needs counseling, not suppression? The same goes for violent local criminals. In a typical case Kemal Rideout casually slashed a woman to the bone on the New York City subway for no apparent reason. When he was caught about to leave town, his lawyer claimed – what else? – he was mentally ill and could not help himself. This had worked four times before when he had committed violent crimes and avoided prison. Why not try again? Others look to his example.

Oddly, while the U.S. is increasingly lenient with drug cartels and inner-city criminals, it’s issuing more threats than ever against foreign powers, large and small, with economic sanctions and military action. It’s now engaged in a proxy war with Russia that doesn’t have a clear purpose and is not going very well. It may be time to look back at an earlier great power, the Roman Republic-Empire, which had a run of close to ten centuries – impressive; we’re just getting started – that historians say became so enfeebled at home it could no longer hold off the barbarian forces that finally took it over. Could a plague of mental illness spell the end of the U.S.?

Evolution Wins along with War

The courtroom combat was a clear mismatch. The most celebrated defense attorney in the U.S., Clarence Darrow, was pitted against the boisterous spokesman of populism, William Jennings Bryan. It was, said many, a contest of wit against half-wit over the credibility of evolution. This famous encounter In the Dayton, Tennessee, trial of 1925 is described, blow by legal blow, in a recently published book, “Trial of the Century,” by Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, who while sympathetic to the lost cause of Bryan, makes it clear that the good guy won: “Darrow’s brilliant and devastating cross-examination of Bryan turned the tide in education. It spelled the beginning of the end of the kind of religious intrusion our Constitution forbids. The wonders and benefits of science were untethered. Generations of Americans became Darrow’s beneficiaries.”

Known derisively as the “Monkey trial,” the event was more spectacle than substance. People flocked to it to see the grandiloquent orator Bryan in action, even if content was not always up to delivery. Twice nominated for the U.S. Presidency by the Democratic Party, he lost both elections to Republicans but remained a key figure in American politics as the tireless spokesman for the underprivileged and overlooked people of the farm and prairie states. As such, he is given much credit for the expansion of democracy in his era.

Clarence Darrow (left) and William Jennings Bryan (right) during the Scopes Trial in 1925. 1925. Brown Brothers, Sterling, PA.

But reasoned debate was not his strong point. Knowing this, Darrow called him as a witness for his defense of John Scopes, a local schoolteacher who had been arrested for teaching evolution in violation of state law for which he could even go to prison. Evolution, insisted believers, contradicted the Biblical account of Creation. The trial judge and the community were sympathetic to the prosecution, but they had not counted on Darrow who in cross-examination mercilessly challenged Bryan’s literal interpretation of the Bible. Did he really believe that the Old Testament Prophet Jonah was swallowed by a whale and then disgorged still alive three days later? Sweating and fanning himself in the summer heat, Bryan gave an evasive answer, disappointing his followers to the delight of his opponents.

Illustration from page 88 of The World’s Most Famous Court Trial. 1925. Unknown engraver.

Darrow lost the battle. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 with no jail time. But Darrow won the war in that his courtroom performance largely discredited fundamentalist doubts about evolution. Yet there was more to Bryan than evolution. With his rousing oratory in a time of no radio or tv, he became the leading opponent of U.S. involvement in the stupendous carnage of World War One. As U.S. Secretary of State, he pressed President Woodrow Wilson to mediate the conflict. When Wilson chose war instead, he resigned his office. Assured that a majority of Americans shared his view, he proposed a national referendum on the issue. But the peace inclined populace was overruled by a war demanding elite, not for the first or the last time. A growing consensus a century later suggests that U.S. entrance into the war prolonged its savagery, led to a vindictive post war settlement and the emergence of the poisonous ideologies of communism and Nazism. If so, Bryan was as right about war as he was wrong about evolution. For which should he be remembered?