Laugh Therapy with Dr. Tom, #2
Laugh Therapy with Dr. Tom, #2
American Liberty Run Amok!
I have read that anything, if taken in too great an amount, can become a poison.
The champions of freedom and liberty never appear to understand that this also applies to personal freedom and liberty: But it surely does.
First pornography was legalized. Then casino gambling was legalized. Then medical marijuana was legalized. Then recreational marijuana was legalized. There has been a push to legalize prostitution for many years; and if the past is prelude it will be done.
While a professor of psychology, I published professional articles against the legalization of both pornography and gambling. These arguments were based upon my understanding of human nature, principles of conditioning and learning, principles of social learning and strong indications that pornography and gambling is injurious to many people who became compulsively involved with these activities. I was convinced that the long-term outcomes of such recreational opportunities would damage our population and society.
Following my retirement from academia, I continued a small private practice and also continued to blog my observations on many psychological, social and cultural issues and events.
I invite you to consider my past blogs (now over 1700) on pornography and gambling and their damaging effects to our society. Among these you will also find references to my previous more lengthy professional publications. Simply enter “pornography” or “gambling” in the search box on the upper right side of my blog page and press enter.
Now Sports gambling has been legalized! Anyone with half a brain can understand that this will further damage the individuals who participate in this newly legalized gambling venue. Of course, it will also damage their businesses and families. This damage will unavoidably redound to America’s society and culture.
One by one, the Judeo/Christian-based moral and ethical rules for personal, political and business conduct have been driven from American Culture. The results should be obvious to anyone who who has not been brainwashed by the the pandemic radical-liberal, Marxian-progressive, atheistic attacks on traditional America.
But there is much more to this story on gambling in America!
Please read Cal Thomas’ excellent article on this sad topic.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/56155-gambling-on-sports-is-a-bad-bet
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 5/30/18
Wake-Up America: You Have-No-Idea!
As you will see below, the Marxist “brainwashing” of America’s children is not only occurring within state institutions; it is also advancing in many other of America’s institutions.
The leftist/socialist/radical-liberal/progressive democrats have taken-over many of our schools, nearly all of our colleges and universities and nearly all of our entertainment and news media.
Now you will see that they have also taken-over what used to be The Boy Scouts of America (BSA).
They now recruit LGBTQ boys and leaders in scouting. Recently they decided to also open their ranks to girls in what was formerly the BSA.
To cap it all off, for the first time in history, they will be handing-out condoms to young scouts attending this year’s World Scouting Jamboree.
I was formerly a Cub Scout, Boy Scout, and Explorer Scout. I was even a Sea Scout for a brief time. These were precious years of my life and they helped to shape who I have become as an adult.
The process of helping to acculturate our future adults is still ongoing in all of scouting. However instead of reinforcing traditional morals, ethics and American values; Scouting will now inculcate perceptions, emotions, beliefs and behaviors antithetical to our cultural heritage and what once was the Boy Scouts of America.
At 76 yrs., I must now withdraw my support for what BSA has become.
See what Scouting has become below.
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 5/25/18
Horrors! He Called Them Animals!!
In a recent article for the Patriot Post, Dennis Prager noted the following:
“If you want to understand the moral sickness at the heart of leftism, read the first paragraph of the most recent column by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne:”
He quotes Dionne as follows,
“It’s never right to call other human beings ‘animals.’ It’s not something we should even have to debate. No matter how debased the behavior of a given individual or group, no matter how much legitimate anger that genuinely evil actions might inspire, dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path.”
Dennis then went on to make his argument that the use of the word
“animal”, as President Trump applied it to MS-13 gang members, was a moral statement, not a biological one.
The leftist-democrats and their mainstream media propaganda machines selected only the part of his interaction with another person that showed him mentioning that illegal immigrants were animals. However, he was only referring to MS-13 members. They then presented this as his and his administration’s encompassing attitude about all illegal immigrants, and by implication, all Mexicans and brown people from Latin America.
The following is part of an article written by Jim Geraghty that relates to this piece of damnable lying Leftist/Democratic propaganda.
Please read it and then also click on the blue titles for the whole story.
“Making the click-through worthwhile: For once, Trump’s heated, hyperbolic rhetoric feels appropriate; a long look at a Democratic congressman who’s called moderate but is nothing of the sort; and the Robert Mueller investigation hits one year . . . and why it’s, at least so far, mostly just confirming what we already expected.
Who’s an Animal?
President Trump, during a roundtable event discussing sanctuary cities yesterday, talking with Fresno County sheriff Margaret Mims:
SHERIFF MIMS: Thank you. There could be an MS-13 member I know about — if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.
THE PRESIDENT: We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It’s crazy. The dumbest laws — as I said before, the dumbest laws on immigration in the world. So we’re going to take care of it, Margaret. We’ll get it done.
I’d prefer if the president spoke more precisely and clearly, but it seems pretty clear to me that the president is referring to MS-13 gang members as animals. That, of course, is not what the media reported.
The New York Times: “Trump lashed out at undocumented immigrants during a White House meeting, calling those trying to breach the country’s borders ‘animals’”
HuffPost: “Trump Refers To Immigrants As ‘Animals.’ Again.”
Vox: “Trump on deported immigrants: ‘They’re not people. They’re animals.’”
The Washington Post: “Trump compares illegal immigrants to ‘animals’”
Come on, Washington Post. We expect you to shed a clarifying light on controversies such as these, not obscure them further with inaccurate headlines. Haven’t you guys ever heard that democracy dies in darkness?
You could argue, as John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal does, that even MS-13 members are human beings, and that there’s reason to be worried when an American leader — or a leader anywhere, really — starts arguing that a certain group of people aren’t really human beings. (You know, such as “partially born,” the disabled, or the terminally ill, right?)
But let’s have no illusions about MS-13. Their motto is “Kill, Rape, Control.” They’re heavily involved in sex trafficking and forcing underage girls into prostitution. They don’t merely kill those who cross them; they do so in particularly gruesome ways to intimidate others, such as stabbing a teenager 153 times in a public park. They leave bodies of victims near elementary schools.
Advancement within the gang requires murdering members of rival gangs. Some members are literally Satanists, justifying their murders with the claim that the Devil “wanted a soul.”
Donald Trump says a lot of crude, obnoxious, inappropriate, incendiary, and disgusting things, but this . . . really isn’t one of them.”
End of quote.
______________________________________________________________________________
The leftist/democratic media published this scurrilous smear tactic to defame a duly elected President of the United States and this purposeful slander should be legally actionable.
This and the unrelenting leftist/democratic media’s deceitful disinformation is all part of a great propagandist rule-of-thumb; one developed by one of the most skilled propagandists the world has ever seen.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-quot-big-lie-quot
All of this would simply be preposterous, were it not such a gut-wrenching symptom of how seriously our way-of-life has been damaged by the American Progressive Movement within the new Marxist Democratic Party and media.
Now, just for fun and to alleviate the sick feeling all of this gives me. When I grew up there were only three categories of materials on earth.
They were vegetables, minerals and animals.
So my fellow homosapiens, to which category do you belong?
However, since my early schooling, science has broadened its taxonomy of living matter. Never the less, I suspect that most of us homosapiens will still wish to identify as animals among the expanded options available.
I challenge you to decide where you fit-in!
http://www.morning-earth.org/Graphic-E/BIOSPHERE/Life%20Classes.htm
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 5/24/18
Europe Commits Suicide!
The following is not new news.
However, I believe that most American’s either are not aware of the seismic sociocultural changes that Europe has inflicted upon themselves; or, they do not appreciate the delayed pernicious consequences of these changes.
If American citizens will only study this matter and understand the facts involved, it will become obvious that unless there is almost unthinkable corrective changes in Europe, its epitaph will be “Suicide by Immigration”.
If America follows Europe’s immigration policies, we will suffer the same damnable tragic fate.
Please see the powerful video below.
https://www.prageru.com/videos/suicide-europe
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 5/16/18
Reality Therapy with Dr. Tom: Education.
Do not kid yourself. Education in too many places, is a progressive, radical-liberal propaganda machine.
The federal government has pumped more and more money into education and it has thereby increased its control over what and how our community schools teach.
It’s real simple: “Do as we say, or loose funding”!
Using the same tactic, the federal government has also increased its demands for school and teacher record keeping and data collection to the point that education costs are going up and up, while the amount of actual teaching is proportionately decreasing.
I have found through my professional associations that many skilled, formally highly motivated teachers, have objected to all of the governmentally mandated impediments to their effective teaching. As a result, they have been met with administration disfavor, unkind, even punitive treatment.
I have learned that many formerly successful teachers are dispirited, depressed, burned-out and leaving that profession.
I also know that in many schools teachers are simply unable to deal with the disrespectful, intimidating and even barbaric treatment that they receive at the hands of increasing numbers of their students. Such students are the products of three generations of sociocultural decline in America.
Of course, teachers of honors classes are more insulated from this treatment than those in regular classrooms.
Too often such students are not disciplined or expelled, they are simply sent to other schools in the educational system, perpetuating their damaging effects upon the quality of education for those who wish to teach and those who wish to learn.
At the same time that students are graduating from high school with deepening levels of ignorance in all subjects; colleges and universities are lowering standards of admissions and engaging in herculean student retainment strategies. Also, “grade inflation” (i.e., higher grades for lower performance) is increasingly common.
Near the end of my 36 year career as a college professor, I was required to document that I personally telephone students who were doing poorly in my classes and invite them to my office for special assistance. I complied, but very few took me up on my offer.
It was always my practice, following each of the many exams that I gave to lower-level students each semester, to invite those who did poorly to visit me during office hours. During these sessions we would go over their tests to discover their study problems and I would tell them of ways to do better on the remaining exams.
Fewer students than you would expect took me up on this offer. When they did, I normally found that they were not studying the study guide questions that I reliably gave them for each chapter in their text books. Test questions were almost exclusively over these study questions.
Predictably, those who were motivated and could read at a college level did well on my tests. Those who were not did not.
I also provided some extra-credit projects for my students. This way, students who were having difficulty with my exams but earned some extra credit, would at least have a hope of passing my classes.
Over the years of my teaching psychology, I was rated excellent on my end-of-semester teaching evaluations by my students. However, my student evaluations declined noticeably over the years as student’s ability to read and learn college material declined. It was clear that the educational system was failing and as a result, our colleges and universities were also beginning to fail.
It was notable that returning adult students who had graduated high school many years before my younger college students most often performed very well in my classes, as did our psychology majors in my upper level classes.
Near the end of my teaching career I had many colleagues from my own and other disciplines visit my classes to evaluate my teaching. As a result of their evaluations I was honored with an Excellence in Teaching Award.
The quality of my teaching had not declined, I would like to think it has actually improved with experience. The sad fact was that students were increasingly unprepared to learn college-level material.
Other more objective evidence is overwhelming.
See for your self!
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/55531-educational-fraud-continues
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 5/5/15
Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Indiana University South Bend.