Dr Ed Dutton: Post Traumatic Leftist Stress Syndrome, By James Reed

Human biodiversity researcher, Dr Ed Dutton, has written extensively on the psychology of the Left, which he sees in general as being mentally unstable. I think this is an inevitable consequence of embracing a world view which is largely at variance with reality, as exhibited by the gender agenda. As well, Leftist policies are always socially destructive, when pushed to their logical conclusion.

As Dr Dutton observes, Leftist have been exhibiting their profound sense of paranoia over the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. One expression of this is that the likes of the Leftist Guardian, have abandoned being on Elon Musk's free speech platform X, stating that the costs outweigh any benefits. Such is the quest for Leftist ideological purity. As Dr Dutton concludes:

"This is a PTSD tantrum, and I suspect many of them will return to Twitter; if they ever actually leave at all. But perhaps it is a step along the path of a broader trend where society completely breaks apart, like the Pillarized Netherlands or Sectarian Northern Ireland. Clearly, we have seen a huge move of Republicans from California to Texas and also to Florida, making the latter a relatively safe Republican state. And, certainly, as Peter Turchin has discussed in End Times, political disintegration should be happening in the West round about now."

This claim of political disintegration is becoming common now.

https://www.jollyheretic.com/p/post-traumatic-stress-why-are-the

"On the assumption that Donald Trump might win the presidential election, and that BLM-level fiery but mostly peaceful protests might be permitted to engulf Main Street, USA, many American business-owners took the precaution of boarding up their shop fronts. This turned out to be completely unnecessary. I must say, I was surprised by the relative calm. Yes, histrionic types uploaded videos of themselves screaming, as though they'd been sucked into the abyss, but, in general, the relatively mentally unstable group known as leftists managed to maintain their composure... or so I thought, until the evening of November 14th.

It is clear that, for such people, Donald Trump's victory is a trauma. As I've set out in Woke Eugenics and many other books, leftists are paranoid. They regard their opponents as wicked, yet Trump managed to win, and convincingly too. They are power-hungry, precisely because they are paranoid, yet Trump has power over them. They deal with their intense self-doubt by telling themselves that they are morally perfect and superior, yet they are the losers: a massive Narcissistic injury. This, of course, can lead to the full-blown rage that the shopkeepers were anticipating. But there's also a more complex reaction, and this is now being observed in leftists, after a significant delay. They are leaving X.com or, like the woke anti-scientist Adam Rutherford, they are asking their sycophants if they should.

https://x.com/AdamRutherford/status/1857004540010115251

It all began with Britain's notoriously woke newspaper, The Guardian; the one whose editor offered her journalists counseling in the wake of Trump's triumph. It announced, on November 13th, that the downsides of being on Elon Musk's now pro-free-speech platform outweighed the benefits. "This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism," wrote the editor. "The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that Twitter is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse."

In other words, since Musk's takeover, Twitter had increasingly permitted freedom of expression for, within certain boundaries, all political viewpoints, not merely their viewpoints. This was a serious problem because though they didn't have to read tweets by "toxic" people, the idea of sharing a platform with them – indeed, one controlled by them in the sense that the Left put equality and harm avoidance above freedom – was just too much to cope with.

This led to all manner of obscure organizations, such as the people who run Clifton Suspension Bridge in southwest England, contagiously virtue-signaling that they were going to do the same, due to "hate speech" and "abusive content." A huge part of this is clearly symbolic: they blame the new Twitter for Trump, who had previously been banned from it, being able to win the election, and they perceive Musk as an evil mastermind who has helped to disempower them. But why the delay? Why didn't they do this as soon as Trump won?

The delayed reaction is consistent, albeit in a very minor way, with what's called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). When something unpleasant happens to you, especially involving a loss of power, or involving intense fear, it is adaptive to simply keep going, such that you can survive. Thus, only long after the event do all the negative feelings hit you. Once PTSD hits in, it can manifest as flashbacks, heightened arousal, or emotional numbing, and as avoidance behaviors. In general, mentally healthy people, evolved to a harsh yet stable ecology, don't experience PTSD: they are adapted to a world where there isn't the abundance to permit them to simply withdraw into the jungle. But we're talking about the left here.

So, what do they do? Even though Twitter is the exciting public space where it's all happening – even more so now that it permits free speech – they withdraw from it, like a wounded dog, to the "safety" of some woke platform that's not really important, Blue Sky. This means they can protect themselves from the evil pro-free-speech people who infest Twitter like truth-sucking fleas.

Put simply, being on Twitter means that they are on a platform that is not controlled by people like them. They feel strong moral disgust (which leftists do more than conservatives) about being in a place where "hateful" people are permitted to be, and where they are permitted to express their "hateful" (i.e., empirically accurate but woke-dogma questioning) opinions. This all reminds them that they may be losing the war, triggering paralyzing paranoia and other negative feelings. Trump's win tipped them over the edge, but in its aftermath, they were in pure survival mode.

Now this has passed, the true reality has hit them. They are frightened and they must withdraw to a safer space or, at the very least, obtain Narcissistic supply by saying they're thinking about doing so, such that their sycophants can tell them how much they'll be missed. In a sense, as you'd expect of the left, they have gone from attacking their opponents viciously, and silencing them, as they did under Dorsey, to victim-signaling about how upset Twitter makes them, in the hope of manipulatively appealing to the liberal-conservative shared concern for harm. But something tells me that autistic Musk can see right through it or just doesn't care.

It would be fascinating, as society increasingly polarizes - between Left and Right, healthy and sick, stable and mentally ill, progressive and traditional – if we ended up with two quite separate online public spaces. This would be the inevitable logic of what may be taking place, but it seems obvious that the freer platform, as long as the respectable right and other high status conservatives stay on there, is bound to be more successful; likely leading to leftists calming down and returning, justifying this by proclaiming they must "fight the far right, no matter how toxic Twitter is."

This is a PTSD tantrum, and I suspect many of them will return to Twitter; if they ever actually leave at all. But perhaps it is a step along the path of a broader trend where society completely breaks apart, like the Pillarized Netherlands or Sectarian Northern Ireland. Clearly, we have seen a huge move of Republicans from California to Texas and also to Florida, making the latter a relatively safe Republican state. And, certainly, as Peter Turchin has discussed in End Times, political disintegration should be happening in the West round about now."