What we know about human behavior is that lasting adaptive change (as opposed to short-term, fear-based, and situational) is simply not elicited by external motivators, especially not by punishers or threat of punishers. When the organism continues to experience unmet needs - however distorted those perceived needs are along with beliefs about how to get them met – what will be effectively elicited and learned from punishers and threats include: oppositionality; overreach for additional power and control; deception, guardedness, manipulation, in effect the full range of learned criminal or antisocial skills that more often than not effectively cope with and skirt rules and laws and are thereby rewarded. That is how Americans learn to work, live and achieve. The logical endpoint of this futile system is the normalization of criminality within the rule-making class (white-collar and political crime) and mass incarceration of threatening, rule-breaking classes by the empowered rule-making class (wait . . . we have those!) or street executions as punishers by warring classes with certain pretenses suspended, something being experimented with in other parts of the world.

With punishers, threats, and external controls, rather than growth that attunes behavior to principle, empathy, reflection, and internal moral development, growth in antisociality is promoted, a process that pretty much explains American culture, from academic systems to what we endearingly construct as “business”, “achievement” or “success” in all hierarchies. We reward, reinforce and celebrate pathology in all spheres, then wring our hands over “lawlessness”.

If only I had punished or threatened my kids more . . . .

Dumm is not wrong, and praise be to god on high for a feminist writer who has no apparent fear of evolutionary psychology.

In children the same psychological/physiological/behavioral need, distress, and somewhat different set of reactions gets constructed as “insecure attachment”, “overanxious disorder of childhood”, later “ADHD” and other disorders. The dependence on others for safety and psychological security is even more profound and its failure potentially more damaging in early childhood (it is a dependence for survival) and sets attachment-injured children up at greater vulnerability to anxiety-related disorders as adults.

The medical solution? – astonishingly, to chalk it up to biology, “disease” model, dose them with medicalized speed (er . . . stimulant medication) and not worry about lack of evidence for long-term benefits, potential side effects, or prevention. At least articles like Ms. Mieszkowski’s can help move us past medical models of distress and toward better understanding, prevention, and treatment.

Clinically distressing loneliness in adults is related to early experiences and the internal templates they generate. Learning to tolerate solitude and create relatedness paradoxically depends initially on secure attachment to, then its opposite - separation, independence, and differentiation from family. Retained need for connections with family of origin is a developmental failure, representing lack of capacity to independently choose and create new relationships with other adults, and as such will be experienced as a form of aloneness. Western cultural norms, medical models, and parenting advice have tended to work against these basic developmental needs.

that what Mr. Sirota is getting at here is something more fundamental than questions about sustainability and resource use, something about the American character, about the substitution of blind arrogance, entitlement, and compulsive, addictive behaviors - gambling, use of alcohol and other mood-altering substances, conspicuous consumption, distraction by extravaganza and bright lights – their substitution to meet psychological needs and to moderate distress and insecurity, substitution for more adaptive ways of living that might involve delayed gratification, impulse control, reflection and planning, and some valuation of collectivism and naturalism over individualism, in which case he has, in fact, aptly described the American character?

Well, the first time I lose I drink whiskey

Second time I lose I drink gin

Third time I lose I drink anything

'Cause I think I'm gonna win

- Gram Parsons, “Las Vegas”

The irony and pathology here, of course, are less about straw man he’s-a-Muslim paranoia, than about the fact that a transparently prevaricating, addicted adolescent, who has cliqued-up with war criminals and disordered demagogues, will place his hand on a magical book, solemnly utter noises, and you will be soothed and inspired by that.

They in fact were NEVER INVOLVED IN RUNNING A CHILD PROSTITUITON RING WITH THAT CAD BLAGO ! In fact they HELPED BRING THIS DANGEROUS VILLIAN TO JUSTICE !

Can everyone just STFU now? An end to distractions! Inaugurate these Vindicated New Leaders.

Can there any longer be any doubt at all that this new crew of principled intellectuals will rout the terrorists, make us safe, restore social and economic justice, say important sounding things, and restore pride in Our Nation?

What more could it take to erase the doubts ?