The Trump administration this week slashed $1 billion in so-called &#8220;mental health&#8221; grants for educational institutions, many of which were going to promote leftist ideology and train leftist activists.
The Education Department <a href="https://apnews.com/article/school-mental-health-grants-trump-biden-dei-00bec2d96371f023ac56fe3f32f3e92f" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confirmed</a> Wednesday that it was making cuts to grants handed out by the Biden administration ostensibly for the purpose of &#8220;mental health&#8221; because of the focus of many of the recipients on racially-focused programs. In a notice to Congress, the administration said it was going to &#8220;re-envision and re-compete&#8221; the funds allocated for mental health at schools in a gun control bill signed by former President Joe Biden.
&#8220;These grants are intended to improve American students&#8217; mental health by funding additional mental health professionals in schools and on campuses,&#8221; Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications Madison Biedermann <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-discontinues-1-billion-school-mental-health/story?id=121360858" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;Instead, under the deeply flawed priorities of the Biden Administration, grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help.&#8221;
The move was first reported on Tuesday by Christopher Rufo, who <a href="https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1917314079406055660" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> on X that there would be &#8220;no more slush fund for activists under the guise of mental health.&#8221;
In March, the conservative organization Defending Education <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-education-department-spent-100m-funding-university-leftist-activist-programs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">put out a report</a> finding that the Department of Education had given at least $100,964,880 in grants to 25 universities to increase their social worker training programs ostensibly for the purpose of mental health. Defending Education found that many of these grants were going to programs steeped in leftist ideology.
This money was allocated through the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program.
For example, Portland State University was <a href="https://ktvz.com/news/government-politics/2023/04/11/dept-of-education-awards-1-6-million-to-help-osu-psu-train-school-based-mental-health-professionals/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">awarded</a> $1,189,801 by the Department of Education to increase the number of social workers. DEI principles are built into the school’s Master of Social Work program, the stated <a href="https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A42f35593-1dd0-3ca0-b163-1b9431eec989&amp;viewer%21megaVerb=group-discover" target="_blank" rel="noopener">goal</a> of which is to train social workers to dismantle “systems of oppression; build[] racial equity and social, political, and economic justice.”
&#8220;The grants were meant to support school counselors and mental health staff. In reality, they became a pipeline for training activist educators steeped in DEI, CRT, and gender ideology. Federal dollars went to universities pushing &#8216;anti-racist social-emotional learning&#8217; and racially preferential hiring,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/nickineily/status/1917947212341875076" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Defending Education President Nicki Neily on Thursday. &#8220;Parents want real support for children in crisis, not counselors or social workers trained to divide, shame, and re-educate. Good on the Trump administration for ending this. Now, let’s make sure the replacements actually serve students.&#8221;

Department Of Education Plans To Lay Off Half Of Its Staff

Trump Admin Deals Blow To Taxpayer-Funded Leftist Activist Training Program

Department of Education

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Education

Joe Biden

Mental Health

Politics

Trump Administration

Country singer Luke Combs recently discussed a mental health condition he’s had since childhood.
The 35-year-old recording artist did an interview with “60 Minutes Australia” and talked about his experience with purely &#8220;obsessional obsessive-compulsive disorder,&#8221; which has the nickname “pure O.” Unlike typical OCD, pure O occurs when the compulsions a person experiences are mostly internal, whereas OCD usually involves physical rituals or repetitive behaviors. 
“It’s thoughts, essentially, that you don’t want to have,” Combs said during the interview, per <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/country-star-luke-combs-opens-living-wicked-ocd-condition-known-pure-o-rcna195646">NBC News</a>. “And then they cause you stress, and then you’re stressed out, and then the stress causes you to have more of the thoughts, and then you don’t understand why you’re having them, and you’re trying to get rid of them, but trying to get rid of them makes you have more of them.”
The singer said these thoughts are “wicked” as they can sometimes turn violent.
“I just have to accept that they’re happening and then just go, ‘Whatever, dude. It’s happening. It’s whatever,’” he said. “It’s weird, sucks, hate it, drives me crazy, but … the less that you worry about why you’re having the thoughts, eventually they go away.”
Combs says he’s lucky to have figured out a way through these moments while acknowledging how difficult it can be. 
“When it hits, man, it can be all-consuming,” the singer said. “If you have a flare-up of it &#8230; you could think about it 45 seconds of every minute for weeks.”
The Grammy Award nominee said he’s seeking to spread awareness about the condition and help others.
“I definitely want to spend some time at some point in my life doing some outreach to kids that deal with this,” he told “60 Minutes Australia.”
“Because it held me back so many times in my life, where you’re trying to accomplish something, you’re doing really great and then you have a flare-up and it just ruins your whole life for six months &#8230; and then you’re back to where you started.”
“The message is if there’s someone out there that’s struggling with it, it’s possible to continue to live your life, and be really successful, and have a great family, and achieve your dreams, while also dealing with things that you don’t want to be dealing with,” Combs said.

Luke Combs

Country Singer Luke Combs Discusses ‘All-Consuming’ Mental Condition He’s Had Since Childhood

Country Singer Luke Combs Discusses 'All-Consuming' Mental Condition He's Had Since Childhood

Celebrities

Country Music

Country singer

Entertainment

U.S.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper is co-authoring a book with Axios correspondent Alex Thompson detailing the “cover-up” of former President Joe Biden&#8217;s “serious decline,” CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/26/media/joe-biden-book-jake-tapper-alex-thompson/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> on Wednesday.
The book, titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” pins the blame on Biden and his family for being &#8220;part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents,&#8221; according to the book&#8217;s publisher, Penguin Press. Tapper co-hosted Biden&#8217;s disastrous June 2024 debate against Donald Trump, which eventually led to Biden&#8217;s exit from the presidential race, while Thompson reported on the debate fallout and the White House&#8217;s attempts to keep Biden in the 2024 contest.
“What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless — a desperate bet that went bust — and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents,” Penguin said in a press release, adding that Biden, &#8220;his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
ORIGINAL SIN, now available for pre-order at <a href="https://t.co/a9TcEIjAnV">https://t.co/a9TcEIjAnV</a> from <a href="https://twitter.com/penguinpress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Penguinpress</a>. Been working hard on this with <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexThomp?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AlexThomp</a>, from interviews with more than 200 WH insiders, Dem leaders, and more. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OriginalSinBook?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#OriginalSinBook</a> <a href="https://t.co/e7hd4bqNHM">pic.twitter.com/e7hd4bqNHM</a>
&mdash; Jake Tapper 🦅 (@jaketapper) <a href="https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1894724349921202424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 26, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In the book, Tapper and Thompson examine what they call Biden&#8217;s &#8220;original sin&#8221; — his decision to run for a second term at 81 years old. &#8220;Original Sin&#8221; will be released on May 20.
The book announcement was blasted by conservatives on social media, who argued that Tapper and Thompson were part of the legacy media&#8217;s cover-up of Biden&#8217;s mental decline. Before Biden&#8217;s catastrophic debate performance against Trump, both Tapper and Thompson criticized conservatives for pointing out clear signs that the former president&#8217;s mental capabilities were going downhill.
During the 2020 campaign, Tapper came to Biden&#8217;s <a href="https://x.com/jaketapper/status/1318570778468777984" target="_blank" rel="noopener">defense</a> multiple times when Republicans criticized him for struggling during his campaign speeches. In January 2020, Tapper <a href="https://x.com/jaketapper/status/1218211112195362818" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reposted</a> a clip of Lara Trump saying she felt &#8220;kind of sad for Biden&#8221; for struggling to &#8220;get the words out.&#8221; Tapper commented on Trump&#8217;s remarks on social media, writing, &#8220;Whatever you think of @JoeBiden and his politics, worth reading this remarkable piece about his stutter,&#8221; and linking to an Atlantic article that argued that voters should &#8220;be more understanding&#8221; of Biden&#8217;s gaffes because &#8220;he’s still fighting a stutter.&#8221;
In June 2023, Thompson wrote a <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/06/18/biden-god-save-the-queen" target="_blank" rel="noopener">piece</a> for Axios on &#8220;Biden&#8217;s weird words&#8221; and defended the former president&#8217;s &#8220;unique phrases&#8221; from Republican attacks.
&#8220;Biden’s quirky aphorisms are sometimes weaponized by Republicans to insinuate the 80-year-old president is in mental decline,&#8221; Thompson wrote. &#8220;But Biden has been using unique phrases for years — but even some of his aides aren&#8217;t exactly sure what he means by them.&#8221; Thompson added, &#8220;There are legitimate questions about Biden&#8217;s age and stamina as he runs for a second term — but his off-beat proverbs are just Biden being Biden.&#8221;

Jake Tapper, Who Ignored Signs Of Biden’s Decline, Releasing Book On The ‘Cover-Up’

aging

Axios

Jake Tapper

Media

I&#8217;ve written a good deal about the damage that the field of modern psychiatry has done to mankind, across a variety of contexts. Most of the harms — the invention of gender ideology, the mass overprescribing of psychotropic drugs, and so on — are relatively widely known. What&#8217;s less well-known, because not a lot of people talk about it, is the sinister influence of modern psychiatry on our criminal justice system. For all the criticism to be made of Soros D.A.&#8217;s and Democrats&#8217; refusal to prosecute criminals — all of it justified — the role of modern psychiatry in freeing violent offenders is often ignored. But it&#8217;s very much a crisis in this country, and it&#8217;s been one for some time.
It was all the way back in the early 1970s when a man named Charles Meach beat a 22-year-old grocery store clerk to death in Anchorage, Alaska. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and shipped off to a mental institution. But just seven years later, Meach was released. Psychiatrists claimed Meach had made a full recovery. He promised he wouldn&#8217;t murder anyone in the future, and that was good enough, apparently. After all, why would he lie? What had Charles Meach ever done to prove himself untrustworthy? I mean, aside from the whole beating-someone-to-death thing. So he was released on the honor system. He pinky promised not to murder ever again. But the promise was short-lived. Two years later, Meach purchased a revolver and murdered four teenagers at a campsite, just for the thrill of it.
Reforms were promised after that massacre, and you can see why. It was a pretty clear sign that mental health professionals should stop pretending that murderers can somehow be &#8220;cured&#8221; of their murderous tendencies. Murder is not, in fact, a symptom of an illness. It is a manifestation of human evil. And people who commit those kinds of evil acts should be locked in prison forever.
But psychiatrists were not dissuaded. Instead, our sainted mental health professionals, with the help of mostly Democrat-controlled state governments across the country, have continued to embed themselves into the criminal justice system. Their psychiatric facilities now function as safe houses for violent thugs like Jordan Neely, who didn&#8217;t go to prison even after he punched an elderly woman in the face on the subway and broke her nose. Instead, Neely was offered &#8220;intensive outpatient psychiatric treatment,&#8221; which would supposedly cure him of his addiction to terrorizing random people on the train. And we all know how that turned out.
Any rational person who looks at incidents like this will recognize immediately what&#8217;s going on. Left-wing prosecutors have found a kind of hack that enables them to release extremely dangerous criminals, even when their guilt is beyond any doubt. All the prosecutors have to do is find some hippy psychiatrist to sign off on a &#8220;treatment plan,&#8221; and then pretty much anything is possible. They could release some of the most dangerous and depraved criminals on the planet, who committed their crimes not too long ago, based solely on the pseudoscience of modern psychiatry — which is completely subjective, and often relies entirely on the promise of the criminal not to reoffend. There is no crime — and I really mean no crime — so heinous that the criminal cannot be released back into society if a psychiatrist claims that he’s been successfully “treated.”
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1542-the-woke-justice-system-just-let-an-axe-murdering-cannibal-walk-free-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
If you think I’m exaggerating, then please consider the case of Tyree Smith, which has to be one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice we&#8217;ve ever seen in American history. Tyree Smith confessed to the brutal murder of a 43-year-old homeless man in a vacant apartment in Connecticut back in 2011. Smith was apparently <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130820075136/https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/accused-cannibal-considered-eating-psychiatrist-4653241.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">distressed</a> about losing his job at Starbucks, before he began to hear voices in his head. 
Now, the details of his crime are so horrific that I’m sorry that I have to share them with you. But it’s important that you have the full story. So here it is. Smith used an axe to kill the man inside an abandoned home in Bridgeport. He then hacked up the man’s body, removed several of his organs — an eyeball and some of his brain — and then ate them at cemetery nearby. So this is an axe murdering graveyard cannibal we’re talking about. Something straight out of a horror film. The man&#8217;s body (or what was left of it) wasn&#8217;t found for nearly 40 days. At trial, Smith was found not guilty by reason of insanity. In 2013, a panel of judges committed Smith to a mental institution for 60 years.
But Smith will not spend anywhere near 60 years in a mental institution.
Instead, something called the &#8220;Psychiatric Security Review Board&#8221; in Connecticut has just granted Smith a &#8220;conditional release.&#8221; That means he&#8217;ll receive &#8220;day passes&#8221; to wander around the hospital grounds as he pleases. And very soon, he&#8217;ll be able to make &#8220;off-site&#8221; visits into the community.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Bridgeport Killer Cannibal" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e5dnQA0zPPs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
If you had told me a few years ago that woke justice reform would soon lead to the release of an axe murderer cannibal, it would have seemed too outlandish even to me. Even if you have a black murderer and a white victim, as you do in this case — even given everything we&#8217;ve seen during the moral panic of the BLM era — it still seems unthinkable. And it only gets more unthinkable when you look into the specifics of Tyree Smith&#8217;s case and why he was released.
First of all, it’s perhaps worth nothing, this decision was made during a hearing in which Tyree Smith wasn&#8217;t even present. He teleconferenced in, and he didn&#8217;t appear on the video screens in the hearing room. Right away, that should be disqualifying. You will not find very many employers in this country that are willing to hire a job applicant after a phone call, without seeing the applicant in any way. Which means it is, at least in some ways, more difficult for a normal person to get a job at Walmart than it is for a homicidal cannibal to get released from an asylum.
So why is Connecticut releasing Tyree Smith? As the hearing went on, a psychiatrist testified that Smith has recovered. He is a reformed cannibal. His axe murdering days are behind him. And her evidence for this statement is that Smith has denied experiencing any hallucinations, or a desire to harm other people. He’s better now, and we know he’s better now, because he says he’s better now. I&#8217;m going to play that clip from the hearing, then at the end you&#8217;ll see a question from the prosecutor to the doctor. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Hearing footage" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a7qPoXhXTYs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
As you just heard, evidence of Tyree Smith&#8217;s “recovery” is based on self-reported data. They “know” that he hasn’t had any hallucinations or cravings to consume human flesh because he told them: &#8220;He denied visual hallucinations or a desire to harm others or himself.&#8221; Well, okay then. What more do you need to know? Oh and by the way, if he stops taking his medications, he could totally become a cannibal again. But he pinky-promises that he&#8217;ll keep taking his medications, and stop murdering people.
Of course, at the same time, Smith also knows that his only chance of ever seeing the outside world again is to lie about all of this. So either he is an axe murderer cannibal who grew out of it like a child grows out of a bed-wetting phase, or he’s lying. There’s about a 99.9999 percent chance of the latter.
At the hearing, one of the victim&#8217;s family members pointed this out. She remarked, “How do we really know he’s not going to do this again? He had no remorse for killing Angel.” She also said that the whole family is terrified because it&#8217;s quite possible Tyree Smith will reoffend. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 family" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gHaMnGxwMvk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
So the axe-murderer is apparently the life of the party at the insane asylum. He’s a joy to be around. Of course we can probably assume that the man he hacked to death and then consumed would disagree with this assessment. But he’s not here — because he’s dead. The point is that, as long as Tyree Smith isn’t axe-murdering, he’s really quite pleasant. But that&#8217;s small comfort to the family of his victim, who really wants an answer to a pretty basic question, which is: What assurances do we have that he won&#8217;t kill us, exactly?
In their report, the Connecticut psychiatry board includes this line, which is really an all-time caliber line. If you&#8217;re assembling a hall-of-fame of the most deranged statements that the medical profession has tried to pass off as legitimate, this would have to be very high on the list. This is directly from the Connecticut psychiatry board&#8217;s report. I’m <a href="https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/bridgeport-ct-tyree-smith-released-18394546.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">not making this up</a>, I assure you: &#8220;He denied experiencing cravings but stated that if they were to arise, he would reach out to his hospital and community supports and providers.&#8221;
Yes, cravings. So just relax, everybody. There&#8217;s nothing to worry about. The Connecticut psychiatric board is releasing an axe murderer cannibal back into society, but they assure us that if he experiences any “cravings” for the taste of human flesh, he will immediately “reach out” for help. They’re going to release him but they’ll say on his way out the door: “Hey, make sure to reach out if you ever feel like eating someone’s brain!” And that should do it. What a relief. In the last decade or so that he&#8217;s been locked away, Tyree Smith has become totally and completely normal. There&#8217;s zero likelihood that Tyree Smith will, say, order Uber Eats and assume that the delivery driver is the meal.
Of course, all of this discussion about whether Tyree Smith is “reformed” actually misses the point anyway. Even in the fantasyland scenario where an axe murderer could be transformed into a functional, tax-paying member of society, he still shouldn’t be released. He should be in prison as a matter of basic justice. If he&#8217;s truly cured of his schizophrenia and murderous tendencies, then he should be shipped to a maximum-security prison. The idea that he belongs in civilized society, after brutally murdering a man and then eating him, is only appealing if you&#8217;re the kind of person who — for one reason or another — sympathizes more with killers than the victims who are killed. And that&#8217;s the kind of attitude that defines a lot of psychiatrists.
For example, I looked up one of the Yale psychiatrists who testified for the defense in Smith&#8217;s original trial, named Reena Kapoor (pronouns she/her/hers). She&#8217;s written a lot of articles about her time working with murderers who were found not guilty by reason of insanity. Here&#8217;s a direct <a href="https://jaapl.org/content/36/4/563.long" target="_blank" rel="noopener">quote</a> from one of those articles. It&#8217;s about how an inmate — a murderer — asked to take a walk with her while in prison. And apparently it left her very hot and bothered:
<blockquote>J.M. and I never did take a walk together. In fact, neither of us ever mentioned the idea again. &#8230; As far as I know, J.M. does not speak of me longingly or wax nostalgic about our year of psychotherapy. .. As for me, I have had some time to reflect on things, and I am plagued by one last question about J.M.&#8217;s request to take a walk with me. Why did he ask to take a walk in particular? Why not ask to see a movie or have lunch together?</blockquote>
It reads like an early 2000s MySpace post or a LiveJournal blog from a teenage girl who&#8217;s infatuated with serial killers. But it&#8217;s not. It&#8217;s an excerpt from an article published in the &#8220;Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.&#8221; This is how a lot of &#8220;doctors&#8221; in the field of psychiatry conduct themselves. It&#8217;s the kind of thing they fantasize about. And in Tyree Smith&#8217;s case, they have taken their ideology to its logical conclusion. Of course, they don&#8217;t want Smith to live anywhere near their neighborhoods. They just want you to have to deal with him.
This is bleeding heart liberalism in its final, horrifically deranged and monstrous, and also literal, form. Although, as I’ve often pointed out, this isn’t actually due to an overabundance of compassion or sensitivity. It’s exactly the opposite. These decisions are fueled by a kind of psychotic indifference to the immense human suffering that will inevitably come as a result. The people who made this decision know that there&#8217;s a high likelihood that this man will butcher another person, and they just don’t care. They are just as psychotic as he is. In Russia, they <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/11/24/news/cannibal-serial-killer-denis-gorin-pardoned-by-putin-for-fighting-in-ukraine/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">send</a> their cannibals to fight in war, to inflict horrors on the enemies of the state. That happened several times in just the past few years, during the war in Ukraine. But in the United States, psychiatrists want cannibals to inflict those horrors on Americans.
When modern psychiatry was just getting started in 19th century Britain, something called the &#8220;Alleged Lunatics&#8217; Friend Society&#8221; formed. They saw psychiatrists as completely illegitimate — as totalitarians who just wanted to imprison people without due process. And there was indeed a long period of time where psychiatry was used to imprison people who were not dangerous and had done nothing wrong. We now have the exact opposite problem. Psychiatry has done a 180 flip. Deranged lunatics are being freed as a means of circumventing the criminal justice system. The common thread here — the the thing that ties together these two extremes — is that in both cases psychiatry is a cover to inflict horrors beyond comprehension onto the public.
The reality — and this really shouldn’t need to be said — is that someone who kills another human and eats his brain will never be fit to live freely in society ever again. This should not be a controversial statement. In fact, it should be the least controversial statement ever uttered. But in psychiatry, it is controversial, which is why people living in Connecticut are worried that they&#8217;re back on the menu tonight. The truth is that the people who freed the axe murderer cannibal are just as demented as the axe murderer cannibal himself. They haven’t consumed human flesh at a graveyard — as far as I know, anyway — but they are equally deranged. And because they have a lot more power, and are legitimized under the veil of “science,” they are quite a bit more dangerous.

MixCollage-24-Feb-2025-02-40-PM-880

The Woke Justice System Just Let An Axe Murdering Cannibal Walk Free

Connecticut

Courts

Criminal Justice

Leftists

Matt Walsh

Murder

Opinion

Psychiatry

Woke Culture

Author J.K. Rowling laid out the mental health risks associated with the rhetoric coming from proponents of radical gender ideology, arguing that it was more likely to contribute to an increase in mental health problems than to help address them.
Rowling began by sharing an example of the rhetoric to which she was referring: &#8220;Are you complaining about people who feel they&#8217;d rather die than live bound by the expectations of masculinity and presenting as a barbarian caveman? Would YOU like to be seen as a man? Would YOU like to let go of your femininity? No? It might make you feel like dying, yes?&#8221;
The &#8220;Harry Potter&#8221; author cut straight to the heart of the matter, saying that such rhetoric was guaranteed to compound the problems of those suffering from gender dysphoria by fostering an unhealthy dependence on outside affirmation.
&#8220;An infallible recipe for poor mental health and lifelong unhappiness is believing that unless the entire world validates your self-perception, it hates you,&#8221; Rowling <a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1836392398793937032">began</a>. &#8220;If you move through life telling yourself that unless you can force other people to play along you&#8217;ll &#8216;be &#8216;erased,&#8217; if the slightest hint that another person doesn&#8217;t see you the way you&#8217;ve labelled yourself feels like an attack on your very existence, your life will be spent in a state of miserable insecurity and fragility.&#8221;
&#8220;Would I like to &#8216;let go&#8217; of my femininity? Willingly; femininity is the set of stereotypes imposed on women by men. Would it &#8216;make me feel like dying&#8217;? Of course it wouldn&#8217;t,&#8221; Rowling continued.
She concluded by pointing out how such statements fed the oft-repeated lie that trans-identifying young people were more likely to take their own lives if their identity was not accommodated — up to and including risky and irreversible hormones and medical procedures — by those around them.
&#8220;Vulnerable young people are being harmed by your kind of hyperbolic language, which promotes the lie about the inevitability of suicide among the gender-questioning unless they&#8217;re given often irreversible medical interventions,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Rhetoric like this flies in the face of everything we know about mitigating suicide risk among those with mental health issues and it&#8217;s particularly gruesome when done by self-congratulatory people on Twitter whose banner picture is &#8216;be kind.'&#8221;

US-ENTERTAINMENT-FINDING THE WAY

JK Rowling Highlights Danger Of Trans Rhetoric: ‘An Infallible Recipe For Poor Mental Health’

JK Rowling Highlights Danger Of Trans Rhetoric: 'An Infallible Recipe For Poor Mental Health'

Gender Identity

gender ideology

JK Rowling

Transgender

World

British broadcaster <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/piers-morgan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Piers Morgan</a> congratulated gymnast Simone Biles after the U.S. women earned gold in the team competition at the Paris Olympics on Tuesday — and he even took the time to admit he&#8217;d been wrong to criticize her after she dropped out of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
&#8220;Congrats @simonebiles on becoming the most decorated American gymnast of all time. I was too harsh on you in 2021 when you quit the team finals,&#8221; Morgan said in a post to X, also sharing a photo of himself with Biles. &#8220;You’re a great champion, and have since proved me wrong in the best possible way — by letting your supreme talent do the talking.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Congrats <a href="https://twitter.com/Simone_Biles?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Simone_Biles</a> on becoming the most decorated American gymnast of all time. 
I was too harsh on you in 2021 when you quit the team finals. You’re a great champion, and have since proved me wrong in the best possible way &#8211; by letting your supreme talent do the talking. 👏 <a href="https://t.co/Zw5wWzQ4WH">pic.twitter.com/Zw5wWzQ4WH</a>
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) <a href="https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/1818363208668999747?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 30, 2024</a></blockquote>
Biles dropped from competition during the Tokyo Olympics, saying at the time that she needed to step back and focus on her mental health after getting &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/its-a-miracle-i-landed-on-my-feet-simone-biles-discusses-twisties-tokyo-experience" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the twisties</a>&#8221; — a dangerous condition in which gymnasts are unable to tell where they are while flipping and twisting through the air.
&#8220;It’s so dangerous,&#8221; Biles <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/simone-biles-olympics-2021.html">explained during an interview later that year</a>. &#8220;It’s basically life or death. It’s a miracle I landed on my feet. If that was any other person, they would have gone out on a stretcher. As soon as I landed that vault, I went and told my coach: ‘I cannot continue.'&#8221;
Morgan <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/piers-morgan-facing-backlash-for-criticizing-simone-biles-2021-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">criticized</a> Biles&#8217; abrupt exit from the competition, saying in a Daily Mail op-ed that she had let down her teammates and her country. He was equally harsh on X, saying, &#8220;Are &#8216;mental health issues&#8217; now the go-to excuse for any poor performance in elite sport? What a joke.&#8221;
Biles, now the most decorated American gymnast in history, will compete later this week for the all-around title.

Artistic Gymnastics – Olympic Games Paris 2024: Day 2

Piers Morgan Admits He Was Wrong About Simone Biles

Gymnastics

Paris Olympics

Piers Morgan

Simone Biles

Sports

Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders rolled out a proposal on Tuesday to incentivize schools in the state to ban cell phones from the classroom, according to a letter sent to schools across the state obtained by The Daily Wire.
The idea is to improve students&#8217; mental health by separating them from their phones, temporarily removing any anxiety their phones cause, encouraging in-person social interaction with friends, and fostering a better learning environment. &#8220;The program will address the symptoms of youth mental illness as well as one of its largest causes: screen addiction and social media,&#8221; Sanders said.
The grant program will cover the cost of putting a cell phone ban into place, providing schools with secure pouches for students to store their phones during the school day. All Arkansas school districts are invited to join the pilot program, the governor and Arkansas Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva wrote in a letter to school superintendents.
&#8220;We have made this a priority in our Administration, and we are committing state resources to help with this crisis,&#8221; Sanders and Olive said. &#8220;To that end, we are excited to announce a pilot program focused on two key priorities: restricting in-school phone use and mental healthcare. We invite your district to join this statewide effort.&#8221; 
Sanders notes that youth depression, anxiety, and isolation have risen across the country, and that the average American teen now spends nearly five hours a day on social media, often while in school. Meanwhile, the teen suicide rate has spiked since smartphones became widespread, as has self-harm among girls especially. Teen math, reading, and science scores have dropped across the country.
&#8220;That&#8217;s five hours a day not with friends, not outside, and not learning,&#8221; Sanders said in a video announcing the program. &#8220;The facts are grim, but there are things we can do to help.&#8221;
&#8220;Big Tech created an addicting product and marketed it to the most impressionable population out there, our kids,&#8221; she said.
Sanders has <a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/how-sarah-sanders-put-arkansas-on-republicans-radar/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">emphasized</a> education during her administration, saying she hopes to be known as the &#8220;Education Governor.&#8221; She successfully pushed Arkansas&#8217; legislature to pass a universal school choice bill that also removed obscene sexual materials and critical race theory from classrooms, established new education standards, and raised teacher pay.
Sanders also led Arkansas in passing a law requiring minors to get parental permission to sign up for a social media account, although that law was blocked by a federal judge.
Public schools that participate in Arkansas&#8217; new program will be rewarded with additional funding, including extra funding for telehealth mental health services. They will also get extra support in navigating mental and behavioral health care, substance abuse care, and social services for students, families, and school employees, as well as help with navigating insurance.
Last month, Sanders and the state education secretary met with several Arkansas superintendents and took their recommendations into account when crafting the program, the governor&#8217;s office said. The grant program will be available for schools next academic year.

Mike Huckabee And Sarah Huckabee Sanders Visits “The Story With Martha MacCallum”

EXCLUSIVE: Sarah Sanders Launches Push For Cell Phone-Free Schools In Arkansas

Sarah Sanders Announces New Phone Free Schools Program For Arkansas

Arkansas

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The following is a transcript excerpt from Dr. Jordan Peterson’s “We Who Wrestle With God” tour. In this segment, he explains the problem with the historical definition of sanity — being a well-constituted individual — is its sole reliance on the individual. He establishes a difference between being depressed and not being situated in the hierarchy of social order (having an intimate partner, family, job, and so forth). Social interaction is critical to finding meaning. Dr. Peterson’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/watch/jordan-peterson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">extensive catalog</a> is available on DailyWire+. 
Our Protestant, liberal definition of sanity is wrong. We tend to think of sanity in terms of internal psychological organizations. We think you are sane if your psyche is well-constituted or if you are biologically healthy in relationship to neurological function, as an individual thing: A well-constituted psyche means you are sane. The idea of self-actualization goes along with that. If you are a sane person, you are a sane individual: Sanity is the description of the well-constituted individual. 
One of the corollaries might be that you could regard any social constraint on the flowering of your individuality as antithetical to your sanity. I would say corrosive criticisms of social institutions tend to presume that axiomatically: “Nothing should interfere with my self-actualization. All social constraint is antithetical to that spontaneous organization and to sanity itself.” I do not think that is the correct notion of sanity. It is too atomistic; it is too individual. For example, how sane are you going to be in a terrible marriage? I do not care how well-constituted you are individually. This is a different question. 
When people would come to me and they were depressed, I would try to find out if they were depressed or if they just had a horrible life. Those are not the same questions because if you are depressed, you have a life that, in principle, should work but is not. So if they said, “Look, I have a lot of things going for me. I have a good job, I have a good family, my wife loves me. But man, I am miserable all the time,” we would delve into that a bit more deeply. That sounds like depression. But they might come and say, “I am miserable. I am suffering. I don&#8217;t even want to be alive.” Then I might ask:
“Well, do you have an intimate partner?”
“No, not really. And I have a history of catastrophic relationships.”
“Do you have any friends?”
“Well, I have this one person I phone once every month or so, but other than that, no I don’t really see anyone.”
“Do you have any close family?”
“No, my family is pretty fractured. I don’t get along with my mom and dad. I don’t see my sisters or my siblings much.”
“How about a career or, failing that, a job?”
“Well, I’ve always kind of been under-employed, and I just lost my job and that is not going very well.”
And so on.
You can walk through someone’s life and find out if they are reasonably embedded in a hierarchy of social institutions. If they are not — no intimate partner, no family, no children, no friends, no job, no career, no educational pathway, no engagement in civic responsibility, no church attendance, no spiritual life, no routine — then they are not depressed; they just have a horrible life, multidimensionally. It is no wonder they think they are depressed; there is nothing in their life that is working. But that is not exactly a diagnosis at the level of the individual; it is a diagnosis of the relationship between the individual and the structure containing social institutions. If you do not have an intimate partner, a family, any friends, a career or a job, any civic involvement or any involvement with religious institutions, and no creative striving, all you have left is pain. That is what you have.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast on DailyWire+</a></h4>
There is a different way of thinking about sanity. Sanity is not being well-constituted as an atomized individual. Sanity is what makes itself manifest if you are properly situated in the hierarchy of social order. Now, some of that is internal because of your mess of fragmented subpersonalities. For example, anger can pull you in one direction, anxiety can pull you in another direction, impulsive enthusiasm can pull you in another direction, and lust can pull you in a different direction — those are all subpersonalities in some real sense. They are ways of perceiving and acting in the world. You need to integrate them within yourself so that as an individual, you are integrated. But the nature of that integration is dependent on your integration within the broader social context.
You can think of sanity as a distributed phenomena. That is another reason you do not want to casually denigrate social institutions because we are social creatures — deeply social creatures. You can tell that because you can take the most anti-social people, the most violent predatory and parasitic criminals, and punish them by putting them in solitary confinement. Think about that: The people who like other people the least, who are most likely to pathologize their social relationships, and who would be long-term, habitually sadistic, violent criminals find it virtually unbearable to be forced into isolation. We are unbelievably social. One of the corollaries of being miraculously social is that to be well-constituted, you have to be a harmonious player in a multidimensional symphony of social interaction. 
It is very hard to stay on the straight and narrow without a partner who does not share your blindspots and correct you constantly. Now, that is annoying because there is tussling about it; there is a fractious, adversarial element to that because you are married, and you do not see eye to eye — and thank God for that because sometimes in your foolish instance of being right, you are wrong and wrong in a way that will take you out. So you better have a partner who does not think the same way you do. Fortunately, if you have a partner who does not think the same way you do, if you can get the dialogue flowing, that is a mutually corrective mechanism. Then, the truthful dialogue between partners in a marriage is actually the process by which sanity itself is generated, which I mean technically. You are too complex to regulate yourself — period — so you need other people to help you do that. If you have a wife or a husband, someone who knows you who is there for the long-run, you can help each other find the meaningful path and stay on it. You cannot do that alone.
* * *
To continue, listen or watch more content with Dr. Jordan Peterson on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/watch">DailyWire+</a>.
<a href="https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/">Dr. Jordan B. Peterson</a> is a clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. From 1993 to 1998 he served as assistant and then associate professor of psychology at Harvard. He is the international bestselling author of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922216/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=">Maps of Meaning</a>,” “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/12-Rules-Life-Antidote-Chaos/dp/0345816021/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=">12 Rules For Life,</a>” and “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Order-More-Rules-Life/dp/0593084640/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=AUTHOR&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.nbV0WtVit9busCddbjMST-Oe7hjueQrxfqnQ4L3HXXUFdIaqlEBr0sp9HQWIq9ut9NlHDAFA0YQoDWVZfDtKNJI7VvlzWv2rMhs2KcAAIIppPRMWq4GIiFerkrssvBABAjeKlg3OFs3H8IHs5D8ktJ5uBg3K-SZ4hpKltaKkrhY6j-RKn-tTkBz29JZXP3Rhm9SB14rHUX1nol5d4z4Fi6f8fwhxXWCVGgkvOHSqG6E.iVF1NljuBEwrpumO9rQBh9FotnzaIo4K7K8HvNnC46k&amp;qid=&amp;sr=">Beyond Order.</a>” You can now <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast">listen to</a> or <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/watch/jordan-peterson">watch</a> his popular lectures on DailyWire+.
Be sure to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Who-Wrestle-God-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0593542533/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=38kcw&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.f911c8db-3a2b-4b3e-952f-b80fdcee83f4&amp;pf_rd_p=f911c8db-3a2b-4b3e-952f-b80fdcee83f4&amp;pf_rd_r=133-1833056-3520340&amp;pd_rd_wg=3zvBk&amp;pd_rd_r=93a1419a-853b-4c49-a764-cbaa90d3073a&amp;ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk">PRE-ORDER</a> Dr. Peterson’s newest book: “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Who-Wrestle-God-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0593542533/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=38kcw&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.f911c8db-3a2b-4b3e-952f-b80fdcee83f4&amp;pf_rd_p=f911c8db-3a2b-4b3e-952f-b80fdcee83f4&amp;pf_rd_r=133-1833056-3520340&amp;pd_rd_wg=3zvBk&amp;pd_rd_r=93a1419a-853b-4c49-a764-cbaa90d3073a&amp;ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk">We Who Wrestle with God</a>.” (Portfolio/Penguin. November 19, 2024.)

JP_FOR_DW_GDWOODMAN027 copy

A Different Way Of Thinking About Sanity

Books

Depression

Jordan B. Peterson

Marriage

Psychology

Readers Pass

Social Issues

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is calling for a mandatory warning label on social media, warning users about the mental health risks for teenagers.
In an opinion <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html">article</a> for The New York Times published Monday, Murthy said he wants a surgeon general’s warning on social media platforms similar to the warning labels that appear on tobacco and alcohol products. The tobacco warnings have been shown to &#8220;increase awareness and change behavior,&#8221; Murthy said.
“The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor,” Murthy wrote.
“It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents,” he said. “A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.”
The mental health crisis among teenagers has been partly driven by social media’s explosion over the last decade or so, during which the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/teen-mental-health-cdc-girls-sadness-violence-rcna69964">rates</a> of teenage depression have skyrocketed, especially among girls.
Murthy noted that adolescents who spend more than three hours on social media a day have twice the risk of anxiety and depression, and teens, on average, spend longer than this, about 4.8 hours a day on such platforms. Nearly half of teens say &#8220;social media makes them feel worse about their bodies,&#8221; he added.
Murthy also called on Congress to pass legislation to protect young people from online abuse, exposure to “extreme violence” and sexual content, and to bar social media companies from collecting “sensitive data” from children and require them to limit features like push notifications, autoplay, and infinite scroll. He also said social media platforms must be required to share their data on health effects with the public and submit them to independent safety audits.
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“While the platforms claim they are making their products safer, Americans need more than words. We need proof,” Murthy said.
Murthy also placed some of the responsibility on parents to protect their children from the negative effects of social media, calling on them to wait until after middle school to allow their kids to use social media and not allow phones at meals and social gatherings.
Murthy added that schools should also keep classrooms free of phones.
“Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food?” Murthy wrote. “These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting; they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability.”
“The moral test of any society is how well it protects its children,” he said.

Conference Of Mayors Held In Washington, DC

Surgeon General Calls For Warning Label On Social Media For Young People

Health

Health Care

Surgeon General

Teenagers

Vivek Murthy

What is the secret to a happy life? Is there a secret? Is there only one secret? These are the questions that, at the most foundational level, everyone asks throughout life. They are a part of the human condition.
I consider myself a relatively happy person, and I love and am grateful for my life. I believe gratefulness influences happiness, so I make practicing gratitude a habit. Conversely, people who live in a constant victimhood mentality (one that seems to be overtaking our culture) are, without a doubt, not happy. While we don’t need science to prove to us these people are unhappy, science just did. 
In a poorly typed tweet, the <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/03/17/lifestyle/woke-people-more-likely-to-be-unahppy-anxious-and-depressed-new-study-suggests/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Post</a> shared the results of a study which suggests “woke” people are more likely to be unhappy. Of course, we didn’t need those results to be “suggested” because we know they’re true.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
‘Woke’ people more likely to be unahppy, anxious and depressed, new study suggests <a href="https://t.co/25RQn08ouR">https://t.co/25RQn08ouR</a> <a href="https://t.co/QDHcGadc8D">pic.twitter.com/QDHcGadc8D</a>
&mdash; New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1769483261728657609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The study was conducted in Finland where researchers examined the progressive ideology that has now infiltrated their culture. First, they created a social justice scale with a list of truisms, or principles of progressivism, to ask participants of the study whether they agreed or disagreed with those statements. Then, they compared the results with other behaviors based on the responses to those statements. The study’s final Critical Social Justice Attitude scale included <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/03/17/lifestyle/woke-people-more-likely-to-be-unahppy-anxious-and-depressed-new-study-suggests/?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=nypost&amp;utm_source=twitter">seven truisms</a> of woke people: 
<blockquote>In the end, their final Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale identified seven truisms of woke people:
<ul>
<li>“If white people have on average a higher level of income than black people, it is because of racism.”</li>
<li>“University reading lists should include fewer white or European authors.”</li>
<li>“Microaggressions should be challenged often and actively.”</li>
<li>“Trans* women who compete with women in sports are not helping women’s rights.” (reverse scored)</li>
<li>“We don’t need to talk more about the color of people’s skin.”</li>
<li>“A white person cannot understand how a black person feels equally well as another black person.”</li>
<li>“A member of a privileged group can adopt features or cultural elements of a less privileged group.” (reverse scored)</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
For the people who agreed with these principles, identifying them as the things they are concerned with on a daily basis, it is no wonder they’re unhappy. The <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/03/17/lifestyle/woke-people-more-likely-to-be-unahppy-anxious-and-depressed-new-study-suggests/?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=nypost&amp;utm_source=twitter">conclusion researchers drew</a> is the same conclusion we all could have told them without even doing this study:
<blockquote>However, the most concerning finding was the relationship between mental health and agreement with the scale. Specifically, researchers found a high prevalence of anxiety and depression in people who believe the statement “If white people have on average a higher income than black people, it is because of racism.” More broadly, they found that those who identified as left-wing were most likely to report lower mental well-being.</blockquote>
That’s correct: “They found that those who identified as left-wing were most likely to report lower mental well-being.” Color me shocked.
Although researchers noted that we should not assume this is the case in every society and country, we know that it basically is. Finland can take these results and expand them to other countries because this is truth — and it’s certainly not isolated to Finland. Columbia epidemiologists have acknowledged depression rates <a href="https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/why-depression-rates-are-higher-among-liberals#:~:text=American%20adults%20who%20identify%20as,inducing%20topics%20like%20racial%20injustice%2C" target="_blank" rel="noopener">are higher among liberals</a>; American Affairs, a journal of public policy and political thought, has evaluated the <a href="https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“well-being gap”</a> between liberals and conservatives; and the New York Times has analyzed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/opinion/progressive-sadness.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sadness among progressives</a> and its self-destructive effects. This is not new information.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/woke-people-are-less-happy-it-s-a-fact" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Comments Section with Brett Cooper</a></h4>
Evidence for why the Left’s mental well-being is lower is evident on television, in the news, or on social media: The Left constantly eats their own. They are friendly with you — until they aren’t. You can be the champion of all their current stances and you can wave all the flags, but if you ask one wrong question or so much as step a little bit out of line, they will rip you to shreds. They will cancel you, insult you, and kick you right out of their group, which is the definition of a toxic relationship and an unhealthy environment.
The Left also promulgates a victim-centric attitude, an attitude that leads to mental illness. Psychologists have studied that fact for years, yet that exact attitude has utterly taken hold of our society. The replies to <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1769483261728657609">the Post’s tweet</a> brought up these points over and over.
<div id="attachment_747795" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-747795" class="size-full wp-image-747795" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/23-tr.png" alt="Screenshot. X." width="512" height="260" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/23-tr.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/23-tr-300x152.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot. X.</div>
<div id="attachment_747807" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-747807" class="size-full wp-image-747807" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/24-ty.png" alt="Screenshot. X." width="512" height="213" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/24-ty.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/24-ty-300x125.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot. X.</div>
Meanwhile, the people who quote tweeted told a completely different story than those who replied. They seemed to want out of the comment section to tell their own story without anyone around to disagree with them. For example, one person said that the list of progressive truisms “are also correlated with higher intelligence,” meaning that people who agree with them have a better “understanding of how society and the world works.”
<div id="attachment_747811" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-747811" class="size-full wp-image-747811" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/25-yy.png" alt="Screenshot. X." width="512" height="126" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/25-yy.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/25-yy-300x74.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot. X.</div>
In actuality, science is split on that. On the one hand, numerous reports have been published explaining that intelligent people are miserable and unhappy because of the unbearable weight of the world; on the other, countless reports explain that intelligent people are actually incredibly happy for a myriad of reasons, usually due to their worldview, attitudes, and what they believe in terms of happiness and fulfillment. How an individual chooses to live their life has a great impact on those outcomes.
Another quote tweet said that those who are “aware of the problems” are the ones who will be upset about them.
<div id="attachment_747813" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-747813" class="size-full wp-image-747813" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/26-yu.png" alt="Screenshot. X." width="512" height="75" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/26-yu.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/26-yu-300x44.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot. X.</div>
To be clear, conservatives are not unaware of the problems that exist in our society. We aren’t walking around in ignorant bliss and therefore not upset. Listen to any Republican or conservative give a speech and you’ll hear a Right-winger ragging on about some problem or other. (When this happens, the Left critiques us, saying we are just trying to pull society backwards by disliking everything in the modern world — which is obviously not the case.)
No, it is not that conservatives have not identified problems; rather, conservatives see different problems. We do not find problems for the sake of having a pity party and an opportunity to complain — something which, by and large, is what many people on the Left resort to. Rolling around in self-pity and complaining just to complain create feelings of powerlessness and anger, leaving them spinning in a cycle of victimhood.
People on the Right, however, are realists. I would argue that we are solution-oriented, an attribute critical to happiness. Conservatives and psychologists alike agree on this. We have hope, we’re positive, and we genuinely want conditions to improve. I genuinely care about everybody in this country, and I want them to thrive and be successful, not be dragged down by their own attitude about the world. I hope that for everyone because it benefits our society as a whole.
In an article published in the National Post titled, “<a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/gad-saad-of-course-conservatives-are-happier-they-believe-society-is-worth-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Of Course Conservatives Are Happier — They Believe Society Is Worth It</a>,” well-known Canadian psychologist and professor Gad Saad explains this phenomenon, saying: 
<blockquote>By definition, conservatives believe that there are values, beliefs, attitudes and ideas worth conserving. Hence, they wake up every morning with a sense of existential glee; they recognize that their society, whilst far from perfect, contains many tried and tested ideas worth preserving. Liberals and progressives on the other hand wake up with a dark cloud of existential doom because their society is apparently racist, sexist, transphobic, Islamophobic and ableist. Canada supposedly sits on stolen land. Capitalism is an exploitative system that rapes Mother Earth. We have less than 15 minutes to go because of the existential crisis associated with climate change. Hence, from the perspective of the Noble Progressive, we must dismantle the current system and fight for Unicornia, which lies just around the corner. How could one be happy when there is so much ugliness in the world?</blockquote>
Saad’s contrast of conservatives and progressives is succinct, yet impactful. Conservatives have a hopeful and positive reason to wake up in the morning — and that changes everything. We have goals. We believe in the best of society and the best of what it can be. We have values outside our political ideology, which the Left often does not, and it is those values, like faith and family, that propel us forward and fulfill us. Saad’s acknowledgment that we “believe that there are values, beliefs, attitudes and ideas worth conserving” is accurate, in that we have solid, tried and true values that have stood the test of time. They are far more stable than the values of the Left, which change daily based on their emotions or the current trend. The fact that we have a strong foundation to stand on — that we know what we’re fighting for, that we know what works — speaks volumes.
Perhaps most importantly, we understand and accept personal responsibility, which is something many on the Left lack. We know we are responsible for our own happiness, for our outlook, and for our response to the world around us. We are responsible for our values and the circle of people we surround ourselves with. This is all intertwined with happiness. And while conquering and owning personal responsibility is difficult, it is also incredibly empowering.
Ultimately, that is why we are happier.

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The Key To Creating A Happy Life — And The Science That Proves It

Brett Cooper

Conservatives

Liberals

New York Post

Progressivism

The following excerpt is from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Detrans-Stories-Escaping-Gender-Ideology/dp/1684515017" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Detrans: True Stories Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult</a>, a new book authored by Daily Signal&#8217;s senior reporter <a href="https://x.com/MaryMargOlohan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mary Margaret Olohan</a>. The excerpt has been edited for brevity.
Helena’s lonely late-night shifts working at the cookie shop were giving her plenty of time to think about the choices she had made. “In some ways, it was a bit maddening, but dispersed within the general neuroticism were moments of clarity,” she writes.
“I remember deciding to take my chest binder off at work for the first time, because it was just me and one other worker who always sat in the back, and that f****** thing hurt. It felt so much more natural not to have anything constricting my chest underneath my work shirt.”
And she started skipping testosterone injections, mostly because of how anxious they made her. At this point, she says, she was only injecting herself with testosterone once or twice a month.
And as a result, the frequency of her “episodes” dramatically decreased.
She started wondering what this meant. Why was she feeling better, not worse, when she took less “T”? And what if transitioning wasn’t, in fact, helping her mental health?
That’s a forbidden question in transgender circles, she quickly found. “I remember browsing trans subreddits in hopes I would get some answers for what to do if transitioning wasn’t improving my mental health,” Helena said. “There were many posts asking this question, and by far the most common answer was to ‘just keep going’ and that one day, when you passed well enough, it would all be worth it.”
<div id="attachment_746099" style="width: 359px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-746099" class="wp-image-746099 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/71lxqCJ3CL._SY522_.jpg" alt="Regnery/Skyhorse Publishing." width="349" height="522" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/71lxqCJ3CL._SY522_.jpg 349w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/71lxqCJ3CL._SY522_-201x300.jpg 201w" sizes="(max-width: 349px) 100vw, 349px" />Regnery/Skyhorse Publishing.</div>
Helena began questioning her life choices up to this point. All these things she had done thinking they would “save” her had not done anything of the sort. “The only thing I didn’t outright question was my choice to be transgender,” she writes. “That would require a more up-front reality check.”
Helena started thinking about the comfortable clothing she used to wear before she started her transition process, back when she didn’t have to worry about whether or not her feminine clothes would make people doubt whether she was transgender. She thought about how much she hated the way she looked in men’s clothing (and “the way masculine styles looked on me in general”).
“I also wished I ‘wasn’t trans,’ and even recall making a reddit post to this effect, lamenting how even though ‘being trans’ was making me miserable, I knew it was who I really was and after I got surgeries it would be right for me,” she wrote. “This kind of thinking, I now realize after talking to so many detransitioners, is common in the weeks or months leading up to detransition,” she shared.
Helena’s “a-ha” moment happened in February of 2018. Her friend Jamie, a biological woman who also identified as transgender at the time and with whom Helena was then in a romantic relationship, made a video montage with pictures of Jamie and Helena showing the progression of their relationship since the day they had met — which was two days after Helena started testosterone.
“As I watched the video, I saw the way my face changed from so young, hopeful, and most of all, recognizable, to weary, deadpan, and foreign,” Helena said. “I began to sob uncontrollably,” she recounts.
“At first, Jamie thought I was crying because I loved the video so much, but I quickly informed her it was something else, but I wouldn’t say what. I cried, and cried, and cried. Every memory those photos evoked was flashing before my eyes, all the pain I knew was behind my eyes was emerging vividly. I saw innocence turn to anguish and I knew I had been on the wrong path for a long, long time. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it would be this way. I was just a kid,” she wrote.
“How could I have been so stupid?”
* * *
Copyright © 2024 Mary Margaret Olohan. Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
Note: A portion of this article comes from Helena Kerschner’s Substack, “By Any Other Name,” prude posting, February 19, 2022, <a href="https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name">https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name</a>.
Mary Margaret Olohan is a senior reporter for The Daily Signal and the author of &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Detrans-Stories-Escaping-Gender-Ideology/dp/1684515017">Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult.</a>&#8221; She previously reported for both The Daily Caller and The Daily Wire.
The views expressed in this book excerpt are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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One Detransitioner’s ‘Aha’ Moment

One Detransitioner’s 'Aha' Moment

transgender surgery

Women

Professional <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/golf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">golfer</a> Grayson Murray, the 58th-ranked golfer in the world, died by suicide just a few hours after withdrawing from the Charles Schwab Challenge on Saturday. He was 30 years old.
Murray, who won the 2017 Barbasol Championship and the Sony Open earlier this year, battled anxiety, depression, and alcohol abuse early throughout his young career, CBS Sports <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/golf/news/professional-golfer-grayson-murray-30-dies-after-withdrawing-from-charles-schwab-challenge/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. The pro-golfer from North Carolina said in January that he had been sober since early 2023. Murray was a standout golfer from a young age, becoming the second-youngest golfer to make the cut on the Korn Ferry Tour at just 16 years old.
&#8220;We have spent the last 24 hours trying to come to terms with the fact that our son is gone,&#8221; said Murray&#8217;s parents, Eric and Terry. &#8220;It&#8217;s surreal that we not only have to admit it to ourselves, but that we also have to acknowledge it to the world. It&#8217;s a nightmare.&#8221;
His parents said that he was loved by everyone in his life from family to friends to other golfers to fans.
&#8220;Life wasn&#8217;t always easy for Grayson, and although he took his own life, we know he rests peacefully now,&#8221; the statement said. &#8220;Please respect our privacy as we work through this incredible tragedy, and please honor Grayson by being kind to one another. If that becomes his legacy, we could ask for nothing else.&#8221;
Murray’s death was announced on CBS’ broadcast of the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, with CBS commentator Jim Nantz saying that the PGA Tour offered to Murray’s family to “stop play.”
“The family was, again, adamant that Grayson — and the family — wants the tournament to go on,” Nantz said. “Grayson Murray gone way too soon at the age of 30. It’s a sad day on the PGA Tour.”
After he got sober last year, Murray said his faith and his fiancee helped him battle through.
“It took me a long time to get to this point,” he <a href="https://www.pgatour.com/article/news/latest/2024/01/14/how-grayson-murray-reclaimed-his-life-to-win-sony-open-in-honolulu-hawaii-waialae-country-club" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in January. “… I’m a different man now. I would not be in this position right now today if I didn’t put that drink down eight months ago.”
“People who don’t know me, I’ll have to show it through my actions, and they’ll get back on Grayson’s side,” he added. “My demeanor is so much better. It’s really a lot of fun now. I really don’t live and die by a golf shot anymore. I’m not going to sit here and say it’s going to be all glory and roses, but it’s going to be a lot better.”
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If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to <a href="http://speakingofsuicide.com/resources" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources</a> for a list of additional resources.
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Sony Open in Hawaii – Final Round

Tragic Cause Of Death Revealed For 30-Year-Old PGA Golfer Grayson Murray

Golf

Suicide

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