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How brainwashing works: I began my formal research in 1999, eight years after battling my way out of a secret, so-called Marxist-Leninist group whose leader controlled my life in its most intimate details. He determined what I wore: a version of the advice in John Molloys bestseller Dress for Success (1975), featuring tailored blue suits and floppy red silk bowties. More significantly, he decided when I could marry, and whether I might have children. The leaders decrees were passed down via memos typed on beige notepaper and hand-delivered to me by my contact. Because I was a low-ranked member, the leader remained unknown to me. I joined this Minneapolis-based group, called The Organization (The O) believing I was to contribute to their stated goal of social justice, a value instilled in me by my family.

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Julian Assange is a staunch supporter of free speech except when its about him: WikiLeakss young spokesperson in those early days, James Ball, has recounted how Assange tried to force him to sign a nondisclosure statement that would result in a 12 million penalty if it were breached. [I was] woken very early by Assange, sitting on my bed, prodding me in the face with a stuffed giraffe, immediately once again pressuring me to sign, Ball wrote. Assange continued to pester him like this for two hours. Assanges impulse towards free speech, according to Andrew OHagan, the erstwhile ghostwriter of Assanges failed autobiography, is only permissible if it adheres to his message. His pursuit of governments and corporations was a ghostly reverse of his own fears for himself. That was the big secret with him: he wanted to cover up everything about himself except his fame.

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Revisiting Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy at 60: His working class world is one in which people may well be living intuitively, habitually, verbally, drawing on myth, aphorism and ritual which makes them sound practically Lawrentian yet are also prone to cruelty and dirt of a gratuitously debasing coarseness. That Hoggart can be so even-handed towards a social class that simultaneously entices and repels him is a mark of his inseparability from the things he is writing about and the moral attitudes at their core.

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Emily Dickinsons hope.

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Matisses objects.

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Chuck Palahniuks coloring books.

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Essay of the Day:

If you didnt read The New Atlantiss blockbuster report on gender and sexuality this past fall, you should. Theyve published a follow-up on the problems of treating gender dysphoria by suppressing puberty. Here are a couple of snippets:

In 2016, the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group, partnered with the American Academy of Pediatrics the nations most prominent professional organization for pediatricians and the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians to publish a guide for families of transgender children. The guide says that to prevent the consequences of going through a puberty that doesnt match a transgender childs identity, healthcare providers may use fully reversible medications that put puberty on hold. Delaying puberty, according to the guide, gives the child and family time to explore gender-related feelings and options.

Reading these various guidelines gives the impression that there is a well-established scientific consensus about the safety and efficacy of the use of puberty-blocking agents for children with gender dysphoria, and that parents of such children should think of it as a prudent and scientifically proven treatment option. But whether blocking puberty is the best way to treat gender dysphoria in children remains far from settled and it should be considered not a prudent option with demonstrated effectiveness but a drastic and experimental measure.

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The use of puberty suppression and cross-sex hormones for minors is a radical step that presumes a great deal of knowledge and competence on the part of the children assenting to these procedures, on the part of the parents or guardians being asked to give legal consent to them, and on the part of the scientists and physicians who are developing and administering them. We frequently hear from neuroscientists that the adolescent brain is too immature to make reliably rational decisions, but we are supposed to expect emotionally troubled adolescents to make decisions about their gender identities and about serious medical treatments at the age of 12 or younger. And we are supposed to expect parents and physicians to evaluate the risks and benefits of puberty suppression, despite the state of ignorance in the scientific community about the nature of gender identity.

The claim that puberty-blocking treatments are fully reversible makes them appear less drastic, but this claim is not supported by scientific evidence. It remains unknown whether or not ordinary sex-typical puberty will resume following the suppression of puberty in patients with gender dysphoria. It is also unclear whether children would be able to develop normal reproductive functions if they were to withdraw from puberty suppression. It likewise remains unclear whether bone and muscle development will proceed normally for these children if they resume puberty as their biological sex. Furthermore, we do not fully understand the psychological consequences of using puberty suppression to treat young people with gender dysphoria.

Read the rest.

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Photo: Kites

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Poem: Susan Donnelly: Mrs. Maher's Iron

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Prufrock: How Brainwashing Works, Julian Assange's Nihilism, and Emily Dickinson's Hope - The Weekly Standard