Month: December 2011

A reader writes:

I find it interesting the number of articles related to sexual behaviors and the counterpoint of marriage monogamy. I recently have had to deal with something that hit home in a very serious and disturbing way.  My wife recently had a sexual encounter with a random stranger, within an hour of meeting him.  This was, and is, extremely disturbing to me. I am not religious but do believe in the power that comes from monogamy.  We have a fairly healthy marriage, three children, and a relatively reasonable lifestyle.  My wife had never been with another man previous to me and had been 100% faithful since our vows.  So how in the hell does this happen?

Well, it turns out, she is bipolar.

Previously in therapy and diagnosed as ADD and clinically depressed, she gets to be in the special club of 80% of all bipolar patients being misdiagnosed.  Her behavior decidedly impacted our marriage over the years and most recently, after a miscarriage in April, spun into an ugly summer-long hypomanic episode.  This led to her disconnecting her emotions to myself, our children, her marriage, and her life. She also has the wonderful symptom of hypersexuality (every man's dream … yeah right).  These are all symptoms of the root disorder which is bipolar disorder (a woefully over diagnosed but, ironically, woefully misdiagnosed serious mental illness).

My wife and I are working through the horror this mental illness has brought upon us.  I am feeling confident we will make it through.  However, her sexual encounter and opportunity – and the reason why it even had an opportunity to arise – was the result of her mental illness.  She is not a sex addict; she is not ADD; she is not clinically depressed but she has all these symptoms due to a spectrum mental illness.

There should be no doubt that irregular behavior is the result of distorted realities brought on the individual due to mental illness.  These behaviors can become manifest due to nurture or life events (PTSD comes to mind but it is more like diabetes).  Whether the person knows about it or does or does not accept what their disorder is does not make it any less real or prevent it from running its course. 

People can be "sex addict" skeptics if they choose to be.  I suppose we can all look at empirical data and deny its existence, instead chalking it up to conscience decisions, poor judgement, poor character, and low moral standards – but that really is just not true.  Maybe it's true in high school – when many of us make most of our judgements on the whole human race, when everyone is a bit unstable. But when folks make it to 30 or 40 years old and continue this behavior – ruining their lives and relationships – it is not because they choose to be this way.  In fact, they do not want to but, like any addict (in this case, folks addicted to chemicals in their brains), they cannot stop the compulsions that drive them.

My wife is mentally ill.  She is crazy.  It caused her to self-destruct and behave outside of her character.  She has nearly lost her family, her self-image, and her husband.  No reasonable person behaves this way without being mentally ill and, I assure you as the forgiver, it is not a "get out of jail free" card.  It's something far more evil and frightening: the acceptance of being mentally ill for the rest of your life.

Timothy Garton Ash considers the question:

You see your neighbour's two-year-old daughter being savaged by his rottweiler. What do you do? If you are able to, you jump over the fence and beat the dog off with a stout stick, or shoot it with your gun. You may take a special interest in the little girl's future from then on, but she doesn't become your daughter, you don't "own" her. No more does the west "own" Libya just because it made a limited, justified intervention there.

(Photo: A member of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) shows journalists remnants of arms and unexploded weaponry being collected as part of an NTC campaign in Tajura, about 30 kms east of Tripoli, on November 16, 2011. In Benghazi, officers and soldiers from the former Libyan regime gathered on November 15 to name a new military chief and relaunch a national army, but the attempt ended in quarrelling amid widespread divisions. By Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images.)

An expert on the base's mind – since he helped create it – Gingrich is a natural current Republican whereas Romney merely seems to be playing one. This is a great line from a must-read by Elias Isquith:

Really, he is today’s GOP: white, male, wealthy, Southern, pension-aged, devout, and, perhaps most importantly, unapologetically combative.

In the campaign for the president of talk radio, he's miles ahead. But his genius flattery of his audience and cooptation of their total contempt for Obama is where he soars.

The GOP elites sound like me:

"Winning the presidency is all about discipline, focus, and organization," said one Republican Insider, "none of which are strong suits for Gingrich." "With Newt, we go to bed every night thinking that tomorrow might be the day he implodes," said another Republican. "Not good for our confidence – or fundraising."

A third Republican stated plainly, "Gingrich is not stable enough emotionally to be the nominee – let alone, the president." "Newt can't take the scrutiny," agreed a Democrat, "and he has the personality of an angry badger."

Jonathan Bernstein uses this survey as evidence that Gingrich won't be the nominee:

As more party actors hear negative things about Gingrich from sources they trust, they’ll quickly lose what little enthusiasm they currently have for him. After that, it will almost certainly filter down to rank-and-file voters. The Newt moment just is not likely to last very long. Too many top conservatives just want nothing to do with the guy. And for good reason.

But do those top conservatives include Roger Ailes or Rupert Murdoch? I don't think Bret Baier's going on Bill O'Reilly to diss Romney's off-camera attitude was an accident.

Brian Ulrich urges them to work with the Muslim Brotherhood:

[T]he liberal parties, who are losing badly because they are simply badly underdeveloped and without a long history of arguing their message in society, should consider their common ground with the Muslim Brotherhood and the prospects for forming a coalition with them rather than leave the salafis are their only willing partners. The MB, for its part, has expressed an openness to this, denied rumors they are tacitly allied with the salafis, and even advertised their willingness to put Christians in high-profile positions. The way forward for those disappointed today is not to become political insurgents in league with the SCAF, but to [accept] the results of 2011 so as to make sure they have a chance to do better in future elections.

Getting smashed:

Michael Brendan Dougherty defends Huntsman's campaign strategy:

The Huntsman campaign decided early to concede Iowa, believing with good reason at the time that someone like Michelle Bachman or Rick Santorum would win that state. (Bachmann did with the Iowa straw poll.) Romney had done the same thing. Huntsman was trying to force himself into a battle for Mitt Romney's supporters. But Romney has held steady until recently. This was a plausible strategy. Huntsman could not "out-conservative" Michelle Bachmann or Rick Santorum who have an almost tribal identification with the party's base. But now Huntsman can "out-conservative" Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich - both of whom are technocrats at heart who have been on both sides of most important issues. 

Here's hoping. Huntsman's campaign has not been flawless, but he remains easily the most accomplished and impressive presidential candidate for the GOP, even as Ron Paul remains the most impressive from a consistently libertarian perspective. 

Gingrich proposed giving illegal immigrants who have been in US for 25 years a chance to stay legally. Pew helpfully looks at how long illegal immigrants have been in the country:

Nearly two-thirds of the 10.2 million unauthorized adult immigrants in the United States have lived in this country for at least 10 years and nearly half are parents of minor children …

Adam Serwer analyzes:

It's unclear whether "been here for 25 years and has kids" is exactly the criteria for immigrants to whom Gingrich is prepared to offer relief, but the Pew survey suggests millions might be eligible even under those terms. And any solution involving "millions" is probably way more than the immigration restrictionist GOP base is willing to support. 

Fred Barnes (via Timothy Dalrymple) compares marriage equality and abortion:

Foes of gay rights are now seen by the press as fighting the bad war, roughly analogous to Vietnam. Pro-lifers are waging the good war, like World War II. "You get much less grief fighting against abortion than you do fighting to preserve traditional marriage," says Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List.

David French rushes to re-brand the fight against marriage equality. Too late. What's striking to me is how there is basically no real gap between the under-30s and the older generations on abortion. On marriage, there's a huge gap, but the seniors are actually narrowing it by moving more quickly into the pro-equality camp. Jonah Goldberg, on the other hand, thinks marriage equality has already won:

When it comes to gay marriage and abortion, regardless of the merits behind the various arguments, I think the gay-marriage advocates have largely won the battle of casting their cause as a rights issue. It is certainly the strongest argument for gay marriage whether you’re ultimately persuaded by it or not. Abortion’s a tougher case to cast as a straightforward rights issue, even if the "reproductive rights" forces insist it’s crystal clear. The right to life trumps the right to choose, at least for many people. Again, I don’t want to rehearse what are obviously well-worn arguments, but if you oppose same-sex marriage it seems to me that you have to deal with opponents’ strongest arguments not their weakest ones.

I agree with both David Brooks and Paul Krugman today, which is not very common. Brooks is dead right that rewarding bad fiscal behavior by bailing out Southern Europe while penalizing good governance by countries like Holland and Germany is a horrible example of moral hazard. The key to fiscal disicpline is fiscal discipline, period.

But that isn't the actual crisis we are now facing. Krugman is being proven right. If Merkel gets her way, Europe is on the edge of a major deflationary spiral. What this could do to the euro area, the entire EU (Britain is by no means immune), and the US is alarming. If that were to happen alongside the euro disintegrating, we have the most serious crisis in Europe since the Second World War. At this point, you do what you have to do, as Paulson and Bush did in 2008. The far-right euro-skeptic Ambrose Evans Pritchard makes the case:

Yes, Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty makes it illegal to purchase government bonds directly. The article is absurd. It is a fundamental design-flaw of monetary union.

But the ECB is already flouting the rules in the worst possible way by buying the bonds of states in trouble, and doing so incompetently at €8bn a week — enough to scare residual bondholders by reducing them to junior creditors (below the ECB) without being enough to solve the problem. The policy is idiotic.

What they should be doing is quantitative easing, which is perfectly legal under EU treaty rules and the bank's mandate. Doesn't the ECB's twin pillar doctrine say that M3 money should be growing at 4.5pc? Well it is not doing so. It contracted in October, month-on-month. So get on with it.

The crisis can undoubtedly be halted immediately by the ECB. The bank can reflate Club Med off the reefs. It chooses not to act for political reasons because this mean higher inflation for Germany. That is the dirty secret. Everybody must be crucified to keep German internal inflation under 2pc.

Today, Merkel told the Bundestag that fiscal union was underway – to ensure future spending is controlled in the euro area. Maybe this is the condition required for the ECB to do for Europe what the Fed has for the US. It's just hard to see how such a stringent fiscal union can be created in time; and how more short-term austerity might be self-defeating.

Britain, which aggressively tackled its debt problem early, is showing the result. The Coalition government has seen its growth targets drop to near-double-dip levels, and the new debt thereby acquired is requiring more years of future cuts, as Osborne admitted in his autumn statement this week. A deflationary debt spiral is far too close for comfort. If cutting debt destroys growth and then adds more debt, requiring more austerity, we're in a great deal of trouble. I understand why the Brits did what they did, and they have escaped a run on sterling. But in comparison, the American gradualism of Obama is looking like a shrewder response to the crisis.