I have to confess to being a lifelong “denier.” At a very tender age, I recognized that pretty much every authority figure I interacted with was deeply flawed. When you’re a critical thinker, your curiosity being countered with “ours is not to question why, ours is just to do and die” or “do as I say, not as I do,” will not satisfy your intellect.
As I’ve alluded to here before, my brother’s traumatic high school incident, which occurred when I was just seven years old, and for extra dramatic effect took place on the same day as the JFK assassination- November 22, 1963, triggered my skepticism about all authority. I heard my father rage against the injustice system, and how he had no chance at fighting the forces aligned against my hapless brother. I didn’t really understand politics yet, but I became a second grade radical. I started questioning teachers, most of whom I had little respect for. I disputed most of my grades, which were never good enough in my eyes. My mother, always my steadfast defender, would faithfully stand behind me. My father was preoccupied with drinking heavily and losing his long battle with the world. I quickly learned that questioning teachers, like questioning anyone in a position of power, did not win you any popularity contests.
Betrayal At Bethesda: …
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I noticed, once I hit middle school, how popularity was baked into the hierarchy of the school system. The teachers fawned over the most popular kids. This was even more obvious in high school, where popular kids become de facto celebrities in their little ponds. Thus, it was only natural that I would eventually write a book like Bullyocracy: How the Social Hierarchy Enables Bullies to Rule Schools, Workplaces, and Society at Large. Researching all those sad stories reinforced my earliest negative impressions of teachers and school administrators. I was never a bullied child, but I don’t know how any of those tragic victims of bullying and a system that refuses to hold bullies accountable, could help but become School Deniers. I was certainly an early School Denier myself. Sure, lack of ambition contributed as well, but that’s the primary reason I didn’t apply to a genuine four year college. I denied the value of “education.”
As I drifted aimlessly at a dead end blue collar job, I relished in my unsuccessful status. I wore it as some kind of twisted badge of honor. I bonded with the truly diverse cast of characters, toiling in obscurity in the basement of a huge hospital system. I quickly contracted Supervisor Denial. Management Denial. Director Denial. Administrator Denial. They hadn’t invented the term “CEO” yet, or I would perhaps have been the Patient Zero for CEO Denial. I complained incessantly, and showed absolutely no respect for any of my “superiors.” I rightfully objected to the term “superior.” So because someone is a higher “grade” than me, and makes more money, he is “superior” in some sense? When some supervisory figure told me to tuck my shirt in, I’d roll my eyes, tuck it in briefly, then tuck it out again when he was out of sight. I was a pathfinder in the untucked shirt movement. Now everyone does it.
Because I worked around so many of them, and found them generally to be a rather haughty bunch, I developed real Nurse Denial. This became awkward because I was engaged to a registered nurse at the time. She didn’t really appreciate all my snide comments about nurses being stuck up, lazy, and uncaring. It’s a good thing we didn’t marry. Even worse was my Doctor Denial. I despised every one of them. They literally would not acknowledge the existence of the blue collar basement dwellers like me. We were as invisible as Bigfoot to them. Eventually these two would meld into Hospital Denial. Although I worked in one for many years, I came to view hospitals as prisons, with the patients playing the role of inmates. There’s obviously an extensive death row in every hospital. But I really enjoyed my fellow low level workers. We weren’t divided really by race or anything else, as we scoffed at our very real common enemy.
When I passed the real estate board exams, and became a realtor, I entered a different world. The white collar crowd. I was still the same, but my personality didn’t quite click with the top selling agents and hardcore brokers. I grew to see that much of real estate business is pure luck. Attractive older women, very often former high school cheerleaders, turning their natural bubbliness and wealthy husband’s backing into quick sales. One wife of an army general put up about a dozen sales and listings in her first month at our company- more than I’d had all year. But then I didn’t have a general with a whole pyramid of “underlings” who would be anxious to curry favor by hiring the general’s wife to buy or sell their home. I grew naturally resentful, having to deal with the most desperate and dubious buyers, gleaned from phone desk duty. None of my friends could buy any home. So I contracted Million Dollar Agent Denial.
When I entered the world of Information Technology, I really didn’t fall victim to any new case of Denial. The IT world was certainly closer to real estate than my physical labor job in the hospital basement had been, but most of the people were pretty cool. Sure, there was always my chronic Management Denial, but that is going to follow me everywhere. I’ve just found very few management types that were worth listening to. Most of the time, it was difficult not to burst into laughter at their ridiculous babbling. I told myself that it was no accident that things were so screwed up wherever you looked, because the wrong people seem to be in charge all over the world. As Charles Dickens described them over 150 years ago; Experts in How Not to Get it Done. Dickens would have a field day with any modern corporation or government agency. He would have been a real asset to DOGE.
Stand Strong: 365 Devo…
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Yes, I probably have more Denial syndromes than most people. Well, maybe almost all people. But this whole labeling of a particular opinion as a “denial,” to categorize it as some kind of mental illness, should trouble us all. It began with Holocaust Denial. People in other countries have been imprisoned for “denying” the Holocaust. That is, for disputing the official narrative by questioning the numbers and Hollywoodish extermination program. I’m no Nazi, but it seems like it would have been a lot easier, and cheaper, just to shoot them all. Then, with the advent of the Greatest Psyop in the History of the World, and the 2020 election, two new maladies took center stage. COVID Denial, which I of course was guilty of from the moment they first started talking about Chinese pedestrians dropping dead in the street. And then came Election Denial. That’s a strange one, because the “denial” only applies to that particular election. Which was the “most secure” one in history, they assure us.
Sometimes, they mix it up with absurd “phobias,” rather than invent another “denial.” Homophobia was the first. I never understood that. Sure, it’s easy to be prejudiced against homosexuals in terms of not necessarily wanting to be friends with them. Or to cringe when two middle-aged men cuddle or French kiss in a movie or commercial. But “phobia” means fear. I don’t know many men who are scared of homosexuality. Well, except perhaps for all those conservative Republican elected officials, who turned out to be gay themselves. So maybe it’s a rare disorder confined to those who shield their own sexual preferences by lashing out at gays. And now we have “transphobia.” Now I do kind of understand the fear there. I’m scared of seeing this kind of real mental illness be mainstreamed. I fear seeing photos of smiling little girls with their insane mothers and evil doctors, flashing their Frankenstein chest scars. Luckily, I haven’t seen any photos of little boys with their scars. I couldn’t handle that.
