Clarissa's Blog

As a postscriptum to the preceding post, I want to draw your attention to the deep similarities between the two most recent big online debates. 

The Burrito Debate and the Postpartum Psychosis Debate are similar in that they are organized around a conflict between the people who feel passionately and deeply sorry for themselves and the people who want to get them to snap out of it. 

A discussion of a complete stranger they’ve never met (Lindsey Clancy and the TPUSA burrito student) prompts them to switch the conversation to their own perceived victimhood. So does any attempt to talk about the larger trends in inflation or the use of mental health defense in the criminal justice system.

To put it more bluntly, these are people who cannot engage with any topic without trying to privatize it. There is no society or community on their mental horizon. There is only an overinflated, sore ego that explodes like a pustule with any touch.

What we see in these debates is a confrontation between people with only partially and people with a fully neoliberalized sense of self.

Such debates are impossible to resolve because they are not really about the topic they purport to address. You either can accept that there are things that go beyond your personal, private experience, or you find that idea intolerable.