Steven Parmenius

     Here is something I share with Trump supporters at least according to the David Pakman show: I am, by an official (and to me a bit arcane) clinical diagnoses (for which I have an official medical prescription, Quetiapine), a psychotic.Don’t worry. I am more than fine these days thanks to medical science: a point I’m sure you pro-science people will appreciate. Anyone who knows me can attest that I function reasonably well both personally and professionally and that my current problems and frustrations are only the ordinary human problems and frustrations. I am, for this reason, a bit bemused when the David Pakmans of the world constantly refer to diagnostic categories like ‘psychosis’ in their attempts to label Trump conservatives and other ‘deplorables’. Also, from puzzling out my own ‘diagnoses’ I am well aware, as Mr. Pakman seems not to be, that words like ‘psychosis’ do not have clear-cult, simple clinical meanings that can be translated directly into ordinary political dis

  Abduction is inference to the best explanation. The best explanation is the one that, all things being equal, is the most plausible. What makes an explanation plausible has many factors which I will not list here but will advert to as we go forward. Please note that the most plausible explanation CAN be overturned later if an even more plausible one emerges. The best explanation is the best one we currently have and if we need to make decisions it is the best current explanation we need to rely on. As a case in point let’s consider the question of who stormed the Capitol Building: this is so clear a case of how to use abduction to reach a conclusion that it is an excellent teaching moment as we profs like to say! By considering a quirky conspiracy theory, we can see how abductive reasoning is used in the world. Most people employ abduction quickly and casually and don’t really advert consciously to the steps involved. This corresponds to how people use modus ponens to board the bus w

  On the very day her prophetic dreams came crashing to earth and her righteous, godly cause fizzled ignobly in a spastic riot, Kelly Marie donned her queen bee hat and put on a prophetic performance for the ages ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4eGLlFLlWg&fbclid=IwAR1p3cSU78WqEjMDuUPu844OD2kmVMP3LWJ9YZv0oMgaToeauQMb-Skyc3I ).   I don’t say this lightly or sarcastically. Judged aesthetically this is one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever heard. If I were still doing my radio show on weird Americana I would certainly play a portion of it. Indeed, I would have to select highlights for Kelly Marie keeps this up for over three hours. I once had Kelly Marie pegged as a backwoods Homer but she is also, it seems, a backwoods Wagner! This very stamina might indicate some manic possession or, to use the kinder old fashioned phrase, poetic frenzy. To her followers, of course, it is the divine madness of the prophet. Yet, and this is the interesting point, it is a madness that leaves t

  Kelly Marie seems to have no last name but she does have a remarkably flamboyant website (https://abbasministry.com/). Situated at her mike, phone in hand for ready reference, stationed before a giant pink and purple Aslan, she is hands down my favorite You Tube prophet. [1] She is of course AGGRESSIVELY pro Trump but that is not what I will be focusing on. Nor will I be addressing the strange amalgam of Evangelical Christianity, holistic healing and new age nostrum that is her website though I wish I could! I will however address the one thing I have no doubt you are all thinking about and that is her mental health and that of people like her. Anyone watching Kelly Marie would put her instantly in the category ‘crazy’ (I know David Pakman would) but I have seen enough of her prophetic performances to have determined that whatever is wrong with her ‘crazy’ does not cover it. I believe this is clinically true for her behavior is culturally coded and is, in the community in which sh