Salon interrupts its usual programming – repeatedly announcing how terrible white people are – to bring us this:

Trump’s assault on the country’s mental health is part of a much larger pattern: the Republican Party and the conservative movement have, for decades, advanced an agenda which has hurt the overall health and well-being of most Americans.

I suspect the “most Americans” bit is doing some heavy lifting there. As we saw recently, those whose minds come undone at the mere thought of Mr Trump – resulting in alcoholism, divorces, the stalking of ex-boyfriends, and sessions with psychiatrists – tend to belong to a fairly specific demographic. One that, oddly enough, includes readers of Salon.

Donald Trump’s negative impact on mental health extends to the intimate sexual lives of many people as well.

We’re told this by Mr Chauncey DeVega, Salon’s politics staff writer, who attempts to bolster his claims by wheeling out some niche expertise:

I recently spoke with Dr Susan Block. “Dr Suzy” is the founder and director of the Dr Susan Block Institute for the Erotic Arts & Sciences.

Okay, then.

Dr Suzy, our high priestess of the erotic arts and sciences, promptly informs us,

Dr Suzy’s pronouncements are varied and numerous, though her train of thought is, it has to be said, not the easiest to follow:

The news media is part of the problem as well. The news is full of stories about bad sex. They don’t really like to talk about good sex. When you have this media obsession with bad sex with the usual “all American” war worship and racism, as well as economic disparities and the way that corporations are in control, it really sucks the life out of a person.

Apparently, the news media and unspecified corporations are behind it all. Stealing our sexual essence, I mean.

Via Darleen, Mary Hudson on the dirty secrets of ‘progressive’ public education:

There was an ethos of hostile resistance. Those who wanted to learn were prevented from doing so. Anyone who “cooperated with the system” was bullied. No homework was done. Students said they couldn’t do it because if textbooks were found in their backpacks, the offending students would be beaten up… I tried everything imaginable to overcome student resistance. Nothing worked. At one point I rearranged the seating to enable the students who wanted to engage to come to the front of the classroom. The principal was informed, and I was reprimanded. This was “discriminatory.” 

Somewhat related, this, this, and the third item here. 

Jonah Goldberg on the immorality of “social justice”: 

Among the myriad problems with this worldview is that individual circumstances are boiled away… Vast abstract categories of human beings are swept up into notions of collective guilt — or victimhood… Traditionally, a person is only supposed to be responsible for the wrongs he or she committed against a specific person. If Person A does something terrible entirely unbeknownst to Person B, it is unjust to hold Person B accountable solely because of the colour of his skin. It’s even more grotesque to hold Person B accountable for the things done by Person A if Person A lived 300 years ago.

Andy Meek on a modern vice: 

Robocallers and spam callers are getting quite good at masking their identity. They do this partly by “spoofing” local numbers, making it seem like a legitimate local number is calling to increase the likelihood that you’ll answer. That’s the reason, according to [caller-ID app] Hiya, that around 9 percent of spam calls a month actually get answered by phone owners even though they don’t recognise the number calling. Nine percent might not sound like much, until you consider the fact that 26.3 billion robocalls were made to American phones in 2018. That’s up 46 percent from 2017’s total of 18 billion.

And via Ace, some news from the world of powerlifting, an activity we don’t often cover here:

“Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.”

In no way related to anything seen above.

This made me chuckle. I’m not sure whether Nancy Pelosi has much control over her face, so her expressions can be quite difficult to read; though I’m guessing her applause was not entirely enthusiastic. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, was less inscrutable.

Via Darleen in the comments, a tale of coal dust and woe: 

A few weeks ago, I attended a holiday party at a downtown Phoenix restaurant. I walked around to view the photographs on the wall. Then a photograph caught my attention.

This one here, since you ask. 

Friends said, “It’s coal miners at a pub after work.” It was a photograph of coal miners with blackened faces. I asked a Latinx and white woman for their opinion. They said it looked like coal miners at a pub after work. Then they stepped back, frowned and said it’s men in blackface.

The author, incidentally, a “poet and essayist” named Rashaad Thomas, seems determined to racially categorise every person who features in his tiny drama. And so, we’re informed, pointedly, that this person is white, and this other person is not.

I spoke with a white restaurant owner. I explained to him why the photograph was offensive.

He was white, you see. Be careful not to trip over the implications.  

Yet the photograph remained on the wall.

Feel his pain, you heathens.

My concern that the photograph of men in blackface was a threat to me and my face and voice were [sic] ignored.

For once, rather surprisingly, the world did not bend to the demands of a whiny, racially neurotic narcissist.

A business’ photograph of men with blackened faces culturally says to me, “Whites Only.” It says people like me are not welcome.

If we peel away the affectations of racial victimhood, clung to so tightly, and instead take “people like me” to denote something more specific – say, a poet of limited talent whose every other tweet mentions race, who refers, seemingly without irony, to “Amer’KKKa,” and who claims that an old photo of coal miners drinking beer threatens his wellbeing – then Mr Thomas may be onto something.