Time for a quick flick through Scary Mommy, where left-leaning ladies are “supporting each other through laughter and empowerment.”

I have clinical anxiety.

But of course.

My current fixation happens to be a home invasion… My house is nigh on impossible, according to my husband, to break into. However, I can’t stop thinking about it.

No explanation is offered by the author, Elizabeth Broadbent, as to possible causes, but the fixation with “scary men breaking into my home” entails lots of weeping – “tears and breakdowns” are a recurring theme – and the purchase of many things.

My husband has had to buy any number of security items. A raging liberal who believes no one has any reason to own anything but a permitted shotgun for hunting, I’ve contemplated buying a pistol. These thoughts will not go away… So I down another Klonopin and wait.

Oh, come on. It’s Scary Mommy. You knew some kind of mood-stabilising medication would crop up sooner or later. Other unhappy preoccupations include recurring thoughts of an expired husband:

I laid in bed imagining different ways he could meet his demise.

And,

After the birth of my third son, I became convinced that his head would fall off.

Okay, then.

That’s when… they upped my meds.

At which point, readers may wish to ponder just how often ladies of the left feel a need to list their mental health problems, as if engaged in some kind of competition, while demanding that the rest of us aspire to their greatness, emulate their lifestyles, and do as they say.

A third-grade teacher at R.I. Meyerholz Elementary School began the lesson on “social identities” during a math class.

But of course. You see, for some primary-school teachers, conveying the basics of arithmetic and fractions isn’t sufficiently sexy or particularly statusful. Marxoid pronouncements on “power and privilege,” however, and sermons on how straight white men are oppressing everyone else, are much more flattering to the ego of a leftist educator.

And after all, those pretentious resentments, the ones you hope to exploit, won’t cultivate themselves. Oh, and apparently, transgenderism and “nonbinary sexuality” are suitable classroom topics for the modern eight-year-old.

What, you didn’t know?

Nor did the parents.

Update, via the comments, where Karen adds,

Today’s word is ‘fraud’.

Given the apparent indifference to parental approval – one might call it subterfuge – you do have to wonder exactly how much class time has been wasted on ‘projects’ of this kind. Or would have been, had parents not discovered what their children were actually being taught instead of mathematics.

And it is, I think, interesting just how often these things occur without the knowledge or consent of the parents whose children are being indoctrinated and psychologically abused, as if such details didn’t matter. As if the children weren’t theirs.

Note too how readily parental umbrage is framed as “divisive.” As if the problem were the parents, not the ideologically possessed educators.

She chose to share, and thereby impress. Pronouns, obviously.

Update, via the comments:

Given Ms Vilkomerson’s ostentatiously woke outpourings elsewhere, I think we can assume that, whether true or fabricated, said tweet was intended to both amuse and be met with approval. A bit of peer-group positioning, The key part being the modish dismissal of “white boys.” (Sort of, “See, I’ve taught my daughter to disdain whiteness and masculinity. How brave I am.”) That said tweet conveys other things, and unintended ironies, seems to have escaped Ms Vilkomerson.

As public boasts go, it’s quite a strange thing. I mean, you can imagine a proud parent announcing that their fourteen-year-old had passed a chemistry exam or reached piano grade three or something. But wanting to announce that your fourteen-year-old has internalised pretentious disdain for white people, and white men in particular, seems… obnoxiously unhinged. That this is apparently something statusful, a basis for applause, or at least in-group belonging, does not make it seem less so.

Via Rafi.

My son needed masks that wouldn’t make him lose his shit when his favourite isn’t clean,

Yes, we’re once again visiting the pages of Scary Mommy, home of progressive parenting and assorted “empowerment.” But don’t worry, the stroppy son in question, the one losing his shit, is a juvenile, a tween, not a grown adult. Unlike his mother, Amber Leventry, who shares with us an account of a shopping expedition. It is, needless to say, a tale of sorrow and trauma:

We loaded ourselves into the van, and while getting out at our first stop, we heard horns honking and engines revving. We looked around to see if there was an old-fashioned car rally that happens in our town once in a while.

Brace yourselves, dear readers.

This was a different car rally but with people with very old-fashioned ideas about what makes America great.

You may wish to grip your chair arms as the world spirals out of control.

My queer family was witnessing a Trump parade, and would end up being stuck in the middle of it while running our errands.

Woke hell is real, people.

“Idiots,” I muttered, and became instantly angry at the pride and self-righteousness with which Trump supporters carry themselves—so much so that they organise themselves to drive through towns to wave their giant Trump flags, honk their horns, and hang out of windows to cheer for a man who breeds and encourages bigotry and violence.

Quite why supporting the current President of the United States necessarily entails being “old-fashioned” is not deemed worthy of elaboration. Nor is it clear how said incumbent “breeds and encourages bigotry and violence.” No clues are volunteered. These things simply are, apparently.

It was shocking how similar all of the people looked: white, middle-aged and older, and seemingly male.

No bigotry there, thank goodness. What with them all looking so similar and being so terribly male. Well, not quite all:

Like lots of women I know, I have anxiety. And, like lots of women I know, my anxiety manifests itself in ways that are unique to me. Namely, my strongest attacks occur in my sleep. 

In the pages of Scary Mommy, a publication all about “empowerment,” Michaela Brown shares a tale of adversity and heroism: 

The other night was particularly rough. I shot up in bed, heart pounding, feeling terrified and not knowing where I was… It took me several minutes to calm my mind and slow my heart rate before I could comfortably lie back down again.

It’s all rather dramatic. One wonders what the cause of such nocturnal torments might be. The coronavirus pandemic is mentioned in passing, along with an allergy-prone son. But these things, it turns out, are manageable and routine, and merely a prelude to the real sleep-shattering trauma.

What’s causing the latest round of panic in my sound-asleep mind?

You may want to clutch the arms of your chair.

My paperwork for my absentee ballot had arrived in the mail that day.

Which is to say,

It’s the election. That’s my primary source of anxiety right now, and I don’t know how to turn it off. Because I’m fucking terrified of Trump winning again. 

Not merely terrified, you understand, but fucking terrified. A fear capable of inducing rhetorical incontinence and a chronic loss of sleep.

And not like the anxiety I felt in 2016—that was nothing compared to these fears. That anxiety barely scratched the surface of what 2020 feels like. 

Once again, it occurs to me that politics really shouldn’t occupy that much space in a person’s life. It isn’t the kind of stuff a life should be filled with, such that it dominates one’s outlook and everyday activity, even one’s dreams. The result is very often a kind of bad mental opera.