Disagree with the liberals? Then you’re probably a racist. Here is Deborah C. Tyler writing at American Thinker:
On November 29, while speaking about flag-burning on MSNBC’s Hardball, former U.S. representative Barney Frank said the late Justice Antonin Scalia was “the leading advocate of fag-burning.” The interviewer, Chris Matthews, reacted to the hideous expression with amusement.
Mr. Frank’s image of Scalia as fag-burner dramatically illustrates what psychologists call a relational frame. His absurd and abusive statement is evidence that he is cognitively fused to a relational frame that is contextually functional for him.
For years, left-wing ideologues like Frank have sounded mentally ill, in part because of their outlandish vilification of people they disagree with. The left wing no longer bothers to speak of rulings, writings, or positions. Rather, leftists relate people they disagree with to racism, sexism, and other phobias. Clinically, this can be understood, through Relational Frame Theory (RFT), as mental fusions with hateful relational frames.
No American has witnessed a person being burned alive due to sexual orientation, or even seen images of such an outrage. Even in Islamic areas where homosexual people are publicly put to death, those punishments are not inflicted through burning. The idea that a venerated Supreme Court justice would advocate death by burning is insane. Yet Chris Matthews understood the meaning of Frank’s words and reacted with laughter. This is due to the infinite capacity of the language-based human mind to create and communicate relational frames.
RFT is important in current psychological research because it is the theoretical basis of what are known as “third wave” mindfulness cognitive behavioral therapies. Mindfulness psychotherapies arise from the theory that cognitive rigidity and fusion – the inability to question or detach from negative relational frames about oneself, about others, or about one’s life – is a principal source of human suffering. In this model, left-wing post-election suffering is understood as the result of fusion with irrational, even hateful, relational frames against Trump, his supporters, and his nascent administration.
Read more: American Thinker
