(*) aka Syndrome of Farquhar-Cosyns
‘lo folks. At noon on Thursday October 21 I was reading my – well, actually my dad’s – newspaper The Daily Crap, in some fringe circles also referred to as "De Standaard". My eyes happened to fall on an article by a compatriot of mine, Mr. Paul Verhaeghen, who, unlike your servant, has the distinct privilege to have a look at the US elections from up close. Indeed, Mr. Verhaeghen happens to be cognitive psychologist at New Yorks Syracuse University.
Mr. Verhaeghens curriculum states that "Current work centers around (a) the influence of speed and executive processes ('levels of action control') on cognitive tasks in the visual and verbal domain; (b) models for age differences in episodic memory; and (c) whatever momentarily captures my fleeting attention."
Photo: Psych On Speed (POS)
Nice, you will say. Tom: "Is he saner than you, Michael?" - Scott: "He's not, Tom, but at least it’s clear he’s not wearing a hairpiece". Har-de-har-har-har.
Hold on a sec.
Paul has written a book. It’s called Omega minor. It is said to be an ambitious project to establish the meaning of World War II, and especially the holocaust, in a wider historical context , to understand it, and to exorcise it. Characters are Paul Andermans, a young experimental psychologist at the University of Potsdam, an old fella by the name of Jozef De Heer on his flat in Berlin, and Nobel Prize Winner Goldfarb, once a participant to the Los Alamos Project. De Standaard’s Literary Chapter described it in april as an "impressive, stately but never long-winded, with great panache written novel". Yawn.
As I was advancing through the article, it slowly dawned upon me Mr. Verhaeghen embedded in himself the priceless potential, at a Shrink School anyway, of being at the same time researcher and research object. Indeed, as the gems of wisdom emanating from this illustrious scientist accumulated throughout the interview, I imagined being a cognitive psychologist at Syracuse University myself and having Mr. Verhaeghen strapped in a tight white vest straight from the Department of Fruit and Cakes and tied on a stainless steel table under the merciless light of a battery of 500W halogen bulbs. In my mind’s eye I could see myself working through an elaborate list of specifically engineered questions aimed at determining the influence of speed (the drug) and professional excesses on cognitive tasks in the visual and verbal domain of Mr. Verhaeghen. For lack of time I decided not to share the purely literary aspects of Mr. Verhaeghens novel with you – after all you are Americans – but instead focus on some of Pauls more challenging viewpoints regarding the US’s role in shaping history. Well, for the moment I won’t bother you anymore with my prose but instead highlight Mr. Verhaeghens superior judgment:
"A lot of literature on the (concentration) camps puts the facts very black-and-white: Germans bad - jews victims. Germans morally inferior - jews morally superior."
"Then you have this group of scientists who are thinking up the atom bomb in the desert of New Mexico. With childish pleasure they are tinkering and completely forget that one day this bomb will be thrown on a city and make hundreds of thousands of innocent victims."
"The same kind of protofascism you had in Germany, you see in what the American government is doing right now: invade a country without good reason – like the Germans did in 1939 with Poland. Only this time it’s not about Lebensraum, but Oelraum – oil. You even get the same kind of images. Hitler let himself be depicted in his general’s uniform, Bush descends from the skies on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit with bulging crotch."
"People are being arrested and held without charge in open air cages far from the American mainland."
"September 11 was horrible, but it was also the Reichstagbrand of Bush."
"It is an eerie parallel, but Hitler came to power because there was very little political counterweight. The only counterweight came from the intelligentsia and the people from the cultural sector".
WHAT DO YOU SAY AMERICA?
Well, not exactly. Any of you jerks out there feel like puking after learning to know how your tax dollars are spent to sustain Mr. Verhaeghens pitiful existence and in a mood to letting this scumbag know what you think of him, email to: pverhaeg@psych.syr.edu
With the compliments of MFBB of course.
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