KAN YAY OR KAN NAY? (The Kanye West Thread)

version

Well-known member
There's no politically convenient way for mainstream liberalism to neatly separate his behaviour from his illness, but people will try because they can only uphold their commitment to mental health awareness when someone's mental health issues stay within certain boundaries and don't come into conflict with their other commitments.
 

maxi

Well-known member
if you have a friend who's an alcoholic, it's a disease and you want to help them. but then one day they come to a bbq at your parents house and turn up wasted and start smashing your mum's china, and you might not want to be friends with them after that even though you still sympathise and it's in large part caused by the disease
 

maxi

Well-known member
Im not saying I know the right approach exactly, but having a commitment to mental health awareness doesn't mean excusing all behaviour caused by that illness surely
 

maxi

Well-known member
but actually I suppose that's what you're saying version - that there's no balance or nuance in the public reaction
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It's also the fact it's happening on a public stage and he has an influential voice -- so him saying antisemitic things and the stuff about George Floyd and god knows what else is actually potentially dangerous.
 

version

Well-known member
I think you have to accept he's both mentally ill and behaving unacceptably and that the messiness of that combination is going to be uncomfortable.

Ideally someone would step in, take him out of the spotlight and get him some treatment, but it's complicated by his being a powerful public figure seemingly surrounded by no shortage of enablers.
 

version

Well-known member
Im not saying I know the right approach exactly, but having a commitment to mental health awareness doesn't mean excusing all behaviour caused by that illness surely

This is what I mean though. He's mentally ill and everyone knows he's mentally ill, but there's no framework for publicly acknowledging that whilst also condemning his behaviour as mentioning the former's seen as hindering the latter.

Anything which complicates the discussion is read as excusing the behaviour rather than describing the situation.

What you end up with is a mental illness contingent on public sentiment. A mental illness which exists as long as it remains palatable.
 

sus

Well-known member
What you end up with is a mental illness contingent on public sentiment. A mental illness which exists as long as it remains palatable.
Unfortunately this describes just about every bourgeois moral system. E.g. I remember how quickly "Shut up and listen to POCs" flew out the door when a POC opened his mouth and said something reactionary about race.
 

sus

Well-known member
Two things I really hate: morals of convenience and false friends. The types of people who say “mental illness doesn’t do that” are the types to profess support for those with psychiatric disorders, but only when it’s easy, when the mentally ill are doing the socially approved things like talking to themselves on the subway. Which of course means that they are no friend to the mentally ill at all; support only means something when it comes at a cost. In its magisterial simplicity, social justice politics has created a vision of the mentally ill as unblemished and blameless children who are easy to exonerate because they never did anything wrong. But to spend time in a psychiatric facility is to hear the n-word, to meet people who have committed domestic violence, to confront the many forms of brokenness within the human race. It’s not cinematic. Nobody’s there who hasn’t done genuinely unfortunate things. That’s what mental illness actually is, not aesthetically-pleasing movie madness but grubby, dirty instability.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
There's no politically convenient way for mainstream liberalism to neatly separate his behaviour from his illness, but people will try because they can only uphold their commitment to mental health awareness when someone's mental health issues stay within certain boundaries and don't come into conflict with their other commitments.
This links in with a lot of discussion around terrorism. Some white supremacist does something terrible, and right-wing commentary is all lone-wolf this and mental-illness that, while ignoring the obvious ideological element. Their mirror image is the progressive voices who concentrate solely on the ideology while ignoring the - often pretty blatant - mental-illness aspect, often to the point of making accusations of "ableism" when anyone brings it up. As if extremist ideology and mental illness don't go hand in hand! And as if the process isn't basically identical when young guys from Muslim backgrounds get radicalized, too.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Ideally someone would step in, take him out of the spotlight and get him some treatment, but it's complicated by his being a powerful public figure seemingly surrounded by no shortage of enablers.
A further problem here is that after the scandal of Britney Spears's extended 'conservatorship' at the hands of her father, we're all going to be very wary of famous but obviously unwell people being potentially exploited while being 'looked after' by those who 'just want the best for them.'
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
Two things I really hate: morals of convenience and false friends. The types of people who say “mental illness doesn’t do that” are the types to profess support for those with psychiatric disorders, but only when it’s easy, when the mentally ill are doing the socially approved things like talking to themselves on the subway. Which of course means that they are no friend to the mentally ill at all; support only means something when it comes at a cost. In its magisterial simplicity, social justice politics has created a vision of the mentally ill as unblemished and blameless children who are easy to exonerate because they never did anything wrong. But to spend time in a psychiatric facility is to hear the n-word, to meet people who have committed domestic violence, to confront the many forms of brokenness within the human race. It’s not cinematic. Nobody’s there who hasn’t done genuinely unfortunate things. That’s what mental illness actually is, not aesthetically-pleasing movie madness but grubby, dirty instability.


sort of random/related but a guy was asking me yesterday what its like working w/mentally unwell people and had all sorts of grubby ideas about it, and kind of wanted me to validate all his (edgelord-ish, ridiculous, OTT) assumptions for the sort of 'oh shit!' excitement/ugh-ness of it all. people also love 'crazy people' as figures of fun (and in kanye's case, saying the unsayable, which kanye also loves actually, the idea of being the one person saying what others do not, as if this quality makes it worth saying and obviously true).
 

version

Well-known member
Even Jones looks like he's just thinking "this guy's nuts,".

If he's got anyone left around him who actually gives a shit, they need to get him away from these parasites as quickly as possible. He's currently got Fuentes and Milo clinging to him and he's gonna attract more of them.
 

wild greens

Well-known member
Not sure i agree with the parasites stuff, this is his own doing man. Illness or not you don't just get people turning up and saying hey lets go full nazi on infowars and you go along with it

The man has gone down the rabbit hole
 
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