What if the same psychological abuse tactics you escaped from your childhood home are now running political culture? Josh Slocum saw it first in his borderline mother's rages, then in his leftist activist circles, and now everywhere: the emotional manipulation, reality distortion, and performative victimhood of Cluster B personality disorders have infected the body politic. A former funeral industry reformer turned cultural critic, Slocum brings 20 years of nonprofit leadership and personal trauma recovery to decode our narcissistic age. His message is blunt: we're being governed by the psychological rules of the personality disordered, and the only cure is learning to say "no."
About Josh Slocum
Josh Slocum is a cultural commentator and host of the Disaffected podcast, a weekly show examining politics through the lens of psychology. After serving as Executive Director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance from 2002-2016, where he fought industry corruption and appeared on major media outlets, Slocum pivoted to analyzing broader cultural dysfunction.
His journey from "hard leftist" to conservative began with recognizing his mother's borderline and narcissistic personality disorders—then seeing identical patterns in progressive activism. Now partnered with TV industry veteran Kevin Hurley, he produces content that helps others recognize and resist Cluster B manipulation tactics in both personal relationships and political movements.
The Cluster B Takeover of Western Politics
Slocum's central thesis is stark: Western political culture, particularly on the left, has been colonized by Cluster B personality disorder dynamics. "I would quote, diagnose the West as having a thorough going case of borderline and narcissistic personality disorders," he explains, noting how the same gaslighting, emotional blackmail, and reality inversion he experienced with his abusive mother now characterize public discourse.
He traces this back decades, citing Christopher Lasch's 1979 "The Culture of Narcissism", but argues the past decade has seen an explosion of normalized pathology. From cancel culture's borderline-style splitting (all good or all bad) to the narcissistic demand that others validate one's "lived experience" regardless of reality, Slocum sees personality disorders as the key to understanding our political moment.
Gender Ideology as Munchausen by Proxy
In perhaps his most controversial claim, Slocum compares the pediatric gender industry to Munchausen syndrome by proxy (now Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another). "These people stick with smiling tears on their face performing brutality on children," he argues, comparing trans-identified children to victims of medical abuse by caregivers seeking attention.
While acknowledging many parents are trapped by institutional pressure, he maintains the psychological dynamics mirror classic MSBP: adults meeting their emotional needs through children's medicalization. He points to the 1990s recognition of mothers fabricating children's illnesses for sympathy, suggesting today's "affirming" parents operate from similar motivations wrapped in progressive language.
Decompensation and Trump Derangement Syndrome
Drawing on the psychological concept of decompensation—when someone's defense mechanisms catastrophically fail—Slocum analyzes the left's reaction to Trump's reelection. He describes Democrats walking out of the Georgia legislature over ending taxpayer-funded transition surgeries for prisoners as "complete disconnection from reality."
"Many of them have, in my view, temporarily, quite literally lost their minds," he states. "They are so psychologically triggered that they're having a trauma reaction and they can't see the difference between their emotional reaction and a dispassionate analysis." This mass decompensation, he argues, reveals the fragility of ideology built on Cluster B foundations.
The Estrangement Epidemic and Role Reversal
While Slocum escaped an abusive mother, Stella describes a different pattern: adult children with "rainbow identities" abusing parents through estrangement and financial exploitation. "The only contact they'll have with the parents is give me money," O'Malley notes, describing "devastating" dynamics where parents question if they're the abusers.
Slocum recognizes this as cult dynamics: "Your kids are in a cult. That's another word. We can call things Cluster B. We can call them demonic. We can call them satanic. We can call them authoritarian. We can call them cults. They're all the same thing." He sees the "glitter family" phenomenon—where trans-identified youth replace biological families with ideological communities—as classic cult love-bombing and isolation tactics.
From Soviet "Political Correctness" to Cancel Culture
The discussion reveals that "political correctness" originated in Soviet Russia, where politicians would ask "is it politically correct?" rather than simply correct. O'Malley connects this to Andrew Doyle's framework distinguishing authoritarianism versus liberty rather than left versus right.
Slocum traces his own awakening to a 2019 Facebook discussion where longtime friends "descended on me as if...they want to rhetorically kill me" for suggesting Trump might be the lesser of two evils. The visceral hostility triggered body memories of his mother's rages, crystallizing how leftist spaces replicated abusive family dynamics.
Breaking the Spell: Boundaries as Political Revolution
The solution Slocum proposes is deceptively simple yet profoundly difficult: "We have to say no." Drawing from his experience evicting his mother after purchasing her a retirement home that became another site of abuse, he argues Western civilization must set similar boundaries with Cluster B political actors.
"When you're dealing with a cluster B dynamic, compassion for one person means cruelty to another set of people," he explains, using the example of boys in girls' sports. The therapeutic insight—that some people's psychology is too damaged to accommodate—becomes political wisdom about movements that cannot be reasoned with, only contained.
The Demonic and Eternal Return of Abuse
In a striking final exchange, the hosts explore how "demonic" serves as an aesthetic descriptor for Cluster B personalities, carrying psychological weight that clinical language lacks. Slocum connects personality disorders to ancient concepts of possession, vampirism, and the "unquiet dead who walk the earth and bedevil the living."
"Do we not call beauty ugliness? Do we not call ugliness and pathology beauty? Yes, this is what we do as a culture now," he states, invoking Isaiah 5:20's warning against moral inversion. The implication: what past cultures recognized as spiritual pathology, we've merely medicalized without truly understanding.
Follow Josh Slocum
Website: joshuaslocum.net
Podcast: Disaffected
Social Media: @DisaffectedPod
Episode #2: "Don't Diagnose" - Slocum's response to critics
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