It's Crazy

Paranoid schizophrenia has intrigued me ever since my psych rotation in med school. Talking with affected young adults, hearing their crazy theories, I couldn't help but think -- they all seemed exceptionally intelligent on some level -- that their insanity came about because, for some brief moment of clarity, they'd seen things as they really are, and it blew their minds. It made me think that we all need patches to the holes that appear in the curtain, lest we see behind it. Glenn Beck, Religion, Reaganomics, Glenn Beck, teabaggerism, Glenn Beck, talk radio, Glenn Beck...

There's a word for those of us who try hard to keep our eyes open and our minds unclouded: depressed.

(It happens that, at the same time in med school, I was reading L. Ron Hubbard's book, Dianetics, and it sounded exactly like the stuff pouring out of schizophrenic brains. In Elron's case, however, I'm guessing it was a deliberate con job.)

Be that as it may, it's interesting that the beliefs of those so affected seem (from what little I know of it) to follow such similar patterns: belief in mind control, implanted devices, hearing voices; seeing dire patterns where there are none, conspiracies, plots, hidden signs. Commonly, too, there's a religious undercurrent, and I find that of interest as well: in what ways does the mumbler on the street corner, the passer-out of rambling and capitalized literature past whom we hurry with downturned eyes, differ from others whose claims took hold? Jim Jones, David Koresh, Joseph Smith... Luck? Off by a couple of phrases from connecting with the extant level of illness of those around them?

Anyway, here's the thing: we generally accept that the paranoid schizophrenic has a determinable disorder of the brain. Chemical, in some way. Anatomic perhaps. And, given that most -- if not all -- human disorders have a spectrum of expression, might it also be the case that the most recalcitrant political conspiracists among us are similarly dyschemified-- just a bit less, to varying degrees?

Is birtherism in the face of all the evidence, for example, not a certifiable condition of a disordered mind? What about climate-change denial? And it's really hard, impossible in my view, to reconcile young-earthism with any sort of rational thinking at all. So maybe it's not their fault: they're just a little further toward the far end of that chemical line than others of us, led around by different molecules. The more I think about it, the less the word "sane" has any meaning. There is no "sane"; probably no "line" either. Just points on a circle.

This is relevant in instances of political murder. The guy who shot the Congresswoman and killed a child, among others, seems to be a schizophrenic, all right. Predictably, people like me find a connection with incessant right-wing hate speech; while the purveyors of that speech, and those who love to listen to it, immediately crank up their who-me. As George Packer wrote yesterday:

.... It would be a kind of relief if Loughner operated not out of any coherent political context but just his own fevered brain.

But even so, the tragedy wouldn't change this basic fact: for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of “soft on defense,” one routinely hears the words “treason” and “traitor.” The President isn't a big-government liberal—he's a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. He's also, according to a minority of Republicans, including elected officials, an impostor. Even the reading of the Constitution on the first day of the 112th Congress was conceived as an assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Administration and Congress.

This relentlessly hostile rhetoric has become standard issue on the right. (On the left it appears in anonymous comment threads, not congressional speeches and national T.V. programs.) And it has gone almost entirely uncriticized by Republican leaders. Partisan media encourages it, while the mainstream media finds it titillating and airs it, often without comment, so that the gradual effect is to desensitize even people to whom the rhetoric is repellent...

(Interestingly, one Republican senator has spoken out about the rhetoric. But he felt the need to do so anonymously.)

My point, at long last, is this: people spew political hate because it works. Witness teabaggers, beguiled and bamboozled by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. It works, in large part, I'd argue, because of the fallibility of the human mind (poorly designed as it seems to be.) Some people can deal with honest discourse, others can't. Some can accept people with whom they disagree without the need to demonize, to destroy them, others can't. And if I'm right -- that there's a spectrum, that paranoid schizophrenia is but a point on a nomogram -- then people like the RWS™ and those who enable and excuse them simply can't have it both ways. They can't gloat at the successes of their hateful and conspiratorial speech and, at the same time, deny it has an effect.

The guy is crazy, they say. It's not my fault. Don't expect me to change my tone, they announce. I'm not responsible for how people react to it.

Really? Does that make any sense at all? Believing your words have power over people, and denying it at the same time?

If we know there are crazy people out there -- especially if, in fact, sanity and its opposite are like height and weight and skin color and musical ability, spread among us: we're all crazy -- isn't it incumbent on those who have the greatest audience to take a little care, to show at least a modicum of restraint? Can they claim power and pretend it doesn't have any effect? On humans, in all their frailties? Might they consider it useful -- moral and ethical, even, if such things had meaning to them (evidence lacking) -- to find a less hateful, less apocalyptic way to make their point? Is that all they've got? Or, worse, is this kind of result they actually want? Elimination of liberals? Explicitly? Because that's what they're saying. Notwithstanding their self-righteous and deeply offended protestations to the contrary, how does that deserve a pass? Can they claim they don't know their audience, when they fine-tune their message to the crazy channel? Reload. Eliminate. Take them out. They mean to destroy you. Reëducation camps. Become "armed and dangerous." No effect? No responsibility? None and none?

Would you walk through a room full of the immuno-deficient if you were coughing up mycobacteria? Wouldn't you at least put on a goddamn mask???

If you smoke in a room full of straw men, are you absolved of the fire?