- It's always satisfying to have a pet theory supported
by new data. A large and authoritative study, just published in the Journal
of the American Medical Association, confirms a favorite hypothesis of
mine, that there is more mental illness and insanity, far more, in America
than you find in other advanced societies.
-
- The study, led by a Harvard Medical School researcher,
found evidence of mental problems in 26.4 % of people in the United States,
versus, for example, 8.2% of people in Italy. The researchers were concerned
with matters such as lack of access to treatment and under-treatment, but
for those concerned about a safe and decent world, I think the salient
finding is simply America's high percentage. The world is being led by
a nation where more than one-quarter of the people have genuine mental
problems.
-
- The finding is strangely both comforting and disturbing.
-
- It is comforting because it helps explain why Americans
continue supporting a man proven wrong every time he opens his mouth, a
man who has de-stabilized parts of the world in the name of creating stability,
a man claiming sound business principles who has pitched the United States
into deficit free-fall, and a man who arouses suspicion and fear throughout
the world.
-
- The study is comforting, too, because it helps explain
an opposition candidate like John Kerry. How can liberals generate excitement
over this stale, fly-buzzed doughnut of a candidate? I suppose the same
way they get excited every time Bush's polls dip by something little more
than statistical noise. Perhaps the same way a man like Michael Moore -
who makes gobs of money playing to the suspicions and prejudices of the
paranoid segment of America's great political market - could so eagerly
embrace a crypto-Nazi like General Wesley Clark as "his candidate"?
-
- The finding is comforting in explaining all those Americans
shocked and appalled over The New York Times' recent apology for its drum-beating,
pre-invasion coverage of Iraq's non-existent weapons. Here is a newspaper
that, more often than not, comes down on the wrong side of human rights,
always protects Establishment interests, always ignores abuses until they
can no longer be ignored, and yet it somehow retains a reputation in America
as guardian of treasured values and as the nation's newspaper of record.
-
- Well, the "record" part is easily explained,
since The Times often takes one position before an event and another after,
adjusting its emphasis according to shifts in public opinion or facts discovered
by someone else. With that kind of coverage, you surely do qualify as some
kind of paper of record.
-
- But nothing could be a bigger nonsense than The Times'
reputation as guardian of values in a free society. Just ask Wen Ho Lee,
or Richard Jewell, or the woman who accused a Kennedy of rape, or all the
people who died unnecessarily at the Bay of Pigs. Go back and examine The
Times at key points in the communist witch hunts or at the outbreak of
the Korean War. Go back and examine its views and emphasis when President
Johnson offered his Hitler-like lies about the Gulf of Tonkin. Go back
and see how often The Times has done any real investigative journalism
- when it mattered, not in retrospect - about subjects as vital as the
FBI's huge abuse of power during the 1960s or the shameful backgrounds
of many of the country's leading politicians. Just examine the statements
of the paper's signature columnist, Thomas Friedman, who sounds like Henry
Ford condemned to bizarre re-incarnation as one the Jews he so hated.
-
- But the finding also is quite disturbing. America, for
many years to come, will dominate world affairs. The world will continue
to be treated as though it were the backyard sandbox of the Bushes, Cheneys,
Rumsfelds, Liebermans, Kerrys, Albrights and other privileged, selfish,
and not particularly well-informed American Establishment figures.
-
- I explain American insanity by a gene pool fouled with
the heavy early migration of Puritans, mentally disturbed fanatics if we
accept the rather detailed historical record in Europe, plus the immense
stresses of a society run along strict principles of Social Darwinism.
An almost unqualified admiration for greed now dominates American culture.
Yes, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" involved self-interest, but
go back and read that thoughtful and compassionate philosopher and compare
what he says to the chimpanzee screams we hear from America.
-
- As to the stresses in American society, I refer not only
to the struggle of individuals to survive there, but to the fact that the
whole story of America has been one of unremitting aggression. It is the
story of "a pounding fist," as Tennessee Williams' Big Daddy
described himself.
-
- Had America somehow come to be in Europe, its story would
most closely parallel that of Germany and its long, belligerent effort
to dominate the continent. It is only because so much of America's aggression
has been against what seemed lightly settled places - the Ohio Valley,
the Great Plains, Canada, Mexico, and Hawaii - that people think any differently
about it. Other places were not so lightly settled, and opposition in places
like the Philippines was crushed with great bloodshed.
-
- My criticism of the United States is not concerned with
how it wishes to order its own society, but about how its activities spill
over into the rest of the world. Its actions in the world too often resemble
those of an ugly drunk pushing his way into your living room and puking
all over the carpet.
-
- Iraq provides a textbook example. The net effect of the
invasion of Iraq is a badly de-stabilized country, now full of people who
resent Americans for their brutality and arrogance, where once there were
undoubtedly many who dreamily admired America at a distance. Saudi Arabia
also has been de-stabilized, as many warned Bush that it would be before
he set his crusaders marching. Many old friends and allies, like France
or Canada, have been stupidly abused for offering sound advice and declining
to join the march to hell. Tony Blair's pathetic rag of a government hangs
by threads after working against the clear wishes of the British people,
and Blair has found the voice he thought he had earned in the councils
of war arrogantly dismissed by Bush and his fanatics. Israel's state-terror
in the West Bank and Gaza, cheerily accepted by Bush (and Kerry), has risen
to nightmarish levels, and if you think that has no connection with all
the hatred for America in the world, you are either foolish or qualify
as part of the more than one-quarter of Americans who need professional
help.
-
- Oil prices are high and unstable, as are American deficits.
International security arrangements, those things so loved by police-mentalities
but which have never been known to stop real bad guys, are becoming stupidly
cumbersome and heavy-handed. Yet America still supports Bush, no matter
what its small tribe of liberals chooses to believe. Knowing America's
record on small tribes, I suppose it's healthy self-interest to pretend
enthusiasm for tiny dips in Bush's polls and for an alternative as insipid
and meaningless as John Kerry.
-
- While I am glad for the confirmation of my hypothesis,
I can't help feeling, as with so many studies, this one does little more
than confirm the painfully obvious.
-
-
- Comment
- From Ted Twietmeyer
- tedtw@frontiernet.net
- 6-4-4
-
- Its 2004....
-
- So, here we all are,
- now in 2004
- Not a drop of sensibility,
- or anything more
-
- The dictators and all
- have all gathered round,
- seeking a police state,
- instead of something sound
-
- More protesters are banned
- all across our once great land,
- Forbidden to expose
- any traitor's hand
-
- Our freedoms denied
- by those we put in power,
- Their cloud of hate grows blacker
- with each passing hour
-
- Who will stand up
- as our freedoms are taken away,
- does anyone love America
- to stand up and say
-
- Give our freedoms back !
- they mean so much to all,
- You had no right to take them
- in the first place at all
-
- The third Reich is dead !
- That's what we've been told,
- Yet all of our leadership
- strives to create a new fold
-
- Next spring a new draft will rise
- from sea to shining sea,
- to fight taxpayer funded terror
- brought upon you and me
-
- You walk out to the curb
- to retreive your bills and mail,
- And see your neighbor oblivious
- to the new world order's flail.
-
- Ted Twietmeyer
-
-
-
- Comment
- From Timothy Cowan
- 6-4-4
-
- Jeff -
-
- The epitomy of what is contained within that short title,
"Insanity In Amerca" that John Chuckman titled his most recent
post to rense.com, speaks volumes, absolute volumes regarding the curent
state of thought now prevalent in America, and calling it thought would
be an exaggeration indeed because actual critical "thought" does
not take place except probably within the hidden world of a few select
individuals within a given society who are so far removed from the general
population of that society that they have nothing whatsoever in common
with them.
-
- The internet is no better a tool for the spread of useful
knowledge in direct correlation to the capacity of those who are using
it to further their own individual understanding of all that is reflected
at rense.com. unless they understand specifically and precisely what it
is they are confronted with. If, which is pushing the EXTREMES in American
thinking, readers of rense.com were to refer to the work of Robert L. Kocher
and being able to seriously reflect upon his insights (read, study, review,
read and read again and then conceptualize) which is freely available,
would in my humble estimation put one on a clear and sound footing to empower
one to honestly confront the almost hopelessly psychotic and profoundly
ignorant condition we as a peoeple, nation, race, culture, state have deteriorated
to as outlined by John Chuckman in Insanity In America.
-
- Robert Kocher's work, that can be accessed through orlingrabbe.com,
and I might add is the equivelant of PhD level studies, will elevate the
individual who studies this work putting him or her on top of the mountain
of critical thinking eventually providing the individual with the enviable
opportunity to look down on the climbing mass of the homogenously conditioned
entertainment enthralled easily excited and emotionally charged on rushing
psychotic who are all shoving, pushing, crawling and hacking their way
to the top of this econimic dung heap of a mountain. Americans are intelligent,
but let's not fool ourselves, we are not and never have been critical thinkers
with the exception of a very few including Robert L.Kocher. This critical
thinker has posted work entailing years and years of study, personal experience
and much belabored deliberation free to anyone fortunate enough and temporarily
sane enough who have momentarily extricated themselves from the crushing
sameness of the mind numbing mediocrity forced on us by the theocratic
doctrines of democracy.
-
- I would challenge anyone to read through Robert L. Kocher's
essay entitled 'Inequality, Terrorism, and Revolution' making reference
toJohn Chuckman's Insanity in America, and then try to honestly evaluate
your own personal circumstances without a sense of profound personal ignorance
and shame. If, once again that variable statement of uncertainty, you
get through this essay, if you haven't already been humbled by your own
ignorance, try relating Insanity In America to Robert Kocher's other assaults
on your fragile interpretation of your own circumstances with his other
essays including Discourse on Reality and Sanity and Donahue's Children
Parts 1 and 2. Read these essays and then tell me your an "American"
with a straight face or has self denial so corrupted your ability to understand
accute differences that you've "defaulted" to psychotic behavior
to just get along to get your share of the loot. I do not appeal to the
mass of humanity, the sheeple, or whatever rhetorical passing the buck
expression is used, this plea, this appeal to those of you who read, who
think and who understand what's at stake will know precisely who you are.
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