Insanity In America
John Chuckman
June 3, 2004
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.
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