Diagnosing the Left

Polipundit's DJ Drummond has maybe hit on a severe form of mental illness. As a Mental Health professional, I'm concerned about what the disorder is, how it begins - that is what is the genesis of the disorder and how can it be treated. Drummond calls this form of insanity Political Compulsive Disorder. Now, there will be many in the field, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers etc who will not agree that this is a mental disorder at all, but that would be because of their own political proclivities; one must believe that one who thinks he is Napoleon, doesn't think he has a problem!

Drummond notes that:

Democrats know full well that their tactics of slander and defeatism are not working to win elections, yet they just will not consider their position in any kind of mature light. Strange. Yet we have seen this before, and the problem seems to be based on raw emotion overriding better judgment."

This is a good beginning of the description. Surely they can read polls and know that the majority of the American electorate are supporting the use of wiretaps, believe that they are legal and even Bush's ratings have gone UP since these yahoos got on this particular meme, but that doesn't seem to stop them. Point in fact, since the 60's, the United States voter has generally shown that they distrust Democrats with national security issues. Yet in 2004 they nominate a man who served in Vietnam for only 3 months or so of a normally 12 month rotation, gets 3 wounds none of which required more than a bandaid, at least one of which was rejected for a Purple Heart by the treating physician (yet Kerry manuvered one anyway - by hook or crook we don't know) and opted out of Vietnam based on having three Purple Hearts. Then the man comes back and scathingly trounces his fellow troops, calls them war criminals, consults with the enemy in Paris and many years later, gets up on the podium at the DNC and gives the silliest, sloppiest most unprofessional salute I have ever seen (and since I grew up in the Army and served in the Army, I've seen plenty of them) and the Democrats think they have a winner. Infact, Markos M. of The Daily Kos goes so far out on that proverbial limb, he projects Kerry the Winner.

What is the left's response to The Daily Kos for that sloppy, unbelievable, insane prediction? They make DK the number one blog in the blogosphere. How's that for insanity?

But, I digress, and the opening topic today is DJ Drummond's diagnosis of the left. Lets take a look at some of the other mental health issues that the conservative blogosphere has put out:

John Moore, a good friend believes that the appropriate diagnosis is Cognition Disorder of Progressives and offers a number of symptoms for the same:

utopian thinking - A delusional belief that the patient knows simple, side effect free solutions to all social problems. In some cases this is associated with psychotic delusions of grandeur.

anthroplastic ideas - a delusion that behavioral conditioning, performed by the government, will cure all behavioral and social problems, i.e., will change all non-CDP people into CDP . Implicit in this delusional system is the idea that people can be "programmed" to be "perfect."

This symptom leads to a reflexive, vehement resistance by the patient to even the idea that people may have immalleable characteristics. The worst known example is that of Pol Pot, who attempted to remove all undesirable influences in the belief that the perfect socialist man would then emerge.

anti-theistic rebellion - an emotional antagonism against Christianity... probably caused by an abnormal persistence of adolescent rebellion... may also be related to the need to avoid counter-arguments to desired policies (see utopiate thinking, above). This ranges from a mere antagonism to Christianity to a hatred of religions of all forms. Generally the more "western" a religion is, the more it is hated. Thus these patients may accept primitive and animalist belief systems.

naturist delusion - a sincere belief that mankind is evil and nature is benign. The incidence of this symptom is inversely related to the practical experience that the patient has with nature. Self hatred is a feature in this area. Typical thinking includes a belief that mankind is a cancer on earth, and that earth (viewed as a feeling being) will retaliate with a deadly virus.

The utopian view of nature is remarkable in that most patients are also believers in evolution, which has resulted in vast amounts of suffering and cruelty in the natural arena.

environmental spasm - the patient experiences episodes of manic activity on behalf of "the environment." The delusional nature of this is evidenced by the misanthropic attacks on all works of man, and also by the focus on visible or totemic objects... for example, the Mount Graham Red Squirrel or the Spotted Owl.

An example of the paradoxical nature of these delusions is given by the Red Squirrel and the Santa Barbara Sand Fly. The Squirrel, a subspecies of the very common Red Squirrel, is fought for aggressively, while the Sand Fly, equally at risk and a truly distinct species, inspires little passion.

The patient usually is obsessed only with cute or cuddly animals, which is probably a displacement of the nurturing urge, itself unfulfilled due to abortion.

control obsession - this is the tendency of the patient to strive for excessive control over others, through government action. This is probably a projection of an unconscious fear of losing control over ones' self, even though the conscious manifestation is viewed as "compassion."

racist/feminist hypocrisy - the patient passionately advocates discrimination based on sex or race, while loudly proclaiming opposition to policies which are "racist" or "sexist."

overemotional perceptions - the patient is far more concerned with how a social action "looks" or "feels," and resists or denies objective evidence to the contrary, This also leads to very superficial cognition about matters of significant impact, as the patient merely gets the "feel" of the issue rather than truly understanding it.

sexual dysfunction - the patient is highly anxious about sexual matters, and this is manifested as:
Obsession with sexual and gender roles.
Passionate embrace of most non-traditional sexual preferences.
A need to define individuals by their gender or sexual preference, and make social policy as if everyone were equally obsessed.
A need to constantly push the envelope of indecent art.

John is probably on to something, but there is also something missing. For example, John calls this a cognition disorder which indicates faulty wiring in the brain, and while this may be true, it doesn't encompass the irrational part of the disorder that is exhibited by the Democrats/leftists. The Assistant Village Idiot believes that the tendency to want to "rule" is the direct result of being highly intelligent. He may be on to something. Didn't the left taut Kerry's obvious (to them at least) superior intelligence based on nothing more than the ability to speak in public with a solid Kennedyesque cadence? In fact, they kept that one going until it turned out that Bush made slightly better grades than Kerry did in college. As the AVI noted:

All you folks who think that the world would be better if the smart people were in charge – drop that idea. I have never interacted with a group that had screwier ideas, listened less, or postured more. Everyone arrived with the idea at long last, people I can reason with, but the discussions were as petty and unreasonable as everywhere else. Higher vocabulary and more formulas, same arguments

OK, we've included in the run-up to making a good diagnosis at least one factor, the intellectual/cognitive dysfunction exhibited by the oh-so-highly-intelligent members of the left and the Democratic party, we'll keep that in mind."

But, as Drummond noted that this disorder is also based in emotion, raw unreasoning emotion. Rush Limbaugh has noted in the past that the right thinks, the left feels. And I think there is something to this and we may be able to add another factor to our workup for a functioning diagnosis. One of my very favorite people in the Blogosphere is Dr. Sanity. She, as a practicing Psychiatrist has looked at the seeming mental illness of the left. Too, she recently did a post called PsychbloggerTouch And Go survey of mental health professionals who blog and does a regular "Carnival Of The Insanities," a not to be missed weekly carnival. Perhaps her most important work in her blog is describing Narcissism and Society in three parts. You absolutely must read the whole thing, but here is a teaser:

In some ways, the rise of human civilization from the cave to the present day has resulted because of attempts through the Rule of Law and social controls to set limits on the unrestrained Grandiose Self. This is primarily due to the destructiveness of the Narcissistic Rage generally associated with that part of the Self.

Because of this, the Grandiose Self has received a bad reputation philosophically, morally, and politically. The natural development of Governments and Religions (which ultimately are an expression of the Idealized Parent Image/Omnipotent Other side of the Self)have all too often attempted to ruthlessly suppress the Grandiose Self--much to the detriment of the individual AND the success of the particular society or religion.

In fact, despite the obvious truth that governments, nations, and religions are in a much better position to wreak far more systemized misery and death on human populations, it is almost always the Grandiose Self that gets the blame. As Wretchard at The Belmont Club pointed out in a recent post, a review of the 20th century, for example, shows that all the "people's revolutions" supported by the Left and purportedly for the purpose of "freeing" large populations of people; resulted instead in enslaving them and increasing authoritarian rule.

Without a political or economic framework that is able to incorporate what we refer to as "human nature" into its calculations, all so-called "perfect" societies and ideologies will at best simply fail in the real world; and at worse cause untold human suffering. With the best of intentions (this is perhaps debatable), the social engineers of philosophy, political science, and economics have caused so much more slavery, misery and death on a grand scale--that the grandiose CEO's of the largest corporations can be considered mere pikers by comparison.

Another Psychblogger who attempts to look at one issue of diagnosis is Shrinkwrapped who looks at the left's inability to face reality in the war against Islamic Fascism in this post The Left's Inadvertant (?) Anti-Americanism. A note, if one sees a reality that no one else can fathom, either the "see'er" is a dreamer with a view of the future, improbable as it seems, or the "see'er" is psychotic, that is out of touch with reality. The focus of Shrinkwrapped's post then is that the left is either covertly or overtly helping the other side and is, as George Orwell noted:

Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other."

So far, we have looked at diagnosing the left as Political Compulsive Disorder, Cognitive Disorder of Progressives (bolstered with the Assistant Village Idiot's "Intelligence isn't everything"), an excellent case for Narcissim, the refusal of the left to "see" what the war really is.

My own contribution to the fray is Acquired/Induced Bush Derangement Syndrome. BDS is a term coined by another psychiatrist, Dr. Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer's premise is that the left is so traumatized by the election of George Bush in the 2000 election, that they have lost all ability to reason. That they are indeed Deranged. Vintage Krauthammer:

Moreover, Dean is very smart. Until now, Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) had generally struck people with previously compromised intellectual immune systems. Hence its prevalence in Hollywood. Barbra Streisand, for example, wrote her famous September 2002 memo to Dick Gephardt warning that the president was dragging us toward war to satisfy, among the usual corporate malefactors who ``clearly have much to gain if we go to war against Iraq,'' the logging industry -- timber being a major industry in a country that is two-thirds desert.

It is true that BDS has struck some pretty smart guys -- Bill Moyers ranting about a ``right-wing wrecking crew'' engaged in ``a deliberate, intentional destruction of the United States way of governing'' and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, whose recent book attacks the president so virulently that Krugman's British publisher saw fit to adorn the cover with images of Dick Cheney in a Hitler-like mustache and Bush stitched-up like Frankenstein. Nonetheless, some observers took that to be satire; others wrote off Moyers and Krugman as simple aberrations, the victims of too many years of neurologically hazardous punditry.

My poor contribution to this is the effect that this has had on to be pitied Cyndy Sheehan. The degree of insanity of which is indicated in that post's comment section by one "Fred" (not to be confused with our dearly beloved TEXASFRED). Fred's comment:

A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." Even so, there will be real consequences for Bush and his misanthropic henchman. It is just unfortunate that we will all have to suffer until this veil of righteousness is lifted. In the meantime, PEACE. I hope you make a lot of money, as that seems to be the real religion followed by Bush and his fellow traitors. Worship away, and perhaps you will build a sufficient fortress to keep the masses at bay for a few days when they get tired of being told to "eat cake".

In an update on the post I made regarding BDS "Pandemic" I noted that EJ Dionne had succumbed:

EJ Dionne (long infected with BDS - Bush Derangement Syndrome) has had a hissy fit. He recently decided that he didn't like the way that Bush put the onus on the dems for the way they are touting the "Bush Lied" meme, in fact, I doubt if anyone else likes "... to be told their arguments make the troops' job harder. Who would want to hear they're undermining the war effort?" as Jonah Goldberg put it in National Review Online's "The Corner" Dionne writes:

Bush was not subtle. He said that anyone accusing his administration of having "manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people" was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will," Bush declared last week. "As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."

Bush was not subtle? OMG... EJ, where have you been for the last 2 and a half years. The Dems, including the vast majority of Dems in the Senate who signed onto the war, have been anything BUT subtle in their condemnation of Bush and the War. And, whether you like it or not, when they turn around and accuse Bush of everything but shorting the sheets of new recruits, they ARE undermining the morale of the troops, the vast majority of whom know EXACTLY why they are in Iraq and who re-up (reinlist) in record numbers. They ARE giving aid and comfort to the islamofascists who believe that if they hang on long enough, the US will belly up.

So, to the mix we add an inability of the left to see where they fit into the political dialectic. This obviously needs much more study, so a second part (following the example of the good Dr. Sanity) will follow in the near future. Until then, look kindly on your lefty friends, they just can't help themselves.

Posted by GM Roper at January 1, 2006 03:08 PM | TrackBack