If America were an individual in an institution, it would be on suicide watch.
I’m not a psychiatrist, but this country has gone crazy, exhibiting extreme self-destructive behavior and denying reality. If it were a family member, we’d order a straitjacket and call an ambulance. Let’s examine the symptoms.
Science deniers. Despite the worst of the pandemic being over, there are still between one and two thousand Covid deaths every week. Yet, loud voices continue to oppose vaccinations, including a minor presidential candidate with a famous last name.
Perhaps anti-vaxxers would like to return to the good old days of smallpox. Perhaps they need to meet with polio survivors suffering its long-term effects for whom the creation of a vaccine came too late.
Instead they scream about their freedom being violated by being encouraged to get vaccinated (or wear masks) without any consideration for the freedom of others to stay alive. Never mind their spreading disease to the vulnerable—the elderly or people with compromised immunity.
Climate Change. Another symptom is the climate change deniers. While severe storms, melting ice caps, rising oceans, droughts, floods, wildfires, and extreme heat are increasing dangers to the planet’s very existence, these anti-science folks, abetted by fossil fuel magnates and their congressional toadies, persistently try to block attempts to slow global warming, pretending that it’s either a natural process or not happening at all.
Remember last summer when the skies were yellow and the air dangerous to breathe as a result of global-warming-induced Canadian forest fires? Deny that.
Gun un-control. There were more than 600 mass shootings in 2023. Whenever there is a school shooting, the persistent irrational response has been to make guns more easily available, allegedly to fight off killers. Consider the massacre in Uvalde, Texas where 19 children and two teachers were gunned down. The armed on-site security guard ran away. And the multiple, heavily-armed police forces debated for hours on how to respond while more children died.
Barstool clinicians maintain the problem is a mental health crisis. If people, insane or not, didn’t have such easy access to guns, they wouldn’t be able to shoot either children or people whose race, religion or sexual orientation they hate.
The increase in gun ownership was facilitated by the Supreme Court’s 2008 absurd misinterpretation of the Second Amendment. The Right to Bear Arms specifically refers to maintaining a “well-armed militia,” not well-armed, racist, insane, child-killing gun-nuts.
I am horrified that my grandchildren and all kids in the Hopewell public schools by necessity have to participate in active-shooter drills. It almost makes me nostalgic for my elementary school days when we practiced taking cover under our desks to protect us from nuclear bombs.
Reproductive rights. Limitations on access to health care promoted by misogynistic religious fanatics, including members of the Supreme Court, are an attack on the lives of more than half the nation’s population: women. In many states, women have to travel long distances for life-saving medical care, a requirement particularly affecting the non-affluent. A country killing its own is suicidal.
Immigration. Aside from appealing to blatant prejudice, the current national hysteria over immigration comes at a time when the country has a labor shortage. What could be more self-destructive than rejecting needed workers and undermining the economy?
Instead, only a few years ago, the country set up concentration camps and separated families.
Most everyone in this country is an immigrant or a descendent of immigrants. Opposition to immigrants is essentially a denial of self, of most everyone’s heritage unless they happen to be Arapahoe, Sioux, or Leni Lenape.
Congress. The Congress, a 300-year-old, vital element of democracy, has has descended into monumental insanity. It’s not dysfunctional. It’s non-functional. Eight members of The House (The Crazy Eight) have stopped anything from happening. What’s the point of having a government if it can’t do anything? Or is that the point?
Not-so-great dictator. And, finally, the clearest evidence of national madness is the potential election to the presidency of a narcissistic, self-professed sexual predator, a man facing 91 felony charges including inciting insurrection, storing classified documents in his bathroom, paying off a porn star and falsifying business records.
What could be more troubling than the idea of electing a repeat bankrupt who admires Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and who, according to his first wife, kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside.
Any other candidate would have trouble surviving a traffic ticket. Yet this man who, according to the Washington Post, told 30,573 lies while in office, is supported by millions. What could be greater evidence of national insanity than electing a man who has declared he will be dictator once elected.
Call the shrink now.
,
