When I was a young rebellious lad, I discovered the works of Dr. Thomas Szasz. I devoured his books The Manufacture of Madness and The Myth of Mental Illness. While working at the hospital, I would quote from them to the more interesting patients on the psych ward. This usually just happened to be the more attractive female patients.
As Dr. Szasz noted, any of us can look “crazy” under a microscope. If you’re early for an appointment, the psychiatrist will label you “anxious.” If you’re on time, you’re too “anal.” If you’re late, you’re “rebellious.” I’ve met people whom I considered perfectly normal, but when they told me they’d spent time in a mental hospital, I instantly looked at them differently. It’s like being accused of child abuse. You may be perfectly innocent, but the allegation will always hang over your head. Once you’ve been labeled “mentally ill,” it’s hard to “prove” you’re not. Try to act “sane.” It isn’t easy. And, of course, as “conspiracy theorists,” all of us in the alternative media world are easily dismissed as “wackos.”
I firmly believed that mental institutions, like prisons, served no practical purpose. Just as prisons didn’t seem to rehabilitate anyone, mental hospitals seemed to serve only to drug and pacify people that society labeled too eccentric or unusual. I loved One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and many people I worked with said that I reminded them of Jack Nicholson’s character Randall McMurphy. I did have a penchant for trying to communicate with the odd and scorned, whom others had abandoned. In my naive idealism, I thought these poor souls were just misunderstood, and needed only a tolerant reformer like me to set them free. To paraphrase Father Flanagan of Boys Town fame, I thought there were no bad people. Later, I would find out Boys Town was connected to the Franklin Credit child sex scandal. Nurture over nature.
When Ronald Reagan emptied the mental institutions in the 1980s, I cheered him on. I thought it was one of the few good things he actually did. For more on the Gipper’s real record, read my upcoming book American Memory Hole. Unfortunately, it turned out that many of those in these facilities, whom I had considered veritable prisoners, were actually crazy. Nuts. Mentally ill. The ones who weren’t dangerous were incapable of taking care of themselves. Thus, the exploding homeless situation. The most well-known advocate for the homeless, Mitch Snyder, became so disillusioned that he took his own life. Snyder walked the walk; he slept on heating grates with the homeless. I became disillusioned, too. Actually, I’ve become disillusioned regularly over the years. Call me a habitual disillusionist. Although I don’t think that’s a word.
Having watched not only Cuckoo’s Nest multiple times, but old films like Bedlam and The Snake Pit, which focused on the horrors of what were once indelicately referred to as lunatic asylums, I felt great empathy for all mental patients. How many were ever helped by barbaric “treatments” like electro shock therapy? For decades after JFK’s sister Rosemary became the first known victim of frontal lobotomy butchery, the procedure was still being done. Was it ever successful? Modern psychiatry, if it ever was anything else, has become yet another de facto drug dealer for Big Pharma. You have to go to a therapist to talk, and ideally get some meaningful feedback. You will get nothing but a prescription from a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists have long had the highest suicide rates of any profession. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
I went to numerous psychiatrists and therapists with my brother. I always sat in on the sessions, because he wanted me to, and because he would never open up about anything important on his own. Left to his own devices, he would have spent the hour talking about the weather. Some of his therapists were decent. But like most people that go to therapy, he really never listened to them. I still remember the psychiatrist I took him too, who started screaming at him about five minutes into the session. I looked at her and calmly said, “So you understand what I’m dealing with?” She was embarrassed, of course, but that illustrated how Ricky’s very unique issues could fluster even a normally unflappable professional.
I visited plenty of therapists myself. I have self-diagnosed myself as a neurotic Jew, even though I’m not even partially Jewish. That’s probably why I relate so well to Woody Allen’s films. I too view the world through how it interacts with me. I regularly wonder “Now why did she do or say that,” or question some insignificance that few others would notice. As every therapist I ever had used to say, “They’re really not thinking of you.” Yeah, well tell that to my persecution complex. At any rate, if I had Woody’s money, I too would go to therapy daily. Probably like him, I would ignore everything the therapist had to say, and analyze their own signs of lunacy (most therapists I’ve encountered have real issues of their own). But some of us need that sounding board. I don’t know if Woody talks to himself, but I do.
More than one of my therapists told me, “You are the most sane person I’ve ever met.” Many who’ve known me would disagree with this assessment, but who am I to argue with professionals? When my brother Ricky died, I received free grief counseling. The woman who saw me was wonderful. She convinced me that I had been a great brother, which wasn’t an easy thing to do, given my intense guilt. But I ran out of free sessions, and unlike Woody Allen, I can’t afford to pay for regular therapy. I met a woman who claimed to have been Woody’s therapist when he was in Paris, by the way. It was at a really Jewish party, which for some reason I was invited to. They actually served bagels and lox. First time I ever ate them. I felt more Jewy as the party wore on, schmoozing and joking. And then I had to go back to the boring Gentile world.
Because of both my brother and my niece being in the mental health system to varying degrees over the years, I became all too familiar with it. The endless bureaucratic agencies that, like the rest of government, simply shuffle you off to some other unknowing and uncaring representative. Because he was in a special housing program, my brother had a series of roommates who had challenges of their own. A few threatened to kill him. And, naturally, the law protected them more than my brother. We see the same thing with school bullying, as I detailed in Bullyocracy. One tried to assault Ricky, and we had to get a restraining order on him. The system, as corrupt as all others, made my brother- the victim- move, not the victimizer.
Fortunately, none of the many people I met who were ensnared in the mental health system were the least bit violent. Some of their delusions were intriguing. One guy, who I invited over to a cookout at my brother’s request, had imagined a complex conspiracy by some people at ABC News to kill his girlfriend. I listened patiently, as I invariably do to such stories. Being far down the rabbit hole myself, I find few things “far out” enough for me to immediately discount them. But most of these confused souls had someone, usually a family member, to advocate for them. I haven’t met the discards of the mental health industry, the homeless living in tents, perhaps defecating on the streets. Those pathetic creatures clearly have no one, and have been written off by whatever families they have.
But with the emergence of America 2.0, to crush our memories of a different, better run country, there is little evidence of sanity anywhere across this land. Not all of the mentally ill are shitting in the street. Some are running police departments. And big cities. Some are nationally known politicians. Some are celebrities worth many millions of dollars. Joe Biden has set a new template for us all. Perhaps this is why he was installed as our fearless leader. Someone who’d be right at home in one of those long closed mental hospitals. He’d probably have been a prime candidate for electro shock therapy. Of course, there is a fine line between mental institutions and nursing homes. Few oldsters have ever looked more like nursing home patients than Biden. He is the perfect face for a society as insane as ours.
When the Pussy Hats first appeared in the streets after Trumpenstein became president, we saw sheer lunacy on display. We’ve all seen the meme of the enraged woman screaming something, which has been shared all over the internet to represent the “Woke” madness. Back when Infowars used to send Owen Shroyer and others out regularly to confront these kinds of protesters, they would either turn their back, refuse to speak at all, or start screeching like banshees. Few of them would even deign to explain what they were protesting about. Most of the psych patients I would make an effort to converse with back in the late 1970s seemed far more sane than any of the Antifa/BLM activists I’ve seen. I felt they should have been released. Now I feel like the “Woke” protesters should be institutionalized.
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