Their p's and Q's: Psychosis and QAnon

A schizophrenic’s delusion is respectable. There is integrity in his false certainty. The delusion arose from the ashes of childhood devastation to save him.* For example, the gutting of his self-esteem by the soul murder of chronic shaming and degradation may require the reaction of delusions of importance – he is Jesus; a famous movie star loves him; he has become so formidable that he is being surveilled ubiquitously – later in life to give him a sense of existing, of being a person. But QAnon? The nonsense these human disappoint­ments believe is as arbitrary and brainless as spitting in the wind and homesteading where it lands, as opening your mouth and swallowing whatever flies in. QAnon are the trailer trash of insanity, wearing the tackiest mask of sanity,** cheapening the nature and heartbreak of psychosis and undermining its rules. I see these sheep and can barely believe cerebral neurons can be wasted so magnificently. It’s stupefying that the grave choice to bastardize one’s life or not to has reached this conclusion.

Our ignorant and complacently criminal president has revealed what huddles beneath the woodwork in America. We learn more psychology than most of us would ever want to know: Adults can make a living and be entirely false and unserious human beings. I wonder what living in this grotesque carnivalscape will do to our children’s sense of reality. 

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* See Peter Breggin’s Toxic Psychiatry and John Modrow’s How To Become a Schizophrenic.

** The Mask of Sanity, Hervey Cleckley, M.D., 1903 - 1984. https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/1941-cleckley-maskofsanity.pdf. Cleckley’s classic study of psychopathy.

Joe or ruination

Who would have thought that our country’s continued existence would be decided in a battle between sanity and the mask of it? This refers to Hervey Cleckley’s classic study of psychop­athy, in which he describes psychopaths as imposters of humanity with destructive needs and with no conscience. Who would have thought that psychology – the soft science and deepest and murkiest quality of a person – would be the single crucible in which our future as a free people is forged? Nearly half our country – or from the Electoral College frame of reference, more than half our country – does not feel, recognize or apply the quality of heart in its idea of the nature of national leadership or in its view of the social contract. The dysfunctions of global anger, global hatred and projected pain are the eyes through which they see time and existence, their own and our country’s. The aborted emotional devel­opment of the psy­cho­path is also at play in the stunning childish immaturity we see in daily discourse, as if the Republican party were the avatar of Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, the psychiatric diagnosis of congenitally angry, vindictive, miserable children. These people, citizens and govern­ment officials, are so ungrown that the president’s most puerile and ridiculous tweets and statements please and do not embarrass them; are so trapped in the damaged child’s mentality that cartoon conspiracy theories fill their heads like magical thinking; are so concrete and shallow that conceiving half the country as their enemy doesn’t strike them as absolutely insane.

One man whose psyche died in childhood, Trump, has released the "demons" – the pain – in millions of people, has legitimated their sickness that required therapy not the power to destroy democracy and institutions. We know with full certainty that pathol­ogy raised this man-child and formed every molecule of his nature. We are led by the equivalent of a creature bred and tortured to become a killing machine, as his thoughts and urges have killed thousands in a pandemic, have destroyed ally relationships, have sickened the economy, have befriended and colluded with murderers, have duped impressionable followers. We are led by disease, as other countries have been and are led by dictators who survived their birth in body only and who, in an ideal world, should spend their lives in prisons and psychiatric wards.

We need to see this treatable disease for what it is. We need to vote for Joe Biden, which is simply to say we must opt to stay alive as a free people, not as a psychopath’s victims.

The problem with Democrats and liberals: A “New Simplism” approach

Most people have a sense of what it means to be a “good” person. Feeling bad if others get hurt. Not prejudiced or discriminating against people who look different from you. “Respecting” or at least being tolerant of opinions different from yours. Being kind, gentle, generous and empathic. “Good” refers, for the most part, to our response to others. Because of that, such good people may be somewhat embarrassed about the necessary selfishness we feel, and to a significant extent must embody. We can’t, obviously, give away all of our food, clothing, shelter. We can’t give our oxygen to someone who may appear especially needy or better able to appreciate the gifts of life than we are. We will feel some internal rebellion against forgoing all enjoyment, peace or pleasure.

We know about this “good” because of childhood lessons from our family and teachers, and possibly by birth instinct, and by the chemical benevolence that comes from being loved. However, people often have grown an internal truth that supersedes what they may have learned. Many children live in predominant pain from innumerable reasons, on the spectrum from abuse to loneliness. If they are never helped deeply, down to where the hurt was planted, and if there is no sympathetic witness to their plight, they will have to shut down hope that goodness will come to them, that it exists. They will callus their heart. These people might hold onto severed ideas of the good, but they will not feel it and will live it sparsely or not at all. More likely their thinking will turn as dark as their pain. “Good” will not come from love and security but from their opposite.

Liberals and Democrats are, admit it or not, widely attributed the cachet of “goodness.” They want to help unfortunate people. They see society as a compact, as brothers and sisters, not as warring islands or a fortuitous crowd of solipsists. Their problem is that – maybe with the rare exception – somewhere inside them, they have an eye of the hurricane created by early hurt in their lives. And where that exists, they are numbed or painfully bent. Where that exists, they believe in force against individuals.

They accept that the definition of “society” is, essentially, “government.” That we are not primarily individuals who should decide how to live our individual lives, should decide who we will help and give to, but are tools of a government that should make our agenda, should create and ratify “good” as it conceives it. Our eye of the hurricane says that “good is good” whether we feel it or are coerced, by fines or imprison­ment, to perform it. This numb, this callus, is the error of psychology that confuses our good no less than it confuses the good of Republicans and Conservatives who value individual rights and freedom yet disfranchise the vote, cage immigrants, feel affection for a sociopathic president, and prefer to unfairly favor the rich rather than the poor.

It's a kind of irony that the Democrats will come off worse in this confusion of the good. They, with their philosophy of altruism and brotherly love, will seem hypocritical, with a paradoxical morality that enables the conflation of liberal humanitarianism with totalitarian Socialism – while the Republicans, whose character is fundamentally “Don’t tread on me” individualism, even self-centeredness, seem consistently true to their convictions. Poor Democrats! What can they do, but try to own a realism unknown to either party or ideological system: Society is a necessity. It would be nice if we were all just individuals, but we’re a shotgun marriage, and now we must compromise for our partner. And by the way, it’s still better to be good.