"Longing for Freedom is a Mental Disorder" - Pt. I

 [From November 6, 2016 - Anticipating the Drapetomania Pandemic.]

“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
- Theodore Dalrymple

“By now we are even unsure whether we have the right to talk about the events of our own lives.” 
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Despite the focus of the past few posts here, my recent ruminations have been framed in a much broader historical context than a single election cycle.  We probably overestimate the impact of electing one candidate over another.  Elections reveal culture as much or more than they change culture.  And so, the story to tell will not come to an end (or begin anew) after next Tuesday.

The dystopian present and future we face will not be averted by electing the “right” candidate.  Nevertheless, political theater does shed light on the deep dysfunction of our society and the threats that do exist.

So, I need to revisit HRC’s “basket of deplorables” quip, (for hopefully the last time): 

…what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that…. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

As revealed here a couple of days ago, it is almost certain that the Clinton speechwriters lifted the laundry list of deplorables from an enlightening article by James Simpson writing for Accuracy in Media, “Reds Exploiting Blacks – The Roots of the Black Lives Matter Movement.”

There is plenty of unfortunate name-calling across the political spectrum.  Rather than engaging in a legitimate debate over issues, it seems easier to discredit those who disagree.  From the Left, we’ve heard the endless repetition of "hate-filled," “bigot,” “racist,” or fill-in-the-blank “-ophobe” applied to anyone advocating an alternate approach to current problems. Hence, voicing concerns about the potential for terrorist infiltrators among Syrian refugees earns one the label “Islamophobic.”

As Stephen Paul Foster explains:

The strategy here is to turn all potential opposition on the right into Klansmen or Nazis, stereotyped creatures of low intelligence and primitive animosities.  People like this, of course, have no place on the political spectrum other than the far fringes where they can be alternately ridiculed or ignored, or perhaps even, punished….  

Foster goes on to suggest there is something more repressive to the “phobic” designations than mere insults:

This proliferation of “phobias” is by design of the left yet another way to marginalize people who disagree with them.  Phobias are a kind of mental illness, and hence irrational. Irrational people cannot be taken seriously except as threats to themselves or those around them.  

If you object to unrestricted immigration from the various hellholes across the world, you are a “xenophobe”.  

If you have a traditional view of marriage, you are a “homophobe”.  

If you think bringing a lot of young Muslim males into the country from places like Syria and Somalia is not a good idea you are “Islamophobic.”  

You do not argue, debate or reason with phobic people. You ignore them, or, if necessary, repress them.  They “thankfully” as Hillary said are “not America”, that is that social-political part of America where people get to compete in making their case for their beliefs and their way of life. 

By being “sick” in this intended psychiatric-phobic sense, a person loses the respect and consideration for his wishes and opinions and potentially even the legal protection of his freedom and property.  Refuse to sell a wedding cake to gay couple and see what happens. Don't want your daughters to share bathrooms and shower with guys who like to think they are girls?  This is just the beginning. 

In other words, "Basket of Deplorables" is more or less equivalent to "Looney Bin."

Of course, pathologizing dissent is not without precedent in American history.  But it is looking more and more like the old Soviet approach to political repression.  Sasha Shapiro, writing in Vestnik: TheJournal of Russian and Asian Studies, recounts that era:

  

The Marxist-Leninist understanding of consciousness allowed Soviet psychiatry to adopt the view that a healthy citizen was one who lived according to Soviet society's expectations and norms. Thus, if human consciousness is the affirmation and manifestation of social life (as Marx proposed) and simultaneously the reflection and creation of the objective world (as Lenin argued), then a political dissident is someone who rejects his objective social world and displays an incoherent understanding of his environment. Anti-Soviet behavior such as protesting Soviet laws and customs, attempting to travel abroad, or participating in human rights protests was taken to be symptomatic of mental illness….

Under Leonid Brezhnev's administration after 1964, psychiatry was harnessed as a tool for censorship to suppress dissent. Official records show that 20,000 citizens were hospitalized for political reasons, mainly on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, and dissemination of fabrications with an aim to defame the Soviet political and social system. Most historians and scholars agree that this number is an underestimate on account of unreleased documentation.

Many of these hospitalizations happened quietly and quickly without attracting media attention and were justified by psychiatrists and high-level political officials in the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). In these cases, officials from the Ministry of Health were given direct orders from regional officials from the City Soviet to target certain individuals who had been marked by the KGB for certain anti-Soviet behavior.

Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway, after examining 200 such cases, developed a classification of the victims of Soviet psychiatric abuse. They were categorized as:

1. advocates of human rights or democratization;
2. nationalists;
3. would-be emigrants;
4. religious believers;
5. citizens inconvenient to the authorities.

In his 1970 open letter to the public entitled, This Is How We Live, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote: 

The incarceration of free thinking healthy people in madhouses is spiritual murder, it is a variation of the gas chamber, even more cruel; the torture of the people being killed is more malicious and more prolonged. Like the gas chambers, these crimes will never be forgotten and those involved in them will be condemned for all time during their life and after their death.

At this point, I have about forty pages of notes to distill into a discussion of the current pseudo-science of psychiatry and its manipulation for political purposes in the United States. This has been a problem of no small concern to individuals on both the political right and left.  Suffice it to say that, in the near future, a cunning political operative can avoid the discomfort of attempting to outlaw “homophobia” or “Islamophobia” or “you name it” by having those “conditions” treated as “psychological disorders requiring treatment.” 

And even when powers-that-be stop short of incarcerating "free-thinking healthy people in madhouses" we've seen plenty of other more nuanced measures to pressure and inhibit and silence individuals - to strip them of their freedom, little by little.

And here is what I find most objectionable about political correctness, just how insidious and coercive it has become throughout our society.  Again, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?”

Our increasingly Orwellian society will be addressed in future posts.  The PC police are not the only agents of rampant dehumanization, but their role in that process is undeniable.  

For now, it might be helpful to revisit a chapter from early American history demonstrating the misuse of psychology for political ends. When I first encountered “drapetomania” I thought I had stumbled upon some clever satire.  But no, this really happened.  David Pilgrim, curator of the Jim Crow Museum, tells the story:

In May, 1851, Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, a Louisiana physician, published a paper entitled, "Report On The Diseases and Physical Peculiarities Of The Negro race." The paper appeared in The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, a reputable scholarly publication. Cartwright claimed to have discovered two new diseases peculiar to Blacks that he believed justified enslavement as a therapeutic necessity for the slaves and as a medical and moral responsibility for their White masters. He claimed that Blacks who fled slavery suffered from drapetomania. In his words:

"Drapetomania is from draptise. A runaway slave is mania mad or crazy. It is unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptoms be absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers. In noticing a disease that, therefore, is hitherto classed among the long list of maladies that man is subject to, it was necessary to have a new term to express it. The cause in most cases that induces the Negro to run away from service is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation, and much more curable as a general rule. With the advantages of proper medical advice strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented, although the slaves are located on the borders of a free state within a stone's throw of abolitionists."

It was common in the 1840s and 1850s for proslavery advocates to claim that Blacks benefited from being enslaved to Whites. For Cartwright, and other proslavery defenders, any Black slave who tried to escape must be "crazy." The "uncontrollable urge" to run away was a symptom of the mental disorder. Later, Cartwright would argue that drapetomania could be prevented by "beating the devil out of them." Amputation of the toes was also suggested.

Cartwright also described another mental disorder, Dysaethesia Aethiopica, to explain the apparent lack of work ethic exhibited by many slaves. The diagnosable symptoms included disobedience, insolence, and refusing to work -- and physical lesions. What treatment did Cartwright suggest? "Put the patient to some hard kind of work in the open air and sunshine," under the watchful eye of a White man.

Parallels to today’s plantation of Political Correctness should be obvious to any thinking person.