Clans of the Alphane Moon

When Michael C was 18 and in his first year of college, he began to have academic difficulty.  He had been an excellent student in high school and was admitted to a prestigious college in the Northeast.  He had started college well and received high grades on his first few exams but then began to have difficulty understanding the material in several classes.  His grades began to slip; by the end of his first semester he had received 3 C's and an F.  Over the Christmas break (winter break was still called Christmas break in those days, the late 1970s) he thought long and hard about his poor performance.  His parents were angry at him and threatened to withhold his tuition for his sophomore year if his grades did not improve.  He began to notice tell tale signs that things were not quite as they seemed.  He noticed a slow increase in the number of red signs in his neighborhood.  When he asked his friends and relatives about this, no one else seemed to be aware of the creeping redness.  Certain numbers began to appear with much more than the usual random frequency.  He found that when he watched TV, the newscasters often had messages of special importance to him.  After pointing this out on  a few occasions and receiving dismissive responses, he realized that other people did not recognize what was happening.  When he returned to school in the winter, things only got worse.  He understood his classes perfectly well yet his professors failed him.  His puzzlement grew.  He knew he was extremely smart; he knew he was destined for great things.  After all, he had been told how smart he was and how important he was going to be from the time he was a little boy.  Why, he wondered over and over, would his professors try to thwart him? 

Over the course of a week in March, he began to put all the pieces together:

He knew he had great things in store; he knew he was being thwarted.  The "Ah-ha!" experience hit him one morning when he realized the opposition to him was an organized cadre of evil-doers who were dedicated to thwarting his plans.  He alone knew how to save the world from its downward path, yet the forces of evil were fighting him at every step of the way.  He went to the police, naively thinking they would help.  They told him that without evidence of a crime against him they could not help.  He returned a week later with voluminous, hand written notes "proving" the existence of a conspiracy.  The police laughed and suggested he see a Doctor.  He realized how foolish he had been to look to the authorities for help; they were in on it! 

He began to cut classes, having more important things to take care of; his papers were all given failing grades and he realized he was in danger.  He started to carry a knife; he noticed the conspiracy was growing; even his roommate was a part of it.  He made one last attempt to warn people about their danger, making an impassioned speech in the middle of the student center.  When the authorities tried to get him to leave, he knew they were going to kill him and pulled his knife.  Luckily, no one was injured.  That night, while in the Hospital emergency room it finally all came together.  A pure voice of an angel whispered in his ear that he was Jesus Christ returned.  His agitation faded and a look of innocence and peace came upon him.

This is a true story (which was put together after the fact), and a not untypical description, of the several months leading up to Michael's first Paranoid Schizophrenic psychotic episode.  What was most painful was the desperation with which Michael clung to his self esteem while his life was unraveling around him.  His initial problem was a difficulty in separating important data from irrelevant background noise.  This kind of signal to noise disorder is often an early sign of cognitive dysfunction in Schizophrenia, well before any of the more dramatic symptoms appear.  The problem made it impossible for Michael to function academically and he was left with the option of recognizing a serious problem within himself or finding an alternative explanation that preserved his sense of himself.  Since the defense he used couldn't work long term, and his illness was progressive, he had to invent increasingly convoluted and irrational explanations for his ongoing problems.  His delusions made him feel better in the short run; by imaging he was Jesus Christ he could avoid the knowledge that his mind was severely damaged and his future was clouded, yet he could not hope to ever function at a higher level unless he eventually found a way to face reality.  The price of dealing with reality was a post-psychotic depression (this is the period when first break Schizophrenics are most at risk of suicide.)  Unfortunately, in the 1970s the treatments for Schizophrenia were almost as impairing as the illness; this has gotten much better but it is still a devastating illness.  In most cases, if the illness can be treated before the overt break, the person does much better and can actually hope for a near normal life.

What occurs in young people with Schizophrenia seems to have an analogue with nations and clans.  The left has become increasingly unhinged in reaction their increasing marginalization.  Richard Landes does an exemplary job  in The “Left” Takes on the Qana Affair: Fisking the Daily Kos.  His entire post is worth reading to see how a bright person can twist his mind into knots to avoid even questioning his basic assumptions.  Richard ends with a summation and an important question:

But what remains with me most after reading this piece is:
the knee-jerk incredulity at the possibility that the major news agencies might have been fooled — by Arab photographers and stringers no less!
the incredulity that someone of another political persuasion might have caught something that someone of my political persuasion did not
the sense that the larger political agendas determine what smintheus [the Daily Kos commenter Richard fisked-SW] and his friends believe
the notion that name-calling is a substitute for argumentation, and that if the author calls people the nasty names, then I don’t have to go read what they say.

And in the end, as they rub their hands in combined agony and glee, clucking over how Israel’s crimes have intensified global jihadi sentiments around the world, they protect one of the major sources of our woe: a deeply irresponsible media.

Tragedy amplified by smug partisanship.

But where does this smug hostility come from? What on earth possesses smenthius and his friends to think they know what’s going on in Lebanon? I guess, when it tells them what they want to hear, they believe the MSM. My question is, why is this what you want to hear?

When your entire world view is at risk, when an admission of even the most minor fact that is in contradiction to your perceptual scaffold is taken as an existential danger, then you will forced into the most untenable positions in order to hold onto your sense of yourself. 

Those who gleefully attack Israel for its disproportionate response, for committing genocide, or collective punishment against the victim Lebanese, must simultaneously believe the Israelis are evil monsters bent on genocide, super human military villains, and spectacularly inept at the murderous warfare they are accused of.  It doesn't add up and it damages one's critical facilities to continue to believe such nonsense.

The press, meanwhile, caught up in their need for dramatic stories, lends themselves as tools to some of the most vicious, overtly genocidal, anti-Semitic forces on the planet.  They must know that they are aiding their own enemies; they know that Hezbollah carefully controls and crafts their every move for the media, and they even admit it in unguarded moments, yet they manage to completely leave this context out of their reports.  Is this anti-Semitism? Ineptness? Evil?  Noah Pollack believes that the press may have started out without any particular anti-Israel bias but has been skillfully used by Hezbollah, just as the Palestinians have used the press for so long, to wage their media war against Israel.  Tom Gross suggests they have descended from anti-Semitism to a frenzied level of viciousness while ignoring the fact that they are next:

But this is far from being an exclusively Jewish issue. Some international journalists seem to find it amusing or exciting to bait the Jews. They don’t understand yet that Hezbullah is part of a worldwide radical Islamist movement that has plans, and not pleasant ones, for all those — Moslem, Christian, Hindu and Jew — who don’t abide by its wishes.

AJ Strata points out that Democrats Have Drunk The Kool Aid:

The one third of America which calls itself ‘liberal’ and ’strong democrat’ can now also be classified as ‘not working with a full deck’, because these people have bought into the BDS hallucination that 9-11 was an inside job. Proof from a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll just out.

More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. ...

These are the same 30% who vote against everything conservative or moderate or Republican. They are the same 30% who hate Israel and Bush and are grateful for the media co-dependants who exposed our terrorist surveillance programs. They are the same 30% who would rather leave Iraq to Osama Bin Laden and Impeach Bush and Cheney. ...

It is amazing that all these people are just incapable of adjusting to an America that has moved beyond their shrill, failed liberal ideas and, instead of attempting to be relevant decide to go delusional - big time. They have truly drunk the Kool Aid. What the reporting doesn’t note is while these minorities are living in a wierdo fantasy, 64% do not in general believe this silliness. 64-36 is what political watchers call a route.

The Arab world is famous for their paranoid conspiracy theorizing about the supermen of America and Israel.  S, C & A does a masterful job describing their downward arc in Useless Ceasfires And The Tragedy Of The Unter-Menschen.

There are many similarities between the Arab/Muslim world and the world of the left and their allies in the media.  All three clans have failed, and failing, models of the world.  The modern world has repudiated communism almost completely and is well on the way to repudiating traditional welfare state liberalism; the media is facing a frightening environment where they no longer have a monopoly on information and its dissemination and are having significant difficulty adjusting to the change; the Islamist world view has been stagnant for 1400 years but only now has the contrast between the modern world and their failure become inescapable.  Israel, to a large extent, and America in a much greater way, are the messengers of their doom and they are becoming increasingly shrill and delusional in their agitated and panicky attempts to maintain their sense of themselves as important.

As for the title of this post.  Philip K. Dick, whose books I began reading in high school, in his own paranoia and disorientation, described what happens when the inmates run the asylum, though he left out one salient issue.  While I last read Clans of the Alphane Moon almost 40 years ago, it has stayed with me ever since.  And what did Philip K. Dick leave out?  In Clans of the Alphane Moon, the inmates did not have nuclear weapons.

Comments

[Richard Landes]

this is a fantastic post. i guess this is the best of the blogosphere. i post a question, you answer it with the help of a host of other people's posts struggling with the same problem. in a way it's harder for me to believe that the left is so unhinged -- i was genuinely surprised by the tone at Daily Kos (which i don't read) -- than that the muslim world is getting sucked into an apocalyptic movement of disastrous proportions.

[goesh]

Yup, just look at the recent black-face caricature of Senator Joe Lieberman, but what amazes me is how these types of people could possibly believe they would have a place in an islamic dominated society - but let them rant and froth at the mouth. They are hurting the Democratic party, the party that will placate islamofacists.

[firetide]

The problem is that while one person with angry delusional beliefs is a mental patient descending into paranoid schizophrenia, one-third of the population with angry delusional beliefs are a political party, or at least available for political exploitation. If one angry and delusional person pulls a knife, he can be restrained before he injures himself or others. If a third of the population or some appreciable fraction thereof pull out weapons, a great many people are going to be injured or killed. When one considers that just over one-third of the population now believe that 9/11 was "an inside job," it may be more than "the Muslim world [that] is getting sucked into an apocalyptic movement of disastrous proportions."
http://newspolls.org/story.php?story_id=55

[Jimmy J.]

I have a friend who continually sends me articles about the U.S. government being responsible for 9/11. Most of the ideas about conspiracies can easily be debunked just by applying common sense. He is, however, unfazed when I ask him how this bumbling administration, which can't keep its phone-tapping and financial-monitoring programs secret, could cover up such a major clandestine operation. I have sent him the Popular Mechanics article that looks into all the conspiracy theories at: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html.
Such evidence does not change his mind. It is sad and posts like this help me to understand what it is that may be going on. I don't consider him to be mentally ill, but his obsession with the idea that Bush is evil certainly is not rational.

[SC&A]

What Landis said and what AJ says.

You note that, "The left has become increasingly unhinged in reaction [to] their increasing marginalization."

I submit that the left is less unhinged than it is deliberate. They have made their choices. As I noted today, had they put only a portion of the anti Israel fervor and venom into the victims of Darfur or Rwanda, earlier, the magnitude of the tragedies would not have been so great.

Instead, the left have reverted to a more primal state- they cannot convince the world of the merits of their cause, so they adopt and absorb the DNA of their 'untermenschen' adoptees.

The true- and ugly- colors of the left are emerging.

They are finally admitting to espousing the racism, bigotry and violence of their 'heroes'- Fidel, Che, Stalin and Mao. It was inevitable- you can't really divorce an ideology from the originators of those ideologies.

For the first time, they are being honest. I suppose that counts for soemthing.

[Granddaddy Long Legs]

Excellent post. There's more on the unhinged left here:

http://granddaddylonglegs.blogspot.com/2006/05/kool-aid-spiked-with-with-vitriol.html

[SUZANNE]

Very good post. I thought when I read the introduction, you were going to make a comparison betweem Michael's alleged "victimhood" and the Jihadists' sense of victimhood.

[ploome]

amazing analysis and spot on

[Terry Crane]

Interesting post. However may I suggest an alternative approach. Building an analogy between a human mind with a biological problem, and a sick society is an interesting tool for initial understanding and communicating, however is not fully scientific. Alternatively, you can analyse behavioural disorders (and you are professional in that!!) coming from common parenting patters again created by social conditions.

A wrote a piece lately, I am afraid rather unsuccessful, titled "Becoming Rachel Corrie", where I tried to look at her parents' behavior - the fact that nobody ever ask her father if he knew about his daughter plans, what was his advice etc.

You may also look at Muslim psycho in today's world, where parents releive themselves of any responsibility by giving children the world: "you are born Muslim, everything should belong to you, if not it's not our fault, it's because of nasty Jews" rather then tha lack of any desire to invest into education of their children...

[larwyn]

Past two days with "blackface" and "homo Joe" (LGF has pics) and LSMers and their "victims meme", I posted in JOM comment thread @1:17pm today:
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/08/ned_lamont_fail.html#comment-20688216

.....I think we are getting to point where we are going to have to accept that brain damage is rampant in the ranks of the Left."pretzel" (logic) just doesn't do it -their brain wirings must be more like that skein of yarn that the kittens got to.
Perhaps Clarice can give us a word for that.

Clarice Feldman, attorney and knitter responded:

"larwyn--"catawampus" with so many definitions including fierce and askew--it captures at the same time their tangled thinking and fercoious defense of nonsensical thinking..
Posted by: clarice | August 04, 2006 at 01:26 PM

Me at 2:01:
"Clarice, shall we call them "catawampites", "catawampists" or "catawapusses"?The "pusses" rather gets across their lack of courage/character and the sound of word suggests their acceptance of the deviant."

later in thread:

"catamite".....refers to the boy used, the victim of sexual abuse and not the abuser. When I think of the KosKids/DUers and all the rest of these mostly youngsters taught and encouraged to spew venom w/o reason, they are being abused just as the arabs abuse their children with indoctrination into their death cults. Therefore, think the cata- works.

Peter added this:
If the Dems get to play with this war,"Cataclysm"
and this:
Al Gore "Catatonic"

About 7PM EDT I read Gerard VanDerLeun' post at American Digest
titled:"Hometown Hezbollah"
(links to video)

" File under: "Suffer the Little Children."

I don't know about you but I'm especially fond of the sub-title that tells us we are spending some quality time with "The family of Ahmed Assil, the first modern-day suicide bomber."

"First modern-day suicide bomber... Sort of gives you a real head's-up notice thatthe wiring in all human heads is not all exactly the same, doesn't it".......Vanderleun : August 3, 06

I will now go back to both sites and drop in a link your post.

Any chance SW that you can get "catawampus" into the Psych's desk reference?

[M. Simon]

I support Bush, I support the war, I support Israel.

Read my blog Power and Control.
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/

Pick any month and see where I am coming from.

I must say the Popular Mechanics article did a very poor job of de-bunking. The conspiracy guys ask a few good questions. And a lot of crazy ones. A bad job of debunking gives them ammunition.

Mechanical engineering is not my main field (aircraft electrical power is) but I know enough to tell if ithe debunk is properly done.

[The Machine]

I'm convinced that no amount of facts, data or debunking would make any difference at all to these demented people.

Just as you would not have been able to convince "John" that what he perceived to be the case during his psychotic episode had no bearing on reality.

The real question right now should be, "Can one third of the polled population actually be suffering from mental problems?"

I've been convinced that the answer to that question is a resounding YES for some time now.

.

[larwyn]

machine,
What do you think is the possiblity that most of this polled 30% are users
or offspring of users of "recreational
drugs"?

That's my own "theory" based on my personal annecdotal evidence. There will never be a study on such an unPC "lifestyle" issue. Just as they shut down the obvious relationship of AIDS to "lifestyle relationships".

[flukeskydiver]

One fatal flaw in the article: how do you know that the 30% from the loony pole are the same 30% of hard core democrats? I see no support other than your own oppinion. You make good points, but fail to back up the crux of your arguement with solid scholorship. I am thus forced to read with skepticism.

[Fellow Peacekeeper]

Not really surprising if one considers that the nature of decision making is similar for both individuals and organizations, and so are the symptoms of breakdown.

In Boyd's Obsevation-Orientation-Decicision-Action model (aka OODA loop) one the striking features is how orientation can subvert observation.

Prior ideological assumptions are one cause of mis-orientation. The facts are fit into the available ideological framework, even if they don't really fit (think socialist rhetoric about the application of marxist principles to near everything).

Now, normally the results of action based on misorientation are at variance with he expected results, and changes are made. If changes are not made (for instance due to rigid ideological dogma) the increasing disparity between the expected and actual results tends to cause confusuion and disorder, increasing incoherance and irrationality until the critical point where the basic assumptions are requestioned (in your terms : a break). Note that as misorientation increases, the symptoms tend become more pronounced. Under pressure it turns to panic and chaos. The symptoms of a busted cycle are familiar - the arab world, the fuhrerbunker, the late USSR, the MSM/leftists.

The results of total organization breakdowns is also familiar - remember the huge and terrifying overmilitarized nuclear USSR? It just blew away in the wind more or less overnight when people stopped pretending to believe.

The result should be that since the MSM no longer provides usefull information, individuals will walk away and seek elsewhere (we are already seeing this in the growth of the blogosphere). The left is liable to experience a break, in an individual this would be a catastrophe, but for an organization - well, it will simply disintegrate as individuals walk away. The problem is the damage done before this happens.

The MSM/left combination is dangerous since the loop is compartmentalised and a positive feedback loop of syncophancy is generated. The MSM only feed forward the "facts" as filtered through their particular prism. They do not take decisions and there is little feedback from actions to change their warped orientation/ideological assumptions. On the other hand the consumers of the MSM find that actions based on that information fail, but cannot change the orientation of the MSM which continues to pump away.

[Ben USN (Ret)]

The leftists and Islamic Fascists cling to self esteem, both being shame cultures.
Thus the irrationality,
and increasing shrillness.
This is also why they never learn from their mistakes.

[Shane Hanson]

The liberals have married themselves to the success of the terrorists. Success for the terrorists would mean success for the liberals(in thier mind). A loss for the terrorists is seen as a success and vindication for Bush so the liberals are fighting it. They will whine about Wilson's wife being exposed as dangerous yet cheer when a program for monitoring terrorists is exposed. Anything to defeat Bush means that they must help the terrorists win. This means opening up our intelligence to aid the terrorists, protecting the terrorists with constitutional rights and indicting soldiers to hurt moral. The liberals have connected themselves to the terrorists. They will expose more programs and indict more soldiers, what ever it takes between now and 2008 to ensure we fail in Iraq and the war on terror. They will do this so they can gain power.

[M. Simon]

Larwin,

The users of recreational drugs are in large part victims of trauma, and abuse. There are also genetic factors.

Is Addiction Real?

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2005/11/is-addiction-real.html

Addiction or Self Medication?

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2004/09/addiction-or-self-medication.html

[larwyn]

In my own personal experience, of the people I know and the friends of my 3 grown daughters who are rabid lefties are also "recreational drug" apologists/users.

Now, I know Republicans/Conservatives who are drinkers, but there is not one in the above circle that uses "recreational drugs".

I would like to see a study, but fear that it would not be P.C.

Peacekeeper, thank you for your very informative comment.

[Sandy P]

I was listening to Medved on Friday when he talked about this and the 10/5 get rid of W day. When he mentioned the signers of the petition, it was the usual suspects.

Their ages really made them obsolete.

And I thought it might be time for a parody of Springsteen's "Glory Days" because they're still living in it.

[C. Owen Johnson]

I'm not sure that traditional theories of delusional behavior really describe why many Leftists act as they do, or believe what they do in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. What I have observed about these people is that they simply don't believe in consequences. They have been protected all their lives by one authority or another and as a result have a very poorly developed ability to assess cause and effect. This permeates their personal lives as well as their politics: they don't see their spending habits as the cause of their financial problems, their lack of personal responsibility having anything to do with their difficulty keeping a job, or the role of their selfish behavior in their failed personal relationships. Basically, they think they can believe whatever they want and act however they want, and nothing "bad" will ever happen as a result: for example, they are free to print classified information in their paper because it is inconceivable that doing so would not actually help the terrorists launch a successful attack in which they or their friends might die. On the other hand, it might hurt in some way someone they have decided they don't like, because that person refused to give them something they wanted.

Of course, when something bad does happen, they are shocked and horrified, and starting looking around for the "cause" which is always the "failure" of the "authority" in some way. Consider how they reacted to Katrina, or how they continue to "explain" 9/11, or the current conflict.

They act this way not because they are mentally ill, evil, or stupid, but because they never developed the necessary critical thinking skills. They grew up in a cocoon, were educated in an echo chamber, and now choose to live in a nanny state where the normal repercussions of being an adult do not operate [well, operate weakly would be more accurate], In consequence, they never had the need [or opportunity] to fully mature. Consider their behavior in the context of children and it becomes both understandable and predictable. Children with bigger vocabularies and a significant degree of sophistication in some areas compared to your average 10-14 year-old, but with the same critical thinking skills.

It is this state of permanent adolescence [in many cases, pre-adolescence] that I believe best explains the behavior of the Left [on all levels, from their beliefs to their social behaviors and communications styles], and unlike other explanations I've seen, it is one that has a clear historical cause. The problem with the Left isn't that they are crazy; the problem is that they need to grow up.

[Fellow Peacekeeper]

@larwyn

Thankyou, its gratifying to have interest shown in my cross disciplinary meanderings. Shrinkwrapped and Doctor Sanity have some truly great posts exploring the links between modernity, narcissism, our left and MSM, (and Islamic traits for that matter). And then there is Boyd's theories for decision making , aka the OODA loop . Combining the two makes the otherwise inexplicable collective behaviour of the MSM and beliefs of western leftists make perfect sense.

If anyone is interested Re Boyd and OODA loops see http://www.d-n-i.net/ , months of reading :)

[diablovision]

Owen Johnson: great post. Very well put.

Anyone noticed how Al-Qaeda in Iraq seems to be dead? Now that they have been finally removed of their leader, they seem to have either been all rounded up or simply melted away. The mainstream media has been pushing the "civil war" meme hard in order to obscure this important fact. The second phase of the war is essentially over now (the first was the removal of saddam, the second was the war of attrition against Al-Qaeda elements). The only phase of the military war left is to defuse the sectarian violence.

Don't be fooled. The nature of the war has changed and it has had fuzzy but distinguishable phases. We've won every single one at a very low cost compared to past wars.

We just need to stick this out and ensure that the Iraqi army can prevent an all-out civil war, and we will have accomplished everything we set out to do.

The left understands this on some level; that's why they are fighting so hard with their words to paint this important change as a loss and a defeat, and why they are so eager to pull out now to make defeat official.

[joe]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_B1H-1opys

18 minutes long but an absolute must watch.

[Margaret]

Owen Johnson,

Repeating the above poster -- great insight!

Not only have the Leftists not grown up; they have been encouraged to remain childish. Liking their Peter Pan state, they squeal at every attempt to force them to grow up. Those who profit from having "sheeple," their would-be leaders, also violently resist forcing adults to behave responsibly. Remember the outrage at welfare reform, or to equating AIDs with homosexual behavior, to outlawing abortion? No one sins, they just have different values or lifestyles.

This would also explain why the Left is unwilling to face squarely the danger that we in the U.S. are in. They lack the courage to face the resulting terror. It is easier for them to think that Bush is at fault than that there are murderous hordes out there with trillions of dollars of oil money to finance our destruction.

Now that I mention it, I'm not all that keen to face the obvious either! Where's my blankie?