Five Symptoms of Republican Schizophrenia
The Mayo Clinic, the world famous institution cited by all sides in the contentious health care debate, defines schizophrenia as a serious brain disorder "in which reality is interpreted abnormally" resulting in "hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking and behavior." Apparently, that affliction is now running rampant among supporters of the Republican Party. As recent polling about conservative beliefs regarding Medicare, taxes, supposed "death panels," President Obama's citizenship and more shows, the crisis of Republican schizophrenia has reached epidemic proportions.
Here, then, are the five symptoms of incurable Republican schizophrenia:
(If you exhibit one or more of these warning signs, see your physician immediately. If you don't have health insurance - and if your state voted Republican, you're much more likely not to - Democrats will try to provide it for you.)
1. "Keep Government Out of Medicare." In July, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) described an angry constituent who confronted him at a South Carolina town hall meeting, "keep your government hands off my Medicare." Despite his best efforts to explain that Medicare is a government program, the voter, Inglis lamented, "wasn't having any of it."
But as new data from Public Policy Polling revealed, that same cognitive failure is now far more widespread than swine flu. While 39% of all Americans responded that the government should "stay out of Medicare," 59% of self-identified conservatives and 62% of McCain voters hold that oxymoronic view.
2. "Barack Obama is a Muslim." An April survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 11% of Americans believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, a figure largely unchanged since its polling started in March 2008. Yet 17% of Republicans and 19% of white evangelicals (74% of whom voted for John McCain) insist the President is an adherent of Islam, despite his repeated pronouncements and decades of church attendance to the contrary.
3. "Barack Obama Was Not Born in the United States." This contagion is running rampant among the ranks of Republicans. And even with repeated treatments of birth certificates and Hawaiian newspaper announcements from 1961, there is apparently no cure.
A DailyKos/Research 2000 poll found that a stunning 58% of Republicans did not believe (28%) or were unsure (30%) that President Barack Obama was in fact born in the United States. To be sure, this is a Southern pathology, a region home to 69% of all birthers and the only part of the country to increase its Republican presidential vote in 2008. This week's PPP survey only confirmed the chronic birtherism plaguing the Republican Party:
Only 62% of respondents reported believing that Obama was born in the United States. 10% thought he was born in Indonesia, 7% thought he was born in Kenya, 1% thought he was born in the Philippines, and 20% weren't sure. Among Republicans 44% think he was not born here while just 36% believe that he was.
(In a promising development, only 10% of respondents weren't sure if Hawaii is part of the United States. On this score, conservatives were only slightly more confused than liberals and moderates.)
4. "Government Death Panels Will Euthanize My Grandma." Sadly, the Republicans' Birther and Deather psychoses represent a cradle-to-grave illness.
Despite the vaccinations administered by PolitiFact, ABC News, the New York Times and countless other care-givers, Republicans persist in their virulent health care death panel delusions. This out-of-control CTD (conservative transmitted disease) has spread like wildfire, thanks to vectors like Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. (Even a Republican like Senator Chuck Grassley, previously diagnosed by President Obama as sane, came down with the deather flu.)
An NBC poll this week quantified the deather madness: a staggering 45 percent said it's likely the government will decide when to stop care for the elderly. (Majorities also wrongly believe that reform proposals on the table would constitute a government "takeover" of the health care system, one which would cover illegal aliens.)
As MSNBC noted, viewers of Fox News - a strong predictor of Republican allegiance - were overwhelmingly afflicted by this health care dementia:
In our poll, 72% of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79% of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69% think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75% believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly.
5. "President Obama Raised Taxes on Working People." The Republicans' profound cognitive disorders are not limited to their hallucinations about Barack Obama's birth or the health care imbroglio. As the Tea Party movement shows, furious right-wing zealots are outraged by no taxation with representation.
As promised, Barack Obama in the stimulus package delivered on his pledge of tax relief for 95% of American households. Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) didn't only jump start gross domestic product and refill empty state coffers in the second quarter of 2009. As Nate Silver thoroughly documented, "Obama has cut taxes for 98.6% of working households."
Nevertheless, frothing at the mouth Tea Baggers spouting Republican Tax Day lies took to the streets not to thank the President, but to blame him for the tax cuts they received. While Andrew Sullivan described their unreasoning mania as "adolescent, unserious hysteria," the Daily Show's Jon Stewart diagnosed their disorder:
"I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing."
Back in April, I appropriated Daniel Patrick Moynihan's classic statement to conclude that with their rag-tag band of revolutionaries, secessionists and agitators for violence, Republicans were "defining political deviancy down." Sadly, the delusional and the deviant are now descending on town hall meetings with guns. The Republican schizophrenics are no longer just a danger to themselves.
UPDATE: Newsweek adds the "Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate" to its list of "Seven Falsehoods About Health Care." Meanwhile, the RNC added to a new pathology, suggesting in a poll that "GOP voters may be discriminated against for medical treatment" under a Democratic health care plan.
(This piece originally appeared at Perrspectives; the image via Huffington Post.)
Foist!
far left loon >.<
http://punditkitchen.files.wordpress.com/2009...
I can name at least five other symptoms......
Beck
Hannity
Limpballs
Bachmann
Savage
Need I go on?
let's not be sexist here. I think you should even out the list with Malkin, Coulter and Princess Cheney.
Do not confuse cause with symptom. Terminate the cause, eliminate the symptoms.
The disease of Republican lies and stupidity has a major vector: Fox News. Stamp out the disease: http://www.democrats.com/boycott-fox-news-adv... . Contact their advertisers via their websites and tell them that you won't buy their products because your dollars would be helping them to pay for racist hate speech - by supporting Fox News.
Alan Grayson for President, Elizabeth Warren for Vice President, and Paul Krugman for Secretary of the Treasury!
GOP voters may be discriminated against for medical treatment
I strongly oppose discrimination on the basis of stupidity! On the other hand, some degree of rationing may be needed in treating mental illness, just as it is true of treating any other health condition.
6) markets are self-correcting
7) war brings peace
8) deficits are good
9) deficits are bad
10) deficits don't matter
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
nice
11) torture is legal
Mickey: "It was an epiphany. Do you know what an epipany is?"
Keoni: "NOT NOW MICKEY!"
12) America does not torture
"It's called the American Dream. Because you have to be asleep to believe it!" George Carlin
Republicanism is a mental disease.
What, you mean "people of color?" Yeah, there must be a ton of those in the GOP....
Keyes, Christie, Steele....Bernard
By tons are you talking about BS???
None
S T U P I D I T Y !!!!!
How many signs are being held upside-down?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
...if there's some evil GOP think tank that calculates exactly which misinformation to put out there, whom to target with the misinformation, and how to go about catapulting that propaganda.
Karl Rove's office.
Hill & Knowlton & The Rendon Group.
...one of these think tanks and reveal how they work.
but there isn't enough soap and water in the world to wash the filth off after being there.
...they would probably come after you and kill you.
And they would do it in the name of their being pro-life.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
don't forget about teh jeeeeeeebus!
I think as of late, they have forgotten about Jesus too. They seem to be trying to have a Mad Hatter tea party along with a tea bagger party.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
though...
http://punditkitchen.files.wordpress.com/2009...
John Rendon is pretty open about what he does.
dramatized. LOL
And then there's kristol PNAC...
Of course republicans will be discriminated against. There's no medical treatment for ignorance or stupidity.
Please don't use schizophrenia as a negative adjective in this manner.
It reinforces the stigma associated with what can be a very serious mental illness.
So do you prefer the Goethe version or the Charles Marlowe?
Actually, I understand one George Sabellicus and Phillipus Aureolis Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim (Paracelsus) were essentially combined together in European lore to create the Dr. Faustus figure.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jU81YW06ZH0C...
And their traipsing in and around Ingolstadt may've had a bearing on the writing of Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, whose Victor Frankenstein, essentially replaces them in modern mythos, because he studied at the University there, where he also created his monster.
It was also the seat of Adam Weishaupt's Illuminati.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tejnH0d6gx4
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Not happy about headline, as a caregiver for a person with psychosis.
And I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but what terms would you consider acceptable to use to describe muddled and often contradictory thinking, the inability to process information logically and the encouraging of violence in response to disagreements?
We can't fit all that into a headline.
And as Jon has described it, this does seem to be some sort of mental disease, stigma or no.
With relatives that are involved in this movement (far right) who are intelligent and well-educated, it seem to me more like cult symptoms than psychosis.
They have not become psychotic (well OK, except for one but he always was), but non-psychotic ones, who are intelligent are so morally outraged and kept so morally outraged that the very robust rational circuits which I know they still possess just do not kick in.
I would need to dig up the links, but when dealing with people who have had their thinking affected by a cult-like process, calling them stupid, or mentally ill is *very* counter-productive.
If you want to increase the right-left divide, this article is how to do it. If you want to help, you have to show them the effects of their behavior, *not* accuse the behavior on a clinical diagnosis which they do not have.
The psychotic I care for, is not Republican btw.
So, I would go for something along the lines of "thought-control" not schizophrenia. But I would also avoid direct belittling attacks. The problem with most is not that they can not think, they can. The issue is that they will only make decisions based on a very small controlled set of data. Calling them mentally ill, may make you feel better, but it will not convince them to read what you have to say. On the contrary, it will convince them to cling more tightly to their comforting (and limited) information sources.
I think that it has been shown over and over that whatever cognitive dissonance (and I'm using that term correctly and appropriately) in their minds keeps them believing what it is they believe, damn the facts, will likewise keep them from being persuaded by us.
It's a losing proposition. I have a fundamentalist Christian (now ex-) stepmother. I would routinely trap her in her own logic against gays, liberals, etc. It never failed that as soon as I did it and she knew she was caught, she'd just dismiss all logic and facts with "I don't care. I know what I believe in my heart is right."
Is it mean-spirited to liken this to schizophrenia and mental illness? Yes, perhaps it is. Is it fair to those who truly do suffer with mental illness? (and FWIW, I don't personally attach a stigma to it any more than I attach one to my chronic asthma. It is an illness. No one chooses to be ill) Yes, probably so, and for that, I feel guilty.
But I haven't found a whole lot of success being understanding of such illogic and fallacies either. Maybe they need someone to be as blunt as to say--"Look, your thinking just isn't right--is it a choice or can you not help it?" to get through to them.
considering I work with convincing a schizophrenic to integrate with reality daily? That is my job. Things that work for him do not work on my relatives (I've tried them!). I really am very sympathetic to your experiences with your step-mother.
This started about how to not insult the mentally ill. I did offer a suggestion. Just imagine what the teen psychotic I deal with will think when he reads this link please? And he reads here, but does not post. I did give you a suggestion, and explained in clinical terms (I work with more psychiatrists than I can count some days) some logical basis for that suggestion.
With the unabashed position of this site, I can't really fault you at all if you don't care about convincing the right. I do have a small twinge at the fact this type of article makes the divide in the country worse though. If you want to share notes on things to say to rabid-right wing relatives, you can just e-mail me. I have this handle at gmail.
Here is a video by that teen. He is worried about how both sides hate each other, and made this video at the recent Health Care Rally here in Raleigh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWF4GeSp-_o
He wants them to talk. Hate bothers him. He wants me to add he thinks the polarization is very bad for our country.
I'm in remission from Bipolar I with psychotic features (not to mention PTSD). I may have been "crazy," I may have been hearing voices, and seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, and the whole nine yards, but even at my worst, I never would have fallen for any of this garbage that the average wingnut has!
What is happening with the right-wing in this country is a whole other ballgame. I don't know how to describe it, and I understand that the C & L team would probably is at a loss for it too, but it is certainly not the kind of psychosis referenced in the title.
I think that the title ought to be more offensive to those of us who struggle with psychotic disorders, who support the President, and who know that health care reform not just us but everyone. Some of them read and comment here, ya know...
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
If it wasn't for the voices in my head, I'd have no one to talk to.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Schizophrenia , from the Greek roots skhizein (σχίζειν, "to split") and phrēn, phren- (φρήν, φρεν-; "mind")
In the headline, the root meaning of the word is implied, not the mental disorder.
Alan Grayson for President, Elizabeth Warren for Vice President, and Paul Krugman for Secretary of the Treasury!
The people who care only about their power and your money are banking on us not knowing the difference between legitimate policy decisions and made up paranoia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6KBRU-yuwc
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Ironically, those who claim the most belief in an afterlife are the least willing to accept death. A study published in the Journal of America Medical Association in March revealed that terminally ill cancer patients who are religious are far more likely to seek aggressive, uselessly life-prolonging care in the week before death than less religious patients.
Religious patients are far more likely to ask doctors to do everything possible to keep them alive, and were three times as likely to be placed on a mechanical ventilator. They were less likely to do advance care planning, such as signing “do not resuscitate” orders, preparing a living will or creating a healthcare proxy.
Life prolonging care of terminally ill patients not only increases human suffering but increases costs to taxpayers. Medicare spends about a third of its budget on people in the last year of life—much of that at the very end of life.
Researchers found aggressive end of-life care not only causes a more painful death, but greater shock and grief for family members.
The study was made by the Center for Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
Sounds like a lack of faith to me or the normal hypocrisy.
Study the symptoms not the virus...
This is very interesting information.
"In theory theory and practice are alike. In practice they are very different."
From:[ http://ffrf.org/fttoday/ ]
A copy can be found here:
[ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7208/is... ]
I scan some of the interesting articles into my puter with PaperPort version 11.1 (11.1.0.300)
For verification purposes I partially tracked it to here:
[ http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract... ]
See: RELATED LETTERS [Mid-Page]
I hope this helps? Thank you for your time and interest.
Amended: I'm not sure if this is the referenced article?
[ http://www.dana-farber.org/abo/news/press/060... ]
Study the symptoms not the virus...
Snip - To the Editor: The study on religious coping and use of intensive life-prolonging care near death in patients with advanced cancer by Dr Phelps and colleagues1 showed that positive religious coping was associated with receipt of intensive life-prolonging medical care near death.
The instrument used to measure positive religious coping, the Brief RCOPE, 2 presupposes an image of God as someone who personally interacts with people. However, empirical research in several countries outside the United States indicates that many people have a nonpersonal image of God.
[ http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/... ]
Study the symptoms not the virus...
Bloomberg ran a book review this morning that really makes a good point in my opinion about universal health care. There are two areas where pure socialized health care are in place. One is in Cuba and the other is run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The author posed this question and I would really like an answer to it especially from a Republican since I am a veteran. I mean, am I to assume that, from the Republican right wing point of view we veterans are some sort of second class citizens in their eyes that they would give us what they depise?
“If this is un-American, why did we choose it for America’s military veterans?” asks Reid, a Washington Post correspondent and National Public Radio commentator.
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&s...
We entitle our soldiers with universal health care so they can fight to save us from such entitlements.
To the opponents of health care reform, and republicans in general, this is a lamentable, but necessary evil, along the lines of 'we are restricting your freedoms in order to preserve them.'
There are only 5? Seem like total whackjobs to me.
I rarely have time to come in here now. Hope everyone is well. Always something going on, isn't there?!! Lights, camera, action.
far left loon >.<
I'm doin ok. how you is?
And no...it never ends...
Good. Still doing interbiews, but tons of spare time too. I'm getting to know the city.
I'm convinced there is a bad (sad) spirit in my hallway. This building was built in 1200 for the Knights Templar, and is stone and plaster, and really friggin' old. I live in a remodelled cavern.
The Chapeau Rouge bar, around the corner, has herb merchants. :)
far left loon >.<
be there around six-ish, lol.
that much time away from the textbooks! ;)
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
Have fun with the books. I like learning, unless it's dead boring crap (like economics). (You aren't studying economics, are you?)
PS I simply CAN NOT get used to C&L hours from my new time zone!!! Brother.
far left loon >.<
Spanish, art, and business.
Hopefully you'll adjust to the new time zone eventually! :)
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
What is so great about the United States health insurance program?
I'm sure they got PLENTY of lies to rationalize their fleecing of their customers...
the (r)/tea baggers chant "free market" but what do they actually vote for are health care insurance companies that don't want competition and lawmakers/Pharma that want no-bidding for drug prices.
consequently prices/cost continue to go upward.
Let's contend that the president is not even a human and was never born. He is a figure created by a mad democratic scientist to take over the world.
It makes as much sense as any of this other nonsense. These people have seen too many movies and have too many people feeding them this trash. They want to believe anything negative about this president to justify their bigoted feelings.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Snip - Fifty years ago a judge wearing a dress was a hangin' offense. Today it's just another new cycle. On Feb. 6th, 63 year old Judge Robert Somma was arrested for DWI after he hit a pick-up truck. Highway patrol found him wearing a black women's cocktail dress, fishnet stockings and high heels.
[ http://www.republicanoffenders.com/index.html ]
Study the symptoms not the virus...
If not, I definitely recommend it. At the beginning a British peer who is also a magistrate, accidentally hangs himself in an act of erotic asphyxiation wearing a tutu.
Hilarity ensues.
"In theory theory and practice are alike. In practice they are very different."
The tea bagger express chose this past weekend to reach for the spotlights and they were ignored by everyone except CNN Headline News and of course Fox. Sadly the news was all about Senator Kennedy's funeral. I bet he would be happy to know that in the end, after he was gone, he was able to keep these idiots from getting the publicity they wanted.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
And yet republican schizophrenics control the liberal media.
I read an article last week that some 60% of the American populace believes in at least some of the health care myths that are floating around out there.
This is really upsetting, that Republicans can lie with impunity and then get some people to believe their crap.
Last week, I understand that the GOP apologized for a GOP sponsored survey about health care. In that survey, it was suggested that the Democrats would use voter registration in order to provide preferential treatment to Democrats over Republicans, if a Democratic health care plan were to become law.
After criticism, the GOP admitted that the statement was "inartfully worded." But you know damned well that they purposely sent that wording out. Some percentage of people, probably not small, will now believe the original suggestion.
This is extremely upsetting that these damned repuglicans lie like this. They've done it with Obama himself; they've done it with healthcare. It's maddening; it's sickening. There's a place in hell for people who lie like this.
Texas is threatening secession over a single issue like this health care "reform" that, by all appearance, looks as if will not be reform at all as much as a revamped, repackaged status quo. There's your bipartisan spirit. I can perfectly understand why Obama thinks he can work with these maniacs.
Ergo, I think it's high time someone wrote an open letter to the great state of Texas.
JP
http://giveusthisdayourdailtydread.blogspot.com
Rick Perry is coming to my town on Wednesday. If I can get close enough to him I intend to ask him how he would replace federal dollars if we secede.
the dollar would be replace with the peso...
that says you can't throw your shoes at him?
I have some really....malodorous... runnin shoes I've been savin for a rainy day.
I wouldn't waste my shoes on him.
..why not?
Mickey: "It was an epiphany. Do you know what an epipany is?"
Keoni: "NOT NOW MICKEY!"
if his shoes smell as bad as mine......
Just once I'd like to be addressed as Sir. Without the "You are creating a scene"
Believe me...
it's awful...after wearing them to do chore outside...I LEAVE them outside....don't wanna clog up the A/C filter.
As entertaining as it would be to cut off Texass, it's a no-can-do.
Otherwise, they'd quickly round up all of the minorities and race-traitors and pagans (ysbaddaden) and string 'em up.
As a member state, they're forced to refrain from extralegal lynchings.
Mexico would just declare war on Texas the second they were their own stupid little country.
I think it's time that we cull the herd, chlorinate the gene pool, or whatever cute phrase you care for, and get rid of the dumbasses who inhabit this country. Honestly, the only thing these people can do is breed. There is no critical thinking left in this country and we are all the worse for it. Dumbasses who breed dumberasses.
Appalling the stupidity in this country. Simply appalling. ARGH!
..not to use or even suggest the "solution" to the problem "..cull the herd, chlorinate the gene pool,.."etc.? After all, its bad enough the right thinks our President has, as his supposed alter-ego, hitler. Just sayin'
And although I would rather engage the dining room table in a conversation, we can only hope to educate as many "dumbasses" as possible before they breed dumberasses.
Mickey: "It was an epiphany. Do you know what an epipany is?"
Keoni: "NOT NOW MICKEY!"
afraid of
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/those...
Just once I'd like to be addressed as Sir. Without the "You are creating a scene"
Of course the willingness of the media to give these nuts a platform and take them seriously combined with the GOP refusal to denounce even the most insane theories doesn't help a bit.
Added to this silliness is the Democratic Party's own tepid defense of Reform and it's utter lack of focus in messaging.
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
you forgot the president likes grey poupon mustard. that makes him a french socialist communist. and he took a vacation, that makes him uppity....
watch some ass kicking after labor day in congress.... pelosi has been very silent this month, and she is going to be pissed with all the bs the GOP has tried to 'throw up' this month.... look for the reichwing really go nuts after labor day thru the holidays....
piece on earth, as long as its my piece...
...about 10 percent didn't know that Hawaii was a state either, so perhaps some of them thought that he was born on foreign soil: the island nation of Hawaii.
Republican Truisms:
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.
I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.
Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
Also Adolph Hitler quotes.
Michelle (nutjob) Bachman isms
Just once I'd like to be addressed as Sir. Without the "You are creating a scene"
Please, step away from the bipartisan red herrings.
Please, grasp that the internet is the newest progressive invention that enables our entire species to become more knowledgeable and to communicate more readily. We now have the unique opportunity to use our exponentially developing technologies to access and organize factual information, and to work together to make macro-level decisions to benefit our entire planet.
Please, recognize that we're "all bozos on this bus"! We cannot exit this planet at the next galaxy, so we must inevitably learn to live together, or continue to sacrifice ourselve and our young people in unwarranted "wars" that benefit only the wealthiest among us.
Finally, please, please, please, recognize that promoting fear, hate and divisiveness of any kind will never result in anything positive. Reject your fear. Let go your hate.
“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?" (Matthew 5:43-47) [Do not mistake my use of this quote as an adjuration to embrace some specific organized religion--just listen to the words, which are timeless and universal.]
Gandhi, King, Dalai Lama--these great pacifists and others like them give excellent examples of effective responses to 'hatemongering' and fear. One doesn't need to wear rose-colored glasses to recognize that love is the most effective palliative in these trying times. Love can also help those who aspire to effective pacifism to accept that those who hate or fear are the only ones who can find their personal path to peaceful membership in our Global Family.
Personally, I pray for patience and acceptance, because so many of the Angry Group (tyvm Dana Gould) really push my hate buttons. But, I have far too many friends and family who are Republicans. I find myself challenged almost daily to address or refute their fears, their ignorance and their resentments without causing cognitive dissonance, or further hate and fear. Love, diplomacy, compassion, and pacifism are the only approaches I've found that help me weasel a wee bit of light into the darkest corners of their minds.
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that many of these right wing people are overwhelmed with racist fears and manipulated by a coordinated campaign in the media and elsewhere. Many are under-educated. Some appear stupid. Whatever has caused this hysteria in the right wing, I do know this: People don't choose to become ill with schizophrenia, and they don't deserve to be mocked for their illness. You really owe it to yourself to go beyond the Mayo clinic list of symptoms and find out about this devastating disease and its impact on individuals, families, and communities. I remember the justifiable outrage when Rush Limbaugh mocked Michael J. Fox. Did you know that Parkinson's and schizophrenia have much in common? Both result from disruption in the dopamine system. Both reflect frontal lobe dysfunction. While Parkinson's impacts motor function, cognition, and behavior,schizophrenia produces psychotic symptoms as well as changes in cognition and behavior. Do you really think that people who suffer from this illness should be equated with these confused, hate-filled people?
I'm grateful that somebody else underscored the fact that this post needlessly makes light of a horrible, tragic affliction.
i think a more accurate (and more compelling) term would be: Republican Psychosis.
*
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
David Bowie - I'm Afraid of Americans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slKNd22GGaQ
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
Trent Reznor chasing David Bowie through the streets of NYC?
Awesome!
Just once I'd like to be addressed as Sir. Without the "You are creating a scene"
it first aired (I was in high school), but I still think it's cool! :)
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
Thanks. I hadn't seen it.
Hey Anna, you are just a pup eh?
Just once I'd like to be addressed as Sir. Without the "You are creating a scene"
that counts as being a pup I'll take it!
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
I am celebrating the 10nth anniv of my 40th. That makes you a pup
Just once I'd like to be addressed as Sir. Without the "You are creating a scene"
say this about
"GOP voters may be discriminated against for medical treatment" under a Democratic health care plan.
That.
Why do we got to respond to Fucking stupid?
If all they do is listen to Rush and watch Fox, I say fuckum.
From now on all I'll do is agree with the idiots.
"Death panels"? That's terrible!
Socialization of our health care?
Not gonna happen on my watch!
Ha!
Just once I'd like to be addressed as Sir. Without the "You are creating a scene"
the irony is in the connection between the fear that we will "end Grandma's life prematurely", and the type of nation that would torture humans. A nation that would torture human beings would definitely kill old foks to save a little money. I can see their fear, it's ironic that GWB was all for torture and tossing the Bill of Rights out the window and Obama is for inclusiveness and compassion but the population still fears the "evil" government and will not allow the intelligent evolution of our system to include healthcare for all.
These days my most frequently asked question is: Are you a Christian? I don't see many folks acting like Chrisitans and being willing to make a small monetary sacrifice so that others can live a free and productive life with taxpayeer-supported healthcare for all. Jesus gave his life so that others could have salvation and live, love and support each other while on Earth (Spaceship Earth for all you Bucky fans). Yet alot of these "Christians" aren't willing to love the poor and other humans in need. Jesus would turn his head in disgust if he saw how Americans were responding to the concept of Universal Healthcare. If you aren't going to act like Chrisitans, please stop pretending to be Christians.
Not yet, but it's in the cards. Nobody, Rethuglican or Dem, can spend money like a drunken sailor at a whorehouse, and not have to find some way to pay for it all eventually. This financial mess is far from over. Paybacks are going to be a biotch.
I am ok with paying more in taxes if.. I get more in return.
What is the big deal with paying more in taxes?
I think we are getting a good deal with what we get.
Fire and police protection.
The roads are always being fixed, etc.
Now we ARE going to get a revamp of our health care system whether it is what I want or not.
I would love to see a single payer system.
And I would pay more in taxes to have it.
Just once I'd like to be addressed as Sir. Without the "You are creating a scene"
... and let ME keep the money I've honestly earned to provide for my own family. The problem here occurs when people stick their hands in my pockets and call it "compassion," rather than by its proper name, theft.
My wife of twelve years suffers from schizophrenia. It has deprived my children of a recognizable mother and largely stolen my wife from me. And yes, it is incurable.
That affliction is hardly a suitable subject of fun, or a condition properly employed as a political metaphor. It is a deadly, tragic disease, and I would think that people who pride themselves on their superior sensibilities would be keenly aware of that fact.
Pillory the GOP and its adherents for their hypocrisy and self-delusion, but resist the temptation to make facile and inappropriate use of mental disabilities with which some of us have become all too familiar.
Oh, and where is that infinitely pious Mr. Neiwert, who really should be chastising the author of this entry for dehumanizing her political opposition? Back in the USSR it was commonplace for political opinions to be treated as symptoms of mental illness, and to place people "diagnosed" in that fashion in the psychiatric gulag.
Treating tea bag activists as clinically deranged is just as much a flavor of "eliminationism" as any of the racist crap being emitted by outliers in the GOP coalition. Sauce for the goose makes a suitable marinade for the gander, people.
The moronic Right Wing-Nut birthers and imbecile anti-health sign carriers will be the losers and this will backfire on all the brain-dead sheep, bedwetting crybabies and kool-aid drinking lunatics.
How can a product that doesn't help anyone, cannot be used passed out borders and is for profit get any bigger than it is.
The health care insurance industry is obviously doomed.
Just once I'd like to be addressed as Sir. Without the "You are creating a scene"
I'm sure schizophrenics would find this post amusing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MmyGmHea-U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XmKfsN3DEM
(Actually, I've known schizophrenics; they like hanging around someone who makes them look sane.)
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Okay, to be honest a certain amount of mental illness runs in my family, combined with a fairly high intelligence.
Fortunately, most of us are merely eccentric, and are frustrated artists, or have voided ambition, though sometimes someone gets it pretty bad.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
came out, and a lot of it is spent on her mental health issues, and her family history of severe mental illness. Gladys Monroe Baker (Marilyn's mom) was schizophrenic, and Marilyn herself was diagnosed as a borderline schizophrenic. Two of Marilyn's grandparents died in sanitariums, and her great-grandfather hanged himself. Sad stuff.
And it wasn't too long ago I learned about my great-grandfather being committed to an asylum in the 1920's after trying to drown himself in a bathtub. I'm not sure I'd want to know anything else about my psychiatric family history...
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
I tend not to think of schizophrenia as a mental disease, although it has a lot of features as such, but rather a functional disease. My understanding is that it occurs in late adolescence/early twenties when the pre-frontal cortex is supposed to come fully online. It is what controls behavior, and keeps impulsive behavior at a minimum. Apparently, because it's either never fully formed or it is malformed that it never really comes online. But impulse behavior is not necessarily limited to what one does, since it can involve impulsive behavior in the thinking processes. It can be like an electrical storm in the brain. So a certain sense of creativity is to be expected. In fact, oddly enough, the classic definition of a religious experience sounds oddly schizophrenic.
But because it is a functional cause, drugs, along with therapy can control it. However, from one I've seen of the drugs they can cause somnolent behavior. So unfortunately, once they feel better, patients often stop taking it, because of those other effects, and the recurrence of the illness can be devastating to all around them.
However, since delusion often plays a part in schizophrenia the use of the term here is not inappropriate, since it involves odd beliefs, a detachment from reality, and in the form of dementia praecox "foolish behavior."
Although I post clips from horror movies to make my jokes, true mental illness more often then not torments the bearer, and perhaps their immediate family, but not in the criminally insane way, because they're generally not dangerous to the public. Forced awkward positions, the banging of the head against walls, severe bipolar disorders can occur and other forms of self-torment can follow.
I'd like to write a novel about mental illness, actually showing the decent into insanity, but I'm not sure what the effect of such writing would have on me. When I was working on my unpublished vampire novel, I started drinking an excess of red wine, out of Halloween skull cups, and eating lots of spaghetti, and eating meat that was increasingly rare.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
be agreed on, and I can see your point too.
And your comment about your vampire novel got a big grin out me! :)
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
In a psychotic, you mention the classic, Oh I feel better don't need those anymore roller coaster.
With primary bi-polar, once you are back on the drugs, you go back to whatever level of functional you are while on them.
With a primary psychotic, once they are off the drugs, a measure of the functionality is lost forever each time, even if you return to drugs. So a med. lapse is very devastating in the psychotic.
There is also quite a bit if evidence now not only for a genetic component (a predisposition though not an on/off gene). As well, something generally has to happen to cause the gene to express. Things like (short, incomplete list) pre-natal stress/maternal viruses during pregnancy, poor pre-natal care, birth complications, drug use prior to symptoms onset and head injuries.
The brain literally degrades in schizophrenia, it really is a mental disease. The grey matter MRIs have shown this for a while. One study very recently suggest white matter may decline too. In brain degredation, it may actually be actually closer to Alzheimer's than say bi-polar. And coming off the drugs, makes the rate of decay increase. Hence, permanent loss of function.
Why this guy will be upset if health care reform doesn't come soon enough.
Being able to link it to a specific cause of organ failure is why they consider it functional. Problem is, aren't all forms of mental illness functional, maybe a chemical imbalance? This has led to a feud between psychopharmacology and traditional psychiatry. The former is definitely endangering our young.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Propaganda works, man!
Say it enough times, and some folks will think it's true. Even the stupid ass Bush II could mouth that sentiment (someone obviously said it enough times into HIS head to make him "know" it was true)...
possible to put a name to this phenomenon, especially if you think about it on a societal level and not an individual one.
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
found:
Psychology Today: "Is Political Conservatism a Mild Form of Insanity?
Seems maybe some of this is attributable to Motivated Social Cognition...
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
Sounds like a variation of "mass hysteria."
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
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