Are They Crazy?

(In writing this, I have the horrible sinking feeling that there ought to be a book on this subject, but I am not aware of that book. So here are my short remarks.)

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Every so often on Twitter, Jim Wright (@stonekettle) remarks that some Republican who believes some obviously mad thing seems mentally ill. A discussion of the sanity (or lack thereof) of Republicans who believe strange things then ensues. It seems that on the left there are many amateur psychologists, much as on the right there are many amateur constitutional scholars, and much fact-free verbiage is thereby generated. But the question remains, “Well, are they?”

This bird is definitely not a psychologist. I will nonetheless attempt to address the issue.

Those remarks were a reaction to crankery from Republicans and, indeed, there is much crankery. But there is also an apparent inability to remember. First Fox News and now One America Network commentators say one thing and many Republicans believe with uncritical fervor. A few weeks or months later the same commentators say another contradictory thing and the same Republicans now believe this entirely contradictory thing with equal uncritical fervor. Often, they even claim that they always believed it. Blogger and podcaster Driftglass (yes, it’s a science fiction reference, and you should pay attention to him) often sourly says that Republicans have become “reprogrammable meatbags” and it is hard to see how he is wrong.

How can this be?

I think it has something to do with being heavily propagandized. It has gone on for decades. These people have been constantly told they are under threat. From liberals. After 9/11, from Muslims. Always behind the threats, racism. As Lee Atwater said in a 1981 interview, “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff […].”

And now explicitly racist and antisemitic fears are stoked. There has been a steady crescendo of fearmongering. The response does not seem to have been rational. Instead of first checking the facts and then acting most Republicans have retreated into a kind of uncaring numb obedience. It is, I think, a kind of synthetic PTSD. Republicans have been subjected to an unending drumbeat of fear, ever rising in tempo and intensity. Under this barrage of propaganda, they have retreated into themselves, rejecting their own rationality in favor of fear and anger, striking out randomly, and believing any confident leader who comes along. I don’t have the psychological language to describe it, but this does seem a kind of mental illness.

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So what is to be done? In treating ordinary PTSD, one addresses the patient’s response to the trauma, which is in the past, and is real. But in synthetic PTSD there are no traumatizing events, only lies. The only answer is courage and thoughtfulness, and it is not an easy thing to teach people to be brave and thoughtful. Lacking the ability to instill courage and thoughtfulness, what might we do instead?

A first step, surely, would be to stop the drumbeat of traumatizing propaganda. But how to do that? It is hugely well-funded. We also must be cautious of freedom of the press.

Bringing back the old anti-fascist media regulations, the fairness doctrine and the equal time rule would help. The free coverage which the broadcast media gave Donald Trump was a factor in his victory in 2016 and had the equal time rule been enforced in 2016 the election might have gone differently.

Another area to address would be the legalized all-but-bribery in campaign finance. The series of questionable Supreme Court decisions that declared that money is speech when it funds a political campaign allows the funding of traumatizing propaganda.

Yet another area to address are the ghoulish attitudes of the social media companies. Time was, all but the most corrupt of media had at least some standards, there were some depths to which to which they would not sink. No more. A bookstore selling Nazi propaganda would be shunned, yet Nazi propaganda is easily available on Amazon. On YouTube, fear-mongering content is usually only a few clicks away. The worst offender, though, seems to be Facebook because of its reach and the utter negativity of its algorithms – they reliably distribute the most scurrilous fearmongering, to attract more clicks. Non-English language Facebook is especially troublesome. In English speaking countries there are at least activist groups which protest, and some limited changes are made. In poorer countries, where Facebook is sometimes the first and only news source, Facebook is rotten with this material. It played a major role in the genocide of the Rohingya and now the civil war in Ethiopia. The executives of the big social media firms claim their hands are clean because the cycle of fear and hate is driven by automation rather than directly implemented editorial policy. But it is not true. Facebook we know is in a position to control the traumatic content; their senior management has refused to do so.

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Let us suppose that, somehow, we stop drumbeat of traumatizing propaganda and replace it with something moderately positive; the PTSD will remain. What is healing then? Somehow, we would then need to create a supportive, positive environment for these people while at the same time refusing to allow them power to act on their madness. This is an area where public attitudes could make a difference.

I have trouble believing we can in fact do either of these things. Perhaps, though, a richer analysis of the problem will allow us to change some things.