The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

How to Maintain Your Sanity

Posted on | December 9, 2020 | 4 Comments

Some readers have noticed that I have barely commented at all about the legal wrangling over the presidential election. My post on Monday (“The Margin of Theft”) laid out a few points of circumstantial evidence pointing toward fraud in “battleground” states. If you believe Democrats stole the election, I’m totally with you, but the real question is what can be done about it and, because I’m not a lawyer, I am not qualified to estimate the likelihood of success of efforts to challenge the results.

Nothing I might say here is going to influence the court decisions. We have on our side commentators who are eminent attorneys and law professors, fully qualified to speak on the subject, so that there is no need for me to contribute my two cents’ worth of uninformed opinion. You can go on Twitter and find plenty of ignorant opinions on the election. Personally, I’m avoiding the hair-on-fire screeching hysteria, which strikes me as irresponsible and unnecessary, and which also possibly might be harmful to my mental health. Not joking here.

Self-awareness is crucial to good mental health. You must be aware of your own vulnerabilities, the tendencies that might lead you down the escalator to the abyss of stark raving lunacy. And I have assessed that this post-election imbroglio is tailor-made to make me crazy.

First of all, it’s completely beyond my control. Nothing that I say or do is likely to have any impact on the final outcome.

One of the foundations of good mental health is a sense of agency, the belief that you control your own destiny, and that your individual actions make a difference. This election controversy inspires me with a sense of helplessness which is not merely an emotion, but is unfortunately an objective assessment of the situation. While I have a remarkably large and loyal blog readership, and while my audience is potentially much larger through my columns at The American Spectator, what could I possibly write about this subject that would not duplicate what others have written? It has never been my habit to engage in “pack journalism,” part of the media herd swarming around The Big Story. No, my preference has always been to find some story others have overlooked — a diamond in the dungpile — and turn that into The Big Story.

So there was a feeling that the post-election controversy offered no work opportunities, as it were, and this was connected to my sense that the whole thing was beyond my control — no agency, and therefore a source of needless anxiety. That kind of stuff can make you crazy.

Consider what happened to Melissa Rein Lively, the Phoenix businesswoman who fell into the rabbit hole of QAnon conspiracy theories. By the time people started expressing concern about her obsession, Lively was past the point of no return. The intricate web of shadowy QAnon allegations was perfectly designed to trigger Lively’s personal vulnerabilities as a trauma survivor, and once she started digging into it, she rapidly became fixated on the subject.

What drives people crazy? Paranoia is rooted in an urgent sense of threat, a belief that people are getting away with sinister activity, so that when you call attention to this threat, and other people seem to dismiss your concern, you feel isolated, alienated, marginalized. In the case of cult-like conspiracy theory, the True Believer builds a sort of echo chamber around themselves. They tune out any voice that does not share their sense of urgency about the threat — whether that threat is Satanic pedophiles (as in QAnon) or foreign intelligence operatives (as in the “RussiaGate” conspiracy theory) — and feed themselves on a steady diet of information that supports their cult worldview. What drives such people crazy is the belief that they are entirely sane, that the sinister forces are real, and that anyone who doesn’t share their concern is either (a) a deluded “sheep” too stupid to understand the threat, or (b) an active agent of the sinister conspiracy. So you must either buy into their conspiracy theory completely, or else you’re the Enemy.

Trust me, I’ve seen how this works. Remember Jared Loughner, the Arizona wackjob who shot Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011? He had become obsessed with a conspiracy-theory “documentary” called Zeitgeist. Part of that cult video’s appeal was its “9/11 Truther” angle, but it also wove this into a larger tapestry of conspiracy theories, including a critique of the global financial system, especially the Federal Reserve. No, there are legitimate critiques of the Federal Reserve, just as there are legitimate critiques of the international banking industry, but if you become obsessed with this subject, it can drive your crazy. Let us stipulate that Loughner was always a few french fries short of a Happy Meal; still, the impact of the Zeitgeist video on his vulnerable psyche was not trivial.

Loughner was a not-very-bright community college student, who had no effective means of acting on the information he got from Zeitgeist which, like all conspiracy theories, included a certain necessary amount of verifiable facts mixed into its far-fetched nonsense claims. There is no more reliable formula for mass paranoia than making ordinary people believe they are being victimized by forces beyond their control. That’s what “Black Lives Matter” is doing, for example, by telling black people they are helpless victims of “institutional racism.” Might as well blame it on the Rothschilds, really — it’s those cunning Jews! — in terms of any problem that people can actually do something about.

This same problem exists in relation to the election controversy. However much we might believe that Democrats stole the election, and however much actual evidence we can produce in support of this belief, what are the chances that the Supreme Court will agree with us? Even if I think it’s an ironclad certainty that Democrats cheated (they’re Democrats, and cheating is their historic modus operandi), I am not one of the lawyers working on the cases being sent to the Supreme Court, nor have those lawyers sought my advice. This means that it is beyond my control, and there’s no point getting myself all worked up about it.

A massive show of force — turning out Saturday for the #StopTheSteal rally in D.C. — is perhaps our only way of influencing the outcome. It is important to demonstrate that there is a large number of Americans angry about what’s happening, to petition for a redress of grievances, a right guaranteed under the First Amendment. What worries me, however, is that some people are teetering on the brink of craziness.

If indeed we are victims of a massive conspiracy to steal the White House, after all, what redress do we have? If our electoral system has been subverted, and if Republican Party leadership is complicit in this fraud, what can be done? For some weeks now, I have been struggling against the feeling that we have traveled round-trip, and are headed toward a familiar historical destination in Charleston Harbor.

Surely I am not the only one who perceives the danger here. And I’ve talked to others who share my sense of foreboding. Intelligent, well-informed people who aren’t the least bit crazy are very concerned about the prospect of violence that could explode into civil war. When I shared with one such person my fear that someone on “our” side might commit some kind of terrorist-type attack, this person replied flatly: “It’s not a question of when, it’s a question of how many.” That is to say, he was 100% certain that some kind of “right-wing” violence will happen, and the only question is how numerous such acts will be. In other words, some people on “our” side have already gone past the point of no return on their road to violent craziness, and that sizzling sound you hear is of a fuse burning inexorably toward an explosion.

Everyone who has seriously studied history must share my sense of dread about the near future. We may be only days or weeks away from an inevitable catastrophe which we are powerless to avert.

Here’s a taste of what’s driving this madness:

“Syndicated radio talk show host John Fredericks . . . reported that a GOP member of Georgia’s legislator told him that veteran members of the Republican party are afraid they are going to be harassed and attacked by the left. The older Republicans are worried BLM and Antifa are going to burn down Atlanta and they will be blamed for it.”

Yeah, you can’t have a civil war without burning down Atlanta.

If it’s truly beyond our control, then all we can do is try to keep from letting it drive us crazy. Do what I have done — turn off the TV and tune out any voice that might inspire you toward either homicidal rage or suicidal despair. However bad the situation gets, and it may get very bad, don’t let irrational fear consume your mind. Focus your attention on something that cheers you up, or at least will keep you occupied doing something pleasant and constructive. I should mention that I have an issue with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) so that I always get slightly depressed this time of year. The only thing that cheers me up is when you remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!




 

Category: Conspiracy Theories, Election

Comments

4 Responses to “How to Maintain Your Sanity”

  1. 10 December 2020 – Dark Brightness
    December 9th, 2020 @ 2:39 pm

    […] One of the foundations of good mental health is a sense of agency, the belief that you control your own destiny, and that your individual actions make a difference. This election controversy inspires me with a sense of helplessness which is not merely an emotion, but is unfortunately an objective assessment of the situation. While I have a remarkably large and loyal blog readership, and while my audience is potentially much larger through my columns at The American Spectator, what could I possibly write about this subject that would not duplicate what others have written? It has never been my habit to engage in “pack journalism,” part of the media herd swarming around The Big Story. No, my preference has always been to find some story others have overlooked — a diamond in the dungpile — and turn that into The Big Story. […]

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