|
||
George Bush's Paranoia War
When the president of the United States behaves in ways that redouble the population's fears, his behavior is a psychological issue. When the White House uses advertising specialists to instill in our minds terrifying visual images of mushroom clouds above American cities, American psychologists should be concerned, to say the least. When our chief executive dwells yet again on "death and destruction" in a speech he makes as we observe the sixth anniversary of our national trauma--and tells us that if we hinder his war policy, our enemies will "come here to kill us"--it's time for professionals who know about the effects of psychological trauma to speak up. As such a professional, I invite any person of reasonably sound mental health to engage in this brief and illuminating fantasy:
Imagine for a moment that somehow the American presidency falls to you, instead of to George Bush, and that, for reasons known only to you and your conscience, you accept the position. Not long after you move into the Oval Office, the United States is hit by a disastrous terrorist attack. Counterterrorism measures that should have been attended to long ago must now be designed at emergency speed--protective systems for the skies, the ports, the nation's nuclear facilities, its food supplies--but you can see that, just now, your stricken countrymen are scarcely able to think at all. Their physical and psychological landscapes have been disfigured by inscrutable "others" from a distant part of the world, and they are deeply traumatized and subclinically paranoid. The resonance of their fear is almost palpable. In this uniquely vulnerable state of mind, three hundred million people turn to you en masse, and, prepared to trust your answer implicitly--to cling to it, even--they ask you the following question: What should we do now?
I believe that, as you looked out on millions of your countrymen lost in fear and grief, you would experience an overwhelming desire to help them. You would earnestly want to bring them some comfort and peace, so they could protect themselves, heal, and rebuild. And--exiting this little fantasy exercise and returning to the reality of the last six years--perhaps, like me, you've been repeatedly saddened to witness that not everyone in such a rare and influential position experiences a desire to assist his own nation in recovery and real self-protection.
That some of our leaders didn't display this sort of heartfelt reaction has been understandably difficult for Americans to acknowledge out loud. As playwright and McCarthy victim Arthur Miller wrote, "Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable." But, if we curb our wish to forget a painful truth, we can recall that the rise of insanely self-interested fear politicians is a phenomenon as ancient as the existence of hierarchical society itself. The heartless cultivation of fear has been used politically at least since the first century BC, when the Sicarii and the Zealots committed public assassinations to terrorize the Romans in ancient Palestine. We saw it in Joseph McCarthy's reign of paranoia over the US in the 1950s, and we're seeing it again now.
Extreme fear is a first-rate weapon, neuropsychologically speaking. Unlike ordinary experiences, which are organized in the cerebral cortex, traumatic experiences stay "stuck" in the limbic system, an emotional, evolutionarily older area of the brain. As our lives go along, these chaotic memories can be triggered in us by reminders of the traumatic event, even in new situations that are far less dangerous. Triggering this neurological "switch" causes us to react fearfully--as if the trauma were happening all over again-- and temporarily derails our ability to think and act rationally in the present.
A disaster-made glitch in the brain makes us unusually vulnerable to influence, and herein lies a convenience for ambitious authoritarians. In The Paranoia Switch , I coin the expression limbic war to refer to the activities of a fear monger who increases his political power by repeatedly triggering traumatic memories in the brains of individuals who have lived through a group calamity. A politician doesn't have to know anything about the neuropsychology of trauma to conduct such a limbic war. It's like sex, in the sense that you don't need to understand biology to participate.
Is our president a scaremonger? Is George Bush waging a limbic war against us? Is he truly cold enough to be using the fear generated on September 11, 2001, as a kind of renewable resource to maintain his political power and further his own agenda? To help answer this question, I'd like to post a summary of the list I provide in The Paranoia Switch--ten behaviors observable historically in leaders who have used fear to keep people in line:
1) Unsurprisingly, leaders who use fear as their primary political strategy speak repeatedly of dangerous people and frightening situations. They address other topics too, and may even use humor. But somewhere within virtually every communication, there will be several references to danger, and to just how frightened people must not forget to be.
2) Fear politicians frequently offer descriptions of catastrophic events that might happen in the future, and of other such events that would have happened had the plans not been thwarted.
3) Such leaders are prone to accuse those who disagree with them of being disloyal to the group and/or naive.
4) Fear brokers tend to look, act, and speak like the people found in their constituencies, sometimes almost in caricature. The fear broker's self-presentation tends to be that of an adequately educated person, but not a worldly or intellectual one. If from a region where the people speak with an accent, such a leader is likely to nurture this characteristic in himself.
5) Fear mongers often behave like archetypal parents. A fear-mongering leader may imply that, though the people are his brave charges, they cannot be expected to be so courageous and strong as he, and therefore, they must always rely on him. He demands to be trusted, and promises that he will never abandon them or give up on his goals.
6) Leaders who practice fear politics tend to admonish people over "moral" issues, and use shame to exert control. As a typical example, a sexuality-related topic (an issue around marriage, childbearing choices, homosexuality, etc.) will be introduced into a popular discussion that had nothing to do with sexuality, and then notes of shame or sin will be blended into the altered debate. These actions on the part of the leader may temporarily distract people from their original concerns.
7) In a seeming contradiction, fear brokers praise the group for being moral and heroic. A scare-mongering leader tends to speak of how much more God-fearing, principled, selfless, and admirable the people of his nation are than all the other peoples of the world.
8) Fear-mongering leaders project personal infallibility. When asked the direct question, "Do you feel you made a mistake?" the answer is always no, regardless of how conspicuous the mistake.
9) Such leaders tend to be secretive, and to be certain that other people, too, are keeping dangerous secrets. Scare-tactic politicians are often obsessed with gathering information about their countrymen, though much of this information may be objectively meaningless.
10) Whatever their tongue, fear leaders use language that pulls for primitive emotions: words and concepts (in the group's language) such as vengeance , cowardice, and good versus evil. In addition, fear politicians are associated with a skewed pronoun usage, specifically the frequent use of the third person plural-- they--as in declarations of what they are doing to us. In contrast, moral leaders tend to employ the first person plural-- we--as in references to what we (the people) can do to help ourselves.
This, in abridged form, is the book's list of ten behavioral characteristics of political fear mongers. Where George Bush is concerned, doing the math is not hard. (I don't know what you came up with, but I counted ten out of ten.) It is my hope, as a trauma psychologist and as a citizen, that we will choose a very different kind of leader in 2008, one who will not engage in an emotional war against us, and who is wise enough not to imagine that our worst fears are his best friends.
Comments for this post are now closed
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
"In The Paranoia Switch , I coin the expression limbic war to refer to the activities of a fear monger who increases his political power by repeatedly triggering traumatic memories in the brains of individuals who have lived through a group calamity. A politician doesn't have to know anything about the neuropsychology of trauma to conduct such a limbic war."
As juvenile as it is to mock someone's name, does that mean that we can start calling him "Rush Limbic" now?
Thank you for your clinical point of view! I'm in complete agreement!
But my huge problem today is not so much with 'one' insane man (Bush), but with 300 million US citizens who seem to be incapable of understanding right from wrong, good from bad, poor from great, facts from lies, reality from fantasy, etc.
Most of us fully know the insanity of Bush and his cronies although we don't know the medical knowledge that you present. And no matter how bad things get, including idle and calloused chatter about a preemptive attack against Iran, the 300 million people just allow the insane madness to keep going and going and going...
It is nearly impossible to find a positive anything in today's society! It is easy to find many horrific issues that currently plague us or will do so in the near future. Death and destruction have little meaning?!
How bad must things become before US citizens do something about the worst president and VP in the history of the USA???????????????
Spoiler note: I've disliked George Bush and his father with an uncharacteristically visceral intensity from the first instant I saw either of them.
President Bush's demagoguery at Ground Zero with an elderly, retired fire fighter as a foil, sickened me at the time he bull-horned it. It's redeeming feature is that it did give us an open window into his so-called soul and what his modus operandi would be in coming years: a totally amoral exploitation of a nation and its people through a reliance on the power of hate and lies.
So far, it appears the Prince of Darkness is winning.
Herewith, my favorite cartoon on this very subject:
http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?sitetype=2&sid=46581&pid=1003&did=4
Bush will leave an ironic legacy. He has so inculcated the culture of fear so deeply that just as we go into the next decade of the century and at a time when our next leaders will need to tell us the truth about global warming, peak energy, population, water, food, and the rest of the strained conditions of our only life support system, any such truth-telling could easily be taken as fear mongering. People are already saturated with bogeyman terror. How are they going to deal with realities that they really should be afraid of - in a positive way. We already hear the voices of denial about these facts.
Fear, after all, is meant to serve a survival purpose. It isn't a bad thing in and of itself. But it has to be triggered by genuine threats to be useful. My fear is that people so bogged down in pumped up fears of terrorism will react to the truths regarding the coming changes in our world with dismissing behaviors. They won't act against the true threats but will always be prepared to react to the phony (or certainly less likely) threats.
Our next leaders will be faced with an impossible task.
V.
Considering the fear-mongering and paranoia that so many of us are continuously exposed to, can you provide some general comments or guidelines for those of us who want to not feel over-whelmed by such thoughts?
I know better than to ask for gross over-simplifications of the things that some of us have been fortunate enough to learn through analysis, therapy, personal research, and our basic survival instincts. It's just my concern that many of us might be lacking adequate defense mechanisms against such pervasive fear-mongering and paranoia as fills politics and the media these days.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts and comments to appear in the future, along with a special thanks for such a clear explanation of how the public is being controlled and manipulated by the Bush presidency.
The costs associated with such a leader, ... such as Mr. Bush, is almost incalculable. The lost opportunities to improve productivity, reduce social anxiety, ... simply to allow people to carry on with living, is tragic.
I makea purposeful effort to avoid the programming he and his hirelings attempt to do to us all, ... avoiding listening and reading their spew, ... but still feel as though there is always something terrible on the way for us in America.
Believing him to be clownish and a buffoon does not work for long, because in the end he has his finger on our lives and those of the world. Of all the fears I have, I know that is the most realistic of all!
Of course. All domestic abusers are terrorists and fear is the applicable tool for any and all occaision.
But even more dramatic here is the idea that the initial traumatizing event was purposefully done, not simply the coincidental timeliness of an external attack by foreigners. If 9/11 was planned, as many of us believe it was, then consequent government actions fit the pattern within the fear-based framework.
This has been obvious from the start. Failure to describe it for what it is, is playing into their ganmeplan.
You should know this, Martha. Sickness thrives in secrecy---revealing the game takes away the hidden element that maintains the fear.
Dr. Stout, thank you.
Inflicting trauma is their primary tool used to achieve their objectives. This message needs to get out loud and clear.
I am currently reading Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
I thought I knew a bit about how the world worked. I'm about 100 pages into this book and haven't been able to lift my jaw up off the floor yet.
Ms. Klein not only talks about the use of trauma and shock to achieve objectives but she expains why it is currently being used and has been used by Americans for the last 60 years.
The american citizens should elect the wisest candidate to the presidency in 2008. What the country (and the world) needs is a lot of wisdom to undo the damage done by a sick man. On january 29th 2008, we should have a minute of silence because that's when a long national (and international) nightmare will end.
Does that mean that Bush/Cheney are insane and we can have them committed so they can't do any more harm? Because having them impeached for gross negligence and malfeasance is "off the table".
What drives Hillary, Obama and Edwards? Is Dennis Kucinich okay? I really like a lot of his positions.
Brilliant. Thank you. Your "imagine this scenario" of what a capable, competent leader would do after a country is traumatized illuminates "what could have been."
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." FDR predicted King George and Prince Dick on March 4, 1933.
I submit to you that the overwhelming obesity and depression in America may be a numbed, traumatized public's reactions to the unrelenting trauma of CONSTANT fear-mongering. What's an electorate to do?
Read YOUR words for starters. Your perspective, Dr. Stout, offers hope ~ hope that voters will not repeat mistakes of being charmed and fooled again. If voters do NOT want authoritarian, messianic, fear-mongering again, study this profile. Absorb the power of this analysis.
Thank you for expressing your views as a professional dedicated to mental health.
I wish you were testifying at an impeachment hearing in Congress!
Precise and wonderfully written.
Thank You for your fine post.
Dr. Stout, thank you for coining the term "Limbic War". I would love to know how that sits with our "fight/flight" response system, so I can't wait to get your book(s).
Having survived the hurricane Katrina + that 1st week of flooding and absolute disintegration of civil order in New Orleans I would like to know if there is a difference between the limbic and "fight or flight".
By the sixth or seventh day I had already witnessed several gunfights resulting in death and myself experienced several vicious traumas of physical violence amidst all the mayhem, but the experience by that time had changed into something else--the idea that to live I had to flee at any cost in any direction and could not, because I didn't know if I could fight any more.
I guess my mind still cannot regard what went on in that city as "crime". I had no moral bearing, that since there was no society, no cops, judges, fire dept or jails or anything then was what people were doing to each other really "crime". My mind was still telling me "Hell Yeah!" but my body was telling me another story.
There were no answers and no authority to even question. The quality of sensation seems different in the way that, though full of fear, it did not feel like the trauma of the week but...almost as if my body had decided that there was no more need run, but my mind knew that I needed to run, and there was a third thing that would make even less sense than what I have tried to say so far.
Dr Stout, can you do a study of the mental health trauma situation in New Orleans?
Dear Dr. Stout,
After my comment I took the time to read your Bio, got me to thinking...
Maybe you could do a sequel to your book, "The Sociopath at 1600 Pennsylvania: the ruthless vs the rest of us." :) Agape.
PS. Wellcome to Huffington Post.
Paranoia? fear?
That's just SMOKE & MIRRORS by Bush-Cheney.
Their MISSION ACCOMPLISHED is to shovel all the USTAXpayer dollars from USTreasury into pockets of rich war-profiteer CORPORATE WELFARE QUEENS:
It's about the bottom line, stupid!
Bush-Cheney proved that Americans are naive, cowardly and weak, ready to be pushed around by anybody who wants to do so.
The brave Americans are sent to war [Iraq invasion] to be killed and maimed.
The WEAK-WILLED WUSSY Americans left in the USA will destroy America with their inability to
stop rubbernecking criminally bad government
at to act against it, attack it.
They just hope the bad guys go away.
They will not! You're just openeing the flood gates for a takeover of the USA by fascistic criminals in power, while you stare with your stupid mouth hanging open.
Loading comments…
|
||
Posted October 5, 2007 | 09:26 PM (EST)