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Dave: > > I will note that I said on your blog something to this effect - if the > right > wing discourse sometimes sounds schizophrenic this tells us something > about > the right wing but little about schizophrenia or schizophrenics. The confusion is over paranoid and paranoia. There is a paranoid style in American politics. Richard Hofstader wrote a book about this. It involves conspiracy theories, worries about government surveillance, etc. In the 1980s the militia movement obsessed about black helicopters. But paranoia schizophrenia is a mental illness. It stems mostly from inner voices telling the sick person that powerful forces are out to get him or her. In rare instances that person would use violence against innocent people during a psychotic break, as was the case with Loughner. If you want to see a fairly interesting film on the illness, I recommend "A Beautiful Mind" about the Nobel prize winning mathematician played by Russell Crowe. For the first third of the movie or so, you see him involved in skulduggery with Russian spies and the FBI, only to learn that this was all in his mind. The most inaccurate thing about the movie is its wide-scale recreation of visual hallucinations when schizophrenia is almost exclusively about aural hallucinations--accusatory voices mostly. If Loughner had shot a reactionary politician, there would not be the kind of knee-jerk reaction from MSNBC et al about the need for civility. Although it is not worth constructing hypothetical situations, I would remind comrades that Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace for pretty much the same reason that Loughner shot Giffords and other innocent people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Bremer After graduating from high school, from September 1970 Bremer briefly attended Milwaukee Area Technical College where he studied aerial photography, art, writing and psychology. He dropped out after just one semester in college, where he was recalled as a "strange, aloof and argumentative"[6] student who "rarely talked to anybody."[7] Bremer got a job as a busboy at the Milwaukee Athletic Club in 1969. Although his employer said he was a "very hard and dependable worker who kept himself to himself", in 1971, Bremer was demoted to kitchen work after customers complained that he talked to himself, and that "he whistled and marched in tune with music played in the dining room".[8] Angered by his demotion, he complained to the program planner for the Milwaukee Commission on Community Relations. The complaint was investigated and dismissed. The planner wrote on November 8, "Mr Bremer is a young man who is rather withdrawn. Appears to bottle up anger but will sometimes let it go. I assess him bordering on paranoid whilst at the same time, conscientious in doing his job at the Athletic club."[8] After this, Bremer quit his job at the Athletic club. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
