Originally published: . Volume 13, No. 6. Source pages: 3.
A Manifesto
In 2008, when Barak Obama was elected president of the United States, I was elated, almost giddy. I bought a copy of the New York Times headlining his election to save for my children as a memento of what I took to be an epochal event, carefully spraying the paper with preservative, and wrapping it acid free archival plastic. I was sure our country had finally exorcised the original sin of slavery. Now, our political situation terrifies me. A scant year and a half ago, a rioting mob invaded our capitol, smashing windows, assaulting peace officers and looting offices, with the stated intent of preventing congressional certification of the election of our forty-sixth president. The rioting was patently inspired by delusional claims that the newly elected candidate had somehow stolen the election. Many of the rioters sported regalia endorsing a fictitious whistle-blower, Q-Anon, who claims that leaders of the opposition party were engaging in pedophilic orgies in the basement of a pizza parlor and that a Jewish international banker was funding a plot to bring immigrants of color to our country to replace white voters. There has been an explosion of these paranoid beliefs about the “stealing” of the 2020 presidential election, most with racist implications: Jewish space lasers corrupting voting machines, fake ballots manufactured in China, and the “great replacement” plot. Like all delusions, these beliefs are not rooted in facticity or rational argument. They derive their force from their intra-psychic function. The explanation for the frankly paranoid and delusional thinking that now seems commonplace, paradoxically, lies in what I regard as socio-cultural progress. In the last few decades we have elected our first black president, nominated a woman to run for that office, we have had our first woman secretary of state, same sex marriage has been legalized, the first black woman sits on the Supreme Court, and many public figures, male and female, have come out of the closet concealing their homosexuality. All of this very rapid, recent, and to me, positive social change bespeaks the seismic collapse of an unspoken, but powerful caste system: the privileging of white, male, euro-centric status. The collapse of this caste system is profoundly disorienting to many, inducing a painful, rageful and frighteningly wide-spread quasi- psychotic confusion. Paranoia, centering on terror of being overwhelmed, is fertile ground for delusions. Delusions do not derive their power from their facticity or their rational basis. Their power resides in their intra-psychic function. They ward off the threat of weakness and confusion, offering a rigid certainty about “what’s really going on” and providing a target for the accompanying feelings of rageful grievance. That is their intra- psychic function and the source of their power. Any merit this analysis may have does not mitigate the dangers to our recent progress toward a more inclusive society. Short term financial and political benefits persuade who know better to refrain from acknowledging the frank lunacy of these conspiracy theories and the merits of abandoning an irrational caste system. Energetic diligence in defending what we know to be right and patience in permitting digestion of social change will be required. So will our stumbling along on our search for system of social value more rational than that of caste.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.