Is the Mind of America Disordered or Ill?

Some say that America created its own mess and we deserve what we get. To that end I would ask, “Is a personality disorder or mental illness created by choice, environment or is it physiologically induced? If not by choice, does one who is negatively impacted by their own disorder deserve what they get?”

Does a nation have a collective mind or personality? Can that national mind be disordered? Why do we assume that a nation’s mind is healthy and therefore deserving of its fate when we accept that an individual’s mind may not be and therefore a victim?

If the government of a nation could be compared to its mind, and that government is acting entirely outside its original intent and against the wellness of its body of citizens, would we not declare this nation’s mind to be disordered or even ill. How then could we in good conscience declare that the body of that nation deserves what it gets?

The retort is that unlike we fellow human beings, a republic can choose its own mind/government so the body of the nation/its citizens can and should be hold responsible of the actions of its mind/government.

Disorder in the mind of the nation might exist as an extension of the disorder in the body/minds of its citizens but even then that does not mean the mind/government acts in a vacuum, but its actions rather reflect the disorder in the minds of its citizenry.

I would agree, yet the medicine for reordering the mind is quite painful. Two thirds of the federal government of the United States is highly subjective to the will of the people through elections yet the barrier to entry of being placed on the ballot is much higher than the vast majority of citizens could afford. Therefore, political parties essentially control the ballot. Over the decades, political parties have gerrymandered the ballot geography to lessen the cost of control and now have a tight lid on who gets elected.

The gatekeepers of the mind of America are the political parties. The gerrymandering effect allows the parties to become highly polarized, almost applying a bi-polar mentality on America. 2004 swung to the Republicans but Bush was too warlike so 2006 swung to the Democrats. 2008 was for hope and change but deficits and Obamacare scared the Republican mentality so much that the Tea Party lobe stressed budget cuts during a time of peak unemployment and attempted to use its newfound power to kill unions. Now in 2012, Ohio, a highly unionized state in the thick of having defended against union attacks may throw its weight to Obama.

And during all this bipolar action. the 0.01 percent of the nation that pays for America’s elections will continue to push its agenda on American economics while the cuckoo bird sings. No, the mind of America is ill, is disordered, is severely outside the norm of the vast middle class, and defends itself mightily against healing.

America knows it is not well. Its passive youth sat outside Wall Street asking for counseling yet had no real clue how to heal America’s brain. Its unemployed swung double digits for Romney after just one debate hoping he offered mental salve. The gender gap has all but collapsed and women are turning for Romney even as Democrat campaigns spend tens of millions on abortion ads in the midst of a failed economy.

Yet until a either viable third party changes the landscape of American politics, or a grass roots effort rises up similarly to OWS, this time with the understanding, will power, and intent that our government must be exorcised of its bipolar excesses, or eventually after the body finds itself in the gutter after hitting mental bottom and chaotically reels in upheaval, this body will remain captive to its unhealthy brain.

Governmental Sclerosis Must be Contained if We are to Lead

Sclerotic government…the term borrowed from a body’s autoimmune disorder is appropriate shorthand for a government that has grown too inefficient to serve the public good. Sclerosis, a nerve disorder caused by destruction of the insulating layer surrounding neurons in the brain and spinal cord, causes the body to progressively attack itself, slowly robbing it of sight, balance, strength, sensation, coordination and bodily functions. As this insidious disease progresses, the body’s energy that was once used to effortlessly work for the benefit of others, now is consumed to just minimally support itself. The good news is that sclerosis is rarely a fatal disease. The bad news is that it can progress rapidly to disability.

Sclerotic government…an autoimmune dysfunction of the body politic… Autoimmunity is the body’s defense irrationally turning against itself, mistaking cooperative organs trying to work together as enemies that must be eradicated. America’s founders believed the nature of mankind contained the seeds to turn against itself. They also believed given the opportunity, that men would imbibe government with this same irrational nature to allow more powerful factions to kill weaker ones in their quest for political power.

They therefore chose to intentionally create an institutional autoimmunity into the design of America’s Federalist system. To protect against an overwhelming desire of factions to dominate their brethren, the founders balanced man’s nature designing party against party, political branch against political branch, and states against each other and the federal government. In so doing, they created a less fatal, political autoimmunity of checks and balances.

Sclerotic government…rarely fatal but potentially progressing rapidly to disability…Our founders did not foresee the excesses of politics that could challenge its institutional sclerosis. They intended for gentlemen to serve out a civic duty and to return to their former lives when voted out by the public’s pendulum swings of political progression and conservatism. Instead, the body politic grew into a gerrymandered, extremist representation of professionally long lived ideologues hell bent on surviving the whims of a fickle public.

Intent on wielding the power of successive sessions of Congress, our representatives carved out highly political districts through gerrymandering, ensuring that extremists would be elected. They capped the number of representatives in 1929 at 435, and since have gained 253 percent more constituents per representative, intensifying the authority of each politician. They bowed to the changing influences of political mediums of communication creating the need for political campaign war chests that were funded by a minority of financially powerful constituents. As the body politic fed on itself, our politicians grew into the very organisms from which our founders had vowed to protect us through their sclerotic political system.

Is it any wonder then that the purposeful autoimmunity our founders built into our Federalist system is now reacting violently to our politicians’ abuses of the body politic? When a body containing the seeds of autoimmunity is inflamed, it reacts brutally. Without a holistic healing through specific measures to mitigate the bastardization of the original intent of the founders of our constitution, the sclerotic process of government hardening progressively deteriorates to disability.

Sclerotic government…a progressive deterioration of the body politics’ ability to service others, instead spending its weakening energy serving itself…Public charities are judged by their effectiveness at providing units of mission delivered per dollar of administrative overhead. If our government is in essence a charitable organization that mandates through law our obliged contributions, why is it that we do not demand a measure of its provision of units of mission delivered per dollar of agency budget? Because in so doing, we would measure the institutional sclerosis that has set in, insidiously hardening the body politic, immobilizing its agencies and governing organs, and deteriorating the body whole.

Nonetheless, measuring the financial effectiveness of each function of government must begin so that we can bring to light the hierarchy of relevance and capability of each function within our body politic. In so doing, government can begin to justify the realignment of spending that must begin in earnest. America must have a means to realign our functional sclerosis, to purge its excesses, and to reverse its trend to functional disability.