A Claim to American Sanity: Confronting the Cultural Psychosis

Strap in as we embark on an unflinching journey through the collective psychosis currently gripping American culture. As a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, I bring my expertise to bear as we dissect the pervasive irrationality and rise of severe personality disorders shaping our public discourse. We confront the harsh realities of this cultural landscape, including the frightful prospect of individuals facing prison time for speaking their minds.

We're not just talking about these problems, though. We're asking the hard questions and challenging you to stand up against the insanity infiltrating our communities. What's at stake if we stay silent? How are the actions of mentally ill activists pushing political movements affecting our society? And most importantly, how can we bring back rational, empirical discussions to combat the progressive and reactionary decay? We hope this episode will inspire a necessary revolution of thought and action. Prepare for a thought-provoking journey as we strive for a return to sanity in 'A Claim to American Sanity'.

The Real Clear Podcast with Dr Lucas Klein is the in-depth analysis and commentary on current political events through a psychological lens. The Real Clear podcast covers a wide range of topics, from the latest election results to policy debates, to exploring the impact of current events on the political landscape.

Transcript

Good morning folks. Monday, september 25, 2023. Again this week, I'm going to have Professor Wilford Riley on with me Thursday to analyze the debate that's coming up on Wednesday evening the second GOP debate for the 2024 presidential elections. So don't miss what I release with Professor Riley. For today, I'm going to read to you the rough draft of a new book that I've been working on. It's called A Claim to American Sanity. I'm going to read to you a brief introduction and then a short segment. I hope you enjoy it. Part 1, the Problem the path toward American sanity can only be achieved by correctly diagnosing the pathology from which the country has been suffering in recent decades. We live in a time of utter irrationality, collective psychotic functioning, and where people with severe personality disorders are dictating the terms of public discourse. In order to clear a path forward toward the sane and civilized discourse that I desire, this book will take you on a theme park ride through the pathological functioning in the Americas' extreme factions of both the left and far right, in order to help us identify irrational functioning where the faculties of reason can be reclaimed. Ultimately, I hope that you find and you will absorb the capacity to understand the problems facing this country at present and that you will develop a willingness to speak truthfully, out loud, about what is reasonable. Western civilization will certainly crumble down to its foundations if citizens are threatened into silence by mentally ill activists. I would like for you to feel bolder, more grounded in reason and more confident in your perceptions of reality. And yes, there is one reality. We each see it from our own vantage point, and so a looking glass affects our perception, but there is a reality that must be approached on its own grounds. I am a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice. This is my attempt to help steer the country in the right direction. There is but one intended purpose to this book to present normal and non-pathological positions regarding critical topics. The effect of borderline and narcissistic personalities on these topics are tearing the United States and the West apart from the inside. Normal, rational, empirical discussions need to replace the collective pathology that has metastasized in our culture. I hope you find the following essay chapters to be sober, reasonable, well-intentioned and somewhat provocative. This seems that anything based in reason and evidence is provocative these days. So, to say it simply, this book is a collection of normal reactions to combat our collective hysteria. If you are an overly sensitive person who enters into anaphylactic shock in the presence of ideas that do not conform to the latest virtue signals you may not want to turn the page. For the rest of you, I very much hope that you enjoy the fruits of my labor and I hope that this book helps in some small way bring us toward a center where we can make sense together through contrasting of ideas against reality. Now imagine that you are on trial in the near future. Your crime is alleged to be that you said something that caused violence to someone's emotions. You tell yourself that such charges cannot be legitimate and there is no way that such laws could actually be in place that extend limitations on the First Amendment that have always been in place, such as the violence, etc. To words that cause others to feel anxious. You further tell yourself that even if such laws somehow passed in some sort of fluke, a jury of your peers would review everything in the same light as you do and they will quickly find you not guilty. When you arrive to your first day of court, however, you realize that you are in serious trouble. The jury is composed of the newest generation and as you look upon the troubled faces of the youth of yesterday. Now adults, you remember who is actually deciding your fate. You remember that this is the generation of people who consumed college courses that told them that speech which one feels strongly offended by is hate speech, and that if they read or hear something that is upsetting in class, that they are entitled to run to a safe space room at a college in order to read magazines, eat candy and lay in beanbags. I'm not making that up. In essence, you realize that you are in serious trouble. You are charged with something that would take a jury of crazy people to convict you for, and you are sitting in front of a jury of people who have much higher levels of borderline and narcissistic personalities, provably, than any group in history. The more pressing problem, however, is that they do not know that they have these problems, and they do not view their pathology as problems in the first place. They grew up in a society that reinforced their pathology, and so they have no framework through which to observe their own sickness. They do not use insight about their own minds, and that which is not taken into insight about oneself is usually discharged onto and acted out towards others. You are the person onto whom the collective pathology will be discharged. You are entitled to a jury of your peers and since good people remained quiet for decades and though the insanity and thought the insanity would wind down, that is on its own you are about to experience the full reach of justice, albeit not very poetic justice. You are about to be sent to prison for offending someone's emotional sensitivity. For anyone who thinks that I made up a wild story there, just be glad you're not living. In Norway, a woman is currently awaiting trial for the exact crime that I described previously, and she may face up to three years in prison. Fox News reports that a Tangi Javan, a lesbian filmmaker and actress, was informed on November 17, 2022 that she's under investigation for speaking out against a prominent Norwegian activist on Facebook named Jentof, who happens to be a quote transgender female that often refers to herself as a lesbian mother. And Javan posted on her Facebook and she's under investigation for this for a crime of saying it's just as impossible for men to become a lesbian as it is for men to become pregnant. Men are men, regardless of their sexual fetishes unquote Now, regardless of your position on the gender topic these days. The point here is that this woman is facing prison time. She's undergoing criminal investigation for offending someone else. You could substitute the topic for another cultural topic, it doesn't matter. The issue here is going to prison for offending someone else's emotional sensitivity, and Norway has a minister of culture and reality who weighed in on this topic. Imagine that a western society that has a minister of culture and reality and is putting people on criminal trial for saying wrong-speak. If this story does not convince you that the West is crumbling under a mass delusional crisis, nothing will. People are being investigated and jailed for speech that offends other people. The lawmakers and activists who are pushing for these sorts of movements are severely mentally ill and they need to be recognized as such. They are not the problem. However, we are in the rational middle, allowing them the pathway to an exaggerated sense of power and importance through our silence and abstention. The time has far past where it is permissible for any of us to remain silent. It is a duty to speak out in your community where insanity is percolating. I might add that it has always been a moral mandate to speak out against cultural insanity. There was once a time in America where towns identified and burned witches and there were sober judges that put a stop to that. It was a collective, rational discourse that ended such a delusional act. It is our main purpose now to stop the rapid decay of the so-called progressive movements and also of strange, paranoid, far-right reactive positions, which I will identify further in the book. Ok, folks, well, that is the introduction, part of it to a new book that I'm writing, and I hope you enjoy it. I'll be with you soon, take care.