This is Psychosis, Plain and Simple

[This article was first published in Off-Guardian on July 8, 2023]

I just saw a headline that was in line with the prevailing insanity, but it really seemed to be heavier than the usual straw lying on the camel’s back.

“Pupil who questioned classmate ‘identifying as a cat’ called ‘despicable’ by teacher”

Really?

(The link is to the article in The Telegraph and has a pay wall to get to the article, but you really don’t have to read any more than the headline and the sentence that starts the story.)

At the beginning of this global illness I thought running across something like this was funny. Now I don’t. At first I didn’t even believe it could be true, now I am not laughing. What does this mean?

I have become a bit impatient with the manner in which most people are seemingly dealing with this. Of course there are some loud voices of opposition, thank God for them, but even those folks are treating all this like these events are typical results of a new ideology—the “woke” culture. They don’t even see it as bad as the Nazi ideology, which is often referred to as evil incarnate and has been bestowed the “that really wasn’t human” award back in the ‘30s—National Socialism was an anomaly of human history, and best be forgotten. There is zero tolerance for Nazis in these modern times, “we’re past that.” But many of us sure are tolerant of this, not only tolerant, but encouraging, and even affirming!

So what is this? What is this “woke” culture that is filled with buzzwords like “equity,” “inclusion,” and “diversity”—all words designed to elicit the response: “well, their heart is in the right place.” Is it? I don’t think so.

This is insanity, plain and simple, and there should be great concern as to what could have possibly “gotten in the water” to distort people’s brains the way they have been distorted.

When I was about 13, I remember reading a chilling article in Life magazine about a small village in France (if my memory serves me). The piece read as a horror story, describing the way people in this town started to go insane, driving their cars into walls, dancing around in the streets naked, painting strange pictures on the sides of houses and buildings. Seemingly everyone went bonko. I do not recall the details, but ultimately it was discovered that there was some strange mold found on some bread that nearly everyone had eaten (the town bakery was the distributor, and the mold had some hallucinogenic effect on all who had ingested it.) Now, maybe I made this story up, and now recall it as reality (maybe I had a bit of tainted bread myself) but I remember it had a profound effect on me. (It has been brought to my attention this story is indeed real, see footnote¹.)

I laid awake that night, thinking of how frightening it would be if I woke up one morning and everyone I knew was loopy like the French folks in this little town. It scared the bejesus out of me. I wondered how that would turn out, and who would save me (assuming I had eaten no bread myself and remained sane.)

Well, folks, welcome to my nightmare. Here we are.

So why hasn’t anyone treated this for what it is?—a mental illness?—and a serious one at that. Why has everyone pussyfooted around this like they are too terrified to step on the toes of those who claim to be the most empathic, the most willing to accept diversity and inclusion?—the most “woke.” That is not what this is. That is not what is happening with the “woke” culture. This is a clear example of the emperor with no clothes and everyone is terrified they will get their head chewed off if they point out this obvious insanity. Well, not everyone. There are a few loud voices out there thank God, but not enough.

Mattias Desmet gave it a shot. But he was not really describing a true departure from reality, not anywhere near as serious as the acid/mold psychotic trip the French townsfolk experienced from the Life story. For one thing, that was chemically induced. The psychosis he describes is more like a mass delusion, and deals more with people being swayed by the authoritative powers to be more compliant or complacent due to psychological conditioning. What I am talking about here can only be described as bat shit crazy. Psychotic. And so psychotic there isn’t much difference between this: believing you are a woman when you are a man, or believing you are a cat when you are a human; than believing you are Napoleon, Cleopatra, or Jesus. Come to think of it, I am sure that if someone “identified” as one of these historic figures, not a questioning word would be said about it. Instead their new identity would be affirmed. That’s crazy.

I remember Bill Maher’s funny quip when he commented, “. . . I wanted to be a pirate [when I was a kid], thank God nobody took me seriously and scheduled me for eye removal and peg leg surgery.” (Bill’s entire monologue can be found here.) If you didn’t know what really was happening, and you came across Bill’s comments here, you might wonder what he could be referring to that would be so serious. Certainly, people are not encouraging young children to have surgery as a result of their fantasies. Yes, they are. And not only that (which would only pertain to the really serious cases) kids are told, as in the above “cat identity story” that they are somehow defective if they find this psychosis all around them rather odd. A kid is told he is a homophobe because he thinks another kid identifies as a cat? Where is the logic in that? And where is the sanity?

I am sorry you caught me on a bad day—a day of nearly zero tolerance. As I said earlier, my camel back got broke—all because I’m not woke. [sic] I do have tolerance for people who are confused, delusional, and mentally ill, and even for people who are psychotic, but this is all going way too far in the false names of inclusion, tolerance for diversity, and equity. The emperor has no clothes, and it is about time we all called a spade a spade and ended this insanity. It is destroying our children for one thing, and undermining our decency as human beings for another.

1. Pont-Saint-Esprit, in 1951, the scene of a macabre experiment apparently carried out by the CIA in an effort to determine how people would respond if poisoned with LSD. There are many links online describing this incident, here is one of them.

I am not sure why I was reading about this in a LIFE magazine in 1968. I could find no story in that year’s edition of the magazine. The event occurred in 1951. If anyone has reference to a LIFE, or LOOK magazine article about this sometime around 1968 I would be interested in being informed about it!!