{pic by TCM Hitchhiker}

As difficult as it might be to believe, there is a healthcare crisis in the United States that has gone largely unnoticed. Although the negotiations now taking place in the U.S. Congress over healthcare reform have focused a great deal of public attention on the many failings of the U.S. healthcare system, this particular health crisis remains largely invisible to policymakers and media commentators. It is a crisis of mental health, and it seems to be growing ever more severe within Right Wing political circles. From the plebeian mosh pit of Talk Radio to the rarefied Halls of Congress, conservatives unable to come to terms psychologically with the election of President Barack Obama are becoming unhinged; their minds consumed by paranoid delusions which can only be described, clinically speaking, as psychotic.

Lest the reader think I merely jest, the National Institute of Mental Health defines “delusions” as manifested in “schizophrenia” as “false personal beliefs that are not part of the person’s culture and do not change, even when other people present proof that the beliefs are not true or logical.” Furthermore, individuals suffering from “paranoid schizophrenia can believe that others are deliberately cheating, harassing, poisoning, spying upon, or plotting against them or the people they care about. These beliefs are called delusions of persecution.”

Now, consider the persistent claims of so-called “Birthers” such as G. Gordon Liddy and Rep. John Campbell (R-CA), who harbor the belief that Obama is not actually a native-born U.S. citizen and is therefore ineligible to serve as President. With Lou Dobbs generously providing a high-profile venue for the airing of these dark fantasies, the Birthers insist that Obama was born not in Hawaii, but in Kenya, and that there is a vast conspiracy afoot to hide this from a gullible American public. And no amount of evidence to the contrary will change their minds.

Or consider the claims of Healthcare Denialists such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) that there is not actually a healthcare crisis in the United States. There is, of course, an abundance of evidence that tens of millions of Americans do not have access to employer-sponsored health insurance, cannot afford to buy health insurance or pay for healthcare out-of-pocket, and forgo medical treatment as a result. Yet the Healthcare Denialists persist in their belief that the notion of a “healthcare crisis” is simply an alarmist ploy by Leftists intent on a socialistic federal takeover of the private U.S. healthcare system.

Finally, consider Climate Denialists such as George Will, Pat Buchanan, and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), who claim that global warming is not occurring. Despite the weight of the scientific evidence in this regard, the Climate Denialists insist that the very idea of “global warming” was concocted as part of a shadow-strewn conspiracy to siphon away the political and economic sovereignty of the United States and transfer it to a nebulous World Government.

Although it is easy to become angry at the inflammatory ramblings of deluded souls such as these, they warrant our compassion—not our hate. In the spirit of Hippocrates, we should want, and work towards, their recovery from the psychosis that afflicts them. As the National Institute of Mental Health has also pointed out, the atypical antipsychotics such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Geodon that were developed in the 1990s have proven highly effective in treating the psychotic symptoms from which far too many members of the Republican Caucus and the Fox News staff suffer. With the right medications, and intensive therapy, even Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh could “improve enough to lead independent, satisfying lives.”

{pic by Sorcyress}

I am the wet dream of conservative nightmares…

Like our foreign-born President, Barack Obama bin Laden, I am a radical militant of both the Islamic and Socialist varieties. This means that I hate anyone who doesn’t believe in Allah because I’m a devout Muslim, and I hate Muslims because I’m an atheist who doesn’t believe in any god or religion. Presumably, this means I hate myself, which I suppose would explain my fondness for suicide bombings.

I am also a dark-hued racial militant governed by the vagaries of “identity politics,” unless I’m white—in which case I assuage my white guilt by supporting anti-white racial militants and opposing the justifiably white identity politics of pro-white racial militants. It’s all rather complicated, especially since “race” doesn’t really exist.

I am a traitor to my country who wants the U.S. economy to collapse into chaos. But I don’t want it to collapse into too much chaos, because I also want to nationalize it. Let’s say that I want the economy to collapse into just enough chaos to do away with free enterprise and private property rights, but then to stop collapsing just before it becomes so chaotic that there’s nothing left for the government to commandeer. It’s a very tricky balancing act.

I am an emasculating, lesbian, Femi-Nazi who hates anything with a penis. But I’m also a faggot who positively loves penises, especially for the purpose of sodomy. So I have a rather conflicted sexual identity. No doubt this explains my fondness for transvestitism, transsexualism, and hermaphroditism.

I am a farcical caricature of a delusional stereotype.

{pic by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com}

Many of the Republican Party’s more Paleolithic conservatives viewed the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court as an opportunity to re-inspire their demoralized ranks by invoking the rhetoric of the so-called “Culture Wars.” If there’s anything worse than having some over-educated liberal black dude in the White House for the next few years, it’s the prospect of having some over-educated liberal Latina chick on the Supreme Court for the next few decades. From said judicial perch, there is little doubt that this woman will seek to undermine the Biblically mandated right of all white-skinned anti-abortion extremists to own automatic weapons. And that’s why the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee—which conducts the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees—tried without success to persuade her to admit her sinister views about gun control, affirmative action, and the right to choose.

Alas, there was never much doubt that Sotomayor would ultimately be confirmed by the Democratic controlled Senate, so the Culture Warriors had to settle for the confirmation-hearing histrionics of the “Operation Rescue” anti-choice theater troupe—and the dubious star power of Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade fame, who went on to become a born-again anti-choice dim-wit.

Of course, President Obama and his advisers tend to eschew culture-war rhetoric in favor of a more pragmatic political centrism that pays homage to unity and common purpose. To which I respond, “fuck that!” If the Right Wing wants Culture Wars, then I say we follow the prescient advice of former President George W. Bush: “bring ‘em on.” The moralistic debates that constitute the Culture Wars are the Right Wing’s to lose. Fortunately for the human species, education and demographics are likely to take Paleo-Republicans the way of the dinosaurs in which they don’t believe…

Consider recent polling data from the Pew Research Center, which shows that the Republican Party’s “constituents are aging and do not reflect the growing ethnic and racial diversity of the general public.” Even more to the point, social conservatism seems to be a product of poor education rather than divine enlightenment. According to the Pew survey, “better educated respondents tend to be less conservative than those with less education.” For instance, the respondents most likely to agree with the statement “books that contain dangerous ideas should be banned from public school libraries,” and to worry “that science is going too far and is hurting society rather than helping it,” were those with the least education. Better-educated respondents who were more likely to have actually read books, and to have read about science, were the least likely to be scared of either books or science.

If we invest enough resources in high-quality education that is widely available, and give demographic trends enough time to work their magic, it won’t be long before the remaining Culture Warriors of the Right have become extinct.

{pic by stevegarfield}

Let us hope that Sarah Palin’s erratically graceless exit from the governorship of Alaska does not portend her exit from the national stage of electoral politics. We need her not merely in the same way that any village has a collective psychological need for its idiot, but in a more pragmatic, political sense as well. The woman is beloved by the GOP’s ever-shrinking “base” of angry white Bible Thumpers. In fact, a mind-numbing 84% of white evangelical Republicans profess a favorable view of Palin despite (or, perhaps, because of) her numerous and well-publicized instances of stupidity and dubious judgment. They even kept loving her after she demonstrated her foreign-policy erudition to Katie Couric by explaining that “as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska… It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.” Truly inspiring words to the faithful.

At any rate, if the Republican Party is to assume its rightful place in the U.S. political landscape as a permanent minority party that provides a reliable source of fodder for late-night comedians, it is essential that Palin become the GOP standard-bearer. And, if Palin is to effectively rise to the top of the Republican Party, she must be on the GOP presidential ticket in 2012. But every presidential ticket requires two candidates, so let us hope that another conservative heavy weight can be persuaded to join her. Specifically, I’m thinking of another darling of the Republican base; the jowl-jiggling hero of the 2009 Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual meeting; the man who thinks that both global warming and the health-care crisis are elaborate hoaxes perpetrated by socialist Democrats and liberal media elites; the Right Wing’s favorite pain-killer junkie: Rush Limbaugh.

If ever there were a ticket that could energize the GOP base like no other, and—in the process—alienate most of the Democrats and Independents needed to actually win a presidential election, it’s Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. Given Palin’s superior star power and hair styling, she should probably be at the top of the ticket, but that would probably be denounced by Limbaugh and his fans as a Femi-Nazi plot to emasculate the red-blooded American male. Real men are always Tops; never Bottoms. So Limbaugh-Palin 2012 it must be.