PSYCHOSIS PANDEMIC

BDS has gone viral:

Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage - the GWB43 virus - has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president.

The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.

Then it was Joe the Plumber, for asking a question.

Next were the Mormons.

Then it was Rush Limbaugh - who hit back.

Next, tax-day “tea party” attendees were “tea bagged.”

Then there was a beauty contestant.

And a Cambridge cop, too.

And now we have town-hall “mobs.”

Smile … you’ve been “community organized.”

When put on the media stage, these individuals and groups have been isolated for destruction for standing in the way of a resurgent modern progressive movement and for challenging its charismatic once-in-a-lifetime standard-bearer, Barack Obama.

This is their time, we’ve been told. And no one is going to stand in the way.

The origins of manufactured “politics of personal destruction” is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based “progressive” street agitator titled, “There Is Only the Fight.”

Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky’s techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, “Rules for Radicals.” In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight - all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.

“Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)”

In a post long ago, I discussed the psychological underpinnings of BDS, which boiled down to psychological displacement.

Displacement is a defense mechanism which separates emotion from its real object and redirects the intense emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid actually dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening. It is usually considered a "neurotic" defense.

However, when you notice that the psychological maneuver is omnipresent, i.e., that it has gone viral as Breibart documents, what you are dealing with is displacement's primitive psychic antecedent: projection. In this case, the offensive or threatening emotion and/or behavior originates from one's own mind and is completely disowned so that the individual (or group) does not have to take responsibility for having it. Istead, it is perceived as originating from someone else. In other words, it is a primitive form of displacement.

Is your "grassroots" movement the product of a Soros-funded lawncare conglomerate? Then accuse your detractors of being "astroturf" and you can remain blissfully clueless about your own behavior!

Is your presidential candidate the most unprepared and unqualified in history without an iota of executive experience? Then accuse Sarah Palin, who was the chief executive officer of a state as being MORE unqualified!

Have you been uncivil, irrational, hysterical and deranged for the last nine years; with complete disregard for the free speech of others? Then accuse your political opponents of that behavior when they dare to disagree with you (make sure you sound simply outraged at their behavior, which on any level that is closely examined simply cannot compare with yours)!

Of course, you must be careful because displacement can get even more psychologically primitive than projection, and that is when it crosses over the bounds of reality into frank delusional paranoia. Most of us can become occasionally neurotic as we stumble around and try to cope with the the disappointments and dangers of life; but it takes a significant level of psychological obtuseness and denial to drift into the realm of psychosis.

Of course, this process can go either way, politically speaking. But right now in history, much as the left would like to believe the opposite--in fact, much as they are trying to pretend it is the right that is "crazy"--the pandemic psychosis of projection and displacement is really their very own.