A New World Disorder
This journal entry won’t require too much writing on my part. All I need to do is to type in this introduction, which makes the relationship between today’s focus of Dittohead behavior (international relations) and the mental disorders that best match it. It turns out that Intermittent Explosive Disorder and Paranoid Personality Disorder are perfect matches! Don’t just take my word for it; here are the symptoms, pasted straight from psychcentral
Intermittent Explosive Disorder:
- Several discrete episodes of failure to resist aggressive impulses that result in serious assaultive acts or destruction of property. The degree of aggressiveness expressed during the episodes is grossly out of proportion to any precipitating psychosocial stressors.
Paranoid Personality Disorder:
A pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent, present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by the following:
- suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her
- is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or associates
- is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her
- reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events
- persistently bears grudges, i.e., is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slights
- perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or to counterattack
Does this sound like any right wing operatives that you know?
05.04.05 @ 09:28 PM EDT [link]

Diagnosing Dittohead Disabilities and Disorders by Video
As I was weeding through the amazing number of mental disorders known to science (including the amazing number clearly demonstrated by extreme right wing figures we know so well), it hit me that I was doing video diagnosis! Most of the behavior I’ve been witnessing takes the form of moving television images. Earlier this year I would have viewed such diagnoses with suspicion, but Dr. Sen. Frist has blazed a path for all of us! And it really fits in nicely with the entire trend of extreme right wing action in the sphere of medical care, doesn’t it? Just consider how the entire group (and not just the physicians) have set themselves up as medical experts. They don’t hesitate for a second to second-guess the judgment of doctors. Just look what our President had to say about what’s best for patients when he recently weighed in on the “Grandmother Incarceration Bill” that would create two new federal crimes related to securing an abortion in a state with less restrictive notification laws than the patent’s home state: the law would “protect the health and safety of minors by ensuring that state parental involvement laws are not circumvented.” What does carrying your state’s laws around with you like a backpack have to do with “health and safety?” Well, that’s were we come back to today’s topic: right wing mental disorders. My nominee for the common mental disorder most associated with right wing medical nosiness is Manic Behavior. Here are the symptoms, each followed in parenthesis with as much text as necessary (a full paragraph, if needed) justifying this symptom as a right wing medical disorder. Here we go:
- inflated self-esteem or grandiosity (Schiavo)
- more talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking (Schiavo)
- attention is easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant items (Schiavo)
- excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences, e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, indiscretions, or foolish investments. (Schiavo)
Yep, an open and shut case!
05.03.05 @ 08:33 PM EDT [link]

Right Wing Attention Deficit Disorder
I spent some time over the weekend going through psychological disorders to see how well they matched the various points of the American political spectrum, in response to the recent right wing rant of a book called “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.” I also spent a good portion of the weekend laughing out loud! Reading the list of common mental dysfunctions was like reading the Republican Platform. It’s going to be a fun week! Let’s start with one of the more benign disorders: Attention Deficit Disorder. Here’s how one source listed the symptoms:
- often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes
- often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks
- often fails to finish tasks
- often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities
- often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort
What list could better describe Republican behavior since the election! I wrote the April 30 Irresistible Impulses journal entry before seeing this list, but look at it again and you’ll likely conclude, as I did, that it describes a party fully in the grip of ADD! If only that were their sole mental shortcoming! Alas, they also exhibit a number of syndromes increasingly less benign, as we’ll explore starting tomorrow.
05.02.05 @ 07:40 PM EDT [link]

Right Wing Ideology is a Mental Disorder
Author Michael Savage (AKA Mike Weiner) has been exercising his First Amendment Rights (and apparently trying to exorcise his personal demons) in a new book, “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.” Since the central principle of this site is that turnabout is fair play, let’s consider the merit of his proposition. Readers may recall a similar exercise for Ann Coulter’s latest, the series we called “How to Talk to a Dittohead (If You Must).” If you missed them, they’re in the archive, readily available via the archive’s search engine. Actually Mr. Weiner raises an interesting point. From the perspective of a right wing extremist, the political perspectives of those who aren’t right wing extremists could indeed seem illogical. If you believe as the extreme right wing does that greed and selfishness are the natural human state, and indeed the most moral state, then an act that reflects an alternative worldview would seem foolish at best and dangerous at worst, since behavior not motivated by “what’s in it for me” would be impossible to predict. The fundamental principles of right wing belief are 1) I have a lock on the truth 2) this truth empowers me as an individual to accumulate and consume without limit in the name of freedom and property rights and 3) my duty is to share this truth with the heathen masses that have not yet seen the light (“share” being a euphemism for “Whatever It Takes” to dominate hearts and minds, starting with media dominance and continuing unabated to lining up the coercive power of law, courts, and police to compel compliance with their self-centered world view). Citizens occupying the remainder of the political spectrum see things somewhat differently. They are willing to admit that laws must respect both the individual and society as a whole, the “common welfare” of the Constitution’s Preamble. Since we live in a world becoming more obviously finite and interconnected with each passing day, the great majority of people recognize a legitimate role for government in maintaining and where possible improving the overall quality of life for citizens. Maybe it’s just me, but that kind of attitude seems less of a mental disorder than obsessive belief that individuals, motivated by unfettered greed and lust for dominance, will magically create a utopian paradise. I know a bit about psychology, considering that it was a required course at West Point when I was there, and it strikes me that “obsessive belief by an individual that his personal greed and lust for dominance should be unfettered” is more likely a sign of mental disorder than the altruism that motivates willingness to consider the welfare of others. So let’s have some fun with this idea for the next couple of days!
05.01.05 @ 09:12 PM EDT [link]