Has the World Gone Mad?

Jeff–Saturday

 

I’ve been locked away for the past week finishing up final edits for Kaldis #12, plus writing three magazine articles with deadlines that seemed sooooo far away when I agreed to write them. There’s a fourth article left to do, but I’m putting that one off until after I’ve finished this blogpost. My sincere apologies to my MIE colleagues whose marvelous posts over this past week I’ve not yet commented upon.

 

Having isolated myself from much of the news for a mere seven days, I never expected when I stepped out of my composing state of mind into what I thought the real world, that I’d end up in a parallel universe where up is down (if you’re on a plane flying over Belarus), down is up (where your hands best be if you fit a certain profile as an arrestee), true is false (depending on what news you watch), false is truth (depending on what party you belong to), deceivers rule because the majority lets them (January 6? What January 6?), armed revolution is openly discussed by legislators as a viable option for resolving political differences, and a mind boggling percentage of Americans believe the world is run by a cabal of Satan worshiping pedophiles.

 

And let’s not forget Covid still ravages much of the world.  Only God knows where we’ll be next week.

 

I saw polls that came out this week plumbing hot button issues polarizing the United States.  The numbers are alarming, but they made me think of a conversation I had approximately a dozen years ago on Mykonos with a very wise American friend.

 

For decades he’d served as the chief assistant to the head of psychiatric services for a major American state. We were sitting in the harbor watching people walk by when someone did something particularly lunatic—even by Mykonos standards. I said the guy must be nuts. My friend said, “The odds are that he is.”

 

I asked him to explain what he meant by that, and here’s what he told me.

 

“Based upon my experience in the mental health field, approximately twenty percent of the people out there should be institutionalized, another twenty percent need heavy medication. That leaves you with sixty percent to work with on a rational basis, and half of them aren’t going to like you anyway.”

 

I laughed, because I thought he was kidding. Today, as I look at those polls and reflect upon recent election results I realize he was not.

 

I know it must seem strange to hear this, but I find an odd measure of comfort in thinking that, if my friend was right, the population today is just as mad as it ever was.

 

What I find frightening is that we now allow the inmates to run the asylum. 

 

Enjoy your holiday weekends, folks.

 

–Jeff