When Religion Loses Its Flavor - The Rise Of Political Ecstasy

Barbery Byfield had grown up in a small town in Mississippi not far from Indianola.  Her father was a mill worker and her mother a teacher, and with the exception of one trip to Biloxi, they had spent their whole life on the Delta.  

 

It was a good life - no accidents or serious disease, enough to eat, strong family ties, and especially religion.  They were members of the River Of Life Baptist Church, born-again Christians who had been baptized in the Yazoo River.  Farley Byfield served as deacon of the church, and his wife ministered to the elderly, and Barbery attended a church-run school and went to Bible camp for a week in the summer. 

It was a family never tempted by drink, moral waywardness, or infidelity; in other words a model of piety, devotion, and faith. 

Barbery was a bright girl, very bright in fact and noticed by her teachers as a girl with promise.  She would be a good candidate for Millsaps College in Jackson, an institution known for its academic rigor and solid Christian faith.  Students there who studied secular subjects were in no danger of questioning their faith, for the faculty, schooled in fundamentalist theology and righteous practice acted as intellectual monitors. Parents never needed to worry about their child's fall from grace. 

Barbery, however, was not just an ordinary student, but a superior one who found the curriculum of Millsaps unchallenging and uninteresting. Despite the rigor of her Christian upbringing, she had a sense of intellectual adventure and grew increasingly restive at what she called 'the harboring faith' of the college.  Her mind was simply ill-suited to the doctrinaire and the prescribed. 

At the same time she was profoundly moved by the sermons of Parsons Fielding, chaplain of the school, a man who was unashamed of his rock-ribbed, unshakable fundamentalism.  The Bible was the unerring word of God - the only rock in a violent ocean of sin - and every morning at chapel, he inspired the students to pray, to seek salvation, and to spread the word of the Savior. 

The two worlds - that of absolute faith and secular knowledge had to be one, she reasoned, envisaged as they were by the mind of God; and that conclusion was the beginning of her maturity and political evolution.  

The plight of the black man, the tenant farmer still slave to the plow, cotton field, and the company store and the need to free him once and for all, only existed within the compassionate and welcoming spirit of Jesus Christ. 

She made forays into Darktown, the black neighborhood of Jackson hoping for a revelation, a sign that Jesus was there walking with her. Her belief in the Negro and his ultimate role in Jesus's salvational army was clear.  If the black man was not the very embodiment of the poor, the blind, the lame, and the destitute whom Jesus loved, then who was? 

She prayed for him, but because of her bi-worldly outlook knew that only prayer plus effort would raise the black man to his rightful place atop the social pyramid. 

As it happened the Congressman from Mississippi's 2nd District was a graduate of Millsaps and gave the commencement speech to the college.  Barbery,  a girl who had gained in poise, confidence, and charm during her years in Jackson, felt comfortable going up to the Congressman after his speech, telling him of her reformist ambitions, her unshakable faith in the Lord, and her desire to please Him and to make a difference. 

The Congressman, old enough to remember the halcyon years of Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy and their ebony-and-ivory marches through the segregated South, was pleased to see that this white girl of obvious faith and goodwill wanted to serve him and the black people of his district; and he invited her to meet him and his staff in Washington. 

Now it was no surprise that the Congressman was cut not only from the same political cloth as his mentor Dr. King, but from the same sexual one.  King was a known sexual vagabond, a man with an insatiable sexual urge, and with the stature, composure, and charm that attracted both black and white women to bed with him, and the Congressman was no different.  Inviting the innocent Barbery Byfield to his chambers in the Dirksen Building was like leading a lamb to slaughter. 

 

Yet like Perdita, :Pericles's chaste and virtuous daughter in Shakespeare's Pericles of Athens, she not only resisted the salacious and irreverent overtures of her patron, but succeeded in chastening him, and returning him to the way of the Lord. 

It was at that moment that she realized her destiny.  She had the power to transform, and she must use it for righteous ends. 'I am a prophet', she said, 'a messenger, a harbinger of reformation, a disciple of the Lord' -  a bit windy and self-important, but no less real for its old-fashioned Baptist assuredness. In fact she felt like getting up from her chair, walking onto the Capitol grounds and shouting 'Hallelujah!' 

It was only a hop, skip, and a jump into progressivism, for there she found - absent the Christian belief of course - the very same passion, righteous ambition, and absolute faith that she had known back at the River of Life church and Millsaps College.  She felt one with her fellow activists, bonded by a secular faith which was no different than the ecclesiastical one with which she grew up. 

Progressivism was a secular religion - one with a canon, a liturgy, a litany, commandments, prayers, and ablutions. The leaders of the movement she met in Washington had the same limitless energy, boundless confidence, and absolute belief in the moral nature of their reform as Reverend Parsons Fielding. 

Barbery found environmentalism the closest to her Baptist faith as any issue in the progressive pantheon, one which had become the religious movement of the day and little different from the apocalyptic notions of Revelations.  The world will end in a fiery Armageddon, said Environmentalists.  

We will pay for our sins against the Earth, and our fate will be hot, brutal, and inescapable. However, we can save the Earth and ourselves through prayer and good works.  There is still time.  How different are these warnings, chastisements, and admonitions from the fire and brimstone that rages from the pulpit of Pastor Fielding? 

It was not long after joining the environmentalist movement that Barbery had fully incorporated her religious belief within the progressive agenda.  Both were based on faith, hope, and charity. Both believed in the fiery conclusion to humanity's sinful excesses. Both were indivisible and absolute in their beliefs.  There was no doubt whatsoever, not one scintilla of uncertainty, not one iota of niggling concern in their belief. 

Religion satisfies primal needs and has since the first human settlements provided simple answers to unfathomable events, offered refuge and consolation, and perhaps most of all, the eventual release from a brutish and unremittingly painful world. 

Religious worship is no different than what it was in pre-history.  We still worship unknown forces, pray for divine intervention, and solve the riddles of the universe by saying ‘God's will’.  We still have priests who interpret divine will; ceremonies of sacrifice, penance, and repentance; and we all wear the protective mantle of belief.

Progressive secularism is no different.  Believers simply pray on a virtual altar to secular god, but within the same type of ordained canon.  Beliefs are taken as truths, inescapable absolutes, permanent and unchangeable facts.  The world will incinerate because of indifference, moral satiety, and ignorance - no different from the world Jesus found when he began his evangelism.  Sin and moral indifference are no different.  Lack of faith and apostasy are equal moral failings. 

Barbery, once indoctrinated into this new, progressive faith, became one of its most convincing, passionate, and articulate prophets.  Her transformation from religious absolutism to progressive zealotry was complete.

When she returned to her home in the Delta and visited Pastor Fielding at The River of Life church, the man witnessed the change in the young woman.  As she spoke and shared with him the urgency of reform, the debilitated morality of America, and the need for evangelical passion, he forgot that she was talking of secular issues and saw her as a latter day prophet of the Lord.  Washington, often thought of as a den of iniquity from which no one escapes with soul intact, had proved just the opposite. 

Until he realized the errancy of her ways, fallen into the trap of secularism - the idea of progress and the attainment of salvation without God.  

As often happens in both religion and secularism, true belief can become unhinging.  There are religious madmen wandering the streets howling about the end of the world and demanding repentance and return to the Lord and secular madmen warning of the devastation of the planet, the extermination of gay men, the incarceration and deportation of asylees, and the creation of insurmountable bastions of capitalist greed.  

Barbery in her final days became a whirling dervish of eccentric, wild, tamed ferocity.  The twin towers of religious fundamentalism and secular mania joined in a perfect storm and she went completely around the bend, ending her life in St. Elizabeth's, an American mental hospital the likes of Bedlam or Broadmoor, a hellhole of a place under the radar of reformists, still operating and the only place for fanatical zealotry gone insane. 

Bedlam - A Forensic Psychologist's Take On The Collective Hysteria Of The American Left

Arnold Beethoven - no relation to the great German composer, but always asked - was the Chief Forensic Psychologist at one of America's best known university hospitals, and was the author of Delusionary Visions - The Reality Of Reformist Political Movements In America', a paper published in the Southwest Journal of Forensic Psychology (2025:Vol. 4, pps. 24-38). 

In this paper he described the viral nature of political dementia:

Political animus in America is as old as the hills, and as common as the scurrilous, defamatory, ad hominem presidential campaigns of the past. And American politics have never been genteel affairs. Yet there is something different about today's political atmosphere. The animus, scorn, and hostility, common during an electoral campaign and thrown indiscriminately by the candidates, have become perennial. The level, intensity, and viciousness of the attacks on the American President reach a level of bilious hate that suggests collective hysteria. 

The campaign between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson set new lows.

The presidential race was full of mudslinging accusations and character assassination. Adam’s supporters accused Jefferson of sympathizing with the Southern slaves whom he wished to emancipate going so far as to say he maintained a “Congo Harem” at Monticello. 

In one over-the-top condemnation, Yale President Timothy Dwight said that if Jefferson were elected, “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced. The air will be rent with the cries of distress, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crime."

The accusations continued right up until the election. One Jefferson supporter likened Adams to a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” 

Adams’ supporters countered with a leaflet calling Jefferson, “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” Jefferson’s camp claimed the president reportedly planned to smuggle London prostitutes across the Atlantic to satiate his sinful tastes. 

This, says forensic psychologist Beethoven, is nothing compared to today. 

Ordinary Americans - cow-milking, 9-5, church-going, dutiful husbands and wives - have shown no limits, no temperance, no hesitation in casting the President in a demonic, Satanic light.  A febrile, untethered and uncontrollable animus has been abroad in all quarters. It is nothing less than mass hysteria. 

The first documented evidence of this malady was reported in England in 1757 when a political campaign in Surrey was noted in the local press. 

Never before in our fair corner of Old England have we seen such devilish idolatry and the abandonment of reason and good judgement.  There is not a soul on our hallowed ground immune to this mortal infection.  Husbands are pitted against wives, accusatory children roam the countryside, and bilious, venomous cries for murder emanate from the hustings.

There was nothing particularly unusual about the election, one little different from any in the past, focusing on local issues - the extension of the grange to the east, recobbling of the High Road, a tax increase of a few farthings etc. - but somehow issues, personalities, character, and 'something in the air' caused the entire community to lose its bearings and come apart at the seams.

Alderman P. Alling Wofford went against the grain, neither monarchist nor populist, neither for Cromwell or the King, but one of a kind.  He fit no mold or cast.  He was outspoken and unabashed about the nature of man, 'a creature of God with divine ambitions' and as such led a libertine, unfettered life.  Social mores were nothing more than tethers on man's natural, uninhibited soul, and should be disregarded. 

All this was tied up with a view of government, governance, rule, and rights.  Wofford was a proto-conservative and hated for his insurrectionist, anti-Christian notions.  Yet at the same time he struck a chord with the local populace, many of whom were no more than serfs in a patriarchal system.  He gave them a voice, and whether or not their privileged, wealthy landlords would listen was irrelevant - it was the vox populi which mattered. 

Never before had such a vicious, wild, and completely unhinged expression of virulent hatred ever been experienced in what was ordinarily a peaceful, accommodating province; and once the animus became universal Surrey was like bedlam - streets full of demented, wracked, insane souls howling, pulling their hair, and ripping their clothes from their bodies. 

There were many more such examples of mass political hysteria - one in Dresden in 1804, another in Turin in 1850 and another in Lourdes, of all places in 1905. 

The outburst in Lourdes made the news, for the citizens of the town, used to the prayerful vigils at the grotto of the Virgin Mary, the long lines of penitents, cripples, and spiritual aspirants, and the overall holiness of the place, had turned manic during an electoral campaign.  All semblance of Christian virtue, Catholic catechetical faith and wisdom, and communal generosity had disappeared.  Lourdes was like Broadmoor, the hellhole of a mental institution for the criminally insane in England. 

The conditions for such political hysteria are quite different today of course.  Democracy was only a notion at the time of these early recorded incidents, public participation in the electoral process extremely limited to local issues and candidates; but the similarities cannot be ignored. 

'Collective political insanity is real', Professor Beethoven wrote. 

What were the particular socio-cultural variables which influenced this unusual and remarkable political virus?  How was it that progressives, active in America since the early days of Brandeis, Lafollette, and Gompers, men of rectitude, principle, and respectful persuasiveness, had become so psychotic in their vision?  

Donald Trump was an aggressive conservative, steeped in traditional Republican values of small government, limited regulations, an unfettered free market, nationalism and individualism and willing to use presidential muscle to promote this agenda; but he was no madman, no Rasputin, no Satanic evil. 

Yet incredibly he was believed to be so; and the more the conviction was expressed and went viral through the media, the more it was adopted as received wisdom and truth.  Men and women who ordinarily would parse, disaggregate, disassemble, and analyze a political policy or position and come to a reasoned conclusion, had now lost any and all rational ability to separate fact from fiction.  

Suddenly everything Trump did was ipso facto evil, wrong, and devilish and everyone believed it - everyone from shopkeepers to surgeons to the man in the street, Democrats in tradition and belief, became infected. 

The popular meme is that if Donald Trump cured cancer he would be accused of wrongdoing, unbolting the foundations of democracy, robbing the people of their rights, enriching himself in collusion with big pharma, and more. 

There is psychiatric reasoning behind this ascription of evil.  People who are unable to grasp and come to grips with radical change, whose minds have become ossified and unresponsive to alteration, often invoke a supernatural power for explanation, and in so doing cross a psychiatric boundary from sanity to insanity

'It is ironic' Dr. Beethoven went on, 'that this feral, wild, assuming, collective mental illness was already given a name - Trump Derangement Syndrome.  How fitting and perceptive, another example of popular wisdom which is often far ahead of the scientific arts'. 

The Sturm und Drang continues as loud as ever.  Progressives will not stop beating the drums until the tyrant is strung up, until the scourge of evil has been removed from the land. 

Diseases cannot be cured overnight and some are chronic and resistant to treatment; but others simply die out, run their course, are depleted and ineffectual. Even if this particular political hysteria goes into hibernation or remission, it will certainly resurface when the times and conditions are right.  

'Wackos rule!' was the sign on one suburban lawn amidst 'Democracy Matters, Hate Has No Home Here, and All Are Welcome' banners. Professor Beethoven laughed when he saw it.  'See', he said to a colleague travelling with him, 'the people are always right'. 

Around The Bend - How Politics Dements, The Feral Antics Of Ladies Teas

Vicki Barton held political tea parties - events at her suburban Washington home meant to share feelings about Donald Trump and in so doing, relieve some of the building, often insupportable anger that everyone felt.

These women were all mature, older, retired professionals who should be enjoying sundowners on the decks of their homes in Tampa or Tucson, but who simply couldn't find it in themselves after decades of political engagement to just take off and leave their younger colleagues in the lurch.

 

The tea parties which always started with genteel chatter about grandchildren and the last snowstorm, quickly, with Vicki's practiced orchestral leadership, became voluble and heated.  The very mention of the President touched off an inchoate anger, a choking, gasping but futile grasp for words to describe their hatred for the man. 

All the ladies spoke at once, some stood up and waved their arms, others clucked and flapped until the whole parlor was like a frenzied henhouse.

This was the first time in their decades-long affiliation with the Democratic Party that they had felt such animus, such untoward, bilious hatred for the occupant of the Oval Office.  

The Bushes were bad enough, Tricky Dick was a crook, and Ronald Reagan a goofy actor; but Trump was of a different ilk - a dangerously unhinged despot not unlike Hitler.  Who could watch federal agents rounding up asylees and herding them off into cattle cars and not see shades of the Waffen SS, the Gestapo, and torchlight parades?

Bettina Phelps stood up, banged the coffee table and sent teacups flying.  'I have the floor!', she shouted, spinning this way and that, flailing her arms, her face, neck, and bodice turning a nasty, splotchy red and white color.  

It was a full minute before she could regain her composure and say what she had to say, something about the climate and transgenderism, but conflated all in an incomprehensible mélange. 

The ladies around the table nodded knowingly.  Bettina did not have to make sense to get her point across.  The clock was ticking, Donald Trump was still wreaking havoc and next presidential election was still years off. 

Bettina's infection went viral and one by one the ladies stood up and howled, energized, frustrated, bilious with anger and hatred, all fighting with themselves to get the words out, to shout their warnings, their fear, and their call to arms. 

Bill Barton, Vicki's husband promised his wife that he would stay put in his upstairs office and keep to himself.  Her tea parties were her affair; but this time he couldn't help himself, and leaning over the railing watched the goings on below.  

Hortie Adams was blowing her stack about racism - a large woman who defied the upper-middle class svelte, Pilates, image of the well-to-do suburban matron and whose rolls of fat flopped this way and that as she threw her arms around, giving her a frenetic, crazed Michelin Man look.

Bill smothered a laugh.  These ladies were wacko, no other word for it, but then again, nothing surprising there.  The Jack Nicholson character in the movie As Good As It Gets asked by an admiring student how he writes about women so well, replies 'I think of a man and take away reason and accountability'. 

Now, despite what he was thinking, Bill was no misogynist. As a matter of fact, to his wife's everlasting suspicion, he loved women.  This caterwauling and screechy catfighting was part of the deal.  As long as they were complaisant lovers, women could howl their heads off about Donald Trump till the cows came home. 

Looked at more dispassionately and more objectively Bill's view of women was not of the most charitable kind but one had to ask what got into these ordinarily sedate, mature, and reasonable ladies? How could they be transformed so easily from good homemakers and mothers into screaming banshees?

The conservative press joked about TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome - and indeed the wild, unhinged, feral hatred of the man went beyond normal political differences. 

Needless to say, there was much academic consideration of the subject.  Political observers who were quite familiar with the protests against Nixon and the 'Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?' shouts, were at a loss to explain the level of feverish, demented cries against Donald Trump. 

'A coincidence of historic proportions', wrote Prof. Emeritus Arthur Barth of Duke. 'The perfect storm of hysterical idealism, an Armageddon mentality, a viral, inchoate, frenzy of deep-seated hatred,  and a President who loves nothing more than to fuel the flames of febrile political insanity'. 

His words were uncharacteristically harsh, unbefitting for an academic, but in answer to his critics, he only said, 'If it walks like a duck...', enraging his liberal colleagues on the faculty, but given his Emeritus and tenured stature, he could be in a very fuck-all mood. The conservative press picked up on the exchange. Barth was 'telling it like it is'. 

Now, the surprising thing of it all was that this so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome had a very salubrious effect on those affected.  It felt good to release these heretofore closeted and unleashed passions.  'I have never felt better', said Bettina Phelps, flushed, excited, and happy as she left Vicki's tea party.  There was something euphoric about hate, as ironic as that might sound, the ladies all agreed, Ecstasy without a Baltimore rave, a camaraderie, womanhood and feminism at their most powerful. 

Vicki's husband, Bill, shook his head and wandered back to his office as the last of the ladies left. 'Loonies', he said out loud, 'couldn't make them up'.  

'How did it go?', he asked his wife when he finally came downstairs. 

She was flushed, wide-eyed, buoyant with enthusiasm and as happy as a lark. 'Wonderful', she said, 'absolutely wonderful'. 

Another academic, Prof. Alden Wright, Chairman of the Department of Clinical Psychology at Hopkins, wrote:

The nature of true belief is born of political dementia.  While there can be a coming together of the like-minded, united around a particular cause or issue, it rarely goes past angry commitment; but when a political commonality goes viral, such as the animus against Donald Trump, and mutates, grows, and transforms into a feral epidemic, the gloves are off. There can be no stopping the rapid spread of the disease nor its mutation into something wildly uncontrollable - a mass schizophrenia.

Out and about - to Starbucks and Whole Foods - no one would suspect Vicki Barton of dementia or least of all schizophrenia.  The virus, again according to Prof. Dr. Wright, 'lies dormant and undetected until it is triggered - a gay man, an ICE officer, an offending street sign - and then it becomes full-blown, and only retreats when the sufferer is back in his or her den...' 

'Completely nuts', said another complicit husband, chatting with Bill Barton after another of Vicki's teas. 'I know women have their loose hinges - menopause is a killer - but Vicki, whoa! and so it was among the husbands who would rather put up with a bit of crazy female camaraderie than ditch it in divorce.