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'.