Some Notes from the Nuthouse: A Post-American Anthology

You’ve got to dig those founding fathers of ours, talking about liberty for all, then locking up their slaves in the pigpen at night. Yeah man. Supreme bullshit artists, those guys. Face it, they were nuts. You’ve got to be crazy to be a true blue American. – Comedian Lenny Bruce, Los Angeles, 1964

To save the village, we had to destroy it.  – U.S. Army officer, Vietnam, 1964

If he’s going to save our country, he doesn’t need the Constitution.  – Donald Trump supporter, Philadelphia, October 14, 2024

Big Bob to the Rescue

It was the first hour of my first night shift in the nuthouse. All the “members” (the term “patients” was officially eschewed) were all drugged and snug in their beds, and Head Nurse was giving me the scoop.

“Most of them are Voluntaries, so they never give us any trouble,” the hawk-eyed lady explained. “It’s the Involuntaries you have to watch yourself around. But not to worry. In all my years here, we’ve never had a serious incident.”

Some divine trickster must have heard her words just then, for in the wink of an eye there appeared a bulky orderly grasping a less than jolly young man. It turns out he was a runaway from Riverview Hospital, Vancouver’s medieval psychiatric prison.

“We need a room for the night, Innkeeper,” joked the white-jacketed goon.

Nurse Ratchet was not amused, and she let the intruders know it. Shrugging, the joker handed her the keys to his oversized prisoner’s handcuffs and departed without even a goodnight, or a good luck.

During my training for the job of “psychiatric assistant”, I had been told that violent incidents were rare on our ward, since all the Members were tranked to their eyebrows. Ergo, my “Code Red” instructions on how to physically restrain someone seemed as useful as tits on a bull. Big Bob – the name I bestowed on the hulking young inmate after the fact – proved otherwise.

Oblivious to who and what she was facing, Head Nurse turned her wrath on the guy, who had unwisely been released from his hand restraints. She had just begun to issue an angry admonition at him when the six-foot two-inch hulk reared back and landed a haymaker to her jaw that knocked her clear across the Nurses’ Station.

Big Bob looked down at me and smiled. We both stared at his impressive handiwork as she lay unconscious on the floor. What else could I do but smile back at him?

When another nurse, hearing the kerfuffle, appeared around the corner, I smiled at her, too, and I said as quietly as possible,

“Code Red, please.”

It took five of us to restrain Big Bob, who absorbed enough Thorazine to stop an ox. And I learned a lesson that night about how to handle loonies: never assume anything.

Big Bob and Head Nurse are never far from my mind these days, and not just for the obvious reasons. For me, they are interchangeable characters in a tragicomedy called America. Whether a “member” or an “official” of the nuthouse, we all seem to be caught in a looney bin without windows or exits.

After working on the University of British Columbia psychiatric ward for three months, I quit my job, even though I counted on it to pay my way through seminary. I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

For one thing, I found it increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the “sane” and “crazy” people. In fact, the patients seemed a lot more genuine and less dissociated than the doctors and nurses. Like one old guy told me,

“I couldn’t take the insanity of the world anymore. At least in here I know what’s coming at me every day.”

Meanwhile, the “sane” staff members routinely electro-shocked the brains of “members”, turning them into vegetables to “cure” them of their depressing memories.

At some point, the generalized insanity becomes too unbearable even for the most “well adjusted” minion, and what’s called a “psychotic break” occurs. Things fall apart for individuals and societies, starting from the inside out. And no-one is exempt.

America, as the epitome of a deranged global culture, has reached such a breaking point. And so, as with Big Bob or a nation caught in a collective psychosis, I never assume anything, besides the fact that they – or rather, we – are capable of anything.

Some telling facts: suicide has become the second most common cause of death for Americans in the prime of their lives, between the ages of 18 and 30. Imagine. And three quarters of Americans surveyed said they hate their jobs and find their lives “meaningless”.

In a corporate system where people are functional cogs in a machine that has no ultimate meaning besides self-perpetuation, people are trapped like bullet catchers in a war who are “here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here”, to quote a World War One soldiers’ refrain I picked up from my grandfather Ross Annett, who took part in that particular looney show.

History shows us that massive societal nihilism tends to give rise to totalitarian regimes, like Germany in 1933 and America in 2025. The adept dictator knows how to pretend to offer to the multitudes the purpose and hope that has been stripped from their lives, and in grateful thanks they they joyfully surrender their hearts and minds to one man.

Once that dark machine is set in motion, nothing can stop it except external conquest or internal collapse. It took fifty million dead people to halt Hitlerism, for a while. And today?

All in all, it’s a strange time to be laughing at ourselves. Or maybe it’s precisely the right time. You be the judge.

Maybe it’s because I’m almost seventy and have been kicked in the teeth enough times to have the long view that no amount of crap or official nuttiness fazes me. All that’s left these days is laughter. And that’s a good thing, because like our heart of hearts, it’s the part of us that the insanity and the Head Nurses can never reach.

So, here’s to you, Big Bob. Keep on swinging.

On Loyalty Oaths and Little Boys who need to be told they’re loved

Soon after the man who would be king dumped his rump onto the oval throne, he announced that, in order to keep their job, every cop and intelligence officer in America must pass a “loyalty test” by answering a single question: “Were the events of January 6, 2021 an ‘inside job’?”

Say what, Donny?

The question seems to have been composed by a ten-year-old functional illiterate. I mean, what does an ‘inside job’ mean, anyway? It depends who you’re talking to.

In Joe McCarthy’s salad days, state thuggery was clearer and more explicit: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist (read, Democratic) Party?” But then, the 1950’s was a simpler time, when presidents even kept their oaths of office.

As much as I’m fond of Harry Truman – no other Chief Executive ever cussed reporters to their faces and threatened to punch them out – he is the culprit when it comes to the infamous “Loyalty Oath” upon which Mr. T is basing his infantile inquisition.

In 1948, the Democratic president helped usher in McCarthyism’s reign of terror by insisting that federal civil servants ‘fess up about those clothes they donated to the Russkies during WW2 or any labor or socialist rallies they ever attended. Of course, by that standard, “Give ‘em Hell” Harry himself qualified as a “red”, since as a senator and then president he routinely attacked the Wall Street big money boys, supported civil rights for blacks, and called for socialized health care.

Right on, Harry!

Donny T., of course, is no farm boy from Missouri. The filthy-rich bugger has never worked a day in his life. But that, perversely, is his attraction to many broke and struggling Americans. Wilhelm Reich called it the Little Man syndrome.

Referring to Hitler, Reich said that when the dictator comes to power it feels to the anonymous man in the street like he has, too. This Little Man lives vicariously through the tyrant and submerges himself in him, even though, ironically, this ‘infallible’ role model is an empty vessel.

As Reich wrote,

“Only a full-blown psychotic can assume absolute power and exert dictatorial rule, since his capacity to love and share in the vulnerability of emotions and the give and take of human interactions is entirely absent. He must compensate for this lack of an inner identity by firmly controlling the outer world and those in it. … Emotionally, the dictator is an abandoned child seeking love but never finding it. He must have everyone around him continually sacrifice themselves to demonstrate and prove their undying devotion to him, even though he is incapable of returning such love. He insists on complete loyalty and sees treason and treachery in anyone not demonstrating it.” (Wilhelm Reich, Commentary on The Mass Psychology of Fascism, 1934)

Donald Trump fits Reich’s description to a tee. His sad little boy was put in the Oval Office by many millions of other sad little boys (and girls) who think that by showing him their complete loyalty they in turn will receive it, and thereby know that they are worthy and lovable human beings.

So, there you have it, kids. Just answer in the right way the question “Were the events of January 6, 2021 an ‘inside job’?” and you’ll be happy forever and ever.

Won’t you?

“Work for and bless the privileged few; what’s good for them is good for you!” – from Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss