I've had two near-death experiences with crazy people. The first: my sister. She's dead now so I can write that. The second: a guy who was part of a surrogate family I had in the first year after my father died.
The lessons were the same:
They are not culpable.
They will almost certainly die crazy.
You can't do anything about it.
In both cases I had sudden moments of understanding which are very vivid in my memory. I remember exactly where I was and how it felt. I felt amazement. Wonder.
And certainty about the fact of the mental illness and its trajectory. The understanding didn't seem to have an analytical component, it was experiential and observational. Just kind of "wow." Fucking wow.
I also understood that there was only one way to deal with it. Pack your bags. Any interaction with people living in that primal, archetypal place will be on their terms. You have to leave.
The last situation in the world you want to be in is to be stuck with crazy people. Which isn't to say you don't care about them. Or even love them. But they do unbelievable harm. I was stuck with my sister.
For about six years, once the crazy came. I figured it out about midway through, three years in. That it would never pass. We were screwed. I was a kid. I couldn't do anything about it. I got out when I could.
I got extricated from the other situation rather slowly and messily. I was pretty implicated. Because, I believe, there was an unwitting desire on my part to suffer. To work my way through some unresolved grief.
Who knows. There are people out there who will help you along if you want to suffer. But I'm back in that situation now, stuck with insanity. With the Republicans. How can I say this:
THEY ARE COMPLETELY OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MINDS.
We, the Democrats, are in a political marriage with lunatics. It's mass hysteria, of some sort. Or mass something else, an infectious strain of stupidity and fear.
That, to me, is observational, not analytical. If you don't agree, sorry. Go read somebody else. What's hard is that there is no way to get extricated. Not really. The only other option is quarantine.
Us or them. Ideally them, but I'd rather be institutionalized than stuck with them. In an asylum called the USA, maybe. We should at least get to use the name. They're the secessionists.
Their system should implode without people to persecute and exploit. People to take advantage of. So we try to shut them in. Let them live out their crap at their own expense.
We'll throw leaflets over the walls, just in case there are non-crazies stuck there. Or someone has a change of heart after watching a Frank Capra movie, or through mental mutation.
I am now leaving the realm of observation. What follows includes analysis and interpretation. Hypothe-..., hypothe-..., hypothe-.... Shit! Speculation. I'm going existentialist on you.
I believe that we are profoundly free. People have a lot of choice. I think we make decisions in our sleep. And from the moment we get up. French toast? The boiled egg? It could be anything.
Not acting is not not choosing. We are choosing. Not to act, definitively, in the curious case of the Republicans. Choosing not to take an unambiguous stand in the face of a lot of terrible, destructive behavior on their end.
It's parallel to being the uncrazy partner in a marriage with an abuser. Not being abusive is not enough. You're there. You see it. If you don't stop it, or at least try, you are responsible. Possibly more so than the abuser, because they're crazy.
It isn't fair, but there are innocents involved. We have an enormous responsibility to children. And the powerless. Old people. The poor. The pregnant. Anyone with less power than we have. Anyone encumbered. Even dogs. I love dogs.
I was taught as a child that people who suffer somehow suffer for all of us. They bear a burden for all of us. There's an utter truth to me in this, because a certain percentage of people will have certain problems. It could have been any of us. Even me. Maybe it is me.
My father actually failed at this. He failed to get my sister out of the house, which he should have done, or protect us from her in some way. He couldn't do it. He was in over his head. If anything he cared too much and it incapacitated him.
He was a good guy. If someone were to ask me if I forgive him I would know they didn't understand. To even say there's nothing to forgive puts it in a context that's incomprehensible to me. It just happened. It's no longer happening.
That doesn't in any way absolve us from the need to challenge the Republicans on what they're doing and to try to stop it. We must do it. You first.
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