The Ship Has No Captain

The United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis

Stuff is Messed Up

Since the eruption of the Covid pandemic in 2020, things seem to have changed at warp speed in the media while in fact remaining entirely the same. First the guidance was to wear no mask, then they flipped and made mask-wearing mandatory – first restricting travel from China was racist, then it was a commonsense step that should have been done earlier. The examples could go on, to say less about toilet paper, lockdowns, and children in school. Even the much vaunted PCR test has suffered scandal – the original tests approved in 2020 didn’t also test for the common flu or influenza, meaning it is quite possible that they have reported false positives. In the Ukraine war, Russia is said to have been running out of missiles since March and collapsing any day now, but now the Ukrainians are in more trouble than ever, and the Russians have maintained their position. Whether any of what I’ve said is true or not doesn’t matter, because one thing’s for sure, stuff is messed up!

The Book

With all this flip-flopping and constant hysteria in the media and the government, we come to the perspective of the author. Dr. Mark McDonald, psychiatrist and physician, uses this book, The United States of Fear, to share his experiences after the pandemic. Practicing in a liberal, highly-educated, and affluent area of Los Angeles, he petitions for the need to re-open America’s schools. In general, he believes that many of the recent crises have been amplified by the media and government megaphone of fear, which has crushing effects on the population.

The reaction he has received is mixed. First, his patient, an eight-year old girl with ADHD was quarantined by her mother, who insisted on only seeing him across Zoom despite the low infection rate among children, and the necessity of outside experiences to develop children. When he spoke out to reopen schools, claiming it was necessary for children’s mental development and stimulation, he received death threats, mostly from women.

Most of his issues stem from women, and he believes that in this world of histrionic and hysteric media coverage, it is the women who are most affected. Smaller and weaker than men and therefore always at physical risk and biologically wired towards emotionality and social conformity, he theorizes that they are easily affected by the constant barrage of bad news and constant negativity. This, in his opinion, is exacerbated by the men getting along to go along, rather than challenging the occasional excessive impulse and stopping things from getting out of hand.

Recommendation

Overall, I think that the book is a well-reasoned take on the phenomenon of the past few years. The author’s thesis of a group hysteria, caused by a world glued to a screen and being bombarded with messages of death and doom, with no counterbalance or restraint. Do buy.

My take

There is, in my opinion, a larger point. The government has the incentive to seem to “do something”, even if they don’t think it’ll do anything, to jump on a crisis and be seen as an active and competent leadership. The media has the incentive to show the news day by day, no matter what is said, in order to keep up ratings and be seen as the one with the hottest scoops. Nowhere, in either group’s motivation, sits the truth, or taking a measured, rational approach to things.

This puts the average person in a conundrum. You can follow the news and try to ignore but remember all the insanity and hysteria, or you can ignore the news and be considered an eccentric at best. You can strictly follow government protocols to the letter, knowing they do little good, or you can skirt the rules at risk of apprehension and being told on by the fearful who do not agree with you. The stakes can be high – people have lost jobs and businesses over this, even gone to prison, making outward obedience the more common choice.

My advice to the average person, as much as possible, is to acknowledge what they don’t know, look into things themselves, or simply live the way they want to live. The current climate of fear and hysteria is both unsustainable and silly, and should be mocked and skirted as much as possible. All the common causes are tainted – climate change, Covid-19, war, economics, the banking system – all of these are trotted out to spread fear and loathing in the 21^st Century, rather than being treated with the gravity they deserve.

The ship no longer has a Captain, only a bickering Committee, arguing over the color of the lifeboats as the ship leaks from a thousand different places. The seamen bail out the water and patch the holes, but without the Captain’s orders, the ship is dead in the water in rough seas. We will be here quite a while.