numan
What! Me Worry?
- Mar 23, 2013
- 2,125
- 241
- 130
'
People seem to ignore the importance of hysteria in American life. Of course, one can find examples of hysteria in the life of all nations, but what is peculiar about the psychology of Americans is the repeated recurrence of hysteria, and the regularity of the recurrence. I don't see how one can make sense of the American Experience without taking it into consideration.
Leaving aside the hysteria of the Terrorist Uprising of 1776, there was the hysteria associated with the Alien and Sedition Acts at the end of the 1790's. There was a revival of hysteria at the time of the War of 1812, then a period of quiescence until the election of Andrew Jackson. That repulsive demagogue initiated an almost uninterrupted period of hysteria for more than a decade: the destruction of the Bank of the United States, the first great economic depression, the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Five Nations, the anti-foreign, anti-Catholic, anti-Mason hysteria of the Know-Nothing Party, and, of course, the Manifest Destiny hysteria that led to the Mexican-American War.
That war, with barely a pause for breath, initiated the ever-growing hysteria of the 1850's which brought on the Civil War. That war was the most useless and unnecessary war of modern times; more than two per-cent of the American population died because of the war -- about the same number and percentage of deaths in Iraq for which America bears such responsibility. If both sides, North and South, had just sat on their hands for thirty years, slavery would have ended anyway -- serfdom in Russia and slavery in Brazil were long gone by 1890, or was the United States so much more backward than Russia and Brazil that slavery would have hung on until the twentieth century? All that misery and death could have been avoided, and all the wounds and bitterness and injustice that lasted so long. But, Oh no, Americans must have their hysterical fits; by the late 1850's each side had so worked itself into a passion, so convinced itself that it was agrieved and wronged, so filled itself with righteous indignation, self-pity and intransigence that a paroxysm of gibbering, murderous rage could not be avoided.
Then there was the peace of exhaustion for thirty-odd years until the nonsense of Free Silver and "You shall not crucify Mankind upon a cross of gold" primed the pump for the "Maine Incident" and the Spanish-American War. By this time the hysteria was being much more consciously directed.
Next was the war hysteria of the First World War, the Ku Klux Klan hysteria of the early twenties, not forgetting the hysteria that led to Prohibition, which made the world safe for the Mafia and the FBI.
Take another hop and a skip to the Second World War, when hysteria made it seem perfectly acceptable to throw American citizens into concentration camps, mass-murder civilians in bombing raids, and rain atomic destruction down upon a defeated Japan.
Then there was the hysteria of the McCarthyite communist witch-hunts which fastened the oppressive Military-Industrial Complex upon the American people ever after. People should have paid attention to Eisenhower's warnings !!
Next, the coup of the Kennedy Assassination set the stage for the prolonged hysteria of the Vietnam War.
Then there was a longer than usual period of relative quiet---just constant, low-level hysteria -- until Monika Lewinski, 2000 election fraud, hysterical over-reaction to the 9-11 attacks, the Iraq War and "Homeland Security" -- in other words our present bout of general mayhem, hysteria and ever increasing totalitarian tyranny.
We still have the collapse of the dollar to look forward to, and the somewhat slower collapse of the American military. And when the six percent of the world's population which is represented by the citizens of the US find it necessary to live on six percent of the world's resources rather than the present twenty-five percent -- that should be quite adequate to fuel another round of perfectly futile hysteria.
.
People seem to ignore the importance of hysteria in American life. Of course, one can find examples of hysteria in the life of all nations, but what is peculiar about the psychology of Americans is the repeated recurrence of hysteria, and the regularity of the recurrence. I don't see how one can make sense of the American Experience without taking it into consideration.
Leaving aside the hysteria of the Terrorist Uprising of 1776, there was the hysteria associated with the Alien and Sedition Acts at the end of the 1790's. There was a revival of hysteria at the time of the War of 1812, then a period of quiescence until the election of Andrew Jackson. That repulsive demagogue initiated an almost uninterrupted period of hysteria for more than a decade: the destruction of the Bank of the United States, the first great economic depression, the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Five Nations, the anti-foreign, anti-Catholic, anti-Mason hysteria of the Know-Nothing Party, and, of course, the Manifest Destiny hysteria that led to the Mexican-American War.
That war, with barely a pause for breath, initiated the ever-growing hysteria of the 1850's which brought on the Civil War. That war was the most useless and unnecessary war of modern times; more than two per-cent of the American population died because of the war -- about the same number and percentage of deaths in Iraq for which America bears such responsibility. If both sides, North and South, had just sat on their hands for thirty years, slavery would have ended anyway -- serfdom in Russia and slavery in Brazil were long gone by 1890, or was the United States so much more backward than Russia and Brazil that slavery would have hung on until the twentieth century? All that misery and death could have been avoided, and all the wounds and bitterness and injustice that lasted so long. But, Oh no, Americans must have their hysterical fits; by the late 1850's each side had so worked itself into a passion, so convinced itself that it was agrieved and wronged, so filled itself with righteous indignation, self-pity and intransigence that a paroxysm of gibbering, murderous rage could not be avoided.
Then there was the peace of exhaustion for thirty-odd years until the nonsense of Free Silver and "You shall not crucify Mankind upon a cross of gold" primed the pump for the "Maine Incident" and the Spanish-American War. By this time the hysteria was being much more consciously directed.
Next was the war hysteria of the First World War, the Ku Klux Klan hysteria of the early twenties, not forgetting the hysteria that led to Prohibition, which made the world safe for the Mafia and the FBI.
Take another hop and a skip to the Second World War, when hysteria made it seem perfectly acceptable to throw American citizens into concentration camps, mass-murder civilians in bombing raids, and rain atomic destruction down upon a defeated Japan.
Then there was the hysteria of the McCarthyite communist witch-hunts which fastened the oppressive Military-Industrial Complex upon the American people ever after. People should have paid attention to Eisenhower's warnings !!
Next, the coup of the Kennedy Assassination set the stage for the prolonged hysteria of the Vietnam War.
Then there was a longer than usual period of relative quiet---just constant, low-level hysteria -- until Monika Lewinski, 2000 election fraud, hysterical over-reaction to the 9-11 attacks, the Iraq War and "Homeland Security" -- in other words our present bout of general mayhem, hysteria and ever increasing totalitarian tyranny.
We still have the collapse of the dollar to look forward to, and the somewhat slower collapse of the American military. And when the six percent of the world's population which is represented by the citizens of the US find it necessary to live on six percent of the world's resources rather than the present twenty-five percent -- that should be quite adequate to fuel another round of perfectly futile hysteria.
.
