The United States needs to construct a fence around the entire nation to stop lunatics from spreading our crazy virus to the rest of the world. I think I know the root cause of the epidemic—deinstituionalization.

Forty years ago, I produced and reported a documentary about the East Louisiana State Hospital, a sprawling campus in the town of Jackson. Founded in 1847 as the Insane Asylum of Louisiana, the hospital mirrored the evolution of mental health treatment in the country—although vestiges of the past could be found in the basement of the main building where long abandoned dungeons were located.

Throughout history, confinement in mental institutions has been a guessing game. A psychiatrist I interviewed for the documentary said decisions were sometimes the result of geography. A person considered mentally ill in a rural community of north Louisiana might be viewed as slightly eccentric in New Orleans. Indeed, until the latter half of the 1900’s, bipolar depression was often diagnosed as a form of lunacy.

Nowadays, even the most severely impaired patients—mostly schizophrenics—can be treated with medications and released from institutions. So long as they continue to pop pills and maintain contact with outpatient clinics, they can usually function in a reasonably normal manner. But the big flaw in desinstituionalization is lack of follow-up. Most big cities and urban areas have sizeable populations of street people, who forgot or refused to take medications.

Worse, the nation’s airwaves and political chambers are overrun by insane characters in need of medication. Even shrinks forget their drugs. That was apparent last night on CNN’s Larry King show when Dr. Laura announced she was ending her long-running radio show in order to exercise her First Amendment rights. 

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/dr-laura-schlessinger-to-end-radio-show/?hp 

Anyone reading my blog more than a couple of times knows I will “fight to the death” (ho, ho) in defense of the First Amendment. But nearly 100 years ago, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted that free speech does not cover “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.” Dr. Laura’s comment that the “N” word was commonly used by African Americans on cable shows and in other venues was not false. However, her repeated use of the word was designed to inflame, thus making it equivalent to shouting fire. Hopefully, Dr. Laura will locate her pill bottle.

So what happens to the radio audience that has now been infected with her insanity. They can find refuge by turning the dial to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and an array of radio talk show hosts, who make listeners feel like they have entered the lockdown ward of a mental hospital. Or they can find a Tea Party demonstration where folks dress in costumes similar to outfits that once got people admitted to asylums. I’m guessing these are the same people who overdosed on Glenn Beck. Consider, for instance, this excerpt from Media Matters, which is staffed by people strong enough to monitor Beck.

Back in April, Glenn Beck informed his radio listeners that during his trip to the Vatican, an “individual” there told him that “what you’re doing is wildly important” in the upcoming struggle against forces of “great darkness.”

Earlier the same week, Beck explained that he was promoting “the plan that [God] would have me articulate, I think, to you,” against “darkness.” While notable on their own merits, Beck’s comments were especially striking because they marked what was (at the time) the culmination of Beck’s regular portrayal of himself as fighting on behalf of “good” against the forces of “evil” and “darkness.”

Since then, Beck has made it abundantly clear that he does not use this sort of language metaphorically — he quite literally believes he is fighting on the side of God against Satan. In the months since his trip to the Vatican, Beck has ramped up the frequency and intensity with which he frames the current political debate in our country in biblical, and sometimes apocalyptic, terms.

For example, in recent months, Beck has:

  • Looked skyward on his TV show and said, “Lord, it’s your turn, we’ve done everything we can” while comparing the current situation in our country to Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic novel The Stand. In the same segment, Beck also told people they need to ask for forgiveness, and said that “we’re in a dark, dark place” and “dark dudes” are “coming our way.” He added, “Now, I’m hoping the guy with horns doesn’t actually show up, but he could.”
  • Explained that we are fighting “the oldest battle that man has ever fought. It is the battle in the war in heaven. It is the battle that we fought in the Garden of Eden. Choice.” Beck also compared Obama and his administration to the snake in the Garden of Eden because he “will make the choices for you.”
  • Hosted a panel of pastors and preachers that he billed as “people that need to start standing up.” During the show, Beck plugged the “excellent” book by Rev. John Hagee, Can America Survive? 10 Prophetic Signs That We Are the Terminal Generation, which he apparently had just started reading. Hagee’s book interprets biblical prophecy to argue that the world is fast approaching Armageddon and the second coming of Jesus Christ. Beck explicitly endorsed Hagee’s theory by stating as fact that “a lot of the pieces that have never been here for the prophecy are here now.”
  • Repeatedly suggested that progressives and liberals are “enemies of God” and “enemies of Him,” and declared that they “don’t have [God] on their side.”
  • Told his listeners to “make no mistake: You are fighting a power far greater, far greater than any elected official. This has been the works for a very long time.” He then warned that the “gates of Hell will open up.”

This brings us to Beck’s upcoming “Restoring Honor” rally, which is slated to take place in two weeks. Beck has repeatedly described the rally as historic and modestly declared that it “will be remembered in American history as the turning point.” As he has explained it, Beck originally wanted to schedule the rally for September 12, but didn’t want people to “work on the Sabbath,” so he rescheduled it for August 28. When he later discovered that this date marked the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, rather than chalking it up to coincidence, Beck claimed that it was “divine providence.”

Just think about that for a second — Beck is so convinced he is working on behalf of the forces of “good” that he believes God made sure the date of his self-aggrandizement festival coincided with the anniversary of a landmark speech by a civil rights icon.

Beck’s messianic religiosity took the next logical step this week, when he announced a new event scheduled on the eve of the 8-28 rally. Employing his characteristic humility, the event will be titled “Glenn Beck’s Divine Destiny” and will feature “nationally-known figures from all faiths.” Beck describes the evening as an “eye-opening” event “that will help heal your soul.”

While Beck regularly garners plenty of attention, his increasingly intense religiosity has flown mostly under the radar. If we’re to take him at his word, then he sincerely believes that he is fighting on behalf of God against the forces of Satan — or as Beck calls them, “progressives.” If that isn’t the case, then he’s cynically using biblical fearmongering in order to continue to grow his brand and score political points. I’m not sure which is worse. Either way, it’s deserving of more attention

A blog reader asked a few days ago why I continued to beat up on Beck, Sean Hannity, Limbaugh, Fox “News,” et al. The short answer is that deinstituionalization has gone too far. A nut virus has been spread by the aforementioned characters and the Republican Propaganda Network, which hides behind the ridiculous misnomer of “fair and balanced.”

Freedom of speech and/or opinions is not an issue when it comes to “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.” And the distortion and lies on Fox and talk radio fall into that category. As the abandonment of dungeons at East Louisiana State Hospital attests, raving lunatics can be treated with drugs. My guess is there are medications powerful enough to treat madmen (and women, or should I say madpersons to be politically correct) polluting the airwaves. Lighter doses are required for most of the loony politicians, although there are exceptions.

And speaking of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, I can’t decide if they are the cause or effect of the epidemic of nuttiness. Newt probably falls into the first category given his shennigans that go back more than two decades—even before Fox “News” was created by Satan himself, Rupert Murdoch. Although the Wasilla flash, Sarah Palin, was infected late, she has become the “Typhoid Mary” of the epidemic.

But as I have said many times before, I always try to see the glass as half full. The upside to all the nuttiness in our country is that we are providing comic relief to many other nations during a worldwide economic downslide that has no borders. Even so, anyone in foreign lands watching the antics that have now become pervasive in the United States must be wondering what happened to our country.

If we don’t build fences to keep the nuts inside our borders, other nations are sure to build them to keep us out.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.