Like most of you, I saw Senator Boxer rise and and
support Representative Tubbs Jones' objection to certifying Ohio's electoral votes yesterday.
The objection forced a two-hour debate in both the House and Senate. Although I did not expect the objection to be supported by a majority of the Congress, I was shocked by some of the vitriol and low-brow rhetoric offered by Republican lawmakers.
Neither Boxer nor Tubbs Jones sought to overturn the election, only to highlight the problems in Ohio such as a shortage of voting machines and inexplicable errors in the tabulation of votes cast via electronic devices. Republicans meanwhile made meanspirited remarks about "conspiracy theories".
While harsh political rhetoric is nothing unexpected, there are reports that Senator Frist wants to introduce a bill classifying "Political Paranoia" as a mental illness:
When the 109th Congress convenes in Washington in January, Senator Bill Frist, the first practicing physician elected to the Senate since 1928, plans to file a bill that would define "political paranoia" as a mental disorder, paving the way for individuals who suffer from paranoid delusions regarding voter fraud, political persecution and FBI surveillance to receive Medicare reimbursement for any psychiatric treatment they receive.
Rick Smith, a spokesman for Senator Frist, says that the measure has a good chance of passing--something that can only help a portion of the population that is suffering significant distress.
"If you're still convinced that President Bush won the election because Republicans figured out a way to hack into electronic voting machines, you've obviously got a problem," says Smith. "If we can figure out a way to ease your suffering by getting you into therapy and onto medication, that's something that we hope the entire 109th Congress will support."
You might remember this as an old Soviet technique:
Soviet dissident is arrested. His crime: distributing anti-government literature. A psychiatrist testifies that the dissident is `unfit to plead' due to mental illness. The result: the dissident is put away without trial in a maximum security mental hospital for an indefinite period.
A Westerner hearing this chilling scenario will quickly come to the conclusion that the dissident's human rights are being cynically violated. The Soviet psychiatrist will seem to be colluding with the political authorities, using a false charge of mental illness - usually `sluggish' schizophrenia - to silence a voice that is not mad but politically embarrasing. The `crime', after all, is not a crime in the West. And the charge of mental illness deprives the accused of the opportunity to speak in his defence. The final blow is that, because he is `sick', he can be detained indefinitely under the implicit assumption that he is being treated. This means that his `sentence', unlike that of an ordinary criminal, does not end until his psychiatrist judges him cured.
Is this what we've come to?
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Pax