Pounding The Podium

Years and Years and Years ago which is admittedly a lot of years, I was working on a degree in Psychology. One of my more ‘modern’ textbooks at the time was a very unique perspective of mental illness called “The Big Umbrella” by Dr. Jay Adams. Maybe ‘textbook’ is a bit too expansive a title for what was actually little more than a long essay. What has stuck with me all these years (since the early 70’s) was the premise of the book. The following brief except provides a good overview of the subject material:

“During the last generation a big umbrella was opened. Beneath its huge, over-arching expanse you now find people with the most diverse problems and difficulties. Under its shadow they have been gathered together according to the novel idea that nearly everybody who is having problems, regardless of what his difficulties may be, is sick. The name of this umbrella is Mental Illness. This umbrella was designed and opened by Charcot and Freud and others who worked with them. Until their time, “illness” meant physical illness. But they stretched the concept of illness until it pertained to nearly any and every sort of difficulty in life.”

One of the examples that Adams utilizes to demonstrate this is the Kennedy assassination, which many individuals at the time blamed on the city of Dallas rather than Lee Harvey Oswald. This expression “The Big Umbrella” was used in the 70’s to describe the expansion of the topic of mental illness to include all manner of problematic behavior. Today we don’t call people mentally ill (which by itself would be politically incorrect) we call them ‘victims’.

This line of thinking has again reared it’s head in today’s politically correct world, who is the victim of Fort Hood? Common sense would tell you the friends and family of the 13 individuals brutally gunned down by a madman, however some would have you believe that the victim is the madman himself Major Hasan. As absolutely ridiculous as this theory is, it has been utilized more and more today by the media in this mixed up message world in which we live.

Ann Coulter examines this overwhelming need to find a victim, and the many benefits of being a victim in her best selling book “Guilty” Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America”. A further example that proves Ann’s point is what is being referred to as “Climategate”.

On the MSNBC talk show Morning Joe, Jeffrey Sachs the author of “Common Wealth” offered his belief that the real victims in the Climategate scandal were the scientists. He actually dragged forth the term “Swiftboat” and explained to us lesser minds that the whole ClimateGate issue was “not a very big deal”.

Swiftboat?? For those who have spent the last few years trying to forget John Kerry and who hasn’t? Swiftboating is a term that became political jargon during the Kerry campaign. The gist of it is that John Kerry ran the campaign based upon his heroism in the Vietnam War, unfortunately his comrades in arms didn’t find him all that heroic and questioned Kerry’s recollection of events in Vietnam. As Kerry and his fellow veterans were deployed in Swift Boats during the war the term stuck.

Wikipedia the source for all knowledge contains a definition of the term “Swiftboating is American political jargon that is used as a strong pejorative description of some kind of attack that the speaker considers unfair or untrue—for example, an ad hominem attack or a smear campaign.

Although Wikipedia does not show it, you would do well to remember that the liberal dictionary defines ’smear campaign’ as telling the ugly truth about someone, such as the fact that they have been falsifying global warming. Most people who are not heavily vested in the global warming political machine just call it “telling a lie”.

For all the left’s vaulted ability to wrap themselves in the cloak of ‘victims’ which they do truly excel at, it would appear that the real victims of ClimateGate would be the rest of us.