In 1961 the sociologist Erving Goffman published his widely-acclaimed book entitled Asylums, which was based on his experiences working and observing in a mental hospital.

First and foremost, his ethnographic study helped to popularize widespread skepticism about the purposes and practices of psychiatry, expressing an often startling contempt for the very idea of the existence of mental illnesses. His viewpoint and other similar ones were certainly a factor in the heedless movement to close down mental hospitals that began to grow throughout the 1960’s, which resulted in patients being discharged into inadequate “community care” settings that failed to meet their treatment needs in any meaningful way. Here we saw a prime example of what has certainly become a truism today: The stupidest ideas are often the work of the (supposedly) smartest people—and we all pay the price.

This “cheap, cheaper, and cheapest” care model, which decided handing out medications rather than providing treatment was the way to go, dovetailed nicely with the budgetary constraints of many states that were anxious to shed the enormous fixed costs involved in running custodial mental health centers. This disastrous policy explains why “free range crazy” has become the defining characteristic and bane of cities around our nation that are today dealing with intractable homeless populations who are desperately self-medicating with alcohol and illegal drugs.The hospital infrastructure that would have been available sixty years ago to provide safety and treatment now stands derelict—with no possibility that its mission will be resurrected. Goffman’s scholarly and learned insights helped cause immeasurable and irreversible human suffering that continues to ripple through our country.

However, Goffman’s seminal work did propose one useful concept, that of the “total institution” robbing its inmates of all emotional and psychic autonomy in order to better control them. Over time this oppressive structure trains its inmates to accept its rules, norms, and whims. Unquestioning obedience is the inevitable end result, and those in control of the total institution also learn to surrender their own humanity and judgement so as to have no compunctions whatsoever about ruthlessly crushing the freedoms of those living in the institution—for their own good. 

Goffman’s concept of the total institution is, in a broader sense, a template for all totalitarianism because the free will of those being controlled is surrendered—whether willingly or not. In exchange for some illusory and ill-defined security that ends up serving only the needs of the self-interested masters, the human aspirations of those dealing with the state-sponsored jackboot being ground into their faces are demeaned and degraded in order to keep them quiet and submissive. Unsurprisingly, in such a setting questions are entirely unwelcome, dissent cannot be tolerated, and accountability is virtually non-existent. The total institution and those who run it are a law unto themselves that will do whatever is necessary to enhance their power and silence their critics.

Oddly enough—and this is the peculiar aspect of what seems, to the rational mind, an inhumane and horrid system—the inmates will eventually become surprisingly comfortable with the total institution controlling their thoughts and actually crave being told what to do. This so-called “institutionalization” of the individual renders them unable to exist without their minds and souls being caged. Freedom of thought and expression, perversely, produces only the deepest anxiety because the inmates no longer want to think independently. Control of their minds is, for these people, a source of destructive comfort that they welcome just as addicts welcome a drug, even if it is, in fact, destroying them.

Now take a good, long look around you at the state of our nation and people today—and for the past several decades. It is obviously not welcomed by our masters in government, academia, and the mass media, but this is probably the perfect time to ask a lot of pointed questions about our dull compliance.

A substantial portion of our national dialogue, whether it comes from the extreme left or extreme right, is today captive to a pathology of anxiety—or even rage—if questions are asked that contradict the core precepts that shield partisans from the pain of actual thought. The security that comes from mindless and misguided obedience to dogmas that seem to have no connection with the real world (or even real people) is very similar to the mental incapacities suffered by the inmates of Goffman’s total institution. This rigidity of mind and refusal—even stark terror—encountered when listening to differing thoughts or contrasting viewpoints is a tragedy that is both destroying individuals and tearing our nation apart.

The fear of thinking, debate, and compromise that plagues so many close-minded, brainwashed, and extremist Americans is obviously the biggest internal enemy we are now facing, and the fortress of official lies and extraordinary propaganda our leaders in government, academia, entertainment, and journalism deploy to gain power and hold it is to blame for the battles today corroding our ability to successful govern our fractious and fractured nation. Whether we are talking about the theory that toddlers can be transgender or the notion that pouring money into the Ukraine war is a great idea, the spectrum of inane ideas to which many Americans tenaciously cling, despite compelling evidence they are wrong, is often startling. 

The inability to acknowledge, for example, that uncontrolled borders are a catastrophe, restrictions on abortion are necessary, or wild government overspending will lead to catastrophe renders desperately necessary conversations impossible and turns practicable solutions that leave all sides just a little unhappy into the foulest of all sins. Whenever someone insists that a “right” is absolute and those who disagree are evil, you can be assured they are laboring under a mental incapacity driven by the extremist drivel being spewed by various “trusted” total institutions that have disabled the ability of many citizens to think for themselves.

It is not unreasonable to argue that Americans are now being forced to live in a national mental asylum created for them courtesy of the madmen, madwomen, and variously gendered crazies now driving our country into economic, cultural, and military ruin for reasons that escape all rational explanation. Whether there is hope for our future depends wholly on our ability to reject the ongoing and destructive insanity being served up by our country’s demented elites and their enablers, who care not for facts, reason, or decency.

Every American should ask themselves, as compliance with the next round of regulations, mandates, and guidelines that will protect us from the next crisis (Global Warming! Hate Speech! Bird Flu! Meat! The Sun!) is demanded, if we will continue to dutifully obey.

A great deal depends on how we answer this question, and this is the time for the nonconformists, iconoclasts, and free thinkers among us to step to the forefront.