Is it the numbers or is it fascism?
A year ago, a good friend of mine, an observant Jew, bought a house in Scotland. This was right after the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, anti-rally and death a year ago. By blaming both sides for this confrontation President Trump implied that racism is okay. He doesn't understand this. Nor does his spokeswoman. But my friend did. He grew up in Pennsylvania. His dad was a Jewish physician and had several friends who had left Nazi Germany to come to America rather than being killed. They told my friend that in prewar Germany, Jews were even better integrated into society than they are in America today. Until the rise of Nazi Fascism and anti-semitism, that is. When my friend heard Trump's response to the Charlottesville violence, he felt that Jews might be next, and liking Scotland, he bought a condominium there, in case he needed to escape from America, like his father's friends needed to escape from Germany. Now the Pittsburgh shooting of Jews in the Synagogue......several years ago my son's mother-in-law was shot twice in the chest in Pittsburgh by an angry, out of control schizophrenic patient at the hospital where she worked. This problem of shooting innocent people has an origin and the origin is in the numbers.
As an emergency room physician I had the opportunity to interview a large number of random individuals. For about two years, during my review-of-system questions (the questions a doctor asks to screen the functioning of the various organ systems in the patient's body that may or may not be directly related to their chief complaint) I asked the question "do you see or hear things that other people don't see or hear?" I was just curious and didn't keep a detailed record but I believe about 5% of people answered yes, sometimes reluctantly. This number agrees with the estimate of at least one poll of persons asking if they have experienced auditory or verbal hallucinations. The internet says that about 1% of humans suffer from a psychotic disorder, meaning a psychiatric illness in which the person is out of touch with reality. There are no numbers I could find about how many people believe in conspiracy theories and are not mentally ill but a number of studies of the various conspiracy theory organizations suggests there are hundreds of people who believe that the World Trade Center attacks were faked. The economic success of Alex Jones' ridiculous allegations suggest that there are more than a few people who will believe any non-sense.
So let's pick a number: how about 2%? If 1% of all people are truly psychotic and, by my survey 5% hallucinate and subtract the psychotic and cut the result in half we get 2%. In addition, if the belief is foolish things is related to IQ, the folks who test below and IQ of 70 constitute 2.1% of those tested.
The population of America is 325,000,000. Two percent is 6,500,000 people. All these hallucinating, not smart, and mentally ill folks have access to the internet and to weapons. That is a lot of people who believe crazy things and can act on their beliefs using weapons of mass destruction in the form of guns, bomb, and automobiles.
In his book The End of Faith Sam Harris suggested that it was time in the history of the human race to stop believing in things without a good, verifiable reason, like, in the case of this book, God, with a capital G. He said that there was no danger in having 'faith' until the last couple hundred years when weapons of mass destruction became available. He was talking about nuclear weapons, munitions of war, chemical weapons, and some hand held armaments. His worry was wars would occur between states of differing religions. His point is correct. But on a smaller scale, like the Pittsburgh shooting tragedy of October 27, 2018 and the Pittsburg shooting tragedy of March 8, 2012, the perpetrators were not military but deluded or psychotic individuals. By our calculations there are 6.5 million potential shooters out there. How do you stop this in a free society? The answer is that you can't. But perhaps you can reduce the chances that one of these folks will decide to act out.
America prides itself on freedom. Unfortunately that means that everyone is free to act on their beliefs if they choose to do so. Campaigning, voting, writing blogs, writing books, giving speeches in public places are all fine and part of our right to dissent. Dissenters are not often heroes and many people would like to elevate themselves from their perceived nothingness to Hero status. The classic story of a hero is a man who acts on principal and dies as a result (and these mass murderers are virtually all men). Living in America mean living with random mass murders unless we decide to be give up some of our freedoms.
The NRA's ridiculous statement that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' is easily reduced to a joke by asking them why then soldiers don't carry dynamite of swords into battle. Guns used in mass shooting are designed specifically to kill large numbers of people quickly and easily with little or no training. The AR-15 assault rifle was used in Pittsburgh.
There are several things we can do to reduce the number of these incidents: get rid of assault weapons, make all guns and explosives difficult to obtain, and allow law enforcement agencies to monitor the internet for those who post hate crime statements - which is a kind of infringement on free speech. Thought leads to speech and speech leads to action. Once thought becomes speech we need, as a society, to take this as a warning and gently, hopefully, intervene.
But, in my opinion, the numbers win. And as we humans increase our numbers, there will be more and more people in the 2% who have crazy, anti-social thoughts. They will always be with us, like the poor. Unless we create a society in which we take care of those who are floundering mentally, economically, and physically, we will all be victims to the occasional deadly violent outburst.
This is an optimistic essay. I have not gone the other direction and suggested that anti-Semitism is growing in America, that Trump-style fascism is about to replace our democracy. However, I see today that Trump has sent about 5000 troops to the Mexican border to confront the caravan of refugees from Honduras that are heading for America. This use of the military to enforce executive policy feels fascist to me.
So what do I suggest to my friend who I am having breakfast with on Friday? Should he head to Scotland?
As an emergency room physician I had the opportunity to interview a large number of random individuals. For about two years, during my review-of-system questions (the questions a doctor asks to screen the functioning of the various organ systems in the patient's body that may or may not be directly related to their chief complaint) I asked the question "do you see or hear things that other people don't see or hear?" I was just curious and didn't keep a detailed record but I believe about 5% of people answered yes, sometimes reluctantly. This number agrees with the estimate of at least one poll of persons asking if they have experienced auditory or verbal hallucinations. The internet says that about 1% of humans suffer from a psychotic disorder, meaning a psychiatric illness in which the person is out of touch with reality. There are no numbers I could find about how many people believe in conspiracy theories and are not mentally ill but a number of studies of the various conspiracy theory organizations suggests there are hundreds of people who believe that the World Trade Center attacks were faked. The economic success of Alex Jones' ridiculous allegations suggest that there are more than a few people who will believe any non-sense.
So let's pick a number: how about 2%? If 1% of all people are truly psychotic and, by my survey 5% hallucinate and subtract the psychotic and cut the result in half we get 2%. In addition, if the belief is foolish things is related to IQ, the folks who test below and IQ of 70 constitute 2.1% of those tested.
The population of America is 325,000,000. Two percent is 6,500,000 people. All these hallucinating, not smart, and mentally ill folks have access to the internet and to weapons. That is a lot of people who believe crazy things and can act on their beliefs using weapons of mass destruction in the form of guns, bomb, and automobiles.
In his book The End of Faith Sam Harris suggested that it was time in the history of the human race to stop believing in things without a good, verifiable reason, like, in the case of this book, God, with a capital G. He said that there was no danger in having 'faith' until the last couple hundred years when weapons of mass destruction became available. He was talking about nuclear weapons, munitions of war, chemical weapons, and some hand held armaments. His worry was wars would occur between states of differing religions. His point is correct. But on a smaller scale, like the Pittsburgh shooting tragedy of October 27, 2018 and the Pittsburg shooting tragedy of March 8, 2012, the perpetrators were not military but deluded or psychotic individuals. By our calculations there are 6.5 million potential shooters out there. How do you stop this in a free society? The answer is that you can't. But perhaps you can reduce the chances that one of these folks will decide to act out.
America prides itself on freedom. Unfortunately that means that everyone is free to act on their beliefs if they choose to do so. Campaigning, voting, writing blogs, writing books, giving speeches in public places are all fine and part of our right to dissent. Dissenters are not often heroes and many people would like to elevate themselves from their perceived nothingness to Hero status. The classic story of a hero is a man who acts on principal and dies as a result (and these mass murderers are virtually all men). Living in America mean living with random mass murders unless we decide to be give up some of our freedoms.
The NRA's ridiculous statement that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' is easily reduced to a joke by asking them why then soldiers don't carry dynamite of swords into battle. Guns used in mass shooting are designed specifically to kill large numbers of people quickly and easily with little or no training. The AR-15 assault rifle was used in Pittsburgh.
There are several things we can do to reduce the number of these incidents: get rid of assault weapons, make all guns and explosives difficult to obtain, and allow law enforcement agencies to monitor the internet for those who post hate crime statements - which is a kind of infringement on free speech. Thought leads to speech and speech leads to action. Once thought becomes speech we need, as a society, to take this as a warning and gently, hopefully, intervene.
But, in my opinion, the numbers win. And as we humans increase our numbers, there will be more and more people in the 2% who have crazy, anti-social thoughts. They will always be with us, like the poor. Unless we create a society in which we take care of those who are floundering mentally, economically, and physically, we will all be victims to the occasional deadly violent outburst.
This is an optimistic essay. I have not gone the other direction and suggested that anti-Semitism is growing in America, that Trump-style fascism is about to replace our democracy. However, I see today that Trump has sent about 5000 troops to the Mexican border to confront the caravan of refugees from Honduras that are heading for America. This use of the military to enforce executive policy feels fascist to me.
So what do I suggest to my friend who I am having breakfast with on Friday? Should he head to Scotland?
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