America is afflicted with a debilitating ailment that has warped the collective national mind. Its symptoms are the experience of persistent delusions and a distorted sense of objective reality. The disorder impairs functioning since the subjective perception of the world does not match actual conditions. That marks the classic psychotic syndrome.
Psychosis can stem from trauma and acute stress. In our case, the traumatic event was 9/11. Characteristically, an experientially caused psychosis, as opposed to one with organic roots, is short-term. The terror psychosis is well into its second decade with no signs that it is ameliorating. That indicates the active presence of psychosocial factors that perpetuate the acute anxiety and apprehension associated with the original traumatic event. Those factors do not take the form of aftershocks. There have been no serious attacks against the United States over the past 13 years – much less any that registered a facsimile of the damage produced by the precipitating shock. Those that have occurred have had domestic sources, and have been minor by several orders of magnitude.…Sic Semper Tyrannis
Michael Brenner | Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, Fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS/Johns Hopkins, and former Director of the International Relations & Global Studies Program at the University of Texas
