I’ve noticed over the past week that the level of hateful, delusional and willful ignorance (what I call “the Crazy”) has taken a sharp uptick. Not only is the news full of politicians and pundits spouting the Crazy (death panels, birth certificates, shouting in Congress during a presidential address), even a few of the people I’ve considered personal friends have become infected with the Crazy. Progressive people. LGBT people. It has me a bit concerned.

One person I know went on a rant about how poor people are dirty, irresponsible criminals (not just some, but “ALL of them”). She put frosting on that cake when she said that homeless people choose to live that way. This was a person that professes a progressive spirituality and teaches yoga. What would Buddha say? Not that!

Just yesterday, a friend claimed that addicts are “fundamentally stupid.” As an addict with thirteen years of sobriety under my belt, I will admit that we are destructive, irrational and clinically insane. But generally we aren’t stupid. Most are, in fact, too smart for our own good. You might be amazed at how clever some of us addicts can be to get a fix or to hide our addiction. If addicts were indeed fundamentally stupid, you’d think the DEA would brought the war on drugs to a successful end decades ago.

While I personally could care less if someone thinks I’m stupid, it saddens me when people I consider friends spout such hurtful rhetoric about something they know nothing. To see friends get swept up into a mindset of hateful, willful ignorance suggests that the Crazy is at dangerous levels.

The adage of “sex sells” has been replaced with “fear sells.” Following the September 11 attacks and driven by plunging home values, skyrocketing unemployment and the collapse of mega-corporations,  fear mongering has replaced baseball as the national pastime. The media pushes fear because it attracts viewers and sells ad time. Politicians push fear because it wins elections over rational debate.

We have begun to normalize fear, the way a child normalizes the dysfunction of living with an alcoholic parent. As we do this, we feel the need to blame someone for our discomfort, because as addicted as we’ve become to the fear, we don’t like how it makes us feel. Blaming someone, however irrationally, is the only way many of us know to find relief.

So rich people attack the poor. Poor people attack the rich. Straight people attack gays. Gays attack trans people. Trans people attack addicts. Conservatives attack those “socialist, communist liberals.” Liberals attack those “corrupt, lobbyist-funded conservatives.” The insanity goes round and round, while the casualties pile up.

I’ve learned it does no good to engage the Crazy in rational debate. Barney Frank had it right. It’s like arguing with the dining room table. The best we can do, so far as I’ve found, is to make sure we don’t get infected with the Crazy. How do you know if you’ve been infected?  When you start pointing fingers and using the words “them” and “they” a lot or when “getting rid of them” seems like a really good idea, then you’ve got a case of the Crazy.

The only cure for the Crazy is to let go of fear, blame and resentments. I know that sounds all touchy-feely, but it’s true, nevertheless. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “Hate begets hate. Violence begets violence. And toughness begets even greater toughness.” In their song “Daylight Again”, Crosby, Stills and Nash sang, “When everyone’s talking and no one is listening, how can we survive?” That has never been truer than it is today.

We have to start listening. We have to become willing to see things from other points of view, even from people we don’t like. We have to let love and compassion be our compass, rather than our political affiliation, economic status, sexual orientation, gender, or race. We have to realize that there is no “them.” It’s all us. This is the only rational way to deal with the Crazy in ourselves, in our loved ones and in our society.

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