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Thursday, December 6, 2007

Madness and Capitalism

posted by on December 6 at 12:26 PM

This is one of the comments in Dan’s post on the man who is charged with raping his eight-day-old daughter to death:

I am looking at my 10 day old son as I read this, and it truly sickens me that people like this asshole exist. I hope every kind of horror fills his life, for the rest of his pathetic life if he’s guilty of this.
All of the commentators expressed disgust at the act but none recognized it as one of madness. If the man is guilty of this crime, clearly the man is mentally ill. My question then is this: Why were none of the commentators able to connect this crime with the condition of mental illness? Why did they connect it with a normal person? A grown man rapes a baby and no one sees him as mentally ill? What is this telling us? And if they can not identify the person who committed this act as mad, then they may not recognize mad people in other terrible or extreme acts. What caused this type of blindness—one that can not see mad people? Yes, capitalism.


Two aspects of capitalism have conditioned the responses to this crime: one, the worship of the individual; two, the fact that the most dangerous (or violent) form of madness, the extreme accumulation of wealth, regulates society. As for the first: The individual is the backbone of the tireless ideology of private property. Remove this individual, and the whole system is in trouble. As for the second: The madness of amassing great wealth would be exposed as such, a mental illness, if we took mental problems seriously. When Reagan closed mental hospitals in the 80s, it was not simply a matter of cutting a welfare program, but mostly a matter of the mad banishing the mad. The mad must go, and the individual must stay. That is the American capitalist order.

So, one, we can’t see mad people because we are only trained to see individuals and, two, mad people have been removed from the cultural/visual field by a dominate madness, the amassing of wealth, that has regulated itself into a social order.

RSS icon Comments

1

committing a heinous crime does not necessarily mean a person is mentally ill. if that were the case our entire criminal justice system - no, the *concept* of criminal justice - would be a gross violation of human rights.

i agree that he could very well be mentally ill [assuming he's guilty], but this crime is in no way diagnostic. it's a little more complicated than anything a non-professional could glean from a newspaper article.

Posted by brandon | December 6, 2007 12:41 PM
2

I disagree. I don't think they see him as sane or insane, healthy or ill. I think they see him as unexplainable, as unnatural, as evil. A ghoul in the night. Not human. It's easy to be disgusted by what we don't understand. The herd rejects the weak ones.

Posted by Chris | December 6, 2007 12:44 PM
3

It's obvious he's mentally ill, Charles. Unfortunately for him, nobody cares about that. Because of what he did.

Fry him.

Posted by Mr. Poe | December 6, 2007 12:54 PM
4

Wrong again, Chuck.

Posted by Rotten666 | December 6, 2007 12:54 PM
5

Talk about a reach Charles.

I think that, to most people, saying that he did it because he's mentally ill sounds like an effort to explain away the crime. A way to soften it and free him responsibility. But we can't do that. Someone must be responsible. Someone must be punished the crime. So, we assume that he was of sound mind when he did what he did.

And we should lock him up for as long as that baby is dead.

Posted by PA Native | December 6, 2007 12:58 PM
6

it is obviously false that all people who commit crimes such as these are mentally ill. i don't know in what kind of armchair psychiatry mudede has a license, but it should clearly be revoked.

even if it were true that this perpetrator was mentally ill, it still wouldn't directly follow the commentator's reactions (disgust, extreme indignation) would be illegitimate. we can react in such ways to a person's act without necessarily implying that such a reaction to the person himself would likewise be legitimate. although, barring a clear verdict of his mental illness, reacting to the person with disgust also seems to me to be clearly justifiable.

certain responses to horrific crimes such as these are justifiable on behalf of, if not required by, any morally decent individual. it would be asking people to respond in overly clinical (and alienating) ways to suggest that every time a horror such as this occurs, we pause to recognize that it may be due to mental illness, and then consequently assume that reactive attitudes of disgust and indignation are therefore inappropriate.

the stuff about capitalism is just way off the mark. i won't even attempt to dignify that incoherent mess with a response. capitalism may encourage a variety of individualism, but it hardly follows that it in all cases causes us to fail to see mental illness when it is present.

Posted by Buddha Stalin | December 6, 2007 1:05 PM
7

Folks are missing the point. Obviously, this wouldn't have happened if the daughter had been adopted.

Posted by Fyodor Zulinski | December 6, 2007 1:07 PM
8

Some people act out anger in a sexual way. Let's say that he started out getting pissed at his daughter for crying too much. He beats her in response (which is supported by the facts in this case. The baby had other injuries). If he's the type of man who associates sex with violence and anger, it wouldn't be unheard of for him to act out that way, even against an 8-day-old baby.

It wouldn't surprise me if he has raped other people in the past.

Posted by keshmeshi | December 6, 2007 1:11 PM
9

I don't think that mad is a politically correct term anymore.


Posted by Lake | December 6, 2007 1:13 PM
10

Buddha Stalin, under what circumstances would a sane person rape a baby? Charles is right, if a man rapes his own baby he is de facto mentally ill. His thinking patterns are so outside the realm of the normal that they are an illness.

I'm tired of people reading an article like this and crying "Why, I would never rape MY baby! Monster.I'm a good person."
As if this man represents some vast, pro-babyrape camp.

I'm also tired of people being tried in the media. He is an accused, not convicted, baby rapist.

Posted by Sandy | December 6, 2007 1:15 PM
11

Clearly this wouldn't have happened if this man had embraced veganism. Once a man decides that killing and eating other creatures for simple pleasure is acceptable, raping a baby is the only logical next step.

Posted by tsm | December 6, 2007 1:17 PM
12

Well said, like all your unreadably disconnected stabs at convoluted miscommuncation.

Posted by TrumpDidIt | December 6, 2007 1:19 PM
13

Buddha Stalin, under what circumstances would a sane person rape a baby? Charles is right, if a man rapes his own baby he is de facto mentally ill. His thinking patterns are so outside the realm of the normal that they are an illness.

You are ignoring the obvious, sandy.

The man has aboslute free will, and chose absolutely to do what he did. That his decision is outside of societal norms (which themselves could be argued is a form of group-madness) does not mean he didn't freely choose it.

"Normal" is not an objective fact. You cannot clearly delineate normal and abnormal. You can define trends, you can define socially "acceptable" behavior, but it is by no means a natural law.

The original post is utterly meaningless because it posits certain "facts" as being absolute. Mudede claims the fallacy of capitalism is that it rests on "the individual"--remove them and the entire machinery fails. Which is true. But that is true for any system. Mudede has outlined for us a system that rests solely on the truth that to commit a crime is madness. All it takes is for someone to decide to rape a child for no other reason than utter freedom and Mudede's astute analysis magnificently falls apart.

To believe that freethinking people can be somehow limited or directed by socially constructed notions of "truth" is madness of the highest order.

Posted by underground | December 6, 2007 1:22 PM
14
"Normal" is not an objective fact. You cannot clearly delineate normal and abnormal. You can define trends, you can define socially "acceptable" behavior, but it is by no means a natural law.

Omg! It's like channeling Angus!

Posted by Mr. Poe | December 6, 2007 1:25 PM
15

I didn't connect the alleged criminal with mental illness because I read the article. In it, he is quoted, and the quotes seemed to make sense and be connected to reality ("I didn't do it", basically). I would have immediately thought mental illness if he had been like, yeah I had sex with an infant, what is wrong with that? Or was entirely unaware of the fact that he was being charged with the crime. Etc.

Posted by Julie | December 6, 2007 1:37 PM
16

flawless point, julie.

Posted by brandon | December 6, 2007 1:44 PM
17

If he asked for a lie detector test, that shows some kind of conection to reality.

This is just The Stranger's attempt to do a Jerry Springer moment. There is no more information or background presented than is required to elicit a visceral response.

Ta Da!
Now we have outrage, and justification, and speculation, and Christ knows what else, all unconnected to what really happened, and how it really came about.

God, this slog IS like a roll of toilet paper.

Flush and repeat.

Posted by observer | December 6, 2007 2:20 PM
18

"If the man is guilty of this crime, clearly the man is mentally ill. "

Who says The Stranger doesn't understand fundamentalists?

Posted by torrentprime | December 6, 2007 2:42 PM
19

Actually, the problem is a bit deeper than that.

The public is so eager to punish, to attack, that it doesn't care if it punishes those innocent, guilty, or incompitent.

In fact, it the people are so impatient that they no longer see the point of waiting to convict but insist that even the accused should be punished for, well, simply being accused of a crime.

The lack of concern in response to findings in Seattle's King County Jail of deadly abuses and civil rights violations demonstrates this vindictive need to see someone, anyone, held to the fire for any crime.

No longer are we innocent until proven guilty... we are all assumed guilty from the start, and well beyond the time that we are found innocent too.

Posted by Packratt | December 6, 2007 3:09 PM
20

#15 is correct. We can argue semantics all we want ("OMG, like what if crazy people are SANE, and WE are the crazy ones?!"), but there's was no details in the story to provide evidence the man is what we define as clinically (or legally) insane.

Also, I'm no fan of Reagan, but he didn't kick people out of mental hospitals. You're just repeating something you heard, and it's pretty easy to find details of that misnomer on the web.

Posted by Dougsf | December 6, 2007 3:20 PM
21

i think packratt makes a much more coherent and convincing indictment of "society" in this case than charles does with his "blame capitalism" drivel. it's not the cause of the individual's actions, it's the reaction to them which is relevant here.

Posted by ellarosa | December 6, 2007 3:20 PM
22

Ah, capitalism- surely, we can also blame it for the Killing Fields of Cambodia- Pol Pot's madness was directly traceable to his love of individualism and expensive objects, right?
And what about old Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, in northern Uganda?
His madness ran to forcing children to torture and murder other children, their own parents, and act as sex slaves to him and others- all on a scale many times worse than this case. He must have been a raving capitalist, heavily influenced by corporations, too.

Horrible acts have been perpetrated under every type of political regime, and in the total absence of any economic or political system, and by human beings who wouldnt know capitalism if it bit em on the ass.
Unfortunately, we are a nasty species.


Posted by Ries Niemi | December 6, 2007 3:21 PM
23

BUDDHA STALIN'S GOT THE SKILLS TO PAY THE BILLS!!!!!!

Posted by Lake | December 6, 2007 3:21 PM
24

#23 - I'm sorry Lake, I disagree with your opinion.

Posted by subwlf | December 6, 2007 3:29 PM
25

#19 and #21 - I'm not totally following. The man hasn't been tried or convicted of anything in the courts, and is simply being held until trial. Meanwhile, all the public can do is collectively gasp. So far, what exactly is the injustice upon him?

What other reaction has there been? No one that knows this story will sit on the jury. There's no angry mobs outside the prison demanding his head, and unless we're talking in metaphors, his only punishment so far is Country lockup and and swift tongue lashing from a few newspaper comments sections.

At least that's the most sense I can make of this thread, but like Charles (probably) would tell you, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

Of course when he goes to state prison, he'll be killed by another inmate, but we're not talking about that yet.

Posted by Dougsf | December 6, 2007 3:39 PM
26

COUNTY lockup, I meant to type. "Country Lockup" sounds either delicious, or hilarious, or both.

Posted by Dougsf | December 6, 2007 3:42 PM
27

@26- Very funny!

@25- Well, the point is that we, as a society, tend to assume guilt. While a few people do really make an effort to remind themselves that being accused is different than being convicted, most do not see any distinction and thus see the accused as worthy of punishment prior to trial.

This is why, while maybe or maybe not in this case, nobody really gets upset about police brutality, about prisoner abuse in pretrial custody, about torture, or about trials by media.

I am suggesting that Charles is off base, the inability or perhaps unwillingness of people to distinguish between convicted, accused, and incompitent due to mental defect runs deeper than he guesses... that perhaps it might just be in our nature to delight in the misery of others, irregardless of the justification.

Posted by Packratt | December 6, 2007 4:00 PM
28

Calling something "insanity" instead of "immorality" is only a convenient way to distance ourselves from the possibility of personally committing such a heinous act. We all are, given the right circumstances and mentality, capable of even atrocities such as these. The question is, rather, what is it exactly that keeps us from descending into darkness?

Posted by Joshua | December 6, 2007 4:09 PM
29

@28

Perhaps a better question would be, which side of darkness should we avoid descending into?

On one side we could choose not to embrace concepts of justice that insist that a harm done should not go unpunished.

On another side, we could choose not to embrace the idea that we should not become so inlined to brutatlity like those we seek to punish.

I wonder, how far off from embracing a system of justice like that which exists in Saudi Arabia when we believe rapists should be raped, murderers should be murdered, and children punished as if they are adults.

Did the founding fathers really mean 'an eye for an eye' when suggesting that 'the punishment should fit the crime' and 'not be unduely cruel and unusual'?

Posted by Packratt | December 6, 2007 4:19 PM
30

We don't know how to define mental illness or moral sensibility, because we don't understand our own minds/consciousness.

So all of you saying he obviously was or was not mentally ill. . . well. . . if you define mental illness by chemistry and neurology, there are a lot of crazy people who we cannot call 'mentally ill' because we don't understand the neurochemical cause of the condition. If we define it by its symptoms, those being abnormal behaviors (which we generally do), whoever raped the baby (ugh) was clearly mentally ill.

Nobody WANTS to be that guy (meaning, whoever did it). Due to chemistry, history, whatever. . . there's something wrong with him. Whenever somebody screams, "fry the bastard", I think they are demonstrating utter thoughtlessness about the role of government in our lives.

The goal of the criminal justice system should not be punishment. Punishment implies more ability to control one's own actions than most criminals have (see: "nobody wants to be that guy"). The goal should be to remove dangerous people from society so that they don't hurt the rest of us. Those people are losing their freedom. Those people have very little shot at a good life. It's a tragedy for everybody.

Posted by violet_dagrinder | December 6, 2007 4:43 PM
31

I'm pretty sure everyone who read the previous entry saw the act as the act of a mentally ill madman, Charles.

Posted by Gomez | December 6, 2007 4:44 PM
32

the thing that angers me about this horrific display of idiocy by charles is that he is going for a fucking full court shot when he could make an easy layup by talking smack about capitalism in regards to today's speech by bush and interest rate freezes.

too bad chaz is too stupid to understand anything financially related. could be why he became an asshat marxist.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | December 6, 2007 4:55 PM
33

Bellevue Ave, you have a point, and expressed that point well. but i did talk about this interest rate freeze with eli this morning. not everything on my mind makes it into the slog.

Posted by charles | December 6, 2007 5:03 PM
34

"not everything on my mind makes it into the slog."

And for that we thank you.

Posted by Bison | December 6, 2007 5:16 PM
35

Right on.

Mental health issues do not get presented well in the media, which reinforces the bigotry and ignorance that the general public has.

A couple years ago when that woman drowned her children in San Francisco Bay, the reporting was all like, "Ew, look at this depraved, immoral person." When in reality the woman was suffering from a severe case of bipolar disorder--which can be debilitating even when it doesn't result in fatalities. Like many health problems, bipolar disorder is biological in origin and not because of the immorality or depravity of the person suffering from this condition; we don't talk about diabetic and Parkinson's patients being immoral and depraved, yet somehow bipolar people (among many other mental conditions) are immoral.

We look at the gunman in Omaha this week and think immoral, rather than untreated depression and other psychological issues.

What is immoral is how we as a society refuse to consider mental health problems as mental HEALTH problems, preferring to characterize mental health problems as depravity and immoral behavior. Choice.

If you read up on how Sweden or Denmark handles mentally ill people (in particular those who have committed crimes), you suddenly realize how misguided our prison system is and how misguided our attitudes toward mental health (and health care and insurance coverage) are.

So there.

Posted by Fire F. Ly | December 6, 2007 11:14 PM
36

Did someone invite a troll to post?

Posted by Troy | December 7, 2007 8:31 AM
37

Charles I love you.

Posted by Kiru Banzai | December 7, 2007 11:06 PM

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