The Americanization of Mental Illness and Public Diplomacy

The Americanization of Mental Illness by Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, in The New York Times Magazine (January 10) -- is, in my view, a must-read for anyone interested in US public diplomacy and cultural diplomacy (if not "strategic communications").

At the same time that we debt-ridden Americans are desperately exporting, mostly through our private sector (more paranoid souls would say through our military-industrial complex) our information/military technology and entertainment/pop culture, we are, throughout the globe, spreading our notion of what it's like to be mentally dysfunctional or "clinically mad" -- thanks to the work/research of our "serious," "expertly-trained" scientists, doctors, and hospitals.

The three -- "cutting-edge" technology, the latest "what's-in" pop culture, and the most "scientifically advanced" form of "what it's like" to be mad in America are interrelated.

Take, as examples, the out-of-this-world sci-fi quality of the Pentagon's newest weapons programs; the nutty “what happens here stays here” smile-all-the-time Las Vegas (13 km from Nellis Air Force Base where "Predators" are directed to bomb Afpak "insurgents"); the weirdness of the mindless, image-bound blockbuster film, Avatar, made for a visual culture without a serious thought in mind.

To be sure, Vegas's "nuttiness" and Avatar's "weirdness" -- vigorously marketed overseas -- are superficial and packaged in a way to "entertain" mass audiences; but, perhaps, they reflect a deeper kind of American anxiety/anomie/madness in our era -- the kind, I would suggest, analyzed by US psychiatric/psychological experts in cases of "deranged" individuals.

As for the Pentagon's newest weaponry, it does not take a "highly-qualified" shrink to figure out that the military's updated Dr. Strangelove 21st century toys have nothing to do with sanity as defined by reality. Or, at least, a certain kind of reality, perhaps the one venerated by humanists in past, now so distant, centuries.

Meanwhile, official US government "public diplomacy" -- carried out, supposedly, by the State Department with the aim of "engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences" -- seems positively "crocodilian" in such a "loony" 21st century of techno/crass-Hollywood/ mad-is-USA American-dominated (dominated for how long?) landscape.

As author Joe Klein recently put it, "[T]he Department of State, a noble antique, is still trying to come to terms with the invention of the telephone."

But what I most value about our "homeland" (thank you, George W. Bush, for introducing this awful word in the American language) is that it's wild and crazy.

May it always remain so but in a really crazy, funny, Billy Wilder sort of way, without the tentacular, humourless Pentagon, corporate business-only mega-blockbuster Hollywood, or acolytes/critics of "psychology" defining our (let us hope) naive and harmless madness that actually makes people laugh about, rather than despise, being human (not to speak of being American).

Mad Magazine? Why not. Or how about It Happened One Night. Isn't that how America, at its most invented/reinvented, happened ...

Meanwhile, "Predators" bomb "Afpak." So much for American humor/sanity.