Dear Fox News psychiatrist Keith Ablow: I have a problem. I have a friend who appears to be very, very sick. He was always an odd one, but in the last year he seems to have gotten increasingly paranoid, thinking the government is
out to get him:
I believe that the Obama administration is conducting psychological warfare on conservative Americans. Not only that but it is also waging this war on all Americans who previously viewed themselves, their country, their Constitution and their overwhelming belief in God as a force for good in the world.
It's not just an odd persecution complex, either, it seems to be the beginnings of something far more severe. He's started to hallucinate things that never happened:
The psychological warfare began with an apology tour in which President Obama publicly “confessed,” presuming to speak for all of us, for the shortcomings of America and our supposed contributions to tyranny and all manner of evils around the world.
He's become a compulsive liar, too:
It was reinforced by the first lady stating during the 2008 presidential campaign that she had never felt pride in our country.
Calming him down is impossible. He's come to refer to his own political opinions in almost divine terms:
Attacking gun rights, I believe, is an element of the psychological warfare on the American belief that force is justifiable when confronting evil.
And everything that happens is the world is considered proof of the larger plot against him:
My belief that psychological warfare is being deployed on Americans by this American president and his administration has been solidified as news has come out of the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS.
What's most alarming, though, is that he thinks the government has been
outright killing people in an attempt to intimidate him.
Seen through the lens of psychological warfare, the failure to defend our embassy in Benghazi need not be understood simply as a screw-up. It could reflect an actual strategy on the part of the administration to reinforce the notion that homicidal violence born of hatred toward America is understandable—even condonable—because we have generated it ourselves and are reaping the harvest of ill will we have sown. In other words, we should take our punishment.
Dr. Keith, is there anything I can do? I admit this fellow has always had difficulties separating fact and fiction, but between the hallucinations and the elaborate persecution fantasies, it is clear now that his condition has devolved into actual psychosis. He's started penning bizarre public screeds on this stuff, screeds which end with peculiarly worded suggestions that his fantasies will be proven right "over the next months and years." I'm a bit worried he's become a danger to himself, or that he could be a danger to others.
Anyway, please write back soon. Now he seems to have barged into a television studio and is saying all manner of lunatic things on air—the staff there seems to be humoring him, they're probably terrified of what he would do if they tried to cut him off, but this has clearly gone too far.
