Nation is suffering from a mental illness

Since World War II, America has achieved such remarkable accomplishments that it may be the stuff of legends when world history is written a thousand years from now. Yet at the moment we are trapped in both antics and seemingly serious business that suggest a national collective mental illness.

Consider a few illustrations. The first example has to be the current condition of the Republican Party. Once the party of Lincoln, it focused on ending slavery, overcoming racial injustice, both subsidizing and regulating industry, and supporting universal public elementary, secondary and broadly available higher education with ample public resources. The GOP found ways to address popular needs while defending the public purse and working to hold down the cost of government.

The GOP always had its elements that were libertarian, nativist, anti-Keynesian, worried about subversive conspiracies or something else that would send us and the republic to socialist perdition. The moderate core, however, constituted the base of Republican power and fiscal responsibility.

Now we watch as the Republican Party devolves into Donald the Bombastic and the Trumpkins. What is scarier still is to watch the parade of seemingly rational, respectable national Republican figures migrate from regarding Trump as “a cancer on conservatism” to “I suspect I’m going to be helping him in a myriad ways.”

On the Democratic side, multitudes of adult Americans endorse ideas of fantastic redistributions of other people’s money occurring with ease. This miraculous condition is to become real upon the inauguration of Bernie Sanders and the passage of new laws in Congress (or perhaps just the signing of presidential orders), with no effective objection in the federal court system.

Nowhere in this fever-dream of egalitarianism is there a shred of connection with the realities of pluralist politics. These fantasies easily rival a Great Wall of the Southern Border paid for by Mexico.

Here in Kansas we’ve abandoned rational discussion about improving our state’s economy and reinstituting an effective, fair system of taxation for bluster over critical policy issues like the relocation of Guantanamo detainees, the accommodation of some Syrian refugees, and most recently which restrooms transgender students can use.

Realistically, can members of a society in such perilous mental disorder be expected to make wise choices about policies and who represents them?

This story was originally published June 4, 2016 at 12:05 AM with the headline "Nation is suffering from a mental illness."