Questions for our American friends

[cicciobuki]

Originally Posted by bombermouse

Don't be silly! He's changing the capital's name to Donaldville and the new national anthem is going to be, "It's Money That I Love."

I'm going with Donald City, so they can keep the DC.

[ultimatewarlord]

I'm currently watching highlights of Fiji vs USA in the Rugby League World Cup. Do any of you Americans know what Rugby League is?

[SanteeFats]

Originally Posted by ultimatewarlord

I'm currently watching highlights of Fiji vs USA in the Rugby League World Cup. Do any of you Americans know what Rugby League is?

Only players and their friends (?) and families.

[ultimatewarlord]

It's what I love about certain sports that have minority appeal. These guys must be so proud to represent their country even though they know they're going to be hammered. There may even be a few fans of the game who've travelled over.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by ultimatewarlord

I'm currently watching highlights of Fiji vs USA in the Rugby League World Cup. Do any of you Americans know what Rugby League is?

Rugby as played in the US is a rather posh prep school and college sport-- basically it gets folks who are good amateur athletes and are put off by the professional nature of American football, even at the college level.

Rugby is what you play with your buddies because you love the sport here.

The only Americans who really play rugby with the intensity that you see in the Commonwealth are Pacific Islanders, American Samoans in particular.

As to "league" vs "union" I can't keep them straight, beyond an Aussie telling me that one is a gentleman's game played by rogues, and the other is a rogues' game played by gentlemen.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

I wish I had an answer for you . . . but I don't. Here's my best guess, but its only a guess:
.....

I _think_ its a generational and age issue, and that the bad actors are folks my age and older-- that younger generations will be more pragmatic.

I have a friend, who had a father who was a brilliant engineer. His father suffered from schizophrenia paranoia since the age of 22 years old until his death (80 years old).

He was used to "speak" with his dead father (grand-father of my friend) and dead friends and even... saw Jesus Christ or God speaking to him in the clouds.

This illness can be transfered genetically. Because his brother and his grand uncle, who were brilliant people too, suffered from this illness.

Once I spoke with a psychiatrist, he told me that only very recently they discovered efficient medicine to cure schizophrenia.

So how can we say to people suffering from schizophrenia and still badly cured, that angels, demons, spirits do not exist, when they communicate with them.

Schizophreniacs rarely are stupid. They often are very clever. If they don't suffer of a strong degree of schizophrenia, they look sometimes very convincing.

Personnaly I think that Jesus Christ, if he really existed, probably was a schizophreniac man. Look how many people he convinced (until today) that he was able to walk on the water, create unlimited food from one piece of bread or beeing the son of God.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

I have a friend, who had a father who was a brilliant engineer. His father suffered from schizophrenia paranoia since the age of 22 years old until his death (80 years old)..

It would be easier to explain our nuttiness if it were something so universal as a schizophrenia.

But this "mental illness" stops at the Canadian border . . . its an aspect of our political culture.

See "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" for a bit of the history:
https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/...ican-politics/

[gwhh]

Maybe a better question. Is why no one ever pays taxi drivers in movies or tv shows in the USA!

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

It would be easier to explain our nuttiness if it were something so universal as a schizophrenia.

But this "mental illness" stops at the Canadian border . . . its an aspect of our political culture.

See "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" for a bit of the history:
https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/...ican-politics/

Taken from your article.

The paranoid style is not confined to our own country and time; it is an international phenomenon.

Studying the millennial sects of Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, Norman Cohn believed he found a persistent psychic complex that corresponds broadly with what I have been considering—a style made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: “the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable prophecies . . . systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often grotesque.”

I don't know you. But if you are guy who tries to be as objective as possible, listen carefully at the people that are around you. You will be surprised to note how many quite strong schizophrenic or irrational people are surrounding yourself.
I'd say at least 50% of the people I met. I even surprised myself to be struck by this illness.
But watching at all these irrational people, I don't know if they really are schizophrenic or if they permanently lie to themselves.
I'm not sure that's a typical illness of the human mankind, but for sure we are an animal that is strongly affected by this deficiency.
That maybe helps us to reach the old age. Because reality is rough.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

I don't know you. But if you are guy who tries to be as objective as possible, listen carefully at the people that are around you. You will be surprised to note how many quite strong schizophreniac or irrational people are surrounding yourself.
I'd say at least 50% of the people I met..

You're clearly off base here.

Schizophrenia is a severe disease, the product of some kind of organic brain defect. It occurs at about a %1 rate (and this includes mild cases) in all populations, no higher than that.

"irrational" ≠ "schizophrenic" . . . people have all sorts of irrational beliefs, that's not schizophrenia nor is it mental illness.

The US population does have some kind of a problem which makes it more violent and paranoid than comparable populations elsewhere. Compare my home state of Washington with our neighbors across the border in British Columbia-- the populations are very similar ethnically, we're actually substantially wealthier, but we're also way more violent.

Particularly older guys -- we kill ourselves far more often than do similar Canadians. That's a function of policy and historical choices, not some organic mental illness.