Obsessive Political Delirium Syndrome – Confessions of a Chronic Sufferer

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

What follows is a post from the Humans of New York Facebook page that unfortunately resonated with both my daughter and me. I recognized this account as a satirical description of what I call “Obsessive Political Delirium” syndrome:

“I had three bottles of wine on election night. I got in bed after Pennsylvania and stayed there for a week. I’d only get up to use the bathroom and get more wine. I’d have left the country by now if it wasn’t for my elderly mother. I’ve weaned myself off Xanax, but I haven’t recovered.

I still watch MSNBC all the time. I’ll spend entire days on the couch. I’ll wake up with Morning Joe and go to sleep with Brian Williams. I’ll get on Twitter during the commercials and search for any hint that somebody’s going to be indicted. I know way too much. I know the name of every congressman. I know their district. I know what percentage of the vote they got.

Before 2016, I hadn’t purchased a book in twenty years. Now I buy all the political ones. The scarier the better. I even got the Omarosa book. Nobody else wanted to read it so I thought I’d take one for the team. I went to DC for four different protests.

And a few weeks ago I drove down to Mexico to see for myself what was happening on the border. I’m obsessed. It’s not healthy. Recently I was able to cut myself off from politics for about a week. But then here comes Brett Kavanaugh and I’m back on the couch for three days.”

The malady described above first gripped me when Richard Nixon won the Presidential election in 1964. His politics and creepiness consumed my attention right up until his impeachment. My political worrying was debilitating and depressing. It also triggered a secondary obsession over the prior assassinations of two Kennedys and a King. I have never been able to shake the feeling that those assassinations are the start of a long thread that has run through U.S. history ever since.

No sooner had I gotten my life back under control when WHAM! Ronald Reagan was elected. He surrounded himself with some of the same creeps and spooks that buzzed around Nixon. That bout of fibral political delirium peaked with the Iran-Contra scandal and dissipated slowly due to the very dissatisfying lack of another well-deserved impeachment.

Then I went into a deep political slumber for a while, and it was glorious. But one evening a CBS news special to explain this new White-Water scandal failed to reveal anything at all of substance. I remember thinking, "OH GOD! Not again!" Here was another rogue’s gallery of radical neo-cons and dirty tricksters flexing their new conservative media machines. They were out for a revenge impeachment of Bill Clinton, and they got it. Clinton wasn't convicted in the Senate, of course, because well... lying about a blow job to protect your reputation isn't exactly a high crime. Still, the dark forces behind the conservative façade got their pound of flesh.

After that I thought I would catch a break, but then Bush v. Gore happened.  I went nuts all over again about the stolen election and the discovery that electronic voting machines were craftily designed to be hacked. All the voting machine companies were owned by partisan Republicans at the time. That bout of the infliction culminated in my having to hire a First Amendment Lawyer to protect me from a threatened SLAPP suit by the company that ran our local elections, and a threatened criminal investigation of me by my county Prosecutor for bringing our local electronic voting machine vulnerabilities to the attention of our county government. I fended off the SLAPP suit (incurring legal fees) but it had its intended effect on me. I shut up about local politics.

I set out to cure myself of obsessive political delirium and was just starting to make good progress when Donald Trump started winning primaries. And OMG… here we are in the thick of the worst political disaster in our country’s history, with a President who is a “Clear and Present Danger” to the security of the United States.

I feel so bad for my children who have come down with this horrible affliction. I have suffered from recurring bouts of it my whole adult life. And the trauma now is greater than at any time in the past. Is this the final festering of an old injury that began with Kennedy’s assassination, or is it the end of America as we know it? I take some solace in the results of the 2016 Congressional election that has installed so many women and such great diversity into the House of Representatives. I also take comfort in the rising activism of a younger generation, including Parkland survivors, that sees things the same way I do. For my children’s sake, I hope that my hope for the future will be realized this time.