Too Much To Dream

Psychotic reaction

Man, dig this spate of deranged babbling by Helen Caldicott. She was supposed to be giving a speech. She seems to have had a slow-motion nervous breakdown instead. Samples:

What is the attraction of killing? What evolutionary situation necessitated that the killing reflex be located in the human (male’s) brain? I believe it started when we were Troglodites [?].

Hey, I remember that song. With it's catchy little chant: "Gotta find a woman, gotta find a woman, gotta find a woman--"

Do men need to sow their seeds in the wombs of the conquered tribes or countries to prove they are superior beings?

(Audience members look at each other, startled.)

I was attending a wealthy socialite party during the first days of the 1991 Gulf war, when one of the men (an Australian, incidentally) announced that “Dr. Caldecott knows about this war”. Whereupon the men gathered around me in a circle, while the women, their partners, sat on the periphery. And it didn’t matter what I said about the medical monstrosities of war --people walking around with their intestines hanging out of gaping abdominal wounds, babies lying screaming on the ground in the arms of their decapitated mothers (think what’s coming…) --the men listening were almost clinically and psychologically dead.

Well, honey, you were at a "wealthy socialite party." What did you expect -- grunts, screams, hoarse chants, the men to jump up and start doing a war dance?

Interestingly, the women who sat on the periphery watching my interrogation and silently agreeing with me, had no courage to publicly take on their men for fear of later rejection and retribution.

(Audience members start to inch towards the edges of their seats, surreptitiously gathering their purses, coats, pamphlets and things, hoping the crazy lady who thinks she can read minds won't notice.)

It was then that I realized that when the scent of blood metaphorically enters the male nostril, it triggers the psychological imperative to kill – a primitive autonomic reflex located in the male midbrain. This must be a relic of their Troglidaic [?] days.

So if a guy cuts himself shaving the smell will trigger his kill impulse? I don't understand -- I must be a Troglidaic.

[Extended ranting about "blood-soaked killing fields" and men who couldn't wait to join up in World War I because they wanted to kill, kill, kill -- and for no other reason.]

War is always fought in the name of God.

Yeah, that's why the Communists fought their wars.

For fifty-seven years humans have lived with the ever present but subliminal horror of imminent annihilation. This deep and now almost unconscious knowledge has severely traumatized our souls.

(Audience members are streaming out the exits, as the madwoman rants on unheeding.)

It’s not just that America is going to go in [to Iraq] with the hideous weapons of mass destruction that were used in Afghanistan (which I describe in my book).

We now pause in the middle of our insane rant for a commercial break.

That’s the backdrop of the stage upon which this Iraqi situation is being played. Does George Bush know that? I don’t think he does. Does Cheney know that? Well, he probably does because he has been living in a fallout shelter since September 11th. There is a huge fallout shelter in Virginia; all the members of Congress are allowed to go in the event of a nuclear war, except a nuclear war only takes a half hour to complete and they won’t have time to get there. It’s huge, full of hospitals and everything.

It's true! I saw it on that episode of The X-Files, the one where Mulder used his birthday to open the Secret Mountain Fileroom. (Or was it his sister's birthday? I forget.)

That’s Wolfovitz) Does he understand it? I think he is so disturbed that it doesn’t even enter his consciousness. Maybe he was abused as a child, I don’t know and I really don’t care. HE IS MEDICALLY CONTRA-INDICATED FOR THE PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF THE PLANET AND HE SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE.

Is this where she finally noticed that the hall is now virtually empty? She knows all of you, you know. She knows your names! And where you live! And she's going to push the red button, yes precious, and she'll show you all -- show you what it's like to mock and defy Helen! The Helen? Queen Helen! Empress Helena the Great of the Universe, and she'll make that fat, stupid American, that Cheney, get down on all fours, make him crawl... Hoy! You! Get back here! (The janitor drops his mop and flees.)

(Via Tex.)

Update: oh my god, I didn't even get to the part where she talks about hemorrhoid cream.

Posted by Andrea Harris at March 19, 2003 12:53 AM