The reigning tendency in official opinion-making today, is a state of mind fairly identified as "a shared delusional belief." This potential fatal mental illness is generalized within the U.S. Department of Defense's highest-ranking levels of bureaucracy, where a dominant element among the highest ranks and civil service classifications, appears to be nearing the terminal phase of this crippling mental illness. A similar devastation is rampant among many offices of the U.S. State Department. Among staff and management of the Wall Street Journal, this epidemic has left no signs of intellectual life in its wake. Present reports indicate that the plague is currently peaking in the financial community, the U.S. Treasury Department, and the economics departments of our universities. Yet, already, it runs rampant on the Federal bench; a majority of the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are already crippled, some perhaps hopelessly. The minds of millions of young and middle-aged Americans have been virtually destroyed by the spread of this infection in our university classrooms. Unless its spread of this plague is stopped soon, the United States could be on the verge of extinction.

Among relevant professionals, the preferred name for this psychosis, is "Cultural Determinism." To explain this epidemic in layman's terms, imagine that the common cold virus, through a slight mutation, became a killer pandemic. In its earlier incarnations, the pathogen was known, variously, as "other-directedness," or the "Coolidge Syndrome," during the 1920s and 1930s. In a slightly mutated form, it became the "Organization Man Syndrome" of the 1950s.

Among military ranks, it was first recognized, during the 1950s, as the "Post-MacArthur Effect," and, later, during the 1960s, a more deadly variant of the same utopian pathogen, set off the panic known as the "Post-Vietnam Syndrome." Internationally, one of the earliest outbreaks of a killer epidemic of this type was in Nazi Germany, where it was known among professionals as Gleichschaltung, or the "Lemming Syndrome." From Europe, the infection spread to the United States; members of the newly established Air Force were gravely infected through contacts with carriers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Ann Arbor, during the late 1940s. During the late 1960s, a massive infection surfaced at West Point Military Academy, in the form of an outbreak of sociology there.

The most dangerous form of this infectious mental disorder is expressed by the following symptomology. Terminal phases of this form of the sickness are apt to express themselves as transforming the victims into bureaucrats, either at financial houses, government agencies, or political pollsters. Members of military and other intelligence services, appear to be especially prone to display of acute delusional states.

The victim believes that the universe is controlled by a vast conspiracy made up of a class of galactic aliens known as "The Administrators." Interviewed subjects claim, that since these aliens control everything which happens in the universe, that anything which the Administrators believe in common must inevitably occur, and that anything the Administrators believe should not occur, will not happen.

For example, the subject of depressions. The victims of the delusion, known as "Los Enfermos," insist, for example, that the only possible cause for economic depressions is that some of the Administrators' purity of thought was contaminated by externally introduced doubts about the ability of the Administrators to prevent any depression from occurring at any time in past, present, or future history. The prevailing opinion among the Enfermos is, that history never really existed; "Nothing ever existed except administration," is a typical view expressed among those in a terminal condition. "Nothing matters, you see," these victims insist, "Everything is simply what the Administrators believe must happen." The variety of Los Enfermos most likely to become dangerous, are those who believe, that within the Administrators as a whole, there is an inner group whose opinion controls that of all the others; this inner group is referenced to as "The Intelligence Community," which some of these poor loonies believe is called "The Agency." These latter loonies believe that no man can cause anything to happen, excepting by working closely with "The Agency." They insist: "They control everything!"

Professional opinion tends to agree, that the classic clinical example of the Los Enfermos type, is the Oxford- trained empiricist philosopher, Professor I. Kant, otherwise famous as exerting the greatest influence on professional political pollsters. His celebrated textbook, Your Future Is Behind You, established his reputation as the father of the a posteriori view of history: "Nothing will happen which opinion has not already decided should occur."

One should be wary. Los Enfermos are not the harmless loonies careless opinion might think them to be. They can become instantly homicidal, the instant they suspect someone is attempting to contaminate the ranks of the Administrators with a dissenting opinion on likely events. The observed Los Enfermos responses to such a perceived threat, fall into two types. The relatively milder form is called the "Ivan Grozny" syndrome: "If his opinion is something we do not fully understand, put him in the man-sized frying-pan, and roast him over a fire." The more extreme reaction, is termed, alternately, "The Legalist," or "Hollywood Director" syndrome which Los Enfermos types have lately adopted as policy for running U.S. national conventions of major political parties: "If he is suspected of thinking, silence him instantly, and permanently."

For those among the many unfortunates who can claim a representative of Los Enfermos as a member of their own immediate family, a word of advice is supplied. Never ask them the question, "What will happen if the Depression comes, and the Administrators are all laid off from their positions?" Faced with that proposition, the typical Los Enfermos is siezed by a paroxysm of ugly convulsions, after which he, or she falls silent, and still, into a permanent catatonic state.

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