Because my mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, I became accustomed to delusional thought processes. Delusions have their own internal “logic”, and the “logic” is designed to sustain the delusion. My mother couldn’t help but get lost in the fog because she had a serious brain disorder, but Michael Brown’s insanity is voluntary. He chooses his bigotry, and he chooses to reinforce it at the expense of LGBT people.
A few months ago I saw a clip of a conversation he had with Cindy Jacobs and her husband. (Cindy Jacobs is the so-called prophet who claimed the mysterious bird deaths in Arkansas was the result of the repeal of DADT.) Brown told the Jacobs that LGBT people are very sensitive to any kind of criticism and the reason for this is because they are outside the grace of God. I recognized this for the clever mental trick that it was. He gives himself permission to say the meanest, nastiest things about LGBT people, and if they dare complain, then he sees this as proof that he’s right. Anyone with any sense can see this self-serving “logic” for what it is, but he’s chosen to lose himself in his bigotry delusion. And there are just enough fools out there to make that delusion profitable for him. He plays the hero fighting the evil gays, and his followers give him unconditional praise…and money. And if an LGBT person fights back, he plays the victim. If an LGBT person tries to talk with him calmly, he becomes arrogant and pretends anyone who disagrees with him rejects truth. The man is a piece of work.
There was no reasoning with my mother when she was psychotic. In fact her doctor warned us against it. He said you can not beat psychosis with reason. When people have mixed up ideas, it’s only natural for us to want to try to explain to them why they’re wrong, but when a person is psychotic, you’ll only end up frustrating yourself if you try. The doctor advised us to not engage Mother about her delusions whenever possible. An d when it was necessary to say something about them--because we needed her to stop doing something disruptive or dangerous--we weren’t supposed to argue, but state firmly, “I don’t believe that.” “I don’t believe that your nephew Tommy who died three years ago told you to put that tube of toothpaste you’ve not paid for in your purse. Now put it back. If you don’t, you could be arrested and I won’t be able to stop that from happening. Put it back, now.”
My mother couldn’t help it, and she really did hear voices. It’s just that the voices weren’t real. She was a very sweet and gentle person when she was stable and medicated. And most of the time the things she said and did when she was psychotic were simply annoying and silly. And sometimes the things she did were funny. There’s nothing like getting up in the morning and finding three loafs of toast on the table. It can be exhausting when you have to deal with that kind of thing day after day, but sometimes you just had to laugh.
The things Michael Brown and company say and do are often vicious and not funny or merely annoying and silly, but there’s a lot of craziness in what they say and do. And because of that, I think it’s generally useless to try to engage them. That’s because there’re not merely confused, or mistaken, or ill informed. They don’t merely have a different opinion. They’re lost in their hate delusion, and they’re going to sustain that delusion for as long as they decide to live in a world of make believe where they are the heroes and LGBT people are the dragons they must destroy for their god. Not all homophobic people are like this, but I think a lot of the extreme cases like Michael Brown are. I don’t think we can hope to change them because they would have to be willing to give up their delusions, and they like their delusions. We can only expose them for the liars and manipulators they are and try to minimize the damage they do.
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