1 Boring Old Man

As any psychotherapist knows, there is no "solution" to paranoia. In its most virulent form, paranoid schizophrenia, medication helps with psychotic symptoms and the pressure to act on paranoid ideas. But those ideas often persist, either quietly in the foreground, or waiting in the background for the next bout. But paranoid thinking comes in gradations from normal to the delusional. So the first order of business is to determine where in the spectrum a person lies. Michael Ledeen is correct that diplomacy with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Osama bin Laden, Ted Kaczynski [the Unabomber] is a waste of time or worse. The only recourse is containment. But these are extreme examples.

In people under the sway of paranoid ideas who are less afflicted than these extreme examples, there are things not to do, Never use direct POWER unless you intend to totally win and then contain. Paranoid people feel powerless, and so they amass and wield power to protect themselves. Trying to overpower them just stirs them up. However, one way of containing them is the threat of superior power. We did that with the Communists and vica versa. The stalemate worked. And never try to trick paranoid people. They are always mistrustful and looking for hidden motives. They pick up on tricks in a heartbeat. Bush and Cheney are learning that right now. They’re trying to put one over on the Iraqis right now with their SOFA agreement. The Iraqis are not fooled.

There are things to do in the face of paranoia. First, knowing there is no quick solution is the most important thing. Critics of the pre-Third Reich era are completely correct, including Ledeen. We should’ve opposed and contained him vigorously in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, rater than waiting. We did better with Stalin once we knew where he was headed. We "contained" Communism for forty years, to our credit.

Beyond containment, rigorous, firm honesty is the right demeanor – no tricks, no arguments, no lies. Draw clear boundries and be extremely clear what will happen if they’re crossed, in either direction. One of the tenets of the Bush Doctrine is strength beyond question. No one disagrees with that. What we question is the arbitrary and frivolous way that strength was used.

The only way to challenge paranoid thinking is to understand it thoroughly, then instill doubt about the logical flaws that are invariably present. But there’s an even bigger principle that over-rides all others. Stay in contact as much as possible. It’s easy to hate people from afar, to demonize them as EVIL. It’s very hard to do it up close and personal. The humanity comes through. The iron curtain blanketed the Communists from the rest of the world. When the Internet, fax machines, radio, television came, they saw our way of life and wanted some of it. It’s the same in the Middle East. The more the contact, the less the paranoia.

The notion that Diplomacy is always appeasment is the greatest flaw in the Neoconservative Cosmology. Diplomacy is a way of insisting that they deal with our humanity, rather than the demons they create in their minds. Paranoid people are not intrinsically EVIL. They are rather dominated by FEAR and ENVY. They are to be approached with respect, honesty, and firmness. But most of all, approached. Left to their own devices, they only get worse. The Bush Administration has been dishonest, disrespectful, and unwilling to be genuinely "firm" – having instead been attacking and pugalistic. They’ve treated the Iraqis as Pawns when they’re really Knights, Bishops, Kings, and Queens. They’ve lumped the rational people with the lunatic Minority. And they’ve been as paranoid as the paranoid culture they are opposing. That won’t ever work.