A Country Unwilling to Defend Itself

Darrell Castle talks about the mass insanity that grips our nation and how we as the American people seem unwilling to defend ourselves from it. Transcription / Notes A COUNTRY UNWILLING TO DEFEND ITSELF Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. Today is Friday June 12, 2020 and on this Report I will be talking about the madness, the insanity, in which America, and perhaps all of what was once Western Civilization, finds itself. For the Castle Family this is the third week back in the office from quarantine and so far, so good. The family daughter remains marooned on her small island many thousands of miles from us, but at least safe. Perhaps in July she will be released from confinement.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of mass insanity and how we, as a nation, seem to be in the grips of it. To refresh my memory about how it all works I decided to consult one of my favorite books and authors and that is Charles Mackey’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. Written in 1841 but still very relevant today Mr. Mackey explores the concept of mass or crowd insanity and how it is quite different from individual madness. The backdrop for the book was the tulip mania that gripped Europe in Mr. Mackey’s day. People trading in the future price of tulip bulbs drove the price to an unimaginable high in that day. It made no sense except when looked at from the standpoint of crowd or mob action. “When a man enters a crowd, he exits civilization.” That is obviously just as true today as it was in 1841 and as evidence, I argue that a man in a riot or even in a mass protest is a man in a crowd. His reason departs and he is driven by the hormones, the emotions of the crowd rather than his own. Men go mad in herds while they must recover their senses one by one. Friedrich Nietzsche in the same era as Mackey said that madness is a rarity in individuals but the rule in crowds. In a crowd a man is not a man but simply a face thus the expression just a face in the crowd. He is a cog in a lunatic machine. He cannot think rationally so the crowd thinks for him. Crowds need something to unite them so they will always have their devils. The devil could be policemen, whites, blacks, Muslims, Christians, progressives, conservatives etc. Whatever it is, each crowd will have its devil. It will always be a devil which inspires the crowd. I can cite no better example of crowd madness than what has happened since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police a few days ago. Mr. Floyd’s death appeared to me to be a virtual assassination. Three police officers hold a man down while another puts a knee on his neck for eight minutes while being filmed doing it. It appeared to be an act of cold-blooded murder, which in a death penalty state should have sent the officer to death row. The question then is, was Mr. Floyd’s murder an indictment of America as a sick, racist society as alleged by some. I argue that it does not and furthermore, other than Mr. Floyd’s race there is not much to indicate the attack was racially motivated. I understand the argument that if he had not been black the officer would not have put his knee on his neck, but the argument may or may not be valid. Can we rationally discuss whether it’s a valid argument or not, probably not, but I will make a few points now? The submission technique that ultimately killed Mr. Floyd is one taught to US police forces by the Israeli military. Consult You Tube and you can find videos of Israeli instructors teaching the technique. They use it to subdue Palestinians in Gaza and other places they are deployed every day. One officer is to hold the subject’s legs while the other kneels on his neck to get control of him. Does that mean Mr. Floyd’s murder was not racially motivated? No, it doesn’t, and I admit that I have no way of knowing, but there is evidence that the technique is and has been widely used against people of all races.