Conceit. But from whence?

In the post below this one, Pat Buchanan eviscerates Neoconservative arrogance, gainsaying and fumbling, noting "...they are the “neo-Jacobins” [what's a Jacobin?] of modernity whose dominant trait is conceit." He quotes Claes Ryn [HTML of PDF]

Only great conceit could inspire a dream of armed world hegemony....

Oh yeah?

When I read neocon flamers like Kristol the elder, or Leo Strauss, or Perle and Frum, the keening pseudo-American warrior-speak and testosterone spiced superficialities masquerading as grown-up policy mystify me to a certain degree.

Then, I hit myself in the head with a brick, and all is clear again.

Okay, it's a small brick. And sometimes hitting someone else with it does the trick.

Bear with me, there is a point to the example: How do some see so readily what's written on the wall, and others are numbed or blind to the signs? More specifically, and even more bizarrely, how do some see signs that are not there? Perhaps it's not simple conceit, but a pathological narcissism fed by deceit. Can our current mess find a parallel in medicine?

The child is a victim of maltreatment in which an adult falsifies physical and/or psychological signs and/or symptoms in the child causing this child to be regarded as ill or impaired. The perpetrator, who is usually a parent or caregiver intentionally falsifies history, signs, or symptoms in the child to meet their own self-serving psychological needs. Other members of the family may support and participate in the perception. [Definition under consideration by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children.]

Eerie. Substitute country or countrymen for child in that definition and see how it reads. Switch policymaker or guardian of public trust for caregiver or parent. The above definition in this case describes a curious, yet not altogether rare affliction with a name only three decades old: Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.

Marc D. Feldman, M.D. : Kathleen Bush and Yvonne Eldridge had a lot in common. First, both cared for children with remarkably complex medical problems: Jennifer Bush suffered from constant intestinal problems, and Eldridge's two foster daughters experienced a host of ailments that left them weak and emaciated. Second, both Bush and Eldridge spent most of their time escorting their sickly girls from doctor to doctor: Jennifer was eventually hospitalized 200 times, and all three children had to undergo surgery to place feeding tubes into their stomachs. And third, both parents received the highest praise for their exemplary devotion to their little charges: Bush was lauded by Hillary Clinton at a 1994 White House rally, while Eldridge was named national "Mother of the Year" in 1988 by Nancy Reagan.

[ . . . ]

The term "Munchausen syndrome by proxy" (MSBP) was coined around twenty years ago, and hundreds of reports have appeared since then. In most cases, a mother either claims that her child is sick, or she goes even further to actually make the child sick. This "devoted" parent then continually presents the child for medical treatment, all the while denying any knowledge of the origin of the problem--namely, herself. As a result, MSBP victims may undergo extraordinary numbers of lab tests, medication trials, and even surgical procedures that aren't really needed. For example, by the age of eight, Jennifer Bush had had more than 40 operations, including the removal of much of her intestines. Other children have scarcely experienced a day of their young lives without being brought to the doctor's office or confined to the hospital. In the vast majority of cases, the perpetrator is the mother and the victim an infant or toddler.

The web of deceit the caregiver spins can be buttressed by medical signs and symptoms that mislead the most skillful of physicians. Their acting skills can match those of a veteran performer. For instance, the MSBP perpetrator might induce "apnea" (a cessation of breathing) by suffocating her child to the point of unconsciousness, then frantically display the limp child to the hospital or clinic staff as the tears roll down her cheeks. She may secretly place a drop of blood in the child's urine specimen, then appear aghast at lab results that alarm the unsuspecting physicians and nurses. Behind closed doors, she may scrub the child's skin with oven cleaner to cause a baffling blistering rash that lasts for months. Since it may take many years of illness for doctors finally to arrive at the truth, it should not be surprising that this form of child abuse has a mortality rate of nine percent.

Hey, I'm no psychiatrist. I just look for patterns and cycles in order to better do what I do for a living. In doing so I also discover quite often that very smart people miss very simple things due to innattention or attribution to coincidence. Or often, to an assumption that there must be some logical plan or explanation at work, somehow, somewhere. They think somebody else has it covered, or there would have been a fuss made about it--by somebody else. The Shuttles Challenger and Atlantis blew up for this reason. Companies go belly up for this reason. And yes, children die and grownups follow through on suicide for this reason.

And everybody says, "I had no idea."

As you can tell, I don't buy that, whether the danger is to the life of a child, or to a nation's conscience. I doubt you do either. Once, an accident. Twice, a coincidence. Three times, a pattern.