History's Greatest Bloopers

Thanks to Wikipedia, today we're going to learn about the Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act. Sounds boring, doesn't it? Wrong! Like everything relating to the mental health of our country, this is one wacky adventure!

This bill was introduced to our nation's congress in the 1950s with the idea of improving Alaska's (and only Alaska's) resources and facilities to care for the mentally ill. Amazingly, this became the greatest political controversy since the previous decade. Republicans violently opposed the bill, calling it a communist plot to brainwash Americans. Several groups also claimed it was anything from a Jewish to a Catholic to a psychiatric conspiracy--and not just a regular conspiracy, but a conspiracy to establish US concentration camps.

I am not making this up.

To make matters even more interesting, once the law got passed (thanks to inexplicable Republican cooperation), Alaska's mental health conditions got a ton worse. Though it initially succeeded in establishing a mental health care system for the state, Alaskan politicans--politicians from Alaska, presumably the ones who initially championed this bill--systematically broke down the system and stole the land that was allotted for it. Some 30 years after the fact, that land stealing was ruled illegal.

I am so serious right now.

In addition, this whole debacle is a keystone argument in Scientology's argument against psychiatry. In one of their museums or shrines or whatever, they have an exhibit entitled Pyschiatry: An Industry of Death, in which they purport that, "psychiatrists sponsored the Alaska Mental Health Bill, the Holocaust, the Bosnian War and the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks as part of a worldwide conspiracy to impose control through the guise of mental health."

That's right. I just put the US government on the same level of crazy as Scientology. That's how badly we bungled this one. Barry Goldwater, you brought us as low as L. Ron Hubbard. Thanks.