Oct 08 2007
Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to
By Jason Miller
10/8/07
Cluster B Personality Disorders
1776.0 Americanistic Personality Disorder
The essential features of Americanistic Personality Disorder include pervasive patterns of extreme self-absorption, profound and long-term lapses in empathy, a deep disregard for the well-being of others, a powerful aversion to intellectual honesty and reality, and a grossly exaggerated sense of the importance of one’s self and one’s nation. These patterns emerge in infancy, manifest themselves in nearly all contexts, and often become pathological.
These patterns have also been characterized as sociopathic, or colloquially as the “Ugly American Syndrome.” Note that the latter terminology carries too benign a connotation to accurately describe an individual afflicted with such a dangerous perversion of character.
For this diagnosis to be given, the individual must be deeply immersed in the flag-waving, nationalistic, and militaristic fervor derived primarily from the nearly perpetual barrage of reality warping emanations of the “mainstream media,” most commonly through the medium of television. Typically indoctrinated from birth to believe that they are morally superior, exceptional human beings, these individuals suffer from severe egocentrism, a condition further engendered by the prevalence of the acutely toxic dominant paradigm known as capitalism.
Continue Reading »
Sep 09 2007
Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to
“The Bourne Ultimatum is the latest iteration of a nightmare haunting the Western mind. Jason Bourne struggles to wake up from a trance that has made him into a thing rather than a person. This theme, which is echoed in everything from the X Men films to the Matrix series and their extensive progeny, speaks directly to the reification phenomenon we’ve been discussing in this dialogue. A variant of the Frankenstein myth from the Romantic era, I suspect this particular strain first developed in the cold war thrillers such as North by Northwest and The Manchurian Candidate when Ludlum first wrote his Bourne novels.”
by Guy Zimmerman
9/9/07
I flew into L.A. on Tuesday after being gone for three weeks. To escape the heat I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum at the Cinerama Dome. Later that night, at home, I watched Bergman’s The Silence. Viewed back to back, the two films made clear to me how radically the culture of the West has shifted during the course of my lifetime. While I was away I’d read J.M. Coetzee’s collection of essays Inner Workings. The book is full of compelling insights about the literary figures of the early part of the 20th century, many of whom were destroyed by the cataclysms in Europe that brought the (relatively) stable 19th century bourgeois paradise to a close. Stepping out of the terminal at LAX and feeling the tight air and seeing the tight worried expressions on the face of the American middle class, it seemed clear to me that, as we’ve mentioned many times, we are at the cusp of a similar world-ending conflagration. Watching The Bourne Ultimatum the image came to me of a culture strapped into the passenger seat of a car that has already left the road. The eyes are screwed tightly shut. No light can enter.
Continue Reading »