As I blogged previously, the brutal extrajudicial murder of a patient in 1989 demonstrated in the most horrific way possible that ultimate power lay outside America’s democratic institutions. It forced me to accept that political control lay in the hands of a wealthy elite who employed an invisible intelligence-security network to terrorize – and sometimes kill – Americans who threatened their interests. This painful discovery lent new urgency to my political work. It simultaneously caused an increasing sense of alienation and isolation from who hadn’t shared these experiences. My liberal and progressive friends all had access to the same alternative news sources I did. Many of them were far more knowledgeable than I was about the absolute control multinational corporations exerted over elections and lawmakers via their political donations and ability to manipulate the mainstream media. Yet my friends reacted very differently to this knowledge. Whereas I responded by devoting every spare moment to some form of community organizing, they tended to withdraw from political activity to focus on their personal lives.

The Patriot Act: Repealing the Bill of Rights

In September 2001, I expected that the Patriot Act, which legalized domestic spying on American citizens, as well as revoking habeas corpus and other important constitutional liberties, would be the turning point that would send progressives into the streets, as the 1999 anti-WTO protests had, to halt America’s transformation into a fascist police state. It never happened. In Seattle, a small 9-11 coalition formed in October 2001 to protest Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan. Over the following year, as Bush prepared to invade Iraq, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and others spoke to sell-out crowds about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Yet when I left the US in October 2002, Seattle’s antiwar movement was still quite small and fragmented.

Sacrificing Mental Health for Global Conquest

Meanwhile the major leading up to the invasion of Iraq led to severe cutbacks in the state and federal programs that funded psychiatric services for the mentally ill. After 25 years of private practice, I faced the difficult choice between trying to find a salaried position in a mental health clinic, leaving medicine or going bankrupt. In the end – for moral rather than economic reasons – I rejected all three options to pursue my 28 year dream of returning overseas. I, like most American intellectuals with access to the international and/or alternative press, knew perfectly well that neither Afghanistan nor Iraq had played any role whatsoever in the 9-11 attacks. In fact, beginning in February 2002, many of us had growing concerns the Bush administration had engineered the attacks in some way.

In any case, by launching unprovoked wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush was clearly guilty of war crimes under international law. And so long as I, as a US taxpayer, continued to work and pay taxes in the US, I shared some responsibility for these crimes.

Why I Chose New Zealand

I chose New Zealand out of pure expedience: it was an English speaking country and had the least stringent requirements for credentialing foreign psychiatrists. I was aware, through friends in the UK, that British society had changed drastically under Margaret Thatcher, with consumerist culture totally supplanting the more humanist, community values I had observed in the early seventies. This stemmed in part from Thatcher’s twelve year attack on unions and the working class – and in part from the steady bombardment of the British public with individualistic, consumerist messages via their corporate controlled media.

I had no reason to believe New Zealand would be any different. As a long time anti-globalization activist, I fully accepted that no country on earth escapes the corrupting influence of multinational corporations. Moreover psychiatric colleagues who had worked in New Zealand had warned me that American movies, sit-coms and pop culture had replaced nearly all remnants of traditional New Zealand identity or culture.

At the same time I believed that specific political features protected New Zealand from the absolute corporate control of government and public information that is found in the US. These included New Zealand’s parliamentary system of government, its electoral system based on proportional representation, it’s National Health Service (the oldest in the world – created in 1938) and its absolute ban on nuclear power or weapons (including a prohibition against US naval ships docking in any New Zealand harbor).