Fox News psychiatrist Keith Ablow has jumped the shark with his latest column. The guy was never exactly a model of rational thinking - what with his diagnosing of Vice President Joe Biden without benefit of examination, his likening President Barack Obama to a wife beater and Psy's Gangnam Style video to a narcotic. But Ablow's latest column on FoxNews.com in which he accuses President Obama of engaging in a "black ops" psychological warfare against Americans is so off the wall that Fox really ought to consider committing him. Right after they dump him.

Ablow starts off crazy in the column:

I believe that the Obama administration is conducting psychological warfare on conservative Americans. Not only that but it is also waging this war on all Americans who previously viewed themselves, their country, their Constitution and their overwhelming belief in God as a force for good in the world. 

And then gets crazier: Ablow goes on to suggest that President and Mrs. Obama deliberately and "malignant(ly)" planted "the seeds of self-hatred and self-doubt" in Americans.

Psychological warfare has been described as a set of techniques aimed at influencing a target audience’s value systems or beliefs and inducing confessions of wrongdoing or attitudes favorable to the group proffering the techniques.

The techniques are often combined with black ops strategy, in which covert initiatives seek to dispirit, disempower and confuse adversaries. The psychological warfare has continued, I believe, with other opportunities the president has had to make American’s question their individual freedoms and autonomy. 

Ablow cites as examples of the "black ops" strategy the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut and the IRS controversy. Then, he gets to the cream of the crazy with this assessment of the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya:

Seen through the lens of psychological warfare, the failure to defend our embassy in Benghazi need not be understood simply as a screw-up. It could reflect an actual strategy on the part of the administration to reinforce the notion that homicidal violence born of hatred toward America is understandable—even condonable—because we have generated it ourselves and are reaping the harvest of ill will we have sown. In other words, we should take our punishment.

...(This) may disclose not just incompetence and may not just be evidence of a cover-up, but may be evidence of exactly what I am theorizing here: that the president, with the help of his administration, is attempting to conduct psychological warfare on Americans who value autonomy and free will and free markets and small government, by convincing them that they are wrong-minded, prejudiced and pathological and should deeply question their beliefs—including some ensconced in the Constitution. 

Mark, at NewsCorpse sums up the lunacy:

Black ops are generally defined as covert, extra-legal activities carried out by military and/or intelligence agencies. For Ablow to assign that sort of purposeful deployment of wartime hostility aimed at unsuspecting Americans is nothing short of delusional. It is beyond the conventional conspiracy theory theatrics of nutcases like Alex Jones or Glenn Beck (with whom Ablow co-authored a self-help book).

It is important to remember that Ablow is not broadcasting this drivel from an Idaho compound over a ham radio network. He is a member of the Fox News Medical “A” Team and his opinions are distributed by Fox and its affiliated “news” outlets. So the next time anyone tries to pass off Fox as a reputable journalistic enterprise, direct them to this example of the absurd balderdash that they regard as respectable reporting.