This song is very obviously about being in an asylum.
The first few lines are saying that an asylum is a place that no one ever wants to go to, and especially in this case, it was forced incarceration, essentially. 'Basement on a hill" is that point where you still have a mental illness, and everything isn't peachy, but your are dealing with it to your standards. Nevertheless, people want to fix you because you are "not like them." And mental issues must be ruthlessly dealt with in our society. Also, the "not like them line" speaks of the stigma attached to mental illness. Other parts of the song like "the mayors name is fear," and "doctor spoke a cloud" speak of the bleak labels doctors tend to throw on you, telling you how you are so ill and must be controlled, also sing the publics fear of mentally ill people to justify things they do to them. The mountain of cliches refers not only to people's jaded and incorrect assumptions of mentally ill people, but also of the useless bromides that people and doctors tend to throw at people to try and help them, of course such cliches are useless.
For me, the most powerful line is:
"isolation pushes past self hatred, guilt and shame
to a place where suffering is just a game"
I think since mental illness is so stigmatized and misunderstood, people have a tendency to think of mental patients as somewhat less than human. Even psychiatrists do this. To the doctors, the patients aren't really people but simply cases to be studied, regardless of the patient's wishes. Similarly, the general public sees all mentally ill people as either dangerous or weird to the point of being intolerable. The intolerable ones are made fun of and become spectacles or are ignored, and sometimes worse. The ones seen as 'dangerous' (regardless or whether or not they actually are) are seen as subhuman things which need to be confined and controlled, usually by force, because the assumption is that if lest alone they will invariably hurt someone, which is simply not the case.
This song is very obviously about being in an asylum. The first few lines are saying that an asylum is a place that no one ever wants to go to, and especially in this case, it was forced incarceration, essentially. 'Basement on a hill" is that point where you still have a mental illness, and everything isn't peachy, but your are dealing with it to your standards. Nevertheless, people want to fix you because you are "not like them." And mental issues must be ruthlessly dealt with in our society. Also, the "not like them line" speaks of the stigma attached to mental illness. Other parts of the song like "the mayors name is fear," and "doctor spoke a cloud" speak of the bleak labels doctors tend to throw on you, telling you how you are so ill and must be controlled, also sing the publics fear of mentally ill people to justify things they do to them. The mountain of cliches refers not only to people's jaded and incorrect assumptions of mentally ill people, but also of the useless bromides that people and doctors tend to throw at people to try and help them, of course such cliches are useless. For me, the most powerful line is: "isolation pushes past self hatred, guilt and shame to a place where suffering is just a game" I think since mental illness is so stigmatized and misunderstood, people have a tendency to think of mental patients as somewhat less than human. Even psychiatrists do this. To the doctors, the patients aren't really people but simply cases to be studied, regardless of the patient's wishes. Similarly, the general public sees all mentally ill people as either dangerous or weird to the point of being intolerable. The intolerable ones are made fun of and become spectacles or are ignored, and sometimes worse. The ones seen as 'dangerous' (regardless or whether or not they actually are) are seen as subhuman things which need to be confined and controlled, usually by force, because the assumption is that if lest alone they will invariably hurt someone, which is simply not the case.