We know that fraud, self-deceit and false consciousness run rampant in our world. That these exist is more evident than that a traditionally-conceived God exists. Fakery and reasoning on the basis of premises false to fact but accordant to wish or agenda is as common as fiat money. They have similar standing and use. Their usefulness is, of course, not equally beneficial to all, nor ultimately to any.
In a blog post, 8-2-13, NYT columnist Paul Krugman wrote: “… Republican leaders are about to reap the whirlwind, because they haven’t had the courage to tell the base that Obamacare is here to stay, that the sequester is in fact intolerable, and that in general they have at least for now lost the war over the shape of American society. As a result, we’re looking at many drama-filled months, with a high probability of government shutdowns and even debt defaults.”
Krugman indicates that due to the escalated craziness of the GOP, the country is nearly ungovernable. He sees no clear way to recovery from the extremities of self-righteous, far-right unreasonableness. Denying objective science and common sense, the not-new Republicanism retires ever farther into fixation on its delusion-inspired program of obstruction. It retires farther without going deeper or gaining Better intelligence. We may well ask why this has been happening. What causes this kind of abject madness?
Step aside with me for a moment to consider the mental case of Ariel Castro. Infamous for kidnapping three young women and holding them captive on the upper floor of his home where they lived in complete subjugation to his sexual whims, for which at least one of them bore a child, he displayed in the courtroom astonishing lack of grasp or remorse for his crime. His viewpoint was totally self-excusing and blaming of anyone or anything else to play himself as victim of society and his own uncontrollable urges. Experts analytically described his sociopathic and ill-conceived view of world and self.
What becomes evident is the machinery of alienated self-justification that reinforces one’s own sense of freedom and power from the authority of law and morality, one’s superiority to culture and its implicit sanctions against anti-social behavior. Criminal psychopathology isn’t confined to mobsters and the clinically insane who endanger us. Just as Ariel Castro becomes a Society-Unto-Himself, so political factions can shrivel down into mental isolation and spiritual alienation from the greater, human surround.
This is what has happened to Tea Party “Patriots” and arch-conservatives. We have a few of them regularly displayed in print, here in Benicia. They will not know how to respond aptly and intelligently to comparison with Ariel Castro, whose very name contains allusion to an American tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, a tragedy the ultra-right seems hell-bent on bringing to our nation and the world.
People on the political right must waken to the inaccuracy and inadequacy in their minds of world-views foisted on them by family and prominent opinion makers. Will it happen? Not without being forced to see themselves in brilliantly unforgiving light.
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