The Republican Party Is An Organized Gang of Sociopaths
By Thom Hartmann A...
Trump doesn't care how many people in Omaha were stranded for hours in the freezing cold, over 3 miles from the nearest road or parking lot, after he's left his rally, putting some in the hospital. And he clearly doesn't care how many people die of Covid.One of the defining characteristics of a sociopath is that they view themselves as the only "real" humans on the planet, and everybody else is basically a prop in the amazing story of their lives.
Other people, they think, don't feel emotions or pain or anything else with the intensity that they do. They believe they're the only ones who matter, because they're the only ones who truly exist.
The Republican Party, starting in 1980, has brought that sociopathic worldview to politics, and made it a cornerstone of policy as well as a criteria for elective office.
Reagan didn't care how many people were harmed or died because of his "government is the cause of your problems" or "starve the beast" policies.
George W. Bush didn't care how many Americans or other human beings may die because of his lies about Iraq and WMD: if it helped him politically, it was all good.
But Trump and the GOP's sociopathy isn't limited to using supporters as props and letting the people he thinks of as suckers suffer from hypothermia.
The Republican-controlled EPA just authorized five years of a deadly pesticide being poured onto our food, so giant corporations and their shareholders could enjoy more profits.
The Republican-controlled Interior department is destroying our national parks and selling off public land to GOP-donor mining and drilling companies.
The Republican-controlled Agriculture department is cutting people off food stamps during the Trump Depression, while the Republican-controlled Department of Housing and Urban Development is trying to throw poor people out into the cold during a pandemic.
The Republican-controlled Justice Department is openly giving a pass to criminal Republican operatives, supporters and donors, while prosecuting critics of their racist, police-state tactics.
The Republican controlled CDC and FDA are cutting corners for big Pharma to help Trump win the election, while putting the lives of millions of Americans at risk.
The Republican-directed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is promoting privatized so-called "Medicare Advantage" plans that often wipe out seniors who get sick, while they devastate Medicare itself and will make it difficult to pass Medicare for All legislation.
Republican-dominated media organizations and radio and TV stations daily traffic in easily-disproven lies and are constantly trying to gin up racial hatred, all to benefit the oligarch class.
Republican-aligned billionaires financed a multi-million-dollar campaign to put rightwing judges on the Supreme Court, and those judges are preparing to repeat their 2000 scam of handing the White House to a man who lost the popular vote and only seized the Electoral College through voter suppression.
There is not a single elected Republican with any consequential profile in America who acknowledges the dangers of climate change and the straightforward solution of ending our dependence on fossil fuels, simply because fossil fuel billionaires own them all.
Republicans celebrate the Citizens United Supreme Court decision because it nakedly allows billionaires and giant corporations to own politicians and political parties.
Republicans embrace white racist gangs that pretend they're "militias" because they'll intimidate people of color who tend to vote Democratic.
Sociopathy cannot be "cured"; it can only be controlled. Sociopaths need to be identified, isolated from society, and restrained in ways that limit the damage they can do to others.
This is a central tenant of psychotherapy, and America must apply it to politics as well, before these Republican sociopaths totally destroy our nation and gut democracy around the world.
-Thom
Comments
#2
Although you're 100% correct, you overlook the simple fact that you could easily add Pelosi or Hillary to that list of sociopaths. Hey, even Obama. Did you not see what he did, what he said to the poor people of Flint? Zero emphathy or remorse. Still, Obama, to his credit, did admit he was more the 80's republican than a democrat. I've come to the conclusion that all US presidents, with the possible exception of JFK and Carter, were sociopaths. Seems it's the requirement for the job now or any high office. Empathy not required, or wanted.
#3
From a spaceship, it looks like an entire species is struggling with basic sanity. Will they achieve long-term survivability? Will they ever find some kind of workable balance in their self-made hell that's completely out of sync with nature? This nearly invisible "pale blue dot" is lost in a lonely black void, failing to sustain an avarice people left to their own devices with no help to save them from themselves coming from the galactic cavalry. They had better come to their senses fast, or pray harder and hope their gods are listening and in a benevolent mood. Miracles and magic are in short supply.
Never before seriously contemplated until the deleterious effects of the carbon explosion of the industrial era became too hard to ignore, the extinction of the human race is no longer outside the realm of real possibility. Homo sapiens, for whatever reasons, seem to be losing their innate pragmatism and essential flexibility to adapt to a rapidly changing environment while greedily consuming resources faster than Earth can replenish herself, like germs reproducing exponentially in a Petri dish until there's nothing left to eat and drink, drowning in their own wastes and poisons, inevitably drying out and turning into dust. ("...for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.") So much for the great "thinking ape."
#4
I keep wondering why commentators don't mention that through much of U.S. History, it was impossible to know election results except for ultra-local races on election night.
For instance, California joined the Union in 1850, so it first participated in the Presidential election of 1852. Can anybody imagine that with communications & transportation in the state they were in 1852, plus California still being full of wilderness, that the Presidential votes of all of California were known in the state capitol, even at noon the next day?
In 1796, when George Washington was concluding his 2nd term, just 13 states along the Atlantic Seaboard were voting. And, just the few white male landowners who could vote in person were voting. Despite the small number of voters, can anybody imagine that votes from all over Georgia and South Carolina had already reached the tiny village that was being created to be our nation's capital before dawn the next day?
What about votes from New Hampshire, then the northern-most and eastern-most state, and all across vast New York State and Pennsylvania? How ridiculous that votes would have been fully counted when relying on horseback couriers and paper with no duplicate copies, etc. Remember, back then, things really closed down soon after dusk and then got going again with dawn -- no attempting to have things finished at midnight!
In 2020, with Daylight Time ending just before the General Election, Hawaii will be back to just 5 hours behind Eastern Time. That means that Hawaii would have to close its polls & rush all the results into the public domain before 7 PM local time to meet the midnight deadline in the nation's capital. Ludicrous & absurd !
#5
RE: "The Republican Party, starting in 1980, has brought that sociopathic worldview to politics, and made it a cornerstone of policy as well as a criteria for elective office."
We are living and dying in the Authoritarian Nightmare!!! We need to cage our authoritarian threat NOW!
#6
No conscience-no empathy hardly describes the whole party. What Trump has done is given people that have some of each the license to squelch the best part of themselves. The very part that makes us human.
Please do a little research on the net, and you will find that empathy has a genetic component. It is taught and nurtured as well. So there you have what is going on, not just here, but in many other countries too. When the person at the helm can't be empathetic everybody suffers. Things are even worse if your leader openly fosters hatred; the result can be no justice or peace and most certainly no progress.
Man's inhumanity to man is a very old concept. I agree we should isolate the real sociopaths. We have to keep pushing our fellow human beings and nurture and teach them empathy. We will progress with or without the Republicans. It's happening before your very eyes in our party and with independents. BELIEVE
#7
Historically, throughout the world, sociopathic leaders are the norm rather than the exception. Therefore it’s not surprising that people like Trump and his fellow Republican politicians are always a threat to enlightened and progressive ideals.
I think the real question here is, what has triggered this tsunami of pathological loyalty to Trump and the irrational behavior of the 60 million or so of his supporters, individuals that in many ways are caring, generous, intelligent, responsible people, that have now suppressed their better angels to rabidly embrace such an extreme sociopathic ideology.
No doubt, backlash from having the first black president is a factor that triggered a reawakening of deep seeded prejudice among many of the Trump cult. But there are likely other factors.
External threats like overpopulation and even the real documented and visible effects of Climate Change are threats that all humans feel, whether subconscious or not and likely weigh on and affect the judgement and reasoning of all individuals.
Do we deal rationally with the threats to our long range betterment and survival of the planet…this is always the question? Are we wild animals or are we thinking human beings? Do we go back? Or do we go forward? Do we embrace rational thinking that has made the world a civilized place to live? Or are we doomed to a “dog eat dog” mentality that is inevitably unsustainable.
Trumpers have chosen the “dog eat dog” path to survival. The question is why?
#8
I suspect the GOP has already got the fix in place and it will happen on Election Day. By the slimmest of margins they will pull off victories in the senate, house and possibly the presidency itself although they may be willing to let that go to Biden. So how are they going to do it, same way it was done in 2016. Manipulation of electronic voting and vote tabulation equipment in favor of the GOP. Manipulation by an embedded script that only comes to life on the day of the election. After November 3rd it becomes dormant so that if the equipment was checked it would appear to be operating normally. How do I arrive at this conspiracy? Previous elections exit polling indicated victories for Clinton that Trump won and the accepted excuse was that people exiting did not want to admit they voted for Trump. About 2 months ago Trump suggested he would postpone the election. Within days McConnell was making a public announcement that the election would take place as planned on November 3rd. When has McConnell ever done anything that was not to the benefit of the GOP. Right wing media realizing early voting favors the Democrats so they are making claims of huge republican turnouts on Election Day. For McConnell and the GOP there is something about the need for November 3rd.
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I agree thom, they must be sociopaths (psychopaths really). Because they never come around on an issue until it hits their family or a loved one personally (even then some of the more religious-nuts just double down on the hate)..