General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe sociopathic style in American politics - "Freedom means freedom for me and not for you"
....In contemporary conservative thought, anti-social personality disorder is, via the magic of ideology, transformed into an all-purpose political doctrine. In its cruder forms, as illustrated 24/7 by the workings of the nations massive right wing mass media propaganda complex, this ideology manifests itself as a kind of oppositional defiant disorder, as millions of chronological adults are encouraged to behave like cranky toddlers, whenever they are asked by the Liberal Conspiracy to perform the political equivalent of picking up their toys and going to bed on time.
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..........the invocation of the word freedom is supposed to cut off all higher cognitive function, just as surely as the word God is supposed to do in some adjacent ideological zip codes.
Thus the sacral status of Individual Liberty requires allowing countless individual choices to wreck the ecosphere via what economists refer to primly as the failure to take into account unpriced externalities, while elementary schools are shot up by semi-automatic weapons, and millions of Americans have no income other than food stamps, even as multi-billionaires rig the tax code ever-more in the favor, because that what Freedom means, according to the Constitution or the Bible or possibly both.
Of course the dictum Youre Not the Boss of Me is not a sustainable basis for even the most tenuous society. The concept of a sociopathic society is an oxymoron on its face, as the right wing is more than happy to acknowledge implicitly when it undertakes all sorts of vigorous steps to make sure that Individual Liberty means the Individual Liberty to live in an authoritarian ethno-state. Yet the apparent contradiction between the sociopathic style and the authoritarian personality is resolved easily enough when we remember that, to those who long to make America great again, freedom means freedom for me and not for you.
But perhaps the most crucial aspect of the sociopathic style is that its dedicated to not remembering that which is easy enough to do when an ideology has no allegiance whatsoever to rational discourse, intellectual consistency, or any other form of honest argumentation. Expecting such things from the sociopathic style represents a fundamental failure to understand what that style is all about, which of course doesnt stop plenty liberals, centrists, and delusional center-right conservatives to continue to expect them.
the rest:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/09/the-sociopathic-style-in-american-politics
hatrack
(59,442 posts)Fucking nailed it. It's the politics of lethal infantility.
CommonHumanity
(246 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)hatrack
(59,442 posts)A friend of mine said it well some years ago: "The problem is that there's a shitload of people in this country who stopped growing emotionally in eighth grade."
Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)but yeah, that works.
You can't have an intellectual discussion with someone who is irrational, which covers most of what the repubs are doing these days.
Nay
(12,051 posts)"At this point in American history, sincere engagement with the nations right wing in general and the Republican party in particular is about as advisable as going on a blind date with Ted Bundy."
Blue Owl
(49,934 posts)Couldn't be more spot-on...