When we’ve got persons with a sociopathic mindset running things, it’s tempting to analyze and find specific reasons for their behavior. I see a confluence of factors or a perfect storm at work:

* Black and white thinkers tend to come from emotionally abusive family environments. They can’t emotionally process nuance. We all go through a stage of black and white thinking during childhood to help us understand and cope with the world around us. Abuse stops emotional development in its tracks. How old was George W. Bush when he was emotionally abused? Did he later drink and drug to medicate his emotional pain, say, regarding his sister’s death? It couldn’t have been a picnic with Barbara Bush as his mother.

* Religious indoctrination used by some to tamp down the potential for critical, analytical thinking skills in a significant portion of the U.S. population.

* Quality and availability of public education to enable critical thinking skills and hunger for knowledge in a portion of the U.S. population. People simply being unaware of what they don’t know.

* Neocon cabal, more sociopaths, merely using and manipulating Republicans and the American public to fulfill the Neocon agenda. Manipulators pair up with those who are easily manipulated. Karl Rove–George W. Bush; Scooter Libby–Richard B. Cheney; Douglas Feith–Donald Rumsfeld; Bill Kristol–John McCain, etc.

* Corporate media no longer doing adequate investigative journalism (gathering facts) and relying much too heavily on opinions of paid pundits. News departments burdened with being profit centers for corporations. Corporate media losing sight of being granted the privilege of using the public airwaves in service of keeping a well-informed citizenry.

The thing is, because most of these people have a warped mindset and perception of reality, they don’t have the desire nor emotional capacity to comprehend their own dysfunctional behavior or role they play. They’ve normalized their dysfunction–it’s all they know now.

I guess we have to be the ones who hold up the mirror they dare not look into.

- Tom

As I have pointed out on another blog under another name, American Fundamentalism is deeply grounded in personalism, which presupposes an obedience to a chain of persons. To the American Fundamentalist, he obeys the law not because it is the law, but because the law has been laid down by those with authority. Those who have lesser status have no right either to contest that law or to question those in authority who transgress it. The objectivity and unyielding nature of Torah, presumably one of the thorns in the flash of St. Paul, is often seen as having been transcended by that chain of authority that reaches from G_d through civil government, community leaders, law enforcement and the family. It is of no small account that Fundamentalist/Evamgelical education focuses on the passage where it is said of Jesus, “For He did not do as the Pharisees do, always arguing and citing authorities, but spoke with authority himself.” While I don’t want to get into a theological debate here over whether Jesus DID see himself as abolishing Torah (or as Christian translations almost universally put it, “the law”), it IS fair to say that American Protestantism, even non-Fundamentalist strains, go out of their way to stress that Jesus set himself above that law in a category by himself in his own disputes with the Pharisees (1962: Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version, pp.1184-1185, notes to Matthew 11).

This Protestant version of the Great Chain of Being alluded to above is similarly evidenced in Fundamentalism’s treatment of Old Testament figures. The declining years of David are hardly marked with honor. Curiously, Kings passes over some of David’s most disgraceful conduct without comment, leaving it to the reader to come to an assessment of whether, at the end of his days, the King was actually “good.” But an itemization of that conduct would read as follows, shortly summarized: 1.) Betrayal and exploitation of employees, seizing credit for himself where not deserved (David claiming rights as a “Great King” while himself not participating in battle); 2.) his clearly duplicitous conduct toward Uriah the Hittite (”See you to your wife” is hardly a friendly warning or solicitousness for Uriah’s marriage coming from his lips); 3.) His murder through administration at one remove of Uriah; 4.) His adultery with, and usurpation of, Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba; 5.) His indulgence of his son Amnon and refusal to punish Amnon despite certainly available and probably conveyed knowledge of Tamar’s rape by Amnon being known to him; and 6.) His favoritism of Absalom, who murdered Amnon out of revenge for Tamar’s rape. Of these, American Fundamentalism focuses only on 4.); while each of these acts is grist for Talmudic discussion in Judaism, they are not discussed as sins at all within American Fundamentalism.

Likewise, the tale of the Fields of Naboth are unmentioned in any Fundamentalist Sunday School. For those unfamiliar with the story, Ahab, a post-Davidic King of Israel and his wife, a foreigner who worshipped idols, wanted a certain plot of land with little value but a great view. Its owner, Naboth, refused to sell it on grounds that it had been an inheritance from his family and as such he would not give it up. Ahab’s wife retained men who brought false charges against Naboth, Naboth was executed for the charges, and the King and Queen seized the property. Later, Ahab dies and the Queen, having remarried, is overthrown, killed, and tossed of the battlements and eaten by dogs. In Judaism, this is seen as a fate appropriate to the Mosaic commandment that stipulates that conspiracy to commit perjury in a capital case bears the sentence of death. However, the only thing known to the American Fundamentalist is the name of Ahab’s wife: Jezebel. Though the original Jezebel was never charged as an adulteress, Paul certainly calls at least one woman priest a Jezebel by conducting heterodox services. From there, Christianity in general and American Fundamentalism in particular proceeded to sexualize the meaning of the name so that it is now universally understood as “harlot.” Jezebel is evil in American Fundamentalism because she worshipped false gods or was (whether rightly or wrongly) a harlot; that she abused her authority is not really thinkable.

Just as the Fundamentalist sees any limitation of authority (and what else is a law that specifies rights?) as denial of that authority, just as the lesser have no rights at all in favor of the greater, so wrongdoers cannot be truly harmed by the righteous, who cannot possibly do to wrongdoers on earth what will certainly happen in the afterlife. Thus, the misrepresentation of Jezebel by sexualizing her offenses is not wrong; it isn’t wrong, in their eyes, to accuse people of atheism who are not atheists; subhuman prison or jail conditions are not of their concern; and whether justice is actually done is of secondary concern that the powers that be declare themselves right. (It is this notion shared by a Protestantized Catholicism, as much as stupidity, which was the origin of a NY State Senator’s claim that “After all, without the death penalty, we wouldn’t have Jesus Christ.”)

Evangelicals believe that G_d constantly intervenes in the world through miracles, often to lengths that seem even to insiders absurd. This should be understood as inherently antinomian in nature; the world doesn’t function according to objective laws, or does so only to a limited extent, revocable at any time. This, too, works to create a universe dependent upon Divine Arbitrariness, not on rules.

All of these doctrinal nuggets, and many, many, more, contribute to Fundamentalism’s opposition to the very idea of rule of law. They are not simply opposed to human law; they are also resentful of the difficulties presented by Divine Law, and interpret Scripture accordingly. It should come as no surprise that they cannot see liberty as a human construct, that they do not accept that rights mean limitations on their own claims, or that they see the Constitution as anything other than an impediment.

I think the best approach is to hit with slogans one at a time. Let the
voters handle one piece of their criminality, injustice, tyranny, whatever
issue we pursue for that time period. If we hit all at once, it will
lessen the impact. One or two items a week to be digested slowly. No
overload. The Republicans won’t be able to cope (let us pray!).
That would be my approach anyhow.