Star Man
11-22-2018, 09:45 AM
This long article by John Stepling summarizes as well as anything I have read about the psychological and political/class foundations of the crisis America and the world face at this time of impending planetry collapse.
Star Man
Liar, Liar
by John Stepling November 21, 2018
Downloaded November 22, 2018 from https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/21/liar-liar/
(https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/21/liar-liar/)
“The dictatorship’s mistake was to torture but not kill.”
– Jair Bolsonaro (Radio interview, 2016)
“I don’t get voted out of office”.
– Bill Gates
“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life.”
– Antonio Gramsci (Prison Notebooks (https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/071780397X/counterpunchmaga))
“The sadist needs the person over whom he rules, he needs him very badly, since his own feeling of strength is rooted in the fact that he is the master over someone.”
– Erich Fromm (Escape from Freedom (https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805031499/counterpunchmaga))
Years ago Robert Bly talked about Ronald Reagan’s capacity for lying. He said Reagan grew up lying about his father, an alcoholic, and his dysfunctional childhood which he routinely described as happy. How the enormity of that lie, and all the attendant pressures of such intimate dishonesty made lying about the Iran/Contra deal much easier. And I recently heard Gabor Mate say the same sort of thing about Donald Trump. How Trump grew up with an abusive authoritarian father, one who humiliated and belittled the boy Trump, and the world of that boy was one of cruelty and abuse. And if that is the only world you know growing up, that is the world you will see everywhere around you later. And the only way to navigate a world of abasement and lying was to be better at it than those who had abused you. The grandiose aggressiveness and paranoia of Trump is the product, in part, and probably in large part, of a family that operated on strict hierarchies of power, a punitive and sadistic family dynamic. Trump’s brother, of course, drank himself to death.
Countless Presidents came out of dysfunctional families, ones often with authoritarian and alcoholic fathers: Gerald Ford, or Bill Clinton with his stepfather. The list is quite long. British Prime Ministers are also disproportionately the product of similar childhoods. But the point is really about a system that rewards men and women who have developed pathological coping mechanisms that include an ability to lie, an inability to feel empathy or remorse, and who are adept at cheating and taking credit for the accomplishments of others. The deformed character that comes out of such dynamics seems perfectly suited for the public spectacle of political life. Probably for carny barkers, too.
All hierarchical systems are to some degree systems that encourage winning and punish losing.
Before the last Presidential election I wrote this about the two leading candidates…
Continues here (https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/21/liar-liar/)
Star Man
Liar, Liar
by John Stepling November 21, 2018
Downloaded November 22, 2018 from https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/21/liar-liar/
(https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/21/liar-liar/)
“The dictatorship’s mistake was to torture but not kill.”
– Jair Bolsonaro (Radio interview, 2016)
“I don’t get voted out of office”.
– Bill Gates
“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life.”
– Antonio Gramsci (Prison Notebooks (https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/071780397X/counterpunchmaga))
“The sadist needs the person over whom he rules, he needs him very badly, since his own feeling of strength is rooted in the fact that he is the master over someone.”
– Erich Fromm (Escape from Freedom (https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805031499/counterpunchmaga))
Years ago Robert Bly talked about Ronald Reagan’s capacity for lying. He said Reagan grew up lying about his father, an alcoholic, and his dysfunctional childhood which he routinely described as happy. How the enormity of that lie, and all the attendant pressures of such intimate dishonesty made lying about the Iran/Contra deal much easier. And I recently heard Gabor Mate say the same sort of thing about Donald Trump. How Trump grew up with an abusive authoritarian father, one who humiliated and belittled the boy Trump, and the world of that boy was one of cruelty and abuse. And if that is the only world you know growing up, that is the world you will see everywhere around you later. And the only way to navigate a world of abasement and lying was to be better at it than those who had abused you. The grandiose aggressiveness and paranoia of Trump is the product, in part, and probably in large part, of a family that operated on strict hierarchies of power, a punitive and sadistic family dynamic. Trump’s brother, of course, drank himself to death.
Countless Presidents came out of dysfunctional families, ones often with authoritarian and alcoholic fathers: Gerald Ford, or Bill Clinton with his stepfather. The list is quite long. British Prime Ministers are also disproportionately the product of similar childhoods. But the point is really about a system that rewards men and women who have developed pathological coping mechanisms that include an ability to lie, an inability to feel empathy or remorse, and who are adept at cheating and taking credit for the accomplishments of others. The deformed character that comes out of such dynamics seems perfectly suited for the public spectacle of political life. Probably for carny barkers, too.
All hierarchical systems are to some degree systems that encourage winning and punish losing.
Before the last Presidential election I wrote this about the two leading candidates…
Continues here (https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/21/liar-liar/)