Wednesday, March 24, 2010

CALLING ALL PSYCHIATRISTS!





My sincere thanks to mud_rake over at Man With the Muckrake for providing me with the initial inspiration and encouragement for this post. Keep up the great work over there, Muddy!


Today's ultra-conservative, reactionary Republican Party confounds logic. It is so unstable, volatile, and irrational that I am seriously beginning to worry about its adherents. It has become so dishonest and so contradictory that I am amazed it can hang onto any followers at all! Consider this:

It acts for the benefit of huge corporations and the wealthy elite who comprise a tiny minority of our citizens, and who have little in common with the vast majority of our population, yet it proclaims itself to be the majority party.

It preaches law and order, but opposes governmental involvement or regulation.

It professes to be strongly pro-life, yet it supports aggressive, pre-emptive warfare and the military/industrial complex, as well as the torture of prisoners and the death penalty. On the subject of abortion, it screams that it is totally against it, yet between roughly 2003-2007, with a conservative Republican President, a strong conservative Republican majority in Congress, and a de facto conservative Supreme Court, it never even tried to overturn Roe v. Wade. Instead, it simply used the issue as a political tool to pull Catholic and religious right voters away from Democratic candidates.

It has become racist and anti-intellectual, actively pushing to eradicate affirmative action programs and questioning and ridiculing those in academia who are not professors of finance or business.

It loudly proclaims itself to be the party of "family values" but opposes direct government aid to poor families, as well as sex education in public schools which would prevent unwanted teen pregnancies.

It claims to be the party of patriots, even as it encourages and incites open rebellion and revolution against the government.

It portrays itself as the party of Judeo-Christian values. But neither the Jewish nor the Christian faiths preach that the rich should get richer, the poor should be neglected or villified as being lazy, or that we should wage aggressive war against our enemies, all stances the party endorses and puts into practice when in power. Indeed, it even attacks those in government who work for the poor and the common good!

It ignores the lessons of history, as it has done by repeatedly adopting and promoting various forms of the same old, tired, "free market" laissez-faire failed 1920s economics which caused the Great Depression and Great Recession, and as it did by engaging in a long, drawn-out and expensive Vietnam-like war in Iraq.


It ignores and ridicules the scientific community on questions of environmentalism and climate change, refusing to take wise and preventative steps for the future and instead choosing to protect the shortsighted business interests of the present.

It proudly bills itself as the party of fiscal discipline and responsibility, yet historical data over the past 30 years does not bear this out. It is every bit as guilty of pork-barrel spending as are the Democrats.

It loves to paint the Democrats as being weak on national defense and itself as the party best suited to provide national security. But its President and Vice President were asleep at the wheel during the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., and over Pennsylvania on 9/11, even though they had received a briefing that an Al Qeda attack was imminent FIVE WEEKS EARLIER!


I know what I would call today's Republican Party: insanely delusional and anti-social. But I would love to have a team of psychologists and psychoanalysts do a behavioral study and psychiatric evaluation on the party. Perhaps then, after this analysis, I ill finally be able to understand the seeming irrationality of what it has become and is today.

CALLING ALL PSYCHIATRISTS: Are there any of you out there who can oblige me on this request?

19 comments:

mud_rake said...

Yes, Jack, it will take many sessions on the couch and deep psychoanalytic therapy to understand the mind of these New Republicans/Teabaggers/Right-wingnuts. There is no logic and I am curious how those so-called independents see all of this.

Great post!

Holte Ender said...

That would be an interesting experiment, to have panel of top psych. people, studying their language, both body and verbal, and give an expert analysis. I have a sneaking suspicion that the conclusion would be: "These people should not be in public service."

Jack Jodell said...

mud_rake,
Thank you, especially for the inspiration!
---------------
Holte Ender,
Or maybe... "These people should not be in public, period, and should be locked away..."? :-)

TomCat said...

Jack, they consistantly stand for one thing, a thing they cannot openly admit: No Millionaire Left Behind. Perhaps the rest of these inconsistancies can be explained by their willingness to adopt any posiytion, no matter how vile, to gain adherants for their central policy.

Infidel753 said...

I think this kind of descent into illogic became inevitable once the right wing made religious fundamentalism such an important part of its identity.

Religion glorifies faith, which means belief regardless of evidence or logic. That is, it teaches that you are morally superior if you believe what you are told or want to believe and disregard any evidence to the contrary.

Once this stance is established in the realm of religious belief, it inevitably comes to seem legitimate in other realms too. If it's a virtue to believe religious dogma regardless of evidence or sense, then why not believe that global warming and evolution are just fictions promoted by vast conspiracies of scientists? Why not oppose sex education because teenagers can be persuaded to abstain if they're thrown a few platitudes? Why not insist that deregulation and tax cuts are always best, regardless of their actual record? And on and on.

I really think this has a lot to do with it. The determined embrace of unreason and self-delusion that we see today had to start somewhere.

Jack Jodell said...

TomCat and Infidel753,
I'd still like to read a deep psychoanalytical summation of just what makes them tick as irrationally as they do. It is really mystifying!

Joe "Truth 101" Kelly said...

The only thing I can add is that republicans areb in reality soft on crime also. They build prisons to benefit big contractors who donate to them. Then they don't fund their operation leading to early release and many violent criminals never even serving time.

They are the lyingest bunch of bastards ever. But they lie so much they believe their own lies.


No conscience at all.

amadmike1 said...

I don't normally do this, as a matter of fact I have never done it, but I wrote a comment on this same subject over at PPlus and I think it applies here. Forgive me Jack:

It has only just begun. History tells us that the propaganda arm of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, known far and wide as Nazis, was instrumental in ensuring the rise of Adolph Hitler, and his ultimate rise to power as the sole leader of the German nation. This arm of the government, led by minister Joseph Goebbels, managed to persuade the vast majority of the populace that the Jews were evil incarnate and responsible for all of the ills of the country. The Germans were/are a cultured, well educated people. The hatred spread by lies and propaganda changed all that. I do believe it can happen again. I am confident it will. Probably not here, but one never knows. The whole thing is scary….

Jack Jodell said...

Truth101,
Good point on the prisons-for-contractors scheme. Republicans do a lot of things half-assed: look at the war in Afghanistan. Bin Laden could and should have been caught long ago, but noooo---Dick and George wanted to invade Iraq.
---------------
madmike1,
Forgive ME for having missed that original comment over at TomCat's place! Man alive---switch a few names around, and we could very well be talking about the teabaggers and Republicans of today---or tomorrow! VERY scary!!!

Unknown said...

Jack!
It's a wonderful 'primer' for current politics 101. There is no accounting for politics? You've addressed that!
The American political arena has always served up the best of the best in crazy. (But you know, I suppose all countries will claim it.)
A really good post Jack! Fantastic food for thought...

Jack Jodell said...

Thanks, Gwendolyn! While we have had many eccentrics and eccentricities in our political history, this current phenomenon of irrational, contradictory, obstructionist, and downright hateful far-right Republicanism is illogical and scary. I think we all need a thorough explanation of it, and that's why I'm calling on psychologists and psychiatrists to provide just that.

Commander Zaius said...

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

This variant is spoken by Prometheus, in The Masque of Pandora (1875) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Jack Jodell said...

Great quote, Beach Bum, and let's hope it holds true for these conservative Republicans!

Manifesto Joe said...

Achtung, Herr Jack Jodell: After ze coup, ve shall haf ze camps for ze likes of you!

Jack Jodell said...

Hey, Teabagger -er- Manifesto Joe, let's hope it never comes to that! With the hatred the GOP is stirring up among the wacko teabagger crowd, though, who knows? SCARY!

TomCat said...

Then let's try theory number two. They're an obvious case of improper potty training. ;-)

Jack Jodell said...

TomCat,
HAAAA---I love it! That explains why they keep crapping all over themselves, and on US, too! :-)

TomCat said...

Yeah! I wish they'd stay on their own side of the kitty box. :-(

Lisa G. said...

I think even the psychiatrists would go crazy studying that bunch!