It is interesting to me that amidst the general outrage and media dismay about McCain's smear campaign no one appears to be talking about an obvious connection to Karl Rove. It is so striking: Rove is a murderer of character, unafraid to apply the ultimate aggression against his opposition, perhaps even relishing the carnage and the suffering, who knows. His protege Steve Schmidt is an advisor to McCain. Rove is a fascinating mentality, a Machievellian sociopath, clearly along with Cheney one of the most dangerous men in America, truly ruthless in pursuit of his aims, willing to take it to the lowest level emotionally, and playing the media for the fools they are--oh,I almost forgot: he is one of the media! Now he can protest that his own tactics are going "too far" and sound reasonable, then complain about "unfair attacks by the left" against Sarah Palin--and almost sound reasonable. If you get a chance read the article by Matt Taibbi in the current Rolling Stone: The Return of Karl Rove. Amazing that this isn't being looked into more in the media.
It is a given that all Presidential candidates are narcissistic; I don't think there is any choice about this quality of personality, other than a question of degree. What concerns me is other personality variables, which are probably as good an explanation as any we have for patterns of belief, world view and consequently, behavioral tendencies. I am particularly wary of the histrionic type as a Presidential candidate. I will admit that I like to blame Ronald Reagan for most of the country's current problems, probably unfairly. In my view Reagan, while undeniably "The Great Communicator" was also "The Great Deceiver", leading us over the cliff named "Morning in America" like a nation of lemmings.
The current crisis in this country is only Reagan's chickens coming home to roost, from my perspective. I know it was nurtured by Clinton, and certainly by Bush et al. However, it was Reagan, who effectively brainwashed most Americans in to buying the idea that unfettered capitalism is the solution to our national needs, while government can only be "the problem", something to be gotten rid of. That the way to prosperity is to concentrate capital at the top, and gut any government regulations or agencies that might get in the way--even as you started seeing homeless people on a large scale for the first time.
What made Reagan so dangerous, so effective as to be able to create a nation of free market capitalists, even as many of the people are victimized by such policies? Was it his vision? Yes, because this vision was incorporated into a histrionic personality style, which had been refined into an communication art during his career in movies, then television. A frequent complaint about movies is that they have nothing to do with real life; that is because the essential ingredient, the real value is drama, so accuracy and veracity is often sacrified to this end.
Histrionic types are all about drama and romance, as a substitute for a more nuanced view of reality. The Marlboro Man is an example of a histrionic type. This would be a little closer to John McCain than Reagan, who was more genial, but of course did star in Westerns. The histrionic type is entrapped within his personal sense of drama or melodrama and can relate to the world only in such terms.
A personality disorder is characterized by a rigidity of viewpoint and beliefs, which affects cognition, behavior impulse control and interpersonal relations, is inflexible and pervasive across various situations and enduring. The histrionic type will tend to construe the world according to his own inner drama, usually with himself as the protagonist. So he is "saving us from them", riding into Washington "to clean up the mess", given to displays of macho temper outbursts, compulsively seductive and philandering, revels in the role of "outsider". Maybe that is the key thing, reveling in the role, in the drama, rather than just "being a good statesman" or leader, or being emotionally driven by a genuine altruism, rather than the drama of being "populist leader". It is truly scary to think of the power a histrionic POTUS has to externalize his inner dramatic needs on to the entire country.
A job like POTUS will naturally attract narcissistic and histrionic types, since the drama and high profile is so unique as to be ultimate. Good politicians all have a histrionic flair, or they don't connect with people sufficiently. What we don't need is someone with a histrionic personality disorder again!
From the Huffington Post, September 19, 2008
An Open Letter to All Republicans From a Former Religious Right
Activist
By Frank Schaeffer
Dear Republicans: This election all Republicans who love America must vote for Obama. A vote for business-as-usual and a continuation of the Neoconservative/Religious Right/ party of corporate American alienation is a vote against America. As a former Republican activist, I appeal to your patriotism and honor.
Unless you haven't been paying attention to the recent history of the Republican Party you will know that today Republican ideology and energy is derived from three sources:
* The Religious Right,
* The Neoconservative Movement,
* Corporate business interests.
You also should know that when it comes to the Religious Right my late father
and evangelist, Francis Schaeffer, was the intellectual voice that made it
happen. As his young sidekick (in the 70s and 80s) I helped take his message to
a huge evangelical audience.
I mention this by way of saying that even if you hate my guts -- for having dropped out of the Republican Party, for writing novels that make fun of you, and for reregistering as an independent voter, let alone for supporting Senator Obama -- perhaps you should listen up. I happen to know what I'm talking about.
So let's look at the three power centers that drive the Republican Party today.
The Religious Right
The Religious Right came about for one reason and one reason only: it was a
reaction to Roe v. Wade and the legalization of abortion in 1973. The Supreme
Court essentially created the culture wars. (A state-by-state approach to
legalizing abortion would have been better and resulted in much the same
situation we have today in terms of the availability of abortion.) Take Roe out
of the political mix and there would be no Religious Right.
That said -- certain power-hungry individuals (Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, Rove, Reed et al.) took the energy of our original pro-life movement and used it to build a hate campaign reminiscent of the early momentum that drove European Fascist parties in the mid-1920s through the mid-1940s. Fear of the "other" gays, immigrants, intellectuals, artists, the media, feminists, etc., morphed into a general critique of "the elite" which turned out to be anyone with an education or even big city dwellers. The Religious Right became a crude populist movement pitting the resentful rubes against the rest.
Take a hard look at yourselves. Play back this year's Republican convention and you'll see an all-white crowd of people screaming for offshore oil drilling -- fat lot of good that will do! more carbon! more polution! -- and essentially reacting like starved hyenas when presented with a piece of juicy carrion. At the convention Sarah Palin and others produced nothing more than a snide list of smart ass put downs aimed at the really dumb, with so little substance that former conservatives such the late William F. Buckley, for instance (let alone my late father) would simply have been ashamed to be in your company. You have become a hate-filled rabble proud of your ignorance and resentful of the rest of your own country, resentment that's exceeded only by your maudlin (and false) sense of victimhood.
People that hate half the population of their own country can scarcely be called patriots. On the contrary, people who exult in mocking as their only way to "contribute" to solving our huge environmental, energy, military and economic problems are true subversives.
The smell emanating from your convention was that of a beer hall putsch circa 1930s, not anything remotely like participation in a democracy. Now you all know what it felt like to be in a lynch mob minus the hanging. You should be ashamed. But shame is something that apparently Republicans are no longer capable of feeling, at least when you get together in a mob.
If you could feel shame there would have been a series of contrite public apologies at your convention for the incredible fiasco of non-governing that has typified the Bush administration. My pension, other people's pensions, our homes, jobs and economy are in chaos because of you. Young Americans are dying in Iraq because of you. The world is a more dangerous place because of you. America is hated because of you. Yes, that is you personally. I blame all of you.
You are the people who gave us eight years of Bush. My Marine son fought in his wars. Cowards, where were most of your sons and daughters? The President's daughters were getting arrested for under age drinking and harassing their Secret Service detail. The rest of you were shopping.
Far from saying you're sorry for the state our country is in you're trying to change the subject by reviving a culture war that has nothing to do with the principled fight against abortion of the 1970s that my dad and I began, and everything to do with simply hating people not like yourselves. The ultimate irony is that you're doing this in the name of Jesus Christ, someone, by the way, whom I try to follow as a Christian. You have become blasphemers by dragging our Lord into your political games.
The Republican Party and the Religious Right have become "Christian" warmongers who applaud the use of torture, start needless wars, fight against civil rights for gays and other disadvantaged Americans, and perhaps worst of all, in terms of the long-term impact, have literally turned your hands against God's creation.
You have a little fool for a vice presidential candidate who says she doesn't believe that human beings have anything to do with the phenomena of global warming and the endangering of all human life on this planet. Dream on. This fool claims to know what she knows because of an absolute "I don't blink" confidence in herself. So on top of everything else this fool who says she is a Christian, proves she is not. She lacks any shred of decent humility, the most basic biblical virtue.
The Neoconservative Movement
Let's be honest: the Neoconservative Movement is nothing more than an
kill-all-the-Arabs, pro-Israel-at-any-cost, morally bankrupt lobby that
actually turns out to be anti-Israel. Why? Because taken to the logical
conclusion the neoconservative's position on everything--from illegal West Bank
settlements, to making war on Iran, not to mention the absolutely useless waste
of life that's taken place in Iraq, warlike preparations against Syria and just
about every other Middle Eastern country, no, scratch that, every other
country in the world--puts Israel in worse jeopardy than ever before.
Fortunately for everyone, it seems that most Israelis "get" this, as well as most Jewish Americans (who vote Democratic) even if a few Neoconservative Jews, most Evangelicals and all the other Republican zealots don't. (Most Jews also know that the idiot fringe so-called Christian Zionists like Rev., Hagee, are no friends to Israel, rather they are perpetuating a doomsday nineteenth century Armageddon/ "Rapture" cult that wants to use the Jews as cosmic "End Times" cannon fodder.)
Get it through your thick heads: a state of permanent war between the West, including Israel and the United States, and the Muslim world is a war that Israel will eventually lose. Do the demographic math!
Republicans: You have been tricked and misled by; Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Robert Kagan, Michael Ledeen, William Kristol, Frank Gaffney, Jr. Dick Cheney. These neofools have unwittingly set in motion the destruction of Israel (probably in our lifetimes) and have maybe killed America too. Bastards! Republicans: It will be remembered that you embraced these world-hating self-deluded paranoid blabberers and made their twisted sound-bite polemics your own.
Those who, like me, actually believe that Israel has the right to exist should look on the Neoconservatives listed above with the same loathing that we look back on the idiots who goaded Europe into World War I, also in the name of "nationalism," "democracy" and "freedom."
Belligerent posturing is not a policy, it is idiocy. You Republicans have become the party of perpetual fear and aggressive non-provoked war, seeing enemies where there are none and/or provoking former friends to become our enemies, and/or faking reasons for war and/or wasting our soldier's blood in places such as Afghanistan, where our cause was just but you fumbled the ball.
Your moron vice presidential candidate is still at it! While turning her son's deployment to war into a flag-dishonoring political circus stunt she repeated the Bush lie and said that her son was going off to fight the perpetrators of 9/11. This is a barefaced lie and you all know it. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. The only reason we attacked them is because the fools listed above decided it would be good for Israel and our stupid "president" went along.
Now you belligerent asses are supporting the same idiot (McCain) that helped bring us Iraq. He is now champing at the bit to revive the cold, and maybe a hot war with Russia! Have you gone mad? Can't you see you have an old foolish semi-senile man mired in the bathos of post-Vietnam "we were denied victory" psychosis for a candidate? Don't you know that Bush has made us weak?
You Republicans did to our military what the USSR could not do: demoralize it, stretch it beyond breaking and set it back decades. And now you want MORE wars?!
Corporate Business Interests
The Republican Party claims traditional values. It has propagated a
laissez-faire attitude toward corporate interests and has -- literally -- stood
back and encouraged the rape of the earth. You are the party of the
earth-hogging SUV. You have literally sowed the wind and reaped the hurricanes.
This is as self-defeating as it is embarrassing for those claiming the moral high ground, particularly those who say that their philosophy represents traditional Judeo-Christian values. We all live here for crying out loud! Will you now fight our God and Creator too for the "right" to burn the last drop of oil while on a weekend jaunt to nowhere in your all-terrain piece of garbage?
Conclusion
The Republican problem is a systemic disparagement of government, community,
faith in our institutions, family, God's creation and the mitigating
institutions that put a check on something any party aligned with a religious
movement should know all about: sin. Greed is not the only problem. Human
weakness and stupidity (i.e., "sin") is the problem! And the genius
of the American system is supposedly that we have a system of checks and
balances to mitigate our fallen state. You have destroyed those checks and balances.
Bush felt no guilt about promoting completely unqualified people to high posts merely on the basis of social, ideological or political connections. I'll take that a step further: I don't think Bush ever wanted the government to work. You Republicans hate our government as bitterly as our terrorist enemies do. You have been trying to deconstruct it. Since the government is seen as the enemy of freedom by you, if it doesn't work so much the better!
We have met the enemy and he is us! When Islamists tried to destroy our
country by flying planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Towers, we
rightly called them terrorists. When the Republicans in the Congress and the
White House set about destroying our country, our standing in the world, our
military and our economy, but much more effectively, you called them statesmen.
It is time for all Americans -- including all you who are patriotic
Republicans -- to sweep away these putrid earth-consuming, family killing,
government bashing "me" worshipping individualistic fools--that or to
watch our country be swept away by them. We can't afford eight more years of
this willful ignorance. Obama in 2008!
Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The
Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All)
Of It Back.
NOW IN PAPERBACK
Nowdays, professional wrestling makes no pretense to be a sport. Vince M, one of the major promoters, will openly, refreshingly, refer to wrestling as entertainment, and himself as being “in the entertainment business”. Wrestlers have well-delineated characters and storylines with “personal narratives”; feuds and vendettas are common and sometimes multi-generational, having to do with apparent personal dislikes, lust for power and glory within the “rasslin” empire, slurs on character and conflicts over core values and beliefs, like: good and evil (as symbolized in choice of costume and hairstyle). Huge arenas have replaced the intimacy of the small television studio, and the huge crowds of people in the stands are real, rather than painted prop scenery beyond the first two rows, as was the case back in the day. Spectacle is the order of the day, with fireworks, rock "theme music", cage enclosures dropped from the ceiling for “death matches” and the like. The bodies of the wrestlers are enormous and steroid-enhanced (although they would deny this). Blood is often everywhere and the action is nonstop, often spilling into the stands. The stories are always variations on the same few themes and the “rasslin” itself is predictable, almost incidental. What are people really interested in? What is it? Certainly not a sport, for it is a travesty of sport, and makes no pretense to be anything other than entertainment. Drama? Is there any drama in it really, since you know how it is going to end at the beginning? Blood? Even if it is fake? It must be comedy, buffoonery of a loud, spectacular and bloody sort. A distraction, an escape into fantasy. Yet it is a legitimate and serious business and quite profitable, apparently, requiring only the merest pretense of a connection to factual reality, a pretense of relating to something in the world, while clearly being a fantasy. “Rasslin” is a world unto itself, like the real world, a parallel media-made universe. But, there is no mistaking “rasslers” for wrestlers. "Rasslers" are not athletes and not really actors (although some appear in movies), they are caricatures, grossly exaggerated clowns. We can enjoy them, laugh, cheer them on, but none of us really believe in the fantasy? Or do we? Perhaps a few children might these days, but I doubt it. Did "rasslin" exist before television? Is it a byproduct of television, showing the effect of television in distorting a sport, or any social phenomenon, which becomes "buffoonized" for mass entertainment? Does it reflect an escapist blood-lust of the public, a derivative of the gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome as offered through the filter of television? Can “rasslers” ever go back to being wrestlers? As a kid I used to wonder, but now I know better –why would they, after all?
Another thought has to do with children’s fairy tales, and what makes them fairy tales: in fairy tales powerful forces, usually negative, dark, mean and ugly- looking have cast a spell, usually as a punishment, or to remove a threat to power. The unfortunate recipient is distorted, socially neutralized and turned into something non-human, like a frog, or made comatose. The spell is broken when a beautiful princess or protagonist takes a leap of faith and kisses the frog, either because she is told to or maybe because she thinks she loves it under the influence of a counter spell. Once the spell is broken the original form and virtuous qualities of the person are restored and evident to all. Is the restoration what makes it a fairy tale? I would be interested to hear about people’s views on the impact and causes ofmedia “spinfotainment” and "buffoonization" in the current political process and how this can be rendered less malignant, and more supportive of American ideals and democracy than it seems to be currently. Is anything other than propaganda and caricature truly possible, or permissible currently, or is the idea as far-fetched as a fairy tale? A Greek ideal from the irrelevant past? On the brighter side, I finally cancelled my Comcast subscription last month, and am enjoying being unplugged from the television.
I find myself thinking about wrestling lately. Not so much about Graeco-Roman wrestling, or wrestling as one would see it in the Olympics. Olympic style wrestling is probably as pure a form of athletic competition as there is, having the most highly conditioned athletes, pound for pound, displaying strength, stamina, strategy, courage and wiliness in a contest of dominance, a symbolic connection to Greek civilization and its ideals. Olympic wrestling can be incredibly dramatic, and sometimes controversial, and it does require some sophistication and understanding of the rules to fully appreciate. Lately, though, I’m not thinking about Olympic ideals; what I can’t stop thinking about is Pro Wrestling, or “Rasslin”, as it used to be called. When I was young I used to watch “rasslin” on television on Saturday evenings. Bruno Sammartino was the regional champion, and he was “a good guy”. George “The Animal” Steele was one of several nemeses. George was not morally bad, just mostly animalistic, while others were morally questionable, even communist-leaning. When the referee would turn his back momentarily, the bad guy would bite, or gouge, or knee Bruno in the groin, or smash a chair over his head, or throw him out of the ring altogether, and Bruno would writhe in agony. As a kid I used to get pretty tense as I would watch Bruno appear to be succumbing to a “death grip” or “sleeper hold”, only to catch his wind and somehow manage to take advantage of some fundamental flaw or error by the bad guy ( possibly the bad guy’s arrogance, or gloating- signs of poor character and bad sportsmanship) before finally jumping off the ropes and bodyslamming the cheater into the mat for a three-count. As a child I sort of had the idea that this was different from other sports, was more of a drama acting like a sport, and might be staged or fake, much as it disturbed me to think about Bruno Sammartino being involved in any fakery. But I wanted to believe in it, because I enjoyed the drama, and I especially wanted to believe in Bruno, and so I left the possibility of fakery as an open question: a maybe. I thought the “rasslers” probably had known how to wrestle at one point, which lent a degree of credibility to it in my mind.
Nowdays, professional wrestling makes no pretense to be a sport. Vince M, one of the major promoters, will openly, refreshingly, refer to wrestling as entertainment, and himself as being “in the entertainment business”. Wrestlers have well-delineated characters and storylines with “personal narratives”; feuds and vendettas are common and sometimes multi-generational, having to do with apparent personal dislikes, lust for power and glory within the “rasslin” empire, slurs on character and conflicts over core values and beliefs, like: good and evil (as symbolized in choice of costume and hairstyle). Huge arenas have replaced the intimacy of the small television studio, and the huge crowds of people in the stands are real, rather than painted prop scenery beyond the first two rows, as was the case back in the day. Spectacle is the order of the day, with fireworks, rock "theme music", cage enclosures dropped from the ceiling for “death matches” and the like. The bodies of the wrestlers are enormous and steroid-enhanced (although they would deny this). Blood is often everywhere and the action is nonstop, often spilling into the stands. The stories are always variations on the same few themes and the “rasslin” itself is predictable, almost incidental. What are people really interested in? What is it? Certainly not a sport, for it is a travesty of sport, and makes no pretense to be anything other than entertainment. Drama? Is there any drama in it really, since you know how it is going to end at the beginning? Blood? Even if it is fake? So “rasslin” is not really drama, and not sport, so maybe it is simply pure entertainment?Yet it is a serious business and quite profitable, apparently. The entertainment seems to require only the merest pretense of a connection to factual reality, a pretense of relating to something in the world, while clearly being a fantasy: “rasslin” is a world unto itself, just like the real world, a parallel media-made universe. Still, there is no mistaking “rasslers” for wrestlers. Can “rasslers” ever go back to wrestling? As a kid I used to wonder, but now I know better –why would they?
Another thought has to do with children’s fairy tales, and what makes them fairy tales: in fairy tales powerful forces, usually negative, dark, mean and ugly- looking have cast a spell, usually as a punishment, or to remove a threat to power. The unfortunate recipient is distorted, socially neutralized and turned into something non-human, like a frog, or made comatose. The spell is broken when a beautiful princess or protagonist takes a leap of faith and kisses the frog, either because she is told to or maybe because she thinks she loves it under the influence of a counter spell. Once the spell is broken the original form and virtuous qualities of the person are restored and evident to all. Is the restoration what makes it a fairy tale? I would be interested to hear about people’s views on the role of the media “spinfotainment” and "buffoonization" in the political process and how this can be rendered less malignant, and more supportive of American ideals and democracy than it seems to be currently. Is it possible or a just a fairy tale? A Greek ideal from the irrelevant past? On the brighter side, I finally cancelled my Comcast subscription last month, and am enjoying being unplugged from the television.
I find myself thinking about the timing of Ms. Ferraro's remarks. Why now? Could it have to do with the upcoming, last-ditch attempt to wrest the nomination by Hillary Clinton, through a huge victory in Pennsylvania? What would this require in terms of voter motivation and turn out? How about fears of blacks taking over the country to motivate those conservative voters in the middle of the state? My bet is that the intended audience for these comments is the central-Pennsylvania voter. Having grown up in Western PA, I can tell you that there are some highly conservative, racist-tending folk in the middle of that state, which is why it is described as "Alabama stuck in between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh". I was struck by the defiant posture Ms. Ferraro took after being confronted regarding her comments. However, her posturing would make sense as a way of keeping the race theme in the news. It seems she could care less what blacks or liberal whites might think of her remarks, and this would be logical, if the remarks are being made primarily in an effort to "speak to the base" in Central PA. Of course the Clinton campaign can reject, disavow, etc. in the classic Rove-Atwater manner.
