There is only one way to interpret the GOP at this point in time. They are nuts. If you want the clinical definition, the party platform is schizophrenic, and the top of the ticket is sociopathic. I don't need to explain sociopath; but in this diary, I want to lay out for you symptoms that constitute classic schizophrenic behavior. You may recognize them.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and by poor emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction.
- Wikipedia
Let me begin with a readable, if oversimplified and exaggerated, summary of the state of mind of a schizophrenic:
We hear voices of impelling importance that criticize us and tell us what to do. At the same time, we seem to lose the boundaries of ourselves. Time crumbles. We behave without knowing it. Our mental space begins to vanish. WE panic, and yet the panic is not happening to us. There is no us. It is not that we have nowhere to turn. We have nowhere. And in that nowhere, we are somehow automatons, unknowing what we do, being manipulated by others or by our voices in strange and frightening ways in a place we come to recognize as a hospital with a diagnosis we are told is schizophrenia.
- Julian Jaynes, The Origins of Consicousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
If you find that describes the state of politics in America (or at least in the GOP), below the little orange straightjacket, I will get into some detail on hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking, and social dysfunction.
Yes, its another arendt extended metaphor. You've been warned. :-)
Just to be clear, the metaphor here is comparing the collective political discourse of our country to the state of mind of a schizophrenic human being. I am not saying any particular person is schizophrenic, but that the behavior of the organzation/electorate as a whole is schizophrenic.
1. Hallucinations and Delusions
Sometimes the voices seem to begin as thoughts which then transform themselves into vague whispers, which then gradually become louder and more authoritative...It is not uncommon to hear patients at certain stages of their illness complain that the voices express their thoughts before they have a chance to think them themselves...
If we confine ourselves to florid, unmedicated schizophrenics, we can state that (auditory) hallucinations are ABSENT in only exceptional cases. Usually, they crowd in persistently and massively, making the patient appear confused, particularly when they (the hallucinations) are changing rapidly...
- J. Jaynes
Isn't this exactly what has transpired in the American media over the last twenty-plus years, since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of cable tv? Formerly lunatic-right positions started popping up in mainstream corporate media - of course, Fox News was always the pulsing heart of these hallucinations, dealing in lies and smears from day one; picking the whispers out of the garbage in the Drudge Report. It is a case of what I will name
Media-induced Societal Schizophrenia.
Dittoheads are an example of the metaphor in action in the society at large. They are literally proud of repeating (like an automaton) the reactionary talking points of the day to anyone they can corner. New, counterfactual conspiracy theories (i.e., paranoid delusions) spring up like mushrooms after the rain. So fast, that during the GOP primary season, following the party line from one deranged candidate to the next "made the patient appear confused". But, like automatons, they always obey their masters' voices in the right wing media.
Now, my argument isn't your blanket Herman Goering contempt for the reasoning powers of the electorate. It is more focused than that. I am saying that a bought-and-paid-for corporate media is conducting a large-scale propaganda intervention, and has succeeded in removing large numbers of Americans from having a grip on reality.
Where I have to tread carefully is in describing exactly what sub-population of America has lost its grip. I mean no disrespect to religion. But it is a fact that schizophrenics have a warped relationship to religion.
auditory hallucinations in general are not even slightly under the control of the individual himself, but they are extremely susceptible to even the most innocuous suggestion from the total social circumstances of which the individual is a part...
A further observation is...that hallucinations are dependent on the teachings and expectations of childhood...the voice-figures of schizophrenia...are authority figures created by the nervous system out of the patient's admonitory experience and his cultural expectations...
Religious hallucinations are particularly common in the so-called twilight states, which are a kind of waking dream in many patients...Invariably such states are characterized by religious visions, posturing, ceremony, and worship.
Often the paranoid, after a lengthy period of difficulties in getting on with people, may begin the schizophrenic aspect of his illness with an hallucinated religious experience in which an angel, Christ, or God speaks to the patient.
-J. Jaynes
Now, over the last forty years, a new kind of phony-Christianity has been set-up. Its tenets are the opposite of Christianity: racism, Social Darwinism, mysogyny, anti-intellectualism, millenialism. Big money has been spent wrapping a bubble of this phony religion around people desperate for meaning, living in a world where corporations have destroyed communities, livelihoods, the environment, and civil discourse. When you are starving, both physically and psychologically, you will go to the soup kitchen and listen to the sermon. You will buy the Mammon-worshipping "Jesus wants you to be cruel, selfish, and rich" bullshit that substitutes for Christianity.
The problem we are now facing is an entire generation of children formed by the toxic child-rearing practices of fundamentalism. Practices that include, at the extremes, submerging babies' heads in water to make them stop crying, beating children for disobedience, home schooling them in what amounts to madrassas.
There is an entire generation whose "admonitory experience" and "cultural expectations" have been formed by these cruel and un-Christian practices. Statistically, some of these people will develop schizophrenia - just like any other group in the society. I'm not blaming religion for schizophrenia. Its just statistics.
The problem is that the symptoms of schizophrenia include a lot of religious behaviors; so the sick individuals may not get serious medical treatment. Instead, they may ride out the acute phase of their illness and go on to operate the rest of their adult lives on delusions formed during a psychotic break. Especially when there is a massive social support network for their delusions in the form of rightwing media and rightwing churches.
Some schizophrenics turn out to be quite charismatic after their psychotic break. They can be used as compelling front-men by the funders of these phony Christian sects. This is one explanation for the "glassy eyed stare" stereotype of religious fanatics.
2. Disorganized thinking and social dysfunction
A schizophrenic not only begins to lose his "I" but also his mind-space (the space in which we introspect). To the patient it feels like losing his thoughts, or "thought deprivation", a phrase which elicits immediate recognition from the schizophrenic.
Patients are unable to utilize information to prepare in advance for things that may happen to them...A patient who has been sorting blocks on the basis of form may be unable to shift to sorting them for color when instructed to sort in a different way.
- J. Jaynes
When I listen to GOP rhetoric, all I get is the feeling of "thought deprivation". These people do not think. They are automatons. They never change their mode. The GOP just nominated two evil scumbags who are going to implement more of the same disastrous economic policies that just ruined our economy. They simply do not think straight.
The Failure of Narratization
Logical reasons cannot be given for behaviors, and verbal answers to questions do not originate in any interior mind-space, but in simple associations or in the external circumstances of a conversation...
With the loss of the "I", behavior is either responding to hallucinated directives, or continues on by habit. The remnant of the self feels like a commanded automaton, as if someone else were moving the body about. He may shake hands normally with a visitor, but, asked about this, reply, "I don't do it, the hand proffers itself."
...Conscious feelings rarely accompany the automatisms...The patients can dance and laugh without feeling happy; can commit murder without hating; do away with themselves without being disappointed with life...the patients realize that they are not their own masters.
- J. Jaynes
You could sum up the entire GOP campaign as a "Failure of Narratization" - a pile of illogical monkey screeches that are nothing more than "simple associations" or "external circumstances of a conversation". The entire party, as I said earlier, is nuts, schizophrenic, beyond reason.
The leadership, which is sociopathic, but not schizophrenic, has calculated that now is the time to go full-court crazy. Now is the time to announce their intention to destroy the middle class, enrich the obscenely rich, and turn the country into a theocratic police state. They think they have enough media-manufactured nutcases on their side, and they can steal enough votes and create enough confusion to complete their 30 year power grab before the demographics makes it impossible.
Unfortunately for sane people, at least 15-20% of the electorate is capable of "committing murder without hating" simply by passing laws that will destroy the economy, destroy the healthcare system, defund the police and fire departments. They are capable of "doing away with themselves" by ignoring climate change, by constantly instigating wars while ignoring our crumbling economy and infrastructure.
They will "stand at Armageddon and fight for the Lord", and that means backing Netanyahu and the Likud to start WW3 by attacking Iran, who is backed by Russia.
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I recognize that this kind of argument will get ZERO traction in the media, and probably zero traction here at Kos. People will say that attacking religion is out of bounds. But, that is only true when left attacks right. The right has no problem screaming that everyone else's religion is illegitimate or false, that everyone else is going to hell and they have the right to rule absolutely.
This diary is what they do to us. Its about time we laid out the entire creeping Big Lie tactics of the GOP, who have been warping this society until it more resembles a lunatic asylum than a democracy. If that includes religion, its because the GOP has manipulated religion, not to say manufactured religion, in its pursuit of political domination.
I may not be a politic person; but I am a logical person. It is time to stop trying to reason with lunatics led by sociopaths. It is time to fight for our lives, because they are literally coming for our country. There is no other way to look at the Ryan/Romney ticket, backed by Sheldon Adelson and other untracable billionaire contributions from overseas.