Our National Sociopathy
By Joe Bageant
There is a dark side to any state induced oblivion -- in this case, our national and international sociopathy, our unacknowledged inner and outer violence. By now it should be clear that our national and personal sociopathy stems more from our environment and culture than anything our mamas and daddies did to us in childhood, lousy as those things may have been for some. This ain't Kansas anymore and besides, our parents were products of the same culture, only less so.
When researchers dive into the subject, they find far more pearls in the interaction of our innate neurological wiring with the kind of society we live in than they ever did in the waters of family abuse -- though family abuse is at least partly a result of the state produced reality -- or attachment disorder. American culture makes more families than families make culture, chicken or the egg proposition as that is. Your mama may have been a drunk and your daddy may have been pawing over your cheerleading squad, true, but people have been boozing and leching for a long, long time.
On the other hand, if you have absorbed directly into your little sugar charged neuro-system the bread and circus offerings of the Empire, some 100,000 shootings, stabbings, stranglings, abductions, robberies, murders, car wrecks, stalkings, war footage and combat scenes, not to mention high pressure sales for video games of war and mayhem, well, mama back there in the bedroom sleeping off a fifth of Jack Daniels may not be the worst problem you had as a developing child. Only a fool would argue that American television makes does not make its viewers, particularly children, more aggressive, fearful of the world around them and less sensitive to pain and suffering of others -- especially these days of swarthy Middle Eastern peoples and for a while there, even the hapless French. Even so, there are plenty of Americans who still say television has no effect. We might ask: “Then why the hell do corporations spend billions on television advertising so they can reach you?" And that's just the TV side of the violent culture problem.
Throw in politicized fundamentalist religion, with its unwarranted persecution complex (We cain't let Stacy Sue git that abortion, that feetus might be another Billy Graham or at least a Trent Lott, fer heaven sake!) religion with a vengeful, repressive Calvinist bent, and corporate media sucking up to the government for campaign adds, government issued bandwidth and corporate concessions, and you have a perfect cultural storm, where resentment turning to hatred becomes the national identity.
It seems doubtful that logic or reason will ever provide the answer to this, our people's dilemma. A culture wrought so completely in unquestioned contradiction isn't likely to be persuaded by logical argument, no matter how compelling. The answer is most likely, like the problem, to be found within the culture itself -- perhaps within latent anti-authoritarian and anti-aristocracy inclinations once more obvious in Americans (if any germ of it remains) The same inclinations that have been reframed by authoritarian Leo Straussians new transnational capitalist class elites as restraints on freedom and prosperity. One hopes so. After all, the anti-authoritarian American myth, for better or worse, and though it may be buried so far down in then national psyche it's gonna take dynamite to get it out, is not dead. In fact, it is what the corporcracy currently uses both to beat us all into submission, and to display the imaginary golden carrot to the unwashed.
Which is why so many ordinary working people honestly believe that by voting Republican they just might yet become rich. They see it as a party of the rich and want to be associated with it. They like the small government platform or the family values platform or because they are born-again.
There is another simpler reason why so many lower-middle-class waitresses in Kansas and Hispanic warehouse workers in Texas now call themselves Republicans. They believe American capitalism's longest standing political and philosophical lie -- that the rich and powerful are most suited to lead and tell them what is good for them and will lead them to become rich, or at least richer. Which fits very nicely with the leadership of American fundamentalism, who are equally convinced that people should not so much as fart without the blessing of some higher authority. The affinity between the neo-cons and fundie church leadership is certainly no mystery. Their Christian leadership is in complete agreement with the Straussian principle that “perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is absolutely necessary, because the people need powerful rulers to define what is good for them.”
One can read this as a kind of black Straussian inflicted comedy, but that gives Leo Strauss too much credit. American working people have been doing this -- though not to the present degree -- before Leo Strauss performed ever buggered Paul Wolfowitz and Bill Kristol. Working folks believe what cannot be true, which is their chief virtue by Straussian measure. Good little people, easy to manage and ever optimistic. Yet, while the Chicago boys may not have entirely created the sorry assed misguided situation we now have, you've got to give them credit. They sure as hell set about instituting their loathsome program at an opportune time in history.
