"The mask of sanity is slipping from the GOP" by Paul Rosenberg at al Jazeerah

[applegrove]

The mask of sanity is slipping from the GOP

by Paul Rosenberg at al Jazeerah

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210281028546997.html

"SNIP.............................................

This brings us to another aspect of the GOP's recent unravelling. Romney's not the only one in trouble, as the GOP's senate prospects have soured significantly as well, and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi is even talking about Democrats regaining the House. This is partly the result of changing voter attitudes, reflected in the fact that fewer people are identifying as Republicans, and more are identifying as independents and Democrats. But it's also the result of individual Republican candidates inadvertently revealing their true colours - or else having them exposed against their will. Thus, we have Missouri Senate candidate Todd Aikin's remarks about "legitimate rape", Wisconsin Senate candidate Tommy Thompson's bragging about his credibility in getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid (thus confirming PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year&quot , Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown's attack on Elizabeth Warren for claiming her Native American heritage - and the racist taunting of his senate staffers that echoed his remarks.

It's not that any of these are necessarily symptoms of psychopathy, though they do have some of its flavour. More importantly, they reflect a political environment in which such behaviour is generally tolerated, even celebrated, an environment in which traditional norms of civility, decency and personal responsibility have utterly eroded, and in which an ordinary concern for others is regarded with contempt. They signal the emergence of wild-eyed, high-risk attack mode as the new normal in Republican politics. And they are just a few of the more well-known examples.

By its very nature as a clinical diagnosis, the psychopathic model is ill-suited to definitively describing political phenomena. It is much better suited to raising questions - such as what sort of social ideal the GOP has in mind - rather than answering them. But there are other ways of understanding how the GOP has gone off the rails.

One such approach is to study the unshakable belief in disproven "facts", which in the GOP's case justify continuing disastrous behaviour which can be deeply destructive of human well-being. This was illuminated by a 2009 paper, "'There Must Be a Reason': Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification", (reported on by Science Daily here), which found that Bush voters who believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks did not change their minds when presented with correcting information -even when it came in the form of a quote from Bush himself denying that any connection had ever been made. One powerful factor influencing their reasoning was "inferred justification", as the researchers explained, "the fact of the war led to a search for a justification for it, which led them to infer the existence of ties between Iraq and 9/11". Of course, it wasn't just the fact of the war, but also the belief that it was just, and thus had some just cause behind it. Otherwise, why try to justify it?

.............................................SNIP"

[KelleyD]

1. They nailed it

Very disheartening the other nations can see this dysfunction in our system. I just wish our own electorate could see through the fog of the right wing conspiracy.

[DCBob]

2. I believe many are clinically deranged..

their hatred of all things Liberal and/or Obama have taken them off the deep end. Its a serious problem and many may need therapy after this election.. seriously.

[Speck Tater]

3. K&R

[hedda_foil]

4. This is terrific stuff. Check this part out too.

"As I noted in an earlier column, Ayn Rand modelled her first prototypical hero, Danny Renahan, on an infamous psycho-killer of her day, William Hickman, as described by author Michael Prescott, who quotes an excerpt about Renahan, from Rand's journal:

[Renahan] is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness - [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should.

The organ that Renahan lacks is what we humans know as conscience. And this "heroic" lack of conscience is what large swaths of today's Republican Party has -rather shockingly - come to revere. This represents a dramatic shift, since as recently as the late 1990s the internet was awash with more conventional libertarians heaping scorn on Ayn Rand's brand, known as "Objectivism", which they justifiably derided as a cult. Times have clearly changed.

This is not to say that Mitt Romney, or even Paul Ryan is himself a psychopath - even though Ryan repeatedly praised Ayn Rand over the years and gave his staffers her books to read. But it is to say that Romney and Ryan have risen to the top of a political culture that actively praises the psychopath's lack of conscience and attacks
those who have a conscience as being socialists and communists."

[DCBob]

5. I think many in GOP think this may be their last chance to win the WH..

with demographics shifting against them. They see the country slipping away into a "liberal abyss" and the government eventually coming after their guns, their bibles, their money, their women, etc etc. They have been so twisted by Faux Newz and other RW media they cant think rationally anymore.