Republicans must take responsibility for their party creating a dysfunctional congress, senate and Supreme Court, in other words, stopping government from functioning properly. They have done it for money, politics and avarice. They have lulled half the country into believing government is not functioning when in fact it is Republicans in government who are not functioning. Republicans are campaigning to fix all the things they are responsible for breaking. They pathologically lie and misrepresent reality to the public. They have reduced any dialog to name calling and a smoke screen of bullshit. Trump, the man Republicans are nominating to run for President, is the complete embodiment of all the Republican party now represents.
The notion that Donald Trump some how represents the interests of working and middle class people is ludicrous since he is a billionaire, son of a millionaire. Donald Trump is not a pull your self up from the bootstraps, entrepreneur, businessman billionaire. He’s a member of the so-called “One Percent” of super rich billionaires. But he represents himself as an outsider, entrepreneur because he knows Americans like self-made people.
It appears that Donald scores high on “the psychopath test” as it is profiled in a book by Jon Ronson entitled “The Psychopath Test-A Journey through the Madness Industry.” © 2011. While it may be that many top executives and CEO’s would also score high on this test, the question remains, do we want someone who seems to mirror most of these attributes to be President of the United States?
Here is the famous twenty-point Hare PCL-R Psychopath Checklist as reported in the book (pg. 97) How many of the twenty signs appear to fit “The Donald?” Seems like he would get an A+ in a huge way.
- “Glibness/superficial charm
- Grandiose sense of self-worth
- Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
- Pathological lying
- Conning/manipulative
- Lack of remorse or guilt
- Shallow affect
- Callous/lack of empathy
- Parasitic lifestyle
- Poor behavioral controls
- Promiscuous sexual behavior
- Early behavior problems
- Lack of realistic long-term goals
- Impulsivity
- Irresponsibility
- Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
- Many short-term marital relationships
- Juvenile delinquency
- Revocation of conditional release
- Criminal versatility”
The current Republican nominee for President is running on all the problems created by the Republican’s for at least sixteen years beginning, after 9/11 with the lead up to and ultimately the Iraq war. One graphic example is ISIS, a result of invading Iraq and the Republican Cheney/Bush administration criminal misrepresentation of the reasons for the Iraq war as demonstrated in this PBS Frontline documentary
“The Secret History of ISIS 54:47Video duration: 54:47 Aired: 05/17/16 Rating: NRVideo has closed captioning.”
“From veteran FRONTLINE filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team comes the inside story of the creation of ISIS, and how the United States missed the many warning signs. The film uncovers the terror group’s earliest plans, the Islamic radicals who became its leaders, and the American failures to stop ISIS’s brutal rise.”
There is one possible error in the above copy for this documentary. The US did not miss “the many warning signs.” Republican’s Dick Cheney and George Bush ignored and suppressed the warning signs reported by US intelligence and others, so they could push the US into invading Iraq. This is apparent in the documentary and other sources.
The media and everyone else are reluctant to place the blame for problems, directly at the feet of the Republicans who caused the problems. News reporters on cable and in print constantly talk about the “dysfunction in congress.” What they should report is the Republican dysfunction in congress. By not reporting accurately and precisely they convey the impression that everyone in congress is part of the problem. When in fact it’s all coming from the Republican radicals and obstructionists who vowed from the start of President Obama’s first term to destroy and obstruct his administration. Interestingly news sources do not seem to have much of a problem reporting possibly negative issues relating directly to Democrats.
Now we have, an apparent Republican Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who is an obvious narcissistic, pathological liar manipulating and playing the media to his benefit. He has gotten more coverage than any candidate. He claims he’s going to fix everything the general public believes is wrong about the country. But he knows that it’s all a sham, that the public has been brainwashed with propaganda and conspiracy theories from Republicans, far right conservatives and lobbyists for many years. Trump used conspiracy theories like the racially motivated idea that President Obama wasn’t born in the US (Birthers) to keep his own name out there and to try to discredit the President. The public is distracted from the real problems by “dog whistle” issues that stir religious, racial, ethnic, cultural and social concerns. Working and middle class people succumb to tribal drum beats, as they dance in primitive circles, persuaded to vote against their own interests.
Voters believed that President Obama would bring change and end the wars the country was involved in when he was elected. But the Republicans made sure he couldn’t do it in an absolute way. For example, they watered down a very workable Affordable Health Care Act and then spent the next six years trying to destroy it in any way possible. Republicans made it impossible for the President to close Guantanamo by passing restrictive laws. Republicans tried to shut down the government and did, causing problems. Republicans stopped economic progress by not allowing the administrations plans for national infrastructure building and repair. Republicans voted against saving the American auto industry, brought to its knees by the Republican sponsored real estate crash beginning in 2007, but put up little resistance to the, too big to fail, bank bailout. The complete list is a story by itself.
Despite all the Republican dysfunction and obstruction, the President and the Democratic administration brought the country back from a terrible crisis in 2008. They saved the auto industry, which is doing well now, and paid back loans to the government, with interest. The economy has steadily improved, unemployment gone down, the deficit reduced, troops brought home. This doesn’t seem to get much press.
Republicans have wasted billions of dollars on committees to investigate things like Bengazi and Hillary Clinton’s emails all for political gain. There is a technique practiced by Fox News, the Republican propaganda cable news outlet. Make up absurd claims about anything, throw them out there, twenty-four/seven, and see if anything sticks. Create enough smoke so that the public will believe there is a fire and blame it on the firemen, in this case the President, the Democrats and Liberals. There is so much smoke the general public doesn’t know what to believe because they can’t see things clearly.
Another hoax perpetrated on the public is the myth of the “liberal media.” When ever a fact contrary to Republican interests is reported, even though it’s accurate, it is deemed as liberal. I suppose it is a “liberal” trait to tell the truth but in this case the term is used to discredit the reporting as biased in some way, perhaps because the information was reported on in the first place. It is also a way to intimidate the press into using language that is less precise and ambiguous. Instead of saying Republicans in congress are causing government to not function properly, the report defers to just saying “congress is causing…” This gives the impression that it is all of congress that is obstructing and not doing their jobs when in fact it is just the Republicans. The public believes it is all of congress and therefore government that is the problem.
At the same time as the right-wing is running around claiming liberal media bias they are using all sorts of “frames” and “spin” to make it appear that the problem is something other than their obstruction.
Who ever wins the Democratic Party Nomination will face an onslaught of “dirty politics” from the Donald Trump campaign. It has already started with Trump calling Hillary Clinton names like “crooked Hillary,” and other things each time he mentions her in some false accusation, rambling tirade. He is just continuing the bashing of Hillary Clinton that the Republican party has been doing for the last eight years and longer going back to when her husband was President. This continual attack has biased people to think ill of her unfairly. Fair or not the perception is out there. If the Republicans thought Bernie Sanders was going to be the nominee they would be attacking him.
Hopefully moderate and normally conservative Republicans will either, hold their noses and vote Democrat or vote for a Libertarian candidate. Democrats need to unite after the primaries, rally around the Democratic nominee and turn out the vote as they did for Barack Obama in 2008. Because of new restrictive voter laws, early registration of voters is important. In addition to voting for President there is an opportunity to shift the balance of power in the Senate and Congress sending a message that the smoke screen is no longer working.
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry