A MALFUNCTIONING PSYCHE

It is often a reality of human nature, that when things are going badly in ones life, that person finds it too painful to accept personal responsibility. If a person’s life has degenerated into a day-to-day crawl thru chaos, or even worse, into a total disaster area, they frequently cannot accept that the fault is theirs. Surely, some one else is to blame. Surely, it’s the Wall Street bankers or hedge fund managers that have robbed them out of their ability to earn a decent salary. Surely, it’s the illegal Mexicans that have taken all the good jobs away and have thereby made it virtually impossible for them to earn enough to afford a quality standard of living. Surely, it’s the government that has placed too harsh rules and regulations on them, and thus, they cannot live the life that was really meant to be. It never has anything to to with the fact that they didn’t, for example, make the effort to study electronics, or medicine, or engineering, or chemistry, etc. which would have given them the necessary tools to earn enough to afford at least an upper middle class lifestyle. It would have been too exhausting to pursue such endeavors. Their psychic reality is that some other party is always the one to blame.

The poet, Edward Arlington Robinson, summed it up best in his poem called “Miniver Cheevy.” “Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, grew lean while he assailed the seasons” is the opening line of this poem which describes how Miniver blamed the whole world for his failures and his alcoholism, and ends with -“Miniver coughed and called it fate, and kept on drinking.” The problem for society is, however,  that when large numbers of people are psychologically invested in blaming others for their shortcomings and failures, it provides fertile ground for the demagogue to move in and seize power. I’ve written many times before about how Hitler demonized the Jews and others in 1920s Germany  on his path toward total dictatorship. Hitler would practice in front of mirrors, with crony consultants advising him on how to fire up the German populace to believe that the many economic problems facing Germany at the time were not their fault. They didn’t have to take responsibility for existing conditions. He would strive for the most inflammatory speech patterns, inflections and hand gestures while demonizing a small, peaceful segment of the German population, who were primarily tailors and shopkeepers. Germans were suffering  because of the Jews, was the message of the day. At first most Germans disregarded Hitler’s ravings. After all, they were well educated and had a rich culture of philosophy, art, literature, and music. But in the end demagoguery prevailed over common sense and personal responsibility, and 60 million people lost their lives.

Someone once said that all of life is politics. If this is true that it must be pointed out that all of politics is a game of salesmanship, and this has never been more evident than in 2016 America. Whoever can deliver the best sales job in describing  his or her vision for the future of the U.S. will invariably win the majority vote and the election to become the most powerful person in the world. One path in this game of salesmanship is to take the demagogic route the way Hitler and Mussolini and others did so successfully. After all, isn’t it the Hispanic illegals that are destroying this country, (the way the the Jews were destroying 1920s Germany.) So what if undocumented Hispanics comprise less than 3.5% of the U.S. population and that their numbers are actually decreasing. They’re still the ones at fault for everything that’s gone wrong in my life. It couldn’t possibly be me. To say nothing of those shysters on Wall Street that have literally taken the bread out of my mouth.

The more one thinks about it,  the more one must  conclude that winning an election is not unlike selling cars. A car is basically a vehicle to get you from here to there. Yes, the more expensive cars may look prettier and give a smoother ride and have more bells and whistles on it. But its purpose is still to get you from here to there. If you never left your house, you would likely never buy a car. Yet, from the salesmanship that goes into advertising cars, especially on TV, one would think they are anything but a means of transportation. Recently, there was an ad on TV for Cadillac, that featured a very sophisticated, and pretty young woman behind the wheel of one of their models, stating: “The question you have to ask yourself is this. When you turn your car on….does it do the same for you?” So now Cadillac products are not there to provide a mode of transportation, but rather should be used as a means of sexual stimulation. Perhaps even sexual climax. Who knew?

So in the end, winning at the ballot box depends on who has the best salesmanship. Not unlike selling new or used cars on TV. For some candidates, their sales pitch  is to take the demagogic route, i.e. assure the populace that all their personal failures in life are the fault of others, usually a small defenseless minority. It has worked well in the past, and is likely to succeed this time around too.

Well, at least I’ve written an entire piece without mentioning  Donald Trump’s name, even once. Oops.