Pathocracy
Kuenstler coins a note-perfect descriptor for the greedy, grasping, and patently insane central Leviathan-state in Amerika v2.0.
Memorial Service
An anxious silence falls over the land this Memorial Day as we discern increasingly that those we put in charge of this shape-shifting thing called the public interest are running out of trips to lay on the people. Something grotesque is revealing itself: a bankruptcy not just of money but of national purpose, meaning, and legitimacy. You realize this day, with a breaking heart, that your country has been stolen by psychopaths.Brace for impact. We’re already off the road and now it’s only a matter of how this vehicle comes to a stop in the ditch. Then, it’s a question of how each of us emerges from the smoldering wreckage. The main thing, though, is clear to everyone: What we were riding in is no more. We’re out there stumbling around in the dark, in shock, trying desperately to assess our whereabouts and what has happened to us.
Now, the trouble with being ruled by psychopaths is that they don’t care about other people. They are actually incapable of imagining the lives of others, especially the fact that these others care about each other, and what happens to them. You may have noticed, for instance, that the psychopath Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) went to Ukraine last week and declared, “Russians are dying. We have never spent money so well.” Only a couple of months ago, he called for the assassination of Vladimir Putin. He stopped short of dissing Mr. Putin’s mother.
Pathocracy always marches toward totalitarianism because pathocrats can’t imagine a management of public affairs by a people who care about each other (and their country). Therefore, everyone must be subject to incessant coercion and punishment, especially for their thoughts (and especially for thoughts of opposition to pathocracy). However, there are certainly more people who care about each other than there are psychopaths in America. I’m not a big fan of quantification but, for the record, psychiatric meta-analysis estimates that 1.2 to 4.5 percent of the population displays psychopathic personality disorders.
How that tiny fraction of the citizenry came to take charge of our affairs is surely the big mystery of the moment. My guess is that under conditions of economic-social-and-political collapse, the people who care about each other become preoccupied with their mutual caretaking duties while the psychopaths, unburdened by such cares, can go about other business — such as plunder, murder, and the sowing of chaos.
Sometimes in history, the pathocrats are simply overthrown by the majority of humans with functioning emotional equipment. It’s not easy, though, because in most other places around the world, the pathocracy become the sole owners of the guns and have armies and police at their disposal to put down revolts. That’s not quite exactly the case here in the USA with our Second Amendment to the Constitution. The putative president, “Joe Biden,” cracked some time ago that anyone seeking to oppose him better bring some F-15 fighter planes to get the job done. As the good book says: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
This Memorial Day is the pregnant moment before history gives birth to new and astounding events. Everyone senses it. The rough beasts are out there slouching across the fruited plain. Attend to your duties courageously, as those before us did, who we remember today.
Amen to all that.