Republicans Are Sadists, Democrats Are Masochists*

*And some, I assume, are good people.

My observations of Republicans and Democrats over the past couple of years has led me to the conclusion that Republicans are sadists, and Democrats are masochists. The signs are there both in their individual characteristics and in their relationship to each other. They may act as though they were the polar opposite of the other. They may claim they are enemies of the other, but all too often you find them getting chummy together in really creepy ways at after-hour events. In fact, not only do they have a really unhealthy relationship with each other, they each depend on the other to complete themselves. As cruel as a sadist can be, he is inevitably dependent on the masochist to reaffirm his identity. And as meek as the masochist plays his role, there is the element of the sadist about him. Neither is capable of or interested in healthy relationships between equals. In the end, both can only view relationships in terms of power. You don’t want to live next door to a sado-masochistic couple: in fact, there’s currently nowhere safe from them on this planet.

The sadistic tendencies of Republicans are easy enough to spot. Anyone with internet access observes the Trump supporters speaking of Democrats the way a grade school bully would towards someone he has in his sights. Although the average Trump supporter is not the actual bully but the guy who hangs around him in order to get in his good graces. Sadists are quick to become toadies in the presence of a greater sadist. Such is the complicated interrelation between sadism and masochism. Both sadism and masochism are coping techniques learned at a young age. Sadism and masochism are two sides of the same coin, two different ways of dealing with relationships built on power rather than mutual respect and cooperation.

Democrats, like a woman in an abusive relationship, abhor who Republicans are, and yet reflect wistfully about who they were. They may tell others how they wish to get the upper hand in the relationship, but anyone who knows anything about their history knows it is never going to happen. And should a third-party arrive on the scene, the masochist will reveal his inner sadist and fight tooth and nail for his right to be abused and debased by Republicans. The masochist relies on the sadist to give definition to his life. When asked, masochists will be unable to tell you who they are except in relationship to the sadist who gives their lives meaning. This is how fascism begins, by giving sadists willing partners in their sick and twisted perversions. Sadists will come to believe that other people appreciate their sadism, because they have encountered people who actually do. The cruelty and narcissism of the sadist is given legitimacy by the behavior of the masochist.

Democrats’ willingness to submit shows not only in their relationship to Republicans but to the world around them. They are the first to bow to the “inevitable”, thinking themselves quite wise in taking less than they have a right to. They call this being “realistic”. Masochists never imagine shaping the world, merely adjusting to it. Masochists shape themselves to conform to the world the sadist creates. Like a long-suffering spouse, they have learned to take a back seat, to accept what cannot be changed, to resign themselves (bringing along with them  the children/citizens) to a life of suffering. They see a certain nobility in suffering. Sure, they also see the injustice in the suffering, but they are able to offer nothing to those who suffer but their sympathy. “I am on your side,” the masochist says. “I feel your pain,” he says, but does nothing. In the end, the masochist can do nothing, he simply appeals to a greater power, the sadist.

There is a certain passive resistance the masochist displays. The masochist will become quite shrill and adamant on the most bizarre and inconsequential of issues, staking out territory in which he is the absolute authority. Never does it threaten the dominance of the sadist, but through the sheer whining and inconvenience of it all, the sadist will throw scraps to the masochist. By pandering to the neuroses of the masochist, the sadist pays his tithe. It is at such moments that the masochist feels most valued and valuable. He will feel a certain sense of self-worth because he has garnered acknowledgement from his master. But the masochist always stops short of demanding anything more than token change. The masochist does not ask for more because he does not want more. He doesn’t want equality, merely the occasional realization by the other that this unhealthy relationship is essential to both parties.

Observe how the masochists relate to the sadist, Donald Trump. Incapable of exercising any power themselves, at least in a healthy manner, they appeal to other sources of authority. Helpless in themselves, they patiently wait for their savior, Robert Mueller, to come to their rescue. They are the fair maiden locked in the high tower, awaiting a gallant knight to rescue them. It is a script that could have been written by E. L. James. Or Donald Trump.

They are utterly incapable of imagining that they themselves hold any power in this relationship, can conceive of no way of resisting other than wearing pink hats. They dream fanciful dreams of a giant blue wave sweeping away all the bad things, while they survive God’s judgment on an ark built of tolerance and good vibes.

I have great pity for the victims of the violent and the cruel. Sometimes the pity wells up in me so deeply that it paralyzes me. But I recognize that paralysis is a weakness and not just a sign of my heart being in the right place. It is okay to feel sad, but it is not all right to feel helpless, because that is exactly what sadists want you to feel. Democrats are so utterly masochists that they cannot even stand up to other masochists. They are being picked on by the likes of Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi is stealing their lunch money. Democrats can’t even stand up to these would-be bullies, and yet they envision themselves as guardians against the likes of a new Hitler. Masochists are prone to such wild flights of fantasy. It helps them endure the unpleasant reality they have no desire to confront.

Sadists need masochists. They relish their impotent squeals, are nourished by their tears. A sadist shrivels away to nothing if he cannot find someone else to indulge in his fantasies of power. Because just like the masochist having an element of the sadist in him, the sadist has an immense fear of power in his innermost being. What spurs an individual on into sadistic impulses is his desire to flee from an essential fear of his helplessness. In demonstrating his power over others, he keeps at bay the truth that he is a vulnerable soul in a vast universe that does not exist solely for him. The sadist is kept strong by those who would accept his own view of himself. Masochists do not, cannot, oppose sadists. They can only feed them.

A sadist kicks down a sandcastle another has built. A healthy individual will find a way to show others on the beach that it is better to create than destroy, and in so doing marginalize the sadist and force him to moderate his sadistic tendencies. We call such people helpers and teachers. A sadist will remove the solar panels another has built when he takes over his place of residence. A healthy person will explain why they were important, and will put up twice as many as soon as he moves into that house. We call such people leaders.

There is only one thing sadists care about, and that is power. Same for masochists. A sadist gains his strength by knowing not only the weakness of the masochist but the fact that deep in his heart the masochist wishes he could be like him. The sadist sees beyond the sweet ideals the masochist prattles on about and sees the inner sadist too timid to emerge. A sadist will never truly see the sadism that exists within himself, but he will see it in you. And if he sees it in those who say they are the opposite of the sadist, the sadist will only see the hypocrisy. He will only see confirmation of his sadistic impulses.

Let me tell you what happens when a sadist and a masochist do battle: the sadist wins. Oh, sure, the masochist will summon up his inner sadist, because all masochists have an inner sadist. But he will lose because he’s really a masochist. And sadists beat masochists every time, just like rock beats scissors. Just like Republicans beat Democrats.

Democrats make excuses for such losses, of course, just as the make promises that they will be your triumphant warrior who will beat back your enemy if you only believe in them enough. These are the stories masochists need to tell themselves—and others—in order to face each new day. They are adolescent fantasies, but if they speak them often enough they will win supporters. Because they’re superficially charming, loveable losers you want to believe some day will find a way to stand up for themselves. You don’t want to look past their explanation to see the incredibly fucked-up people they are on the inside, don’t want to believe they could engage in bootlicking and disgusting displays of self-degradation at the feet of the powerful.

To support such masochists is a step even beyond being a masochist, because at least the masochist bows before legitimate power. Buying into the stories of the masochists just involves you in their dysfunction, it’s like a support group for masochists who don’t want to change but instead want to blame others for their problems. If you cannot stand up to the likes of a Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, or Diane Feinstein, what hope do you think you will ever have at standing up to fascism? No, you will bow before such a power before you ever oppose it. Even now you do not oppose real power but instead choose to punch down on those below you. You attack Susan Sarandon, you attack Ralph Nader, you attack the lower middle-class and the uneducated. These are the kinds of sadistic acts a masochist indulges in.

“Oh yeah?” you may ask. “Tell us then, Mr. Smarty Pants. What’s the magical answer? What can we do to stand up to the sadists? Show us a better course than the cautious approach of voting for ineffectual wet noodles who lack courage to take on our enemies. Tell us how we can succeed without exhibiting any courage or taking any risk.”

Spoken like a true masochist afraid of confronting his master. Spoken like someone so badly beaten down that he prefers the comfort of his servitude than the freedom that is his birthright. No, I will not tell you what to do, because you are not willing to listen. I can only point you to the stories of those who did not fear to oppose the sadists. I will tell you to learn more about the likes of Martin Luther King, about Mother Jones and Eugene Debs. I will ask you to Google people like Fanny Sellins and Dorothy Day, Granny D, and Jim Zwarg. I can only show you what moral courage looks like and hope it inspires in you some kind of self-respect. There are millions of examples of people who stood tall and risked all in the fight against the sadists who wanted to rule over humanity. Study them if you dare, learn from them and emulate them. You will find answers when you want answers.

The Final Battle With The Big Boss Media

I can’t help getting the feeling we’re playing a video game, and we’ve worked our way up to the big boss in the last battle. Our thumbs are worn out from pressing the X button a million times and the boss is throwing everything it can at you, and then all of the sudden it starts going through all these weird motions like it’s going to throw a giant attack at you that will destroy everyone and mean game over. But really it’s just going through its death throes and is unravelling right in front of your eyes.

The big boss in this instance is the media, which has spent the last couple of years throwing everything it could at you in an attempt to overwhelm you. But the attack seems to be working less, even as its intensity increases. You can kind of sense it in the eyes of the newscasters (spellcasters) who seize up when they are presented with someone who says they don’t believe the official narrative. The look in their eyes is like a robot who is confronted with a situation for which he has not been programmed.

All of us, really, are no different. Which is why it is understandable that we feel frightened. Because unlike a video game, things don’t end when you beat it but you then have to move on to the real task of replacing the system you have worked so hard to destroy. Once you beat the fake game you have to deal with real life, and most of us would rather not get to the ultimate foe and so have to get off of our couches.

I am terrified of what may come once the established paradigm is overthrown, because as bad as it is, it has provided a degree of security and comfort. Granted, it is the kind of comfort one feels in a luxury vehicle that is speeding towards a cliff, but the human mind is reluctant to surrender that sort of comfort, reluctant to build something new when what we had was so good, at least to those in the driver’s seat.

The truth is, we don’t know what will come next. We only know that what presently exists is racing us toward extinction. We can choose comfort of the known, which is an immature way of reacting to the world, or we can choose to leap from our place of safety with a hope that we will be able to respond in a way we never have before. Like a baby bird leaving the nest. Because we must. Because life does not wait until we are ready. Because perhaps we will never decide we are ready on our own. Because that is the way of all living things, to reach outward and go forward. If they are to survive. And I want to survive. Not just for another moment, not just so I can live out my life with a comfy couch and a TV and a video game console to play my pretend life. I want to survive in a much more meaningful way. I want to have children who will outlive me, want them to have children, and so on into an unknown and unknowable future.

Plus, I just really really want to beat the big boss.

They Make The Rules, They Just Don't Live By Them

There are those who set themselves apart from society who nevertheless wish to determine the way society is run for the rest of us. Those who are not themselves educators think it is their right to run our education system. Those who are not doctors or nurses—in other words, those who run the HMOs, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical industry—are determining how our health care systems are run and how we are treated. Those who would never permit their children to major in the arts in college are the ones who decide which books will be promoted, which movies made, and which musicians will receive air play. Those who care nothing about how good government is practiced are choosing the limited pool of politicians for which you can vote. Those who—even if convicted of terrible crimes—will never see the inside of a real jail, wish to dictate how the rest of us are to be punished for disobeying the laws they have created. They are the shapers of a society they have no interest in being a part of. Their interests lie not in creating a healthy society but in extracting wealth the society they create.

They are choosing for us—you and me, and everybody you know or are likely to meet—how the corporation you work for will treat you, what news will reach you, and what you will be talking about at work on Monday morning. Whatever creative innovation that might be boiling up among the ordinary citizens and small entrepreneurs will eventually be ground up into sausage by a machine that is too big to be denied, a machine controlled by them. Whatever human interaction that still smacks of independent thought will be drowned out by the overwhelming spectacle that is created by their entertainment industry. And if you should ever by chance get to know someone who has gone from being one of us to one of them, remember that they never would have been allowed to do so had they been a threat to those who stand apart from us. Those tiny few who join their ranks do so because they are willing to play within the rules provided by their bosses. Even multi-billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg realize they have to go along to get along. Either one of them would have been squashed like a bug by the system if he had been perceived as a threat to the system. And they are still reminded that they can be destroyed should they fail to back the system that permitted their vast wealth. The chance of anyone within the system going against the system is exactly nil. They rose to that level of wealth because they were useful to the system and because they shared in the desire for the obscene wealth such a system provides.

The system in which you live is fashioned by those who have no interest in being a part of it, no interest in listening to what you have to say or meeting you on the street. It is not like in the old days when you would wave to the owner of the local bakery, pharmacy, or any other independently-owned business that helped shape your community. Your local stores are now mostly owned by someone you will never meet and who does not give one shit about your community. They might live in another state or maybe in a different country. You will never interact with them.

Those who operate the system in which you live, live in gated communities, hang out in private clubs, fly on private jets. They know each other because most are on multiple different boards of directors together. They live in the same communities and vacation at the same resorts. They get invited to parties on each others’ yachts. They share a very real bond because they realize they have a shared interest, one that is not yours.

You and I ain’t ever getting a ride on Betsy Devos’ boat. We are never going to be invited to the meetings where our fates and the fate of our planet is decided. Our opinions of their wars don’t matter, we just have to fight and die in them. And it doesn’t matter which party we support, because the politicians from both parties take their orders from them. No war has ever been stopped because the wrong party was in office.

It may seem as though I am drawing a line in order to cause a division between a “them” and an “us”, but this is not true. I did not force them to flee from my neighborhood, their leaving was a choice they made. It is they who constructed the walls, they who distanced themselves from us. It is they who don’t want to hear your opinion, confident that they know what’s best for humanity. I have never built a gated community to keep the extremely rich out, I have never hired security to keep others from taking what is mine. I do not monitor their secret conversations nor place informants within every large group of people interested in social or political change.

I did not create the division that exists. They did. They placed themselves above us and apart from us. They chose to make a nation where money and not people reigned supreme. They preferred money to humanity, placed their faith in the kind of wealth that could be stored in vaults rather than placing their faith in spiritual and communal concerns.

And why is it that they feel the need to shape a society they have no interest in being a part of? Because in doing so they can extract great wealth from those forced to live within the constraints they have built. And the money is necessary in order to purchase bigger yachts, taller fences, more people to protect them, and more bombs to drop on those who do not submit to them. And sadly, the more yachts they acquire, the more of the wealth of the planet they will need to waste on bombs.

I thought you might want to know.

Capitalism Versus Water (17 Images In Support Of One Thought)

In the final analysis, it will be said of the late stages of capitalism that they could not even provide safe drinking water to the vast majority of the population. Monster Juice, electric couches, and porn, yes. Water, no.

Price gouging in times of crisis:

Public drinking water:

The government is against those who protect water:

What “Woke" Means To Me

The term “woke” is being used of late to describe a state of mind that is capable of seeing beyond the official political narrative. Although there appears to be two official narratives, the liberal and conservative models, the range of debate within those two contrasting positions is so narrow that the two merely represent modest extremes of a single central narrative. The term is best associated with Caitlin Johnstone, author of a book of poetry called Woke as well as an impressive amount of political commentary and journalism. I would like to speak a little about what “woke” means to me, before the term is co-opted by Democrats, who co-opt any concept uttered by legitimate leftists and water it down until it has lost any meaning. 

I sometimes wonder if such a term as “woke” is a little too far out there for the average person to take seriously. In reality, all it implies is that one is able to consider ideas beyond those put forth within that narrow frame of debate as established by the two political parties and the corporate media that provides us with all the context we are supposed to require. Being woke in the political sense, then, is simply refusing to fall in with either of the two narratives we are given as choices. And if you want an example as to how limited those choices are, opposing war is always going to fall outside of them. You simply can’t argue for peace within the parameters set by those who define what is acceptable thought. If you ignore their definition of reality, you are woke.

There are deeper dimensions to the term “woke”, of course. Being politically woke is almost always accompanied by a deep cultural awareness, as well as a desire to explore one’s own psychological and spiritual needs and motivations. It is really not much different than what Sociologist/Psychiatrist Erich Fromm would call becoming an adult. 

Being woke, to my mind at least, is to emerge from the desire for an authority to tell you what to do and how to behave and instead become an active agent in the world. To be something less than woke, something less than a fully emerged adult, is to escape into childish fantasies, to allow others to assume your responsibility to the world you live in. I see it in academics, who find no issue so important that they can’t escape from putting their ass on the line by parsing words until meaning—and hence the impetus for action—is lost. I see it in our political leaders who retreat down the path of least resistance because they really don’t believe in their ability to effect meaningful change. I see it in our artists who don’t feel they have any further obligation to their audience than to entertain them, just as I see it in their audience, who demand nothing more of art than distraction. I see it in everyone who goes to work doing a job that is harmful to society as a whole, because profit has taken the place of meaning. And I see it in the pundits and the journalists. God, do I see it in the pundits and the journalists. They are nothing but actors on a stage reciting the words written for them by anonymous authority. And finding it necessary to prove themselves worthy of the obscene wages they receive, they use all of their skill to project passion and conviction into the role they play. But there is no will in them. Whatever individuality is within them they cede to their paymasters. They are not adults but children eager to please those with power and authority.

The concept of being “woke” is not only not new, it is quite possibly as old as recorded human thought. It bears an unmistakable resemblance to the Upanishads, which date at least back to 6^th Century B.C. 

Plato spoke of the very thing in The Republic circa 300 B.C. It is nothing more than a transcendence of our more primitive/bestial/childish way of perceiving the world we live in and our relationship to it. The Book Of Genesis (circa 6^th Century B.C.) offers a similar vision as Erich Fromm’s in describing the fall of man. Man once lived in the Garden Of Eden, unaware of death, no different than the animals or a child. But by eating of the fruit of knowledge, he can no longer live like an animal or a child, and is evicted from the garden, can never return to that early state of innocence. In place of the Garden of Eden which he was forced to leave upon evolving, he cannot hope to revert but can only work towards evolving further still to a new relationship with the world in which he lives as an adult.

Humanity cannot hope to go back to how things were, as you now see Democrats and Republicans so fervently trying, each in their own ways. We can either confront the situation as it is or else deny it, as those within the primitive binary Republican/Democrat paradigm are attempting to do. We can either accept reality or rationalize everything until it fits within our outmoded model. We must struggle to understand truth or else retreat into fantasy. We can vainly endeavor to find our way back to the Garden, some imagined idyllic past not unlike Hitler imagined for the German people, or else work our way to a promised land that all our great thinkers—and evolution itself—push us towards. 

On it's surface, there is really nothing mystical at all about the idea of being "woke". It is merely becoming wise to a viewpoint that has limitations that have been pushed to their limits. It is merely recognizing that what is presented as solutions are not sufficient to help us create the world that needs to be. It is just accepting the facts at face value. But I do not wish to dismiss the deeper elements to the idea of being woke. Because there is a wonderful and immense depth to what can be unearthed once we transcend the limitations set for us by ourselves and others. Becoming an adult, tapping into our adult capacities for conviction and commitment does not do away with miracles, it makes them possible.

A New Greatest Generation

Tom Brokaw coined the expression “The Greatest Generation” to refer to those who were raised during the Great Depression only to end up having to fight in the Second World War. Though they did what was necessary, the individuals of that generation did not choose to be confronted with the kind of trials that would forge them into greatness but rather had such tests thrusts upon them. As the times make the man, so to do they make the generation.

Such a time is now upon the current generation. While they were raised at the tail end of prosperous times rather than a depression, a threat to democracy and the world itself has been building during the course of their lives. Indeed, it is no looming threat that sits outside our borders, it has already overwhelmed us, penetrated the depths of our nation into every corner of every community. The battle has already been fought and we are now a conquered people. We are living in an occupied nation and the battle we must fight will be a war of liberation.

The battle will be fought in the smallest of ways. It will be fought within each neighborhood, each small community. It will be fought in the schools and at the farmers markets. It will be fought wherever two or more people have an opportunity to discuss the situation in which we now find ourselves and discuss the ways in which our own emancipation is possible. As those before us had scrap drives and newspaper drives, so too will we have to work together to recycle and preserve our precious resources. That which is wasted might as well be given over to our enemy.

It will require the tactics of the guerilla, the same sort of resistance required of a people subjugated by a foreign power. It will require the unified action of a people who realize control of their nation has been taken from them. We must be clear that those who now rule over us do not do so with the informed consent of the people.

The enemy is immensely powerful, but it is clumsy and it is slow. It will be vulnerable to a disciplined resistance that is able to constantly shift tactics and choose its own battlegrounds. We cannot afford to fight our occupiers on their own terms, because they are too strong. We need to take them on at a very human level.

The conqueror I speak of is the corporate control of our nation and, indeed, our world. Corporations have utterly overtaken our country, replaced a government of the people with a government of the corporations.

Understand that I do not talk about a resistance that involves violence. Nor can or should we attempt to work in secrecy, since the enemy is in control of most every means of communication, has their spies in every home and in every public space in the form of the electronic devices they have convinced us we need. I speak of a resistance the likes of which Mahatma Gandhi demonstrated to the world. I speak of a resistance that rises up from the deepest and noblest aspects of us.

This struggle is not merely a struggle for independence but quite possibly a struggle for the existence of life on our planet. The corporate mentality is not a human one. It does not jibe with the most basic human needs beyond the physical, and as it is said, “Man does not live on bread alone.” It seeks to make all human interactions into economic ones, seeks to make us all nothing more than cogs in a corporate machine, cogs that are to be thrown away once they no longer function as the machine requires.

In a corporate reality, the environment, the Earth itself, has no intrinsic worth. If it so serves the short-term goal of making more money, forests are to be torn down and bombs dropped on children in order to insure corporations' need for profit. In a strictly corporate mindset, nothing matters except increasing power and profit for the corporation. Clean water, your child’s survival, the extinction of species, are all secondary considerations, potentially profitable but also potential barriers to the primary goals of profit and power. In such a world, money, not man, is the measure of all things.

To combat this will require great sacrifice from us, from all of us. Sacrifice sounds like a terrible thing. But anyone who has loved enough to sacrifice for another human being, a goal, or an idea, will understand how lightly sacrifice may be born when done for love and in hope of a better future. A parent sacrifices in countless ways for the love of a child, but the sacrifice is easily borne when done with love and hope. The sacrifices someone makes to start a business or finish a degree are many, but the achievement of that goal, both in aspiration and in reality, makes us happier people even as we give up small comforts.

But such sacrifices in the end are small things. As Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty, or give me death.” We will find that mere material possessions mean nothing in the long term. Indeed, such trinkets can as easily be taken from us as they were given. A government of the corporations will insure you no rights or property. They wish to keep you poor so that you are so busy in scratching out a living you have no will to reflect or resist. We are daily switching from an ownership society to one of monthly payments, becoming renters instead of owners. Where once we owned physical copies of movies, we now have access to them only so long as we pay our Netflix bill. Our access to knowledge is not through a set of books we own but dependent upon our monthly payment to our internet providers. And who now can say they truly own the house they live in or the car they drive?

What we must give up in the short term are mere conveniences, plastic spoons and plastic bags. Unnecessary trips to Walmart to buy things we don’t need. The newest iteration of cell phone or video game. We must disconnect as much as possible from the corporate way of doing things and find new (and old) ways of connecting with our environment and our fellow humans, ones that bypass profits for corporations. We must dismiss out of hand any corporate source of information or art as being fundamentally flawed by corporate intentions. We must view laws passed by corporate-owned politicians as tools intended to suppress true democracy and self-determination for the people. We as human beings must find a way of defining who we are and what we want without being molded by corporate interests, which in their essence are contrary to our own.

And when we begin to make the necessary sacrifices we will experience a joy we have forgotten existed. We will feel the very real (and some may describe as spiritual or sacred) connection to our fellow humans and the world we inhabit. We will even experience our sacred connection to ourselves, recognize ourselves perhaps for the first time as something other than producers and consumers of product and services, as competitors in a battle that none of us can ever win. We will realize once again that our primary connections are not economic ones but bonds of love and interdependence. If we are able to win this battle, I assure you no sacrifice we make will seem too great in light of this. And future generations will look back at the struggle we undertook and use the word “great” to describe it. The Greatest Generation knew sacrifice and was able to win the largest war the world has yet seen. We owe it to both them and those who are to come to win the battle that is now before us.

P.S. Found this looking for a picture to add to my essay.

Betsy's Boat

I rode my bike to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy yesterday, and it left me feeling rather good about myself. I felt good that I didn’t waste gas. I felt good that I bought from an independent pharmacy, even though I spent a few more dollars than I would have if I had given my business to Walmart. And I helped in some small way to keep the local downtown alive amid the onslaught of corporate chains that crowd around the highway offramp. I try as much as possible to have my actions correspond with my values. It is a battle I fight in a thousand ways, making small decisions and sacrifices that I believe will be beneficial to my fellow man and the environment that sustains life on Earth.

And then I thought of Betsy DeVos and her $40 million yacht. I can’t imagine her worrying about the fuel such a behemoth wastes, nor all the people who pay the costs to have it wasted by her. And there is no doubt in my mind she has never scrupled to do the right thing if it cost her a dime more.

No one with any capacity for honesty can say Betsy DeVos cares about children or education. The time she will spend in government is strictly a business opportunity for her. She will leave her position in government richer than when she entered, and society will be the poorer for it. She will spend her time in government fighting for the special interests of herself, her friends, and her class. She is a taker, not a giver. Anyone with a 40 million dollar boat is a taker, it’s that simple. 40 million dollars could pay for a hell of a lot of school supplies.

Yet Betsy DeVos is the kind of person our society is set up to serve. We have a media that sweeps away all the unpleasantness that results from the actions of such individuals. It holds them up as role models to the average citizen. Our corporations are set up to funnel the wealth they create to an elite few who had enough money to invest large sums of money to begin with. Governments from the local to the federal level have been bought and constructed to conform to the whims of such people. We have built a society that exists to support sociopaths.

This may anger many who have until this point agreed with me, but it doesn’t matter whether it is a Democrat or a Republican who is in office: sociopaths will be served. Betsy Devos did not become a dangerous sociopath with the election of Trump, nor was she stripped of her obscene wealth and undue influence when Barack Obama was elected. The Democrats are merely better at disguising their supplication to sociopaths: they are more likely to allow an African American or a woman act as their servant.

They are sociopaths, let us not fall to the false politeness insisted upon by the media that is owned by and serves their kind. They are sociopaths and they have been doing a very good job of convincing the rest of us that sociopathic values are normal. They have normalized greed and selfishness, turning them into supposed virtues rather than the sins and character flaws that any healthy culture would view them as.

This is a profoundly sick society set up and run by sociopaths incapable of seeing past their own selfish interests. How can you tell who they are? Well, a 40 million dollar yacht is a big red flag. Anyone with more than one yacht or a private island is likely one of them. Anyone buying up a sizeable chunk of Hawaii or any other state because they believe it to be their just reward for their contribution to society is another tell. 

The degree to which they feel the need to place themselves above and apart from the average person is a good gauge of what they think of their fellow humans. They are the ones who have amassed obscene amounts of wealth by serving the machine. They have names like Zuckerburg, Bezos, DeVos.

They are really little different than the sociopaths of profoundly sick societies of the past: give them powdered wigs and snuff and you could mistake them for the royalty of the French Revolution. Their chief differences from those who lost their heads to the guillotine are that bloodlines are de-emphasized somewhat and they are more active in their quest for personal wealth. But their indifference to the suffering of others, their contribution to moral decline, and their unquestioned subservience to the power structure in order to advance their own interests are identical.

A society cannot long function in this manner. It can’t. Corruption always exists in any society, but too great a degree of it is deadly, just as too much rot on a tree or cancer in a human is deadly. A society needs leaders who have values that to some degree line up with the average person’s. We are almost completely lacking in such leaders. Those who are now in charge serve the values of the powerful, and the average individual is powerless.

I am not suggesting bringing out the guillotine, as they did during the French Revolution. Nor do I say we need re-education camps for the Betsy DeVos’s of the world, as was done during the Vietnam Revolution. What I am saying is we need to have a very serious discussion about how we can keep such obvious sociopaths away from the levers of power before they destroy the very planet we need for our survival. We need to keep them from defining the way we see ourselves and our relationships with each other and our planet, because the narrative they set forth is growing increasingly distant from reality. I would say the narrative pushed by the sociopathic power structure is currently the single greatest threat to our species 

Such a conversation will need to take place outside the parameters that have been set for us. We will need to include everyone from both sides of the political aisle. This conversation will need to take place outside of the mainstream media and outside of our conventional political settings, because they have been set up to create divisions among us. Raychell Maddow and Sean Hannity will never lead us towards a consensus. The media and the political process is owned by the sociopaths and will not permit sane and healthy discussion. The internet and social media have been powerful tools in permitting us such conversations, but the sociopaths have become aware of this and are looking to silence opposing voices. We must continue to find new avenues of open and honest. discussion. Not yelling, discussing. We must remember that when we speak in anger that it is an anger fomented by those who wish to keep us from finding common purpose.

We must find ways to communicate and find common purpose outside of the parameters set by the sociopaths and those who serve them. If we don’t find practical and humane ways of doing so, and doing it soon, then the Robespierres of the world will have their say. As tempting as their leadership may appeal to some, it will not lead to a better tomorrow.