January 23, 2008
The Consequences of Overlooking Evil
I awoke listening to the administration's plans for perking up the economy they've shattered so effectively with their policies, their war and their criminal behavior. Leave it to the Bushies to make financial hay out of any disaster. From the New York Times
House conservatives raised alarms about the emerging economic legislation, saying they feared it would focus too much on tax rebates [Dak: for the middle class, forget about the poor] and not enough on tax incentives to encourage businesses to create jobs.
They said any package should include provisions that would reduce the corporate tax rate, adjust capital gains for inflation and lower the capital gains rate for corporations.
I think they have given up on making tax cuts for the rich permanent. That will have to wait for the next national catastrophe.
And from the World Economic Forum in Davos where GillianTett reports that the mood is "extremely nervous" and "there is a view that something has gone fundamentally wrong in the way world finances are conducted in recent years .... 60% of the economists, policy makers and bankers think the central banks have lost control of the situation. There is the problem that there is no consensus about how to right the financial problems."
George Soros said: "Markets have been left to their own devices, and the authorities came to rely on the markets to right themselves. They ought to have known better."
Gillian Tett politely called Condi's lies "a major sales pitch" "The US economy is resilient. Its structure is sound and its long term economic fundamentals are healthy. The United States continues to welcome foreign investment and free trade . And the economy, our economy, will remain a leading engine of global economic growth"
Yesterday the Center for Public Integrity posted the results of their study showing that members of the Bush administration "unequivocally lied" 935 carefully orchestrated times in order to lead the USofA into the war in Iraq. No kidding!. This is old news to everyone who pays attention, although the fastidious documentation of the statements and timing are compelling. Of course, Dennis Kuchinich was not allowed to utter the work liar on the house floor yesterday.
What, pray tell is going on here? Henry See has a three part series on what he calls the hysteroidal cycle, which could explain a few things:
Some observers have suggested that societies and countries, like the individuals that make them up, pass in cycles from good times to bad times and back again. They have called this pattern of change the hysteroidal cycle, from the psychological definition of hysteria: a psychological state of uncontrollable fear or exaggerated excitability. Here it is being used to describe "fear of truth" or fear of thinking about unpleasant things so as to not "rock the boat" of current contentment.When a country is in a period of "good times", the search for truth, especially the unpleasant ones, makes people uncomfortable because it asks them to give up their comforts, hard-won after a period of crisis. Rather than peer under the surface of the illusion, people want to relax and think only about pleasant things. They begin to eliminate unpleasant data from their thinking, and, before long, it has become a habit. The trouble is, thought process based upon such limited information cannot be correct. They can only produce correct conclusions by accident. Unfortunately, because the pathologized thinking process has become internalized, ever more convenient premises must be substituted to patch over the errors in thinking.
After the Second World War, Americans benefited from a long period of economic growth. The fruits were more evenly distributed than they are today. Real incomes rose. Jobs were much more secure, on the whole, than today. The fact is, however, that this growth was based upon the exploitation of the US's new economic colonies. American's benefited at the expense of people elsewhere. However, to point out this fact at the time was to invite accusations of being a communist. During good times, people don't want bad news, even if it is true.
Isn't that why "hope" and "change" are the nouveau political cries, rather than crimes, prosecution, jail and punishment -- even in the face of a precipitous global stock market crash and cascading mortgage foreclosures, we still don't want to hear the bad news.
Related thought from Andrew Łobaczewski, Polish psychiatrist and author of "Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes."
When a few generations worth of "good-time" insouciance results in societal deficit as regards psychological skill and moral criticism, it paves the way for pathological plotters, snake-charmers, and even more primitive impostors to act and merge into the process of the origination of evil as essential factors in its synthesis... Those times which many people later recall as the "good old days" thus provide fertile soil for future tragedy because of the progressive devolution of moral, intellectual, and personality values which give rise to Rasputin-like eras.
There's a name for what's happening. Pathocracy, when sociopaths, those without conscience, move to the highest positions in government and industry and shape the world.
Photo note: Budapest graffiti - Drunken Sailor, what DO you do with him? He ostensibly gave up booze, but what about his addiction to power. Quite a monstrous clown
Addendum: View from another Pathocracy, Dorothy Thompson's1941 article in Harpers (written after spending time in Germany as Hitler rose to power) Who Goes Nazi?