Conservatism as Sociopathy
I didn’t blog about the teabaggers who berated a man with Parkinson’s Disease at a rally outside of Mary Jo Kilroy’s office because, well, what was there to say about it. Is a pathetic, disgusting display, made even more so by the fact that it turns out the man the teabaggers berated by throwing money at and declaring they wouldn’t give “handouts” to turns out to be a distinguished professor who almost certainly makes (or made) more money than any of the protestors. But Chait does a good job of tying the sentiment into the ethos of the larger right:
Last week I linked to a video of anti-health care reform protesters taunting a man with Parkinson’s disease, shouting their belief that they had no obligation to help him. They were expressing opposition to what many conservatives have taken to calling the “redistribution of health.” Quite possibly the man, a former professor, earned more money than the protesters. But in the realm of health, they are the winners and he is the loser. Ryan, while surely less cruel on a personal level, shares their basic belief that government should not force them to subsidize him.
By now, it’s hardly insightful to point out that a total lack of empathy is a central part of the movement conservative identity. Nor is it particularly surprising that a movement that has so accepted the ideas of Ayn Rand, a textbook sociopath who voiced admiration for a serial-killer who raped and dismembered a 12-year old girl (to say nothing of creating the character of Howard Roark as a hero), would develop sociopathic tendencies as a fundamental part of its essence. But it generally is striking to see the attitude applied to healthcare, because people don’t generally ascribe personal fault to medical misfortune these days. It’s easy enough to rationalize that people who don’t make a lot of money are in their situation due to some personal fault of their own, to completely ignore the impact blind luck plays in economic success, but it’s generally not openly believed that medical afflictions are cosmic punishment for character flaws or sin these days. Which is why, I imagine, the protestors have to assume the professor is some poor ne’er-do-well, the possibility that someone decidedly upper-middle class, making more money, than the vast majority of people in the country, could be ruined by a degenerative disease simply doesn’t compute with their assumptions about the world. Add in the fact that being able to be a total asshole and inflict suffering on other people gives them the feeling of having power they almost certainly lack in their day to day lives, and you’ve got a classic sociopathic mix, one that’s come to dominate the base of one of the two major political parties in the world’s richest nation.
Tags: Conservative Sociopathy