Psycho Nation

You know, we really shouldn't be surprised at the US's slide into low-level domestic fascism and international rogue state status, spurning traditional allies, instead consorting with dictators and trying to take advantage of the war torn state invaded by its neighbour by extorting it for access to its natural resources.  The re-election of Trump, after all, didn't come out of nowhere - you don't elect an obvious crook and psychopath as your leader by accident.  So, was he elected in spite of the fact that he is a raving psycho, or because of it?  Because the US had already had four years of Trump in power, with the country descending into chaos domestically, with numerous street protests and attempts by the government to violently suppress them, while on the international stage it found itself in danger of becoming a pariah.  Not to forget that it all culminated with Trump inciting an attempted insurrection to present the new government from being accredited by Congress, having refused to accept the electorate's narrow rejection of him.  You'd think that, after all that, only a lunatic would vote for him again.  Yet more than half of the US electorate did just that.  I'm afraid that justifications along the lines that voters felt that Joe Biden had failed economically (although the data says otherwise) just won't wash with me - with the experience of that first Trump administration still fresh in their memories (not to mention the subsequent convictions for rape, fraud etc, plus the revelations about those stolen classified documents and the election-interference cases), there was really no excuse to vote for the psycho candidate again.  As the US is finding out, stuff like higher gas prices is a small price to pay for not having a psycho in the White House.

But the fact is that they did vote for him.  They voted for him because they wanted a psychopath as president.  Why?  Because the US is a nation of psychopaths.  Just look at the evidence - their fascination with firearms, for instance.  Indeed, they fall back on their constitution as a guarantee of their right to bear arms, because it somehow makes them free.  Free to slaughter each other in massacres, that is: just look at the number of fatal school shootings they have - their bloodlust is such that they even j+kill their own children.  But do these massacres result in restrictions on gun ownership.  They do not.  Instead, they bristle at the idea of having their rights restricted, claiming that it would just be the first step toward dictatorship.  No remorse, just self-justification.  Allied to this is the wider notion of 'might being right' in just about every arena, particularly in international relations.  That might mean wielding economic might rather than military might, but it amounts to the same thing.  Of course, they justify it all by wrapping it up in self-righteous language, lecturing the rest of the world on how the 'American Way' is the best, the only way, that the peoples of the world can truly be free.  Free to buy American goods, watch American TV, worship at American churches and free to indulge in democracy, just so long as it follows the American way.  To listen to them, you'd think that nobody else enjoyed free speech and free elections, that they'd invented democracy.  Again, this sort of self-justification for committing terrible acts and self-aggrandisement is yet more evidence of their general psychopathy.

So, it is only natural that a nation of people so aggressive, deluded as to their self-importance and violent, should want a leader that reflects their own general characteristics.  So, it is reasonable to ask, why didn't they elect someone like Trump before?  Because, in the past, both main parties, whilst including their own fair share of crackpots and would-be dictators, were, in the main, run by people who recognised that to indulge their nation's psychopathic tendencies on the wider stage would, in the long run, be disastrous.  So they made out sure that the candidates they selected for office were, by and large, reasonably rational.  It's how they tamed the West - a playground for violent psychopaths - imposing law and order by gradually imposing candidates for office who were committed to civilised values, the regulation of rapacious capitalist exploiters, the appointment of judges and lawmen who weren't corrupt and so on.  But, by the end of the twentieth century, the hold of the rational on at least one of those parties began to slip as, desperate for power, they started fielding candidates - Reagan, Bush the Senior and Bush the Junior - who were, if not psyschopaths, at least less more prepared to abuse their powers to push entirely partisan agendas and to engage in reckless overseas policies.  But, in the main, they still adhered to what the rest of us would consider more or less civilised values.  Then along came Trump, a man manifestly unfit to hold public office, using money to bully his way to the Republican nomination.  But he promised the Republican leadership victor, so they debased themselves before him.  More importantly, the nation of psychopaths that the US seems, in the main, to be, suddenly had a candidate whose deranged mind-set aligned with theirs.  Which would be fine if it all remained within their own borders but, unfortunately, the rest of us also have to put up with the deranged behaviour of this psycho nation and its psycho president.