Billmon:
However, doctors say they are puzzled by the fact that some of the worst casualties appear to be among top officials in the Pentagon and the Bush administration — even though these patients typically show no physical signs of injury.
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September 17, 2006
WB: Signature Wound
Comments
I believe the CIA’s MKULTRA program discovered the efficaciousness of the “stupid ray” (TV) back in the 50’s & 60’s. It is so insidious and powerful that it even affects those who think they can target it’s effects on just the masses. Haven’t they all come to believe their own lies because of it’s omnipresence?
Posted by: Juannie | Sep 17 2006 12:04 utc | 1
Link to NYTimes
This link is slightly off-topic, and since Krugman’s behind the Times’s firewall, I have to assume that the link won’t even link. But it’s worth trying, because Krugman, in tomorrow’s paper, runs a truly superb piece about Bush’s taste for torture.
I don’t disagree with his central point–that torture, for Bush, is the ultimate proof of mastery over one’s environment (that phrase, from Freud, sums up Krugman’s argument)–though I’ve contended, and will always contend, that the crux is the pleasure Bush takes in the practice of torture. It makes his day, and everything else he does is the price he pays in pursuit of that single pleasure.
Bush’s tantrum at his press-conference on Friday was of the kind that small children sometimes throw when their toys are taken away.
Posted by: alabama | Sep 18 2006 4:07 utc | 3
@Alabama
I haven’t publicly stated my concurrence with your thesis that George Bush is a sadist before now, because I thought this was common knowledge. He hasn’t exactly been closeted about his predilictions, and this is not a new side of him that we’re seeing.
Even before his presidency, he set new records for taking lives, sheltered by the umbrella of the Texas judicial system. Were we not supposed to have suspected before now that he actually enjoyed this reputation? I’ve long been of the opinion that his only motivations for remaining in government at all are that they enable him to pursue his two favourite hobbies: taking money and taking lives. He has demonstrated a positive churlishness to every other aspect of government (ostensibly, to promote the welfare of the governed) well before New Orleans died of neglect.
How many lives has he, more or less directly, been responsible for ending? Is the clearly demonstrable fact that he enjoys trivilialising the lives of others and inflicting suffering supposed to be some kind of epiphany? Do people actually think he grudgingly sends “shock and awe” into the lives of the disenfranchised all over the world? The man can barely suppress his joy at the prospect of inflicting harm to others… hence, his revealing “Bring ’em on!” slip up.
Yes, he has some extremely deep pathologies. No, we should not be surprised about this at this late date.
Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 18 2006 5:02 utc | 4
Beguiled by neoconservatives, who told him that the virtuous goals of the American empire justified any means, and misled by an incompetent Attorney General, who told him that the President of the US is above the law, Bush was deceived into committing war crimes under Article 3 of the Geneva Convention and the US War Crimes Act of 1996. Bush is now desperately trying to save himself by having the US Congress retroactively repeal both Article 3 and US law.
Under the US Constitution retroactive law is without force, but desperate men will try anything.
Apologies if this has been posted already.
Posted by: beq | Sep 18 2006 13:10 utc | 5
Monolycus, I don’t think this is common knowledge, in the sense that people commonly accept “sadism” as a fact–a serious fact–pertaining to public action. I even wonder how many Bush supporters (or detractors) really know the meaning of the term “sadist”–where it comes from, and what it describes.
This is hardly a fault on their part: an informed understanding of psychodynamics, and its place in the understanding of politicaldynamics (for it really has one) is not to be taken for granted….
For example, have you ever heard anyone talk on television about Bush’s sadism? Seriously, intelligently, deliberately? Has it ever been raised as such by the editorial pages of the NYTimes, say, or the Washington Post? In their op-ed pieces or letters to the editor, perhaps, but not in the editorials themselves.
So it’s not something that “goes without saying”. In fact, I think the topic is commonly censored, and commonly censored in general: if we mean to discuss it commonly, and seriously, as having a general application, then we have to consider its role (for it certainly has one) in our own (i.e. personal) political discourse.
I think this makes Paul Krugman’s article truly extraordinary. I take it as a departure from the way he usually looks at things. “Economy,” for him, is largely a matter of “political economy,” to the exclusion of “psychic economy”.
And thank you, Monolycus, for raising this point as you have!
Posted by: alabama | Sep 18 2006 14:14 utc | 6
what does it say about the rest of us when we (about 51% anyway) support and vote for a man with these qualities?
nobody likes a wimp in the USA and a cold cruel killer often inspires awe.
w gets to act out in real life all of our fantasies. he gets to kill people who piss him off or if he is bored. golly, for someone getting shit on everyday this is the dream.
big deal, he is a sick bastard, now what?
we put him there and if we want we can get him removed from office.
first we have to want to.
Posted by: dan of steele | Sep 18 2006 15:44 utc | 7
@Alabama
You raise an interesting question regarding whether or not I have seen reference to Bush’s overt sadism in the mainstream press. Actually, I have not. I have always attributed this to the fact that any such diagnosis would have to be deprecatory, yet considering the culture of mass sadism we live in (you have seen television programming or popular films within the last ten years, haven’t you?), it is extremely doubtful that any such accusation would do anything except to bolster support for the administration. So far, it has been prudent for Bush detractors not to mention that particular elephant in the room and Bush supporters are certainly not going to be the ones to bring it up.
The closest thing I have seen to a diagnosis of this sort has been posted on MoA before (my apologies to whomever it was that first brought it to our attention… my memory is not what it should be). While it addresses the cultural support for Bush’s condition, it misses the mark by identifying that condition as a case of malignant egophrenia… which is merely a neologism to describe intractable sociopathy. As we have discussed already, Bush is not a garden-variety sociopath, as some have claimed, as this would present as indifference to the well-being of others. Bush is anything but indifferent.
Some minds independent of the mainstream media have come closer to the mark diagnostically, but still stop shy of mentioning that the reason Bush has made it so far is that he has the backing of an extremely sadistic culture. Others, still, recognise it in the culture but blame the person of Bush for producing it in the first place. This is just as logically unsound as contesting that the abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were the work of a “few bad apples”.
Unfortunately, George Walker Bush represents a walking, talking embodiment of the monsters we have allowed ourselves to become. I have pointed out both here and elsewhere that the Romans engaged in their gladiatorial games, the Toltecs their deadly ball games, the English their fox hunts, et cetera, after their respective empires had expanded to a point of ludicrousness and bloodthirsty sadism in those populations had become an integral part. I think we can say the same about Western society and “reality television”. From this perspective, Bush’s profound and undeniable sadism is nothing to be marvelled at; it was inevitable that we should find ourselves dealing eventually with a monster of our own making.
Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 18 2006 16:38 utc | 8
And while I was composing my verbose reply, dan of steele cut to the chase. I have GOT to start working on brevity.
Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 18 2006 16:41 utc | 9
Not verbose, Monolycus, but valuable–and I regret having missed or forgotten the places you link to.
For me, your most urgent point is that we’re dealing with “a monster of our own making”. We wouldn’t be human if we lacked this sadistic component. The one great question is how we actually handle it.
For example, a case can be made that video games and violent movies are rather benign channels for releasing the pressure of these impulses (if not just a way of arousing them). Trickier by far is the experience of the voting booth–which is, or ought to be, a truly private experience, rather like masturbation, and is therefore bound to be rather “fantastic,” and thereby challenges us to push back, and take it as serious exercise in reality-testing. It can be trivialized as a form of emotional release, treating the voting-booth itself as a kind of video game.
And I’m not exempt from this: in 1968, for example, I was so mad at Hubert Humphrey that I wrote in a vote for my wife as President. This felt rather good at the time–witty and expressive, even almost eloquent. In fact it was just a way of giving Humphrey the finger. It failed a basic test of political responsibility.
And of course we have to remember that people voted for Bush before September 11. This was hardly an innocent act on anyone’s part, and the darker motives for enacting it are easily overlooked. Though it’s “nothing to be marvelled at,” as you say, we have to take its measure all the same, and along the lines you suggest, lest we find ourselves surprised by expressions of wounded innocence.
Posted by: alabama | Sep 18 2006 17:47 utc | 11
@Alabama
I’m really not sure that video games are as benign as all that… and that is the end of my self-linking for the evening. I promise.
As for your other observations, I agree. There have been many times when people here have expressed the wish to be witness to Bush or Cheney meeting with Mussolini’s fate… which makes us every bit as sadistic as those we condemn for it. We are simply using alternative forms of justification. We are none of us exempt, but I congratulate you on ‘fessing up to your own sins.
I’ve been saying for a long time that compassion is the cure to the majority of our society ills, but following Avolokitesvara is not as sexy or compelling as a policy of vengeance and retribution would be. I’m frankly not sure that compassion is as hardwired into us as sadism is.
And, beq, you are very, very kind. Kind of kicking myself a bit for my self-indulgence.
Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 18 2006 18:12 utc | 13