Columnist Roger Simon makes this comment about today’s leftist sympathizers who excuse the burning of America.
So they blame Trump—someone who occasionally does act like a father—for their own failures. And even though those failures have been going on for months.Simon is talking about a certain psychological syndrome identified to describe our current president’s opposition.
It’s hard to believe they do this with a straight face, but they do.
The political derangement syndrome, says Simon, “has evolved from a neurosis to a psychosis. . . . They [the deranged] disbelieve what is in front of their eyes.” Rioting thus can be described as “mostly peaceful protests” and it’s all the fault of our current president.
To most rational observers today, it is astoundingly incomprehensible why anyone would ignore or tolerate the violence we have seen in the last few months.
Perhaps psychology can help us understand.
A syndrome is a collection of symptoms. What makes it psychological is that the symptoms derive from thinking errors, not physical conditions or environmental events, though both are often asserted as causes.
For example, a depressed young man jilted by his lover may feel anxiety and a profound sense of hopelessness with the underlying thoughts: “I’ll never find another girlfriend or ever be happy again. I can’t go on with life.” The young man then may as a symptom project his plight onto the young woman, blaming her while ignoring any role he may have played in the breakup.
His thoughts, however, are false because, considering the population of the world, a new lover can be found, though the effort likely will require putting himself in a position to meet members of the opposite sex. And as the song says, it “Takes Two to Tango” when it comes to successful relationships (1, 2). The false thoughts nonetheless cause the young man’s symptoms of anxiety, hopelessness, and projection.
Psychological problems, as a result, set up a clouded lens that distorts our perceptions. In worst cases, the lens can prevent us from seeing reality at all.
The clouded lenses with the additional defensive habits of rationalization and projection are what blind many derangement sufferers.
Columnist John Miltimore offers further understanding by citing Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s linking of violence to falsehood, because violence, as Solzenitsyn points out, sooner or later “loses confidence in itself” and must lie to put on a “respectable face.” Says Solzhenitsyn, “Violence can conceal itself with nothing except lies, and the lies can be maintained only by violence.”
The reason, more precisely, that violence requires lies is that initiated coercion, which all forms of non-self-defensive violence are, cannot ever be justified; it must be covered up or rationalized.
To be sure, our postmodern culture of epistemological skepticism and moral relativism is a fundamental cause of the present lack of respect for truth and sincerity—the postmoderns, after all, have brought about the penchant for talking in “narratives” (or fictions, as I prefer to call them), rather than facts and knowledge.
The notion of lying to cover up coercion goes back at least to the “noble lie” recommended in Plato’s (totalitarian) Republic (1, 2) and probably to the first tribal chieftain who called himself master of the tribe.
The defensive habit of rationalization, which can be either subconscious or intentional, is the act of making excuses to justify one’s irrational thoughts and behaviors. This is what explains the otherwise astoundingly incomprehensible events of today.
Leftist sympathizers are the writers and politicians who fail to denounce the violence, whereas the actual rioters are criminal personalities who lie, cheat, and steal as a way of life and enjoy getting away with the forbidden. Leftist ideology justifies the rioting, because any form of socialism requires total coercion and control. (See Trevor Loudon’s columns on the Maoist role in today’s riots: 1, 2.)
Leftist ideology is what allows the sympathizers to excuse and tolerate the rioters, though some sympathizers may secretly be what Yochelson and Samenow (1, chap. 7; Applying Principles, pp. 280-83) call “nonarrestable criminals,” a criminal personality that lies, cheats, and manipulates others but does nothing overtly illegal. Some may want to be on the streets, tossing Molotov cocktails, but other internal psychological conflicts prevent them from doing so—or perhaps a modicum of health prevents them from being that deranged.
And blaming a father figure? Hmm! Without going too Freudian, projection and scapegoating derive from the need to blame someone—anyone—for one’s own insecurities, especially anxiety and anxiety’s source, low self-esteem. Projection is rampant in today’s political context and it comes mostly from one side.
Does this explain the seemingly unexplainable? It’s a start, but just how far down the rathole are we going to go?
