Narcissistic , Sociopathic America

One of our current society's most salient characteristics is an absence of shame on the part of politicians, financial architects and media fulminators. No matter how scurrilous or dishonest their behavior, they exude, if not exactly respectability, an air of self-righteousness - - proud of their ability to delude the general public and do whatever it takes to get elected, get a gig on cable TV or just make as much money as possible.

At the start of the health-care debate, there was widespread support for reform. But, over the course of a tumultuous summer, disruptive town-hall meetings, raucous tea-party events and obstructionism in Congress managed to distort the process and turn support into dissent. Indeed polls showing voter dissatisfaction with the bill were a distortion themselves since some of the negative numbers were the result of people who weren’t against reform itself but felt the proposed legislation didn’t go far enough.

It is distressing now to see some of the same tactics being used by Republicans in the Senate to stall and perhaps kill legislation that would regulate the financial sector and rein in the systemic deceptions that came close to precipitating a full-blown depression. “Let’s start over” says Senate minority leader McConnell fresh from his visits to pals on Wall Street. Let’s not do anything to stifle the markets other conservative politicians and editorialists say. Like Alan Greenspan in his day they insist that unfettered markets would self-regulate and investors would be protected, all evidence to the contrary.

On Bill Moyer's Journal recently, William K. Black, Assoc. Professor of Economics and Law at the Univ. of Missouri and former bank regulator, described practices that were fraudulent in both intent and outcome. It isn’t that nobody saw danger in the casino-like activities at a number of the nation’s largest financial institutions. According to Black, people at the top had to know that shaky mortgages packaged as triple-A investment-quality instruments were likely to fail at some point which is why they ‘hedged’ their bets, notably at Goldman-Sachs. Aside from the obvious problems these questionable instruments would cause in the general markets, deceiving clients who trusted advisors he calls “financial sociopaths” was an unconscionable deception.

But it wasn't only at Goldman-Sachs that dubious transactions were occurring. In testimony before Congress, one Lehman Brothers executive told of being fired when he attempted to expose irregularities at the firm. Professor Black said most whistle blowers were intimidated from speaking out and that industry-wide fraud would be found if proper investigations were undertaken. SEC spokesmen have insisted disingenuously that they lacked the authority or the tools to detect and remedy infractions even after they had created a “deliberate black hole” by lobbying successfully for the repeal of Glass-Steagel, legislation that kept banks from engaging in securities trading.

Deceit has become a way of life in our society. Right-wing pundits repeat lies about the president and his policies with such regularity that they derive a kind of legitimacy through repetition and are discussed endlessly by the news media. Prevarigators rarely seem to suffer any consequences and are celebrated in some circles for having political smarts, or for just being amusing. Conservatives in Congress fail to disavow egregious distortions and outright lies by the more extreme members of the media or their party, so anxious are they to claim victory in the next election.

How strange it is that only a little over a year into a new administration, an impatient and frivolous electorate is poised, according to current estimates, to re-elect representatives of the very party that brought the country to near collapse. The only interesting outcome of a return to such an inglorious past would be to watch an old-time, new majority wrestle with the real world problems the country faces. No doubt lower taxes would be the most original idea a change of leadership in the House would promote.

Former vice-president Cheney provided insight into what the best and the brightest Republican minds have to offer when, guesting with comic Dennis  Miller, he said that telling Senator Leahy to “go f**k himself was “sort of the best thing I ever did.” Shameless as ever but in light of the awful policies he helped facilitate in the previous administration, his unstatesman-like remark to Leahy on the floor of the Senate may ironically have been his best thing in that it was the least reprehensible compared to his other bad acts.

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