"This country has been having a nationwide nervous breakdown since 9/11. A nation of people suddenly broke, the market economy goes to shit, and they're threatened on every side by an unknown, sinister enemy. But I don't think fear is a very effective way of dealing with things-of responding to reality. Fear is just another word for ignorance."-Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist
© Wikimedia CommonsBattery Park City and the former Twin Towers at the World Trade Center NYC.
, another day in America.
Or so it seems.
With alarming regularity, the nation is being subjected to a spate of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country's fragile ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.Take this latest mass shooting that took place at a small church in a small Texas town.
The lone gunman-a
former member of the Air Force-was dressed all in black, wearing body armor, a tactical vest and a mask, and firing an assault rifle. (Note the
similarity in uniform and tactics to the nation's police forces, SWAT teams and military.)
Devin Patrick Kelley, the 26-year-old gunman, had served a year in military prison for assaulting his wife and child in 2012. Domestic disputes aside, Kelley-like many of the other shooters in recent years-was
described as a "regular guy" by those who knew him.
This "regular" guy's shooting rampage left at least 26 people.
President Trump and the Governor of Texas have
chalked the shooting up to mental illness.
That may well be the case here.
Still, there's something to be said for the fact that this shooting bore many of the same marks of other recent attacks: the gunman appeared out of the blue without triggering any alarms, he was dressed like a soldier or militarized police officer, he was armed with military-style weapons and clearly trained in the art of killing, and the attacker died before any insight could be gained into his motives.As usual, we're left with more questions than answers and a whole lot more fear and anxiety.
As
The Washington Post reports, "For some, the church massacre ... reinforced a sense of unease that no place could be considered immune from possible violence after a concert ground in Las Vegas, a Walmart in Colorado, a Nashville church and a bike path in New York all became scenes of death and bloodshed over the past six weeks."
That sense of unease is growing.
Comment: As the country further descends into the pit of chaos, we have to look at the common denominator with other regimes that have taken a similar turn. That is, the corruption of society via the process of ponerology. As positions of power are filled by psychological deviants, they impose on the masses their ideology and pathological values which they adopt themselves. This creates the conditions that you are seeing today; endless wars, extreme violence, growing economic divide, ever increasing control of the public, the blatant lies in the mainstream media and the list goes on and on. From
Ponerology: Psychopaths and their role in geopolitics:
Political Ponerology, coined by psychiatrist Andrzej Łobaczewski, is the study of institutional and government systems comprised of high-ranking officials presenting with psychopathic traits. Łobaczewski's investigations focus on government in which absolute political power is held by a psychopathic elite, and explains how an entire society can be ruled and motivated by purely pathological values. Łobaczewski emphasizes how psychopathic leaders "special psychological knowledge" of normal people enables them to manipulate and assert a hypnotic power over the masses. He explains psychopaths have studied us and their ability to use our emotions against us deteriorates our cognitive abilities.
B.F. Skinner's work with operant conditioning tells us that what we learn is impacted by reinforcement and punishment/unpleasant consequence. A pattern of intermittent reinforcement establishes unpredictability and confusion. The psychopath capitalizes on this phenomenon. The victim's mind scrambles in an effort to mitigate the distress and return to internal consistency. Eventually cognitive dissonance sets in and the desperate urgency to discern a rhyme or reason becomes a driving force. At this point the duped masses are caught up in an addictive cycle and come to view the psychopathic tormenter as the redeemer. Lobaczewski contends the psychopath's evil motivations, masked by a humane ideology, further exacerbate confusion.
The use of propaganda, distraction, and elaborate lies are instrumental in ensuring that beliefs and memories that echo the psychopathic leader's agenda are retained, while that which doesn't serve the psychopathic leader, are forgotten. The need to fit in, to secure a national identity further ensures compliance with this indoctrination. According to Lobaczewski the basic ignorance and weakness to this conditioning/brainwashing guarantees that the masses will bend to the deified psychopathic leader's will. This pathological attachment is a survival strategy, which enables dissociation from jarring reality. By disowning inconceivable truths and taking on the psychopath's perspective, the victim wards off the threat of helplessness, and terror is mitigated. Over time learned helplessness takes over and passive acceptance of abject criminality occurs.
For some more on the process that's currently unfolding in the US:
Political Ponerology: A Science of Evil Applied for Political Purposes
The road to pathocracy: Why ponerology is important to solve the world's problems
Interview with Harrison Koehli on Political Ponerology (Full Transcript)And for an even more detailed look at the process, you can buy a copy of Political Ponerology on
Amazon or through
Pilule Rouge (for those located outside the US).
Comment: As the country further descends into the pit of chaos, we have to look at the common denominator with other regimes that have taken a similar turn. That is, the corruption of society via the process of ponerology. As positions of power are filled by psychological deviants, they impose on the masses their ideology and pathological values which they adopt themselves. This creates the conditions that you are seeing today; endless wars, extreme violence, growing economic divide, ever increasing control of the public, the blatant lies in the mainstream media and the list goes on and on. From Ponerology: Psychopaths and their role in geopolitics: For some more on the process that's currently unfolding in the US:
Political Ponerology: A Science of Evil Applied for Political Purposes
The road to pathocracy: Why ponerology is important to solve the world's problems
Interview with Harrison Koehli on Political Ponerology (Full Transcript)
And for an even more detailed look at the process, you can buy a copy of Political Ponerology on Amazon or through Pilule Rouge (for those located outside the US).