Kingdom Come

‘Evil’ people are those who are unable to empathize with others. They are selfish, self-absorbed, and narcissistic. In fact, other people only have value for them to the extent that they can help them satisfy their own desires or be exploited. This applies to dictators like Stalin and Hitler, and to serial killers and rapists.

No one denies that we’ve become a mean-spirited culture. There are many reasons offered for this.

• social media is driving us all crazy.
• we are more isolated
• as a white-dominated nation is becoming a much more diverse country millions of white Americans are panicking
• high levels of economic inequality and insecurity have left people afraid, alienated and pessimistic.

And obviously, all of these are having an effect. But the deepest issue is that we are no longer schooled in morals: first, helping people learn to restrain their selfishness; second, teaching basic social and ethical skills—things like welcoming a neighbor into a community or disagreeing with someone constructively; and third, helping people find a purpose in life. Further, human beings were seen as creatures who were, by nature, sinners against that moral order. Any sense of an objective moral order is gone. Any sense of transcendent truth is gone.

Social media has helped us become addicted to thinking about ourselves. Couple this with how we see ourselves as the center of the universe. We’re anxious and insecure, sensitive to rejection, and this leads to triggers of distrust and hostility leading to breakdown of relationships. You become estranged from others. We get callous, defensive, distrustful and hostile, leading to violence.

Without a foundation of universal morality guiding personal conduct, good and evil becomes defined by me vs you, broadening into groups of us vs. them as the good guys vs. the bad guys, much of it fueled by resentment – elements of Narcissistic personality disorder.

According to DSM-5, individuals with NPD have most (at least five) or all of the symptoms listed below.

1. Grandiosity with expectations of superior treatment by others
2. Fixated on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.
3. Self-perception of being unique, superior, and associated with high-status people and institutions.
4. Needing constant admiration from others.
5. Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others.
6. Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain.
7. Unwilling to empathize with others’ feelings, wishes, or needs.
8. Intensely jealous of others and the belief that others are equally jealous of them.
9. Pompous and arrogant demeanor.

A majority of voters holding these attitudes is exactly how a supra-narcissistic man got elected to the most powerful political office, not only in America, but across the world.

Widely held impressions about Trump’s narcissism are corroborated by the DSM criteria. There have been many narcissistic heads of state before, such as Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and Hitler. Trump is following the same Dictator No-Rules Book.

Can we recognize that the social, economic and security chaos we Americans are experiencing is a consequence of our own sinful choices?

What if we really chose, in the words of the preamble to the Constitution, “to promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

Signs that some of the same factors that fractured the Roman empire back in 476 CE (and other of its iterations since) are distinctly present in this country today – phenomena like gross economic inequality; over-spending on military expansion; political corruption; deep cultural and political fissures; and, oh yes, the barbarians at the gates.

Grotesque Economic Inequality: The Romans relied on slave labor for basics like food and clothing. This country relies on super-exploited farm and food-factory workers, many of whom are unlikely to demand more or better because they came here without authorization. Our (extraordinarily cheap) clothes are mostly produced by exploited people in other countries.

The COVID pandemic was used to shutter small businesses to transfer assets from the middle class to the super rich. President Trump’s slashing of federal funding for the middle class and impoverished, with imposition of tariffs that will only increase costs for purchasers, may be the final blow to America’s capitalist economy that depends on consumer spending. Even before the pandemic, more than 10% of US families regularly experienced food insecurity. Now, it’s a quarter of the population.

Wild Overspending on the Military: At the end of 2020, Congress provided a stunning $741 billion to the military for the next fiscal year. A week later, Congress passed the omnibus pandemic spending bill which contained an additional $696 billion for the Defense Department.