I FEEL THREATENED: Thoughts on selfishness and sociopathy
A Florida man in a Costco had this reaction to being asked by an elderly customer to put on a mask:
As people in the comments have mentioned, this is a common utterance by police about to shoot unarmed civilians. We don't yet know who this person is, but at the very least he needs to be banned from Costco.Super Spreader Florida Man pic.twitter.com/7clfY5GBom— Daniel Uhlfelder (@DWUhlfelderLaw) July 7, 2020
As I was falling asleep last night, this sentence entered my mind: They live lives of selfishness, and call it "principle".
For the historians among you, yes, you may have noticed that this is a play on Tacitus: They make it a desert, and call it "peace".
I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm tired. A good Twitter friend of mine had this response to a question yesterday:
While I can see the logic of this, it's cold comfort.More cell phone cameras. There are probably fewer terrible people now, it's just that you know about the terrible person in Random, Arkansas because of the cell phone video you saw on Twitter. https://t.co/BLBVNqclSl— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) July 6, 2020
Our technology has allowed us to expose racism in a manner which is unprecedented. And, yes, the reaction to George Floyd's murder by people of all backgrounds is more than heartening.
But in the age of Trump, seeing unhinged white person after unhinged white person lashing out violently as their privilege is chipped away at in the most minor way beats one down.
As the sentence which entered my mind last night says: These are selfish sociopaths. They can't bear being told "no". They can't bear having to share this world with those they consider their inferiors. They can't bear not being masters of all they survey. Any move towards a more equal, more just disposition is seen as the imposition of slavery. And of course, they're afraid of being made slaves; they fear being done to them what they and their ancestors did to others.
Your racism isn't principle. Your sexism isn't principle. Your homophobia and transphobia aren't principles. They're sociopathic security blankets you refuse to relinquish, because to do so would shatter your self-conception. And this isn't limited by ideology. Rightists aren't all scum while leftists are pure and clean. We know all to well the dysfunction among the left. This is a dominant group beginning to lose its place in society, a place it has held for hundreds of years, and it's causing a psychotic break. Unfortunately, the rest of us will suffer the results of their psychosis, because in going down, they have enough power to wreck the world.
Part of the work we have ahead of us is how to effect a soft landing for a dying order. We need to do this so that we're not faced with a rebuilding which would be akin to that after the Second World War. We need to pass on to future generations a world better than we found it. We don't have much time left to do so.