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August 31, 2012

How Republicans Live with Themselves: The Entitlement of Hypocrisy

By C. S. Herrman

This is the second of three articles in the series on Republican social psychology. The topic here is how Republicans come to see themselves as so entitled to do what they do in light of their political position on the concept of 'entitlement' in general, especially as it applies to the vast humanity whom they hold in contempt

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All human institutions have a way of growing into perversions of their original purpose that block its attainment. Those who run the institutions are allowed to acquire interests that conflict with the professed purpose of the institution they serve. --   F. C. S. Schiller

When people land a job they had once only dreamt of, and then get raises and bonuses on top of that, you can be reasonably certain that sooner or later two things will happen. First, they will come to understand that they deserve all that they get; second, they will begin to realize that it is only honorable to bargain for whatever can be got. Once entitlement has become a veritable disease occurring across the gamut of offices -- professionals, top corporate brass and elective posts -- we get endemic corruption, the general topic of this, the second of three in the series about Republicans and what they do for and with their concept of honor.

Silence from the sinkhole

If entitlement attaches to naturally occurring or accruing dignity, Republicans are flat out of luck with the exception of those who can point to business creation and development, for which decency requires a deep reservoir of thanks and the respect that goes with such indebtedness. No Republican has ever been satisfied by this, however, and many refuse to believe that any liberal is capable of such regard. Never mind. Republicans believe they are entitled to rather a lot. Out of respect for their opinions we accordingly offer some examination of their Dickensonian expectations (you will note the irony).

Some of their suspect entitlements hang in there unnoticed until opened zippers betray accidents or emergencies -- or criminal activity. Richard Francis Burton may or may not have been bisexual, but he was unquestionably interested in sexuality, and in particular, homosexuality; specifically, homosexuality where least expected or understood -- throughout the Sotadic Zone, that swath of honor-based cultures where homosexuality had always been, and has since been, off limits. Talk about being brave or stupid. Oh, and according to Wikipedia, he was in addition probably Muslim, not just playacting to gain access to the knowledge he would later write about. Worse, his explorations into homosexuality were explicitly titled 'pederasty' (here is the link to the unexpurgated 14,000 word essay originally appearing in the tenth volume of The Arabian Nights) which might for some recall the saw of a mind's concentration walking to one's hanging, for such was the influence of a word denoting that part of the gay lifestyle most assured of fetching the death penalty.

To hear it from sanctimonious Republicans, liberals are supposed to be the lushes of the world. While I am not claiming that Republicans are pederasts, fun though that might be, I am interested in pointing out how homosexuality could be rife precisely where it was also viciously persecuted.

The highest status groups in honor-based societies tend, with remarkably few exceptions, to become laws unto themselves. "More often than not," wrote Simon Tisdall in the Guardian, "instinctively undemocratic, oligarchic and corrupt national elites find that an appearance of democracy, with parliamentary trappings and a pretense of pluralism, is much more attractive, and manageable, than the real thing." Nothing more perfectly describes the two most advanced cults of dignity in nominal democracies: the apparatchiks of the American Republican Party and Putin's Russia. Against the latter the European Parliament is calling for travel bans and asset freezes.

Why not welcome these good Europeans to investigate our own brand of Putinism? I for one am all for it. Look: polls indicate that some 50 percent of Russians would prefer that Putin retain the presidency for life. The conservative movement in this country, but for slightly different circumstances, would be similarly inclined. In the "freest country in the world' I am now able to say with a straight face that when Republicans rule (as also Democrats who govern like Republicans) some or another equivalent of Siberia is no longer an assumed absurdity. America is many things, but because of Republicans, 'the freest' is no longer one of them. Of course the 'Patriot' laws are not intended to hurt law-abiding folk, but I for one cannot trust such powers in the hands of those whose mission is a conservative agenda with a vengeance.

Shame is the great honor-based cleanser, and a thoroughgoing visitation from European authorities would be more than merely refreshing; it would shock a goodly number of the Republican underclass into rethinking their mind-numbing cupidity. We fought a revolutionary war to rid ourselves of the very aristocratic pretensions now firmly entrenched throughout corporate America and Wall Street. We waged a long Cold War with the U.S.S.R. only to discover that our own home-bred honor-based thugs are willing to foist the same dirty flag over the most recent of history's three storied democratic experiments. Speaking of which, we should revisit the first of them.

Plato was the spokesperson for ancient conservatism. A card-holding member of the Athenian aristocracy, he looked favorably on pederasty as a symbolic representation of normative superior-inferior relationships in nature's and society's order, including that of student and teacher (the ostensible rationale). For our heuristic pleasure: when the Sophists used pederasty to force their presence in competition with the aristocracy, Plato suddenly disavowed pederasty entirely. The honor-based and the patriarchal do not approve inferiors dissing their superiority, most especially by aping its own symbols. 'My way or the highway' is only partially what he was saying; 'The highway is one lane, one direction' better states the matter. This also better parallels Republican fanaticism. They want to have and retain for themselves what they also prefer be denied to others, whence they take umbrage at government giveaways that actually or symbolically dilute their felt entitlement.

All of our elected officials are in on the act, of course, but not necessarily for the reasons you think. Because we have perfected all the worst attributes of the electioneering process inspired by Rome, a serious candidate pretty much requires a goodly dose of bipolar traits, the same that, with even a little excess expression, lay aback those feelings of uber-entitlement, just as they sponsor the drive, grit and determination to see through an amazingly ridiculous gauntlet. We should never be surprised if the result is a cynical cesspool of self-praising, self-serving dilettantes.  The only discernible difference between the political parties is that Republicans are outraged at efforts to curb abuse and nonsense, whereas Democrats are sad at having to work harder to obtain and retain the perks. Republicans will call all such efforts a liberal conspiracy, since facts never matter to Republicans until they decide otherwise. Nothing unfair can be their fault, and everything unfair is necessarily the fault of liberals. It's the honorable thing to claim, for to them their honor is a birthright, their unique birthright.

According to John Stuart Mill, something else has always been a birthright of conservatives, namely, "most stupid people are conservatives." My personal impression of Mill's meaning comes from another of his expressions: A man who has nothing " which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Intellectually, Republicans have essentially nothing more than their ideology, which, in their willingness to fight for, brings out every manner of stupidity, in every metaphorical category ever invented or invoked of lower nature. It's all just part of Republican honor. And the very liberals who, being by and large those 'better people', the same who are attacked as the cause of all that is bad, are the only ones who will wage Voltaire's fight to ensure that Republicans retain the right to be stupid. No liberal ever ordered under pain of law that any American have an abortion, make love to gays, or educate kids in the midst of mean and dirty heathens. But the Republicans are pleased to try passing laws against all others merely to sleep better at night. And this sounds like democracy? How? It truly takes a breathtaking kind of entitlement to carry on in this fashion. Only spoiled children and dictatorial adults can shamelessly ape such behavior.

The implicit arrogance of the 'live by my own laws' Weltanschauung is occasionally caught sneaking a midnight dip. Republicans, while so outwardly proud of tradition and religion, are notoriously oblivious of anybody else's sacrality. If the more unscrupulous of the honor-based can mine the land, they will have no scruples dispatching, literally or figuratively, the natives (the latest land grab from the Sioux). Absent cameras, a nice evening might find Republicans of superior morals skinny dipping in someone else's sacred lake without so much as a wink or a nod (lately the Sea of Galilee). Republicans are, by countless kinds of evidence, outrageously self-centered and shameless. The vast majority never deserved to hold any office, let alone powerful ones. One day liberals will learn, doubtless the hard way, that the shameless self-centered behavior of honor-based cliques ultimately brings down everyone else in their orbit.

These self-same moral arbiters tarnish themselves as well as others. Chasing skirts and male pudenda is fine when under the rules or auspices of an open and just society. Republicans are above that, however, feeling entitled to make their own laws even as they use law to deter others from precisely the same conduct. The hypocrisy is, like the felt entitlement, breathtaking. Though these behaviors appear limited in scope, the believability test for a political party holding itself sacrosanct is the tacit approval of the rank and file. The Republican underclass makes war on gays but yet wants the assurance that they, too, can share in the radical independence demonstrated by their elders who make their own laws. It is the psychology aback the honor of thieves.

While the older set go to the younger gays for clandestine fun, the younger Republicans have their own antics, and those who happen to be the most repressed by the Republican ideology of their parents, have been known to go over the top. The object here is not, however, fun. The object is revenge and vengeance. It has happened a hundred times if it has happened once. One or more smart-ass Republican turks make like gays, corral a willing victim, take him yonder and dispatch him. Until very recently these urchins were nearly always acquitted.

It is this strain of obdurate ugliness that the Tea Party is bringing to Washington along with other erstwhile innocent ideas. Let me clue you into something here. One method and one method only works against this. Shame, and loads of it. Such is the lesson of history, whether liberals like it or not. At war you do what works, you fight fire with fire until the war is over. You apply shame. When everywhere they look there is a scowl, a stare, an upbraid, they will begin to actually use what their god gave them between the ears. They will come to know how they in particular enjoyed treating slaves and servants not so very long ago. Just because it's a different time and place doesn't mean the motivations are no longer in their breasts. The evidence clearly says that it is. The only folks not taking it sufficiently seriously are the liberals. Take the gloves off.

Who needs a harem when all of life is easily enriched by fabricating what is not already stretched or bent into personal service? It isn't that Republicans don't 'get it'; the real issue is simply that they don't even care that they don't get it. Republican office-holders can return to their districts where they spend every other minute of the day telling everyone who will listen how very much they truly do   -- get it -- and in so doing discover still more reasons why they can expect to get elected and re-elected. They use and abuse. And then, as the chips turn, they have the balls to vocalize in dry tones that it really is we the public who don't 'get it' (e.g., Mayor Bloomberg vis-a-vis OWS).

Mirror,   mirror " am I not the fairest of them all (don't answer that)

This is less about what looks back when Republicans look into the mirror, than about what they see. Life in front of the mirror seems an apt metaphor, what with the ever-present recourse of Republicans to pruning ruffled feathers, applying the wife's foundation over the easily bruised ego, caking the shadows behind lying eyes and, of course, the justly famed forked tongue of hypocrisy. That's a lot to do, so it takes a lot of their time. Republicans are nothing if not vain in the sense that they allow self-entitlement to project both fanciful needs and fanciful enemies. It's just another way that felt entitlement manifests.

This leads to unexpected and far-flung consequences ranging from disparagement of fellow lawmakers to out-and-out war, whether with gays, minorities, women or, in spite of themselves, God. Republicans expect to ride in self-delusional ticker-tape parades that are forever threatened by enemies wanting nothing more than that their lives' lasting contributions to humanity be to rain on the Republican parades. The fear so many had of Jewish networks secretly manipulating the world is reflected in Republican paranoia that liberals are itching to lay a turd that would swallow the earth. The anxiety over these fears is palpable, magnified by the amorphous quality of the expected attacks, which might arrive in ten minutes or ten years. Fears based in congenital insecurity are fears that reign forever. Why would anyone elect such people to high office?

Insecurities based on the fear of lost entitlement yield other consequences. Since the world is against them, there is no even playing field, thus no reason to play fair. Ergo, no reason to compromise and every reason to hold back and play chicken, knowing that in this game the odds are in your favor. Decent people back down, a time-honored precept of honor-based war tactics. Further, only winning is important, and only on their terms, regardless the cost. This is honor, after all.

Such attitudes occasionally result in showy boastfulness. We all know what Senator McConnell announced as the number one goal of the minority party for the Obama administration. That was pretty sick, and the only thing sicker is that the base shouted their hurrahs in unison, just like they booed (during the Republican debates) a gay vet and then the notion that sick people might be entitled to healthcare. What barn are Republicans born in, anyway?   Answer: The barn of entitlement -- to be crass, ugly and stupid all at once. And we shall fight to let them keep that entitlement. But to get them to rethink entitlements altogether, we need to think how best to shame them. Honor-based peoples maintain order with the threat of shame. We are dealing with honor-based mentality, ergo...

However wrong it may be as a fact, still one can be forgiven the presumption that Republicans deem themselves special in god's eyes. Rightly or wrongly, perception counts for something. Someone should casually inform them that the mere perception of such attitudes used to land Jews in serious difficulties over long stretches of time. Whereas Jews lacked the power to prevent backlash, Republicans oftentimes find it and abuse it. It's the honorable thing to do; when you're behind, honor requires every effort and tactic; when ahead, well ... the same, since the way they enjoy the perks of power will likely require all the explaining that honor can muster. Just look at the wealth of suspicion left behind by the last occupants of the White House.

Being tone deaf carries many of the same problems. Mitt Romney's vision for kids looking to pay for a college degree is simply to borrow funds from the parents. Take a moment over this. Who is the presumptive audience, and who is the audience omitted, deliberately or not? This guy does not have the lower sixty percent of the population within five inches of the frontal lobe. In this example, one that is readily generalized, Mitt represents the part of the Republican base that flows with milk and honey, the part that, more than any other, thinks only of and for themselves. I will suggest that it is just this group that supplies endless groupies for Ayn Rand's pursuit of selfishness. Between their ideology, what they hide, and an upbringing that helps ensure tone-deafness, they are typified by words and deeds so disconnected and disorganized that connecting them   has come to require a storm of static latterly dubbed "the Republican noise machine'.

Behind glass walls

Living life with heavy baggage exposes one to a couple of added issues. On the fear that others can see through to one's inner fanaticism, it helps greatly to construct a façade to satisfy the mind's eye if not also those of the onlookers. Creative Republicans can also generate blinds that keep out preying eyes, but in glass houses they go up at the expense of hiding reality from their own superego. In either case we observe the tell-tale signs that Republicans are a Freudian dreamscape of sublimations and compensations when, that is, reality isn't completed condensed into fantasy (to be fair, Republicans demonstrate the ability to attend to reality in many cases where liberals are flakey to say the least; in good honor-based form, contra political correctness and fighting fire with fire are two biggies).

Honor-based societies believe strongly in their values as if they possessed today's equivalent of ideology. Herein they resemble Republicans, who are nothing if not ideologues, believing that anything they aggrandize, and anything they demolish, can be justified by the self-same ideological reasoning. Empty entitlement breeds an excuse factory. The principal difference between the honor-based culture and the Republican is in their views of reality, but only in parts thereof. When values are at issue, both will ignore facts in favor of faith, convenience or ideology. Attending responsibly to the reality without which one cannot become successful again finds them on the same page. The difference we're looking for is found in the logic and process of reality as it unfolds. When modern medicine cures what the witch-doctor makes excuses for, the honor-based usually have the good sense to accept the newfangled. Republicans just dig in their heels, believing that any giving into the wrong reality is tantamount to skimping on devotion to ideology.

Of course, it all depends on how you define reality. These days Republicans define good reality as whatever makes their lives more enriched, in every sense of that word save for the rational or the spiritual. Whereas a Roman leader might forgo a labor-saving devise because of the families who would go wanting (not everyone was worried that a monopolist would go wanting if the latest deal fell through), Republicans have handy mottoes and cliches to justify money above all else.

In any culturally-dependant discussion of reality, including that of money, it is helpful to realize that the honor-based are more spiritual and moralistic, the dignity-based taking up the ethical and ecumenical side of things. In addition, we need always to recall that economics and markets are everywhere predominantly honor-based, meaning that businesspeople must per force be trusted to obey regulations, their honor in the deal carrying forth as a component of their repute. As God's very special creatures, however, Republicans would rather be trusted absent the regulations that to them are just one more variation on the theme of enemies ready to rain on a money parade. All of which goes back to entitlement and hypocrisy, since cherry-picking reality is practically the same as making the laws as you go when you can't otherwise use law to Gerry rig.

The Republican disposition to identify with faith thus makes a great fit for the honor-based fondness for moralizing. At the practical end of the stick this means that Republicans find it possible, indeed preeminently rational, to declare to themselves and to the world that making money and being successful are the moral prerequisites to a healthy democracy. Don't laugh; there is a brand of Protestant theology gaining wide traction that stresses exactly that message. Apropos God's will that we go out and propagate dollar bills is the commonplace that Republicans fill the ballast of those entrepreneurial pyramid programs like Amway. Republicans are nothing if not thorough about their self-interest, even if that requires putting words in God's mouth.

When those from honor-based societies emigrate to our country they find a receptive home in business and, as evidence illustrates, do quite well, thank you very much. The critical and hugely important difference between imports and native-grown moralists, however, is the former's commitment to ensuring basic needs to all alike. In point of theory and principle, it is likewise dignity-based, though the honor-based motivation isn't quite the same as ours. They have never been able to approve of dependence on others, which is viewed as an unnatural burden reflecting a character defect. In their societies efforts are undertaken to avoid conditions that make dependence the sore spot for society that it typically turns out to be. The ghettos in South American urban areas are caused by the same conservative mentality that produces the American equivalent, and not because the peoples' philosophy of life approves it. When pundits suggest we are already a banana republic, that's what they imply, less the caring part. Elites everywhere create disastrous cults of dignity. We are at risk of passively abetting the very worst.

Republicans, while fully agreeing that dependence is a defect -- the work of the indwelling Devil -- have absolutely no desire to work matters so as to avoid the problem. They prefer to permit the problem and avoid its consequences by devoting serious resources in the effort to insulate and isolate themselves. One reason they could care less about global warming is that they can afford to avoid the consequences. These consequences and justifications amount to creating the finest Venetian blinds for their glass houses. The end result, of course, is a blindness both to humanity and to the rudimentary responsibilities that all honor-based societies have always and everywhere acknowledged.

The land of opportunity

Opportunity, to hear it from Republicans, is a meow that miraculously transduces across phyla in order to exchange mean barks with the underclass once Republican policies are doing what they do so well. Should opportunity dilute the potential for profit, whether by capitalist competition or government doles, Republicans are not well for it. In between the capitalist and government variations on profit dilution is the concept of stewardship. In theory, corporate entities benefit in many ways from an honest attempt at stewardship. It exists to prevent collateral damage from concentrated power; it helps the corporate brand by enhancing respectability, and augments sustainability through conduct the integrity of which solidifies trust in the corporate management.

Republicans welcome branding that increases market share, and predictably detest all else, whence the corporate charter, which implies all of this, has been gutted by the courts in deference to arguments from high dollar industry lawyers arguing that stepping on the brakes equates to slippery slopes and falling skies. Judges routinely buy into this in part because they are not taught the reality of law's dependence on stewardship and the offices protected thereby. Were stewardship the term of legal art applied to offices in general rather than the narrowly prescribed application to union bargaining, Republicans would not get away with the worst of what they do by nature.

All of which speaks poorly of lawyers, of courts, of corporate business (and we're really just warming up). J. P. Morgan famously decried stewardship (providing employment was stewardship), and according to some helped to fashion conservatism into the mantra that it remains today for Republicans: financial prowess coupled with commitment to religion and the facilitation [entitlements] of high culture. Thus there is widespread apoplexy when liberals, who merely ask on the basis of inherent dignity for equal opportunity, call for spending that would ensure an even playing field. Republicans have never been interested in an even playing field excepting when it benefits them and them alone. It's high time we all understood this for the reality that it is. You cannot explain reality apart from this unpleasant fact.

A further honor-based feature shared by Republicans is the supreme joy in identifying with greatness. Russians exemplify the style, with their hero worship of chess masters and allowance for the acknowledged wayward behavior of prima donnas. Regardless who it is that Republicans want to identify with and emulate, I am going to exercise a novelist's prerogative and name the most appropriate, the same J. P. Morgan already mentioned. Even the glorifying biographer John K. Winkler had to declare at least a few solid facts that will brand the Republican ideal. "He took what he wanted. His code was his own. He did things that today could not be defended in law or morals. But, for his time and generation, he played the game and played it fairly." When Wall Street claims that the public just doesn't "get it', they are referring to the game they all play. Doesn't really go very far, does it? Fair for a den of thieves seems closer to the truth.

Winkler also offered an apt metaphor capturing the temper of our own time, when remarking on the Roosevelt-Morgan feud: "Friends of both sought to bring them together. There were many meetings, but no fusion of friendship. To Roosevelt, Morgan was a man whose talents were devoted entirely to entrenching the power of organized capital. To Morgan, Roosevelt was a gentleman gone wrong -- a man who sacrificed all the privileges of his class for common applause."  

Too many liberals and some independents naively expect warring entities to become purple. "We're all purple,' announced President Obama years back. Nice words to get elected, not so accurate for truth-telling. No conscious liberal is going to metaphorically bed up with Hitler and then accept the shame that befitted Chamberlain. The friendships between those holding mutual political offices are for show. Professionalism is supposed to do the rest based on the rules of offices that demand the job get done at a high standard. It is only the lack of accountability and the ugly composition of the Republican presence that foils efforts at rational compromise.

Morgan's impression of Roosevelt was not based in fact but in moralistic terms. In classic honor-based theory, outsiders are as good as inhuman, at a minimum barbarian. His words were high moralism meant to enshrine felt entitlement. In sum, the 'opportunity' of America is for the powerful to be an acolyte of 'high culture'. To a Republican it also smacks of entitlement on steroids. Opportunity for the underclass is a useful locution -- for getting votes. The economic arguments suggesting that the underclass is helped by jobs created by Republican policy are a sham. The underclass is being used and abused.

Fifty years ago Republicans didn't used to be quite this extreme. Even Richard Nixon favored a guaranteed national income. Never mind the fact that it is a built-in stimulus package that can only put money in Republican pockets and seriously reduce the downside of down-turns in the business cycles. None of that fluffy stuff for today's Republicans, Their objection is moral, not economic or political. They, like their honor-based counterparts, are disposed to be moralistic. They get away with this nonsense because their underclass rigidly adheres to self-help credos along with much else in the honor-based litany.

What remains unexplained is that equal opportunity presupposes reliance on self-help. Why on earth wouldn't Republicans support opportunities that lead to self-help? I can't imagine any economist denying that competition at the level of opportunity wouldn't result in greater productivity across the board. The liberal position is that, given the nature of reality and of Republicans, such opportunity comes at a cost a portion of which society may have to pay for through taxation. Brown v. Board of Education was addressing this very issue. Separate schools were not offering equal opportunity and it was a cruel joke to suppose otherwise. The idea that property taxes would support schools was an attempt to equalize opportunity, but the desire to throw any amount of money at an education that granted status and a better college (etc & etc.) meant that those who could, moved into neighborhoods where high culture, high taxes and great schools were the perfect troika, effectively replicating 'separate but equal' and denying the spirit of Brown. Republicans simply took advantage, and can't honestly be blamed for that. It was 'the system' that screwed up educational opportunity. But it was sheer manna for their ideological Weltanschauung. Except, that is, for Republicans who would not tolerate their angelic children mingling with the heathens.

Of course if you have enough money you can send kids to private schools that are effectively college prep academies, and there's no arguing against that, nor should there be. That's how the system was designed. That's not exactly how Republicans want it to work, however. Republicans who fall in between ridding themselves of the heathen and the ability to afford the prep academy are still faced with paying the freight of a separate, private, education. They have never been well for that. Then they dreamt up Charter schools. Clever. Liberals saw what was going on and took them to court in Republican Arizona, no less, in a case that wound up in the lap of the five Catholic conservative justices who not unexpectedly handed the Republicans what they wanted. This business of Republican ideology isn't just a disease, it is a virus that spreads. After decades of this High Court politicking, lawyers are still able to ignore reality in favor of the happy mythic mantra that the Court does not abide mixing politics with law. Someone hasn't been to the clue store.

Writing in the Atlantic, Garrett Epps saw the majority [for the Court] defending the proposition that harnessing religion for "public and civil duty" is a great idea. He then wrote about James Madison's veto message of 1811, noting the clear parallel: "he sent back to Congress a bill that would have funneled tax money to a church in the District of Columbia to operate a school."   (Justice Scalia's version of originalism doesn't much abide legislative intent or the fact of vetoes on behalf of the people.) Back in reality, instances illustrate the creative ways in which Republicans have used the recent ruling to have their cake and eat it too. In some cases funds dedicated as scholarships for the poor landed in the laps of those already in the private school. Clever, these Republicans! They are out for number one. There is no such thing as doing what is right for the community or state or nation. They truly are apostles for J. P. Morgan. And they truly are proud of it. They are the entitled hypocrites of our era.

And why exactly are Republicans so attached to this curious topic? It manifestly is not helping the underclass, with the pitifully tiny exceptions of exceptional students. They want what they want and they want it for as low a cost as possible. Like everything else in the marketplace, morality is what they and the market says it is. Which is precisely the problem. They care for nothing but themselves, meaning that they use and abuse all else, justifying whatever they can on the morality of the marketplace. Clever, convenient, cruel and unconscionable.

We don't need Republicans to run markets. The way things are at present, we hardly need them for anything. They have outlived their usefulness and should be retired -- e arly, and with no pension (too expensive) or five finger access to health insurance. All of a sudden the gears start turning"when the misery done by Republicans to all others (on the highest principles known to morals and economics, mind you) comes home to roost, it is amazing how an arrogant tone-deaf brat can become nearly human, almost caring, very nearly sincere. I can easily understand how some of these personal experiences could lead to an even larger change, that of leaving their forlorn and threadbare Party behind. There is something called shame; sometimes it takes a catastrophe for the bent mind to experience its pangs and begin to respond to the warmth of another human being.



Authors Bio:
Mr. Herrman is a liberal philosopher specializing in structural metaphysics, where he develops methodologies enabling him to derive valid and verifiable answers not only in matters of the ontology of reality, but also in real-world concerns for everyday people.

Herrman has made contributions in legal, behavioral, sociological and logical theory and is challenging assumptions about the universe in recent work on the metaphysics of number. His publications include The Office and Its Stewardship (VDM 2009) and articles at openDemocracy, The San Francisco Sentinel, and the scholarly directory SSRN (Social Sciences Research Network).

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