Yes, It Truly Is Sociopathic
Approximately thirty news cycles have passed since people were talking about Donald Trump's State of the Union address on February 24 (only nine days ago, incredibly). The post-speech chatter covered a variety of issues raised by that rambling flood of lies, with one controversy erupting over US Rep. Ilhan Omar's shouted response during one of Trump's staged moments. More accurately, virtually all of the discussion of that controversy focused on the fact that Omar said something and that Republicans responded to the fact that she said something. What was not among the talking points was what Omar in fact said. And that matters.
Trump's stunt was yet another attempt to try to paint the Democrats as anti-American, saying: "The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens." When the Democrats did not play into that nonsense and refused to stand and applaud, as the trained seals Republicans were doing, Trump yelled at the Democrats: "You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourselves." One conservative columnist actually described Trump's cheap theater this way in The New York Times: "Democrats are feeling
emboldened on immigration amid Trump’s controversial enforcement push. But Trump effectively invoked what is still one of his strongest issues,
while drawing a contrast with Democrats." Right. Sure. Uh huh. Patriotism has always been the last refuge of a scoundrel, but I'm with us and you're with them "effectively invoke[s] one of his strongest issues." Now I understand.
That assessment of Trump's dishonesty is not merely wrong. It is completely backward. The contrast was definitely drawn, but not in Trump's favor. As noted above, Rep. Omar did say something during the Republicans' ovation, which of course led to attacks on her from the party that had little problem with their own people repeatedly heckling President Joe Biden. Trump, according to The Detroit News, later wrote that Omar and fellow Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib "'screamed uncontrollably' during his State of the Union speech and 'had the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people.' In the message, he called them 'lunatics' and said they 'look like they should be institutionalized.'" Have we reached the point yet where "every accusation is a confession" for Republicans can be shorthanded to EAIAC?
But again, the point is that Omar said something in that moment that was on point and should have been the focus of the discussion, rather than the pearl-clutching from those who still claim to worry about decorum. Omar did not say something generic, like the infamous "You lie!" moment in President Barack Obama's 2009 address to Congress. (Notably, the shouter in question soon publicly apologized and then spoke directly with the White House, where the chief of staff accepted the apology.) Of course, Obama had not lied, whereas Trump did nothing but, which would have made a stock heckle like that at least defensible in being true.
What did Omar say? Recall that Trump's challenge was to get everyone to agree that "[t]he first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens." Omar's response: "[Y]ou have killed Americans." And that is no lie. Not only has the Trump Administration killed Americans whose names we now recognize (Renee Goode and Alex Pretti) but others whose murders never made headlines. The first duty is to protect American citizens, right? The first duty, not "a nice thing to try to do, if it's not too inconvenient while we go after brown people or anyone who speaks Spanish," right? So much for that.
And now we are in a war of choice that inevitably leads to the deaths of Americans and other innocents abroad, including schoolchildren -- who, it should be obvious, are not "illegal aliens."
Although less dramatic, it is also of a piece with Trump's disrespect for human life (including the lives of Americans) for him to have included this in his State of the Union speech: "[I]n one year we have lifted 2.4 million Americans - a record - off of food stamps." No, Trump and the Republicans did not "lift" anyone off of food stamps. They simply threw them off the rolls, and Trump considers it a bragging point that 2.4 million people who had been eligible for nutritional assistance were summarily cut off.
Importantly, this is hardly new to the Trump-led Republican Party. Back in 2012, I wrote a Verdict column in which I endorsed some strong words from a Times op-ed by Nicholas Kristof, who responded to then-extreme conservatives' lack of compassion for dying people by writing this: "To feel undiminished by the deaths of those around us isn’t heroic Ayn Rand individualism. It’s sociopathic. Compassion isn’t a sign of weakness, but of civilization." My column then explained why the word "sociopathic" was not over the top. Relying on both clinical and dictionary definitions relevant to the question, I wrote:
While there are many different definitions of the word “sociopath,” there is a common element to all of them: sociopaths lack the normal constraints of conscience when it comes to pursuing their own selfish ends. Other people, in their eyes, are “lesser,” and it does not matter if the “people who really matter” do whatever they see fit, no matter if that means ignoring the rules everyone else must live by.
One dictionary, for example, defines “sociopath” as “a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.”
The specific policy question that animated my column back then in fact had to do with food stamps: "[T]he Republican Majority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to a recent report, advanced an agenda ... 'to reduce programs for the poor, including eliminating nutrition and education financing.'" At that time, it was still (barely) possible to be shocked that a top Republican leader would explicitly condition his party's support for a bill to end a debt ceiling crisis on harming millions of the most vulnerable Americans. Now, it hardly counts as news. In fact, before Trump's return to office, that kind of sociopathy had become standard, even for those who claim to espouse Christian virtues.
Today, that political party and those self-righteous hypocrites stand behind a government that deprives people of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without even attempting to provide due process to figure out whether the people they are harming are even guilty of anything. They cheer when people are left to starve. They show no concern that people are dying in the new war for which the White House cannot keep its excuses straight. People are dying? Yeah, and ...?
I happen to disagree that "[t]he first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens." One might hope that the first duty of any government is not to inflict gratuitous harm and death on disfavored people essentially for kicks. That ought to be an easy bar to clear. Yet here we are.
- Neil H. Buchanan