What's the Matter with Kongress?

Oppositional Defiance Disorder:  DSM definition

A. A pattern of angry/irritable mood, argumentative/defiant behavior, or vindictiveness lasting at least 6 months as evidenced by at least four symptoms of the following categories, and exhibited during interaction with at least one individual who is not a sibling:
Angry/Irritable Mood

1.

Often loses temper

2.

Is often touchy or easily annoyed

3.

Is often angry and resentful

Argumentative/Defiant Behavior

4.

Often argues with authority figures or, for children and adolescents, with adults

5.

Often actively defies or refuses to comply with requests from authority figures or with rules

6.

Often deliberately annoys others

7.

Often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior

Vindictiveness

8.

Has been spiteful or vindictive at least twice within the past 6 months.

From the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Watching Congressional hearings on youtube, once you get past the idea of you are watching reality TV or some other form on entertainment, and you realize you are watching what is supposed to be an actual living institution, which most people once assumed had actual work to do, you become quickly disoriented.

Lauren Boebert won her primary in Colorado yesterday, beating four other candidates, so she's doing her job-- namely to get re elected. 

And there seems little doubt Marjorie Taylor Greene will be re elected. 

Ms. Greene has been seen bending over to shout invective through the mail slot into the office of Representative Alexandra Ocasio Cortez. She has yelled out during the Presidential State of the Union address, hissed at Dr. Anthony Fauci that he is no doctor as long as she had the floor in the Congressional hearing, that he is a criminal and should be in prison because his type of science means torturting puppies. Beyond her assertion that Western forest fires are started by Jewish space lasers devised by the Jew George Soros, her insistent polemics against science and virtually any authority of any sort--beyond perhaps, the Protestant ministry--is loud, foul and beyond hyperbolic.

I first became aware of "Oppositional Defiance Disorder" watching "The Wire" in which certain children were pulled out of the classroom because they were so disruptive they made it impossible for anyone else to learn math, science or anything. Now Ms. Greene and Ms. Boebert are doing the same thing but in Congress.

Which, apparently, is what their constituents have sent them to Congress to do.

Which suggests, there may be entire Congressional districts populated by people with this disorder.  Which should, of course, come as no surprise in the Georgia from which Ms. Greene hails, which was, after all the springboard from which "Gone With the Wind" was launched, and which also launched the Ku Klux Klan, which GWTW lionized. (Read the book someday, as opposed to watching the movie, which was bad enough, but not nearly as bizarre as Margaret Mitchell's original text.)

In fact, oppositional defiant disorder is what the Confederacy was all about, when you think about it.

The problem for America today is that the Confederacy of Dunces today is not as Lincoln observed in 1865, geographically limited. As Lincoln noted, the peculiar institution of slavery was not evenly distributed, but confined mainly to the Southern part of the country. But today, every state, from Maine to Wisconsin to California is divided between the urban centers and the rural areas--the old "Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Alabama in between," phenomenon. 

Once, proper people were raised to respect the idea of martialing evidence to support argument, to examining the sources of information to assess their accuracy and credibility, to critically evaluate any claim in an argument.

But how does a proper person, raised and educated, know how to respond to an  MTG, a Boebert, a Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) when they start ranting about space lasers and the importance of having a good guy with a gun in every classroom, or the conspiracy to strip Americans of their liberty by trying to vaccinate them?

The educated folks have no tools to contain these disruptors. Donald Trump, of course, will never stop talking during a debate, will obey no rules about giving his opponent the opportunity to speak and reply.

How do you debate a raving lunatic?

Disruption is, in fact, their argument. 

And if Trump's oppositional defiance resonates with 40% of American voters, that may be enough to carry the day, to win the 2024 election.  Hitler, of course, came to power with around 30% with the same program. His SA goons roamed the streets with cudgels and policy meant nothing. All the Nazis needed were slogans and grievance, and that is where we are today with Trumpists.

It all comes down to counting: Are there more of us or more of them? 

In a way, there is a point to election denial: We, as individuals have no way to really know if 82 million voters voted for Biden to 74 million for Trump. The whole proposition of an election on such a vast scale is beyond any individual. We take a certain amount, maybe a lot, on faith. We watch the returns on TV but how do we really know whether what we see on TV is real? Did those guys we saw on TV bouncing around on the moon really reach the moon or was it all staged in a studio? 

How do we know?

It's like those excruciating philosophy classes in college: How do we know we are sitting in this room? What is a "fact"? How do I know you are real? 

On the cancer wards, I often had the feeling I had finally faced undeniable reality, because what I was seeing nobody could have made up, nobody could deny. It was beyond mischief, beyond imagination. And so you knew there was really a reality.

Watch the faces of those morons marching through the Capitol on January 6: most of them seemed astonished. We are actually here! This is real! They had to know, on some level, that Trump lost the election, that all their chanting was just a game like the video games they played in the basements of their parents' homes. 

They had to know that simply believing does not make things come true. 

But they will smear their feces on the marble walls, and act out until somebody makes them stop.

The child who expresses himself with feces is revealing a mental disorder beyond the usual pout and tantrum. The kid who places his poop in his dresser drawer or wipes it on the wall of the kitchen is beyond simple rebelliousness.

And, in the Red States at least, in the red counties, you've got a fair number of these folks. I was struck, when, after eight years, I moved out of New York City to rural Rhode Island how very different the people were. In the line at the post office, at the grocery store, at the hardware store and in the diners: these people were really impaired, visibly, palpably. They could not have lasted a day in New York City. They were way beyond Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy. 

I looked around and thought: "This, right here,  is America. 

God help us."