The Lies Never End

 

 

One night, was enough, of the RNC hypocrisy, propelled interest in writing this essay. The speakers presented hours of inexhaustible insincerity. They gave fear-based lies, superficial generalizations, no facts and baseless predictions. For example, the word “we” was used with its multiple meanings. This pronoun might include you and I; you, I and another or others; another or others not including you. Notably, there are many synonyms for the word “lie.” For instance” clever,” as in, good in achieving what you want, especially using unusual or slightly dishonest methods; “dubious” meaning not completely good, safe or honest;  and corrupt,  fraudulent and unscrupulous.  To lie, is a false statement made with the deliberate intent to deceive; with an intentional untruth. There are also lies of omission by not telling the entire story. This essay focuses on conscience, lying, and paranoid delusions.

At this convention, some of the deceitful lies included the following: 1. Imagine the life you want to have, great job, beautiful house….. (For white Christens only?  ) 2. They will turn our country into a socialist utopia…… (More people involved in production, distribution and exchange are a good thing) 3…. local businesses shut down because of the…. riots (What about Covid -19, the worst unemployment figures in history, more deaths than the Vietnam War. I forgot that 57% of Republicans believe the 186,000 deaths are acceptable) 4. …. disarm you, empty the prisons (Only in those instances to reduce the Covid- 19 spread)….. 5…… the fake impeachment…. (The impeachment occurred and was not fake) 6….. His promise was to put America first…. (Yes, we have more Covid -19 deaths than any other country 7……. Justice is served……. (He can’t be indicted is a joke. Jesus was indicted) 8. People of faith are under attack (By whom?) However, we have a different reality from Individuals like Mary Trump, Marianne Trump, Michael Cohen, and others that have talked and written about his numerous lies, deceit, criminality, deceptions, narcissism and  sociopathy.

Freud wrote about the superego in his organization of mental functioning. The superego’s job was to scan ego activity at all levels, incorporating the basis for approval, disapproval, self-criticism and self-esteem .In this occurrence, the individual, under optimum conditions,  can develop a guilty ego or a guilty self in a well-functioning conscience. This conscience then functions with the disapproval of unfortunate and abnormal deeds, words and thoughts.  Moral values and ideals also develop with a hierarchy of good, better, best, bad, worse and worst.

This superego- conscience was formed by identification. Identification is initially based on parents and/ or other caretakers beginning very early around the second year in life. The parent or parents by their words, behavior, and attitudes express their values. These values then become part of the child’s superego and conscience. With identification, the child, without any direct training, reward, or intentional learning, begins to think, feel and behave through the characteristics of the other person or persons. It’s as if the   child now possess some of the characteristics, feelings or emotions of the parent with whom he identifies.

Imagine the youngster growing up in an authoritarian household filled with tension, angst and anger. Research with Authoritarian controlled households found restricted curiosity and originality. The children were punished for exhibiting curiosity and spontaneity and were rewarded for obedience for conforming to parental standards. Responses of compliance and conformity therefore become strong habits for these children both in and out of the home. The cold non-nurturing authoritarian parents were described as highly controlling, using power freely and not encouraging the child to express himself when he disagreed with his parents. Authoritarian parents do not practice what they preach. They are more concerned with their own ideas and standards as opposed to the child’s interest and welfare. Now you know why Authoritarian leaders demand loyalty.

Further, imagine the identifications, models and imitations from parents that fight, cheat, lie, are dishonest and with attitudes that are demeaning, racial, anti-Semitic and hateful. Parental attitude and behavior of rigidity, harshness, inflexibility and unreasonableness interfere with superego or conscience development. Conscience ,in most children,  initially are related to specific behaviors and then  develop  into more generalized abstract standards; become less exclusively determined by external rewards and punishments and more by internal sanctions; and begin to involve not only the voice of prohibitions but also the pursuit of what one should do. How is the child, that’s reared in a dysfunctional atmosphere, that’s delusional, narcissistic, and without an appropriate conscience, going to develop trust? He doesn’t.

 As youngster proceeds in age, so does his mental representation, language and moral and ethical capacity. Briefly, the verbal world of the child is not identical to the external world of reality or the inner world of imagination. Thus, contradictions, errors, difficulty with reality occurs. The normal worship of the word, is the belief that the verbal world is somehow more real than direct experience.  Of course the difficulty occurs when the verbal world is made to appear preeminent. However, logic is widely considered to be more realistic than direct experience.

Jean Piaget wrote that the child’s intellectual growth is characterized by a series of stages. According to Piaget, in ages 1 ½ to 7 or the preoperational stage of development, the child treats objects as symbolic of things rather than themselves.  With development, Piaget’s final stage of intellectual growth is called formal operations. With formal operations, the adolescent is able to generate and explore systematically various hypotheses; can employ deductive reasoning; and able to use abstract rules to solve a number of problems. Piaget, with research, found that children, eventually becomes less controlled by external rewards and punishments and more by internal sanction.  The individual begins to be able to avoid prohibitions, but also the pursuit of what one should do. Lawrence Kohlberg also studied moral development. He found that for the adolescent, conscience, at its highest level, was then able to view morality in terms of democratically accepted norms or laws.

Even with this limited overview, it’s not difficult to understand how an individual can develop an impaired conscience. Distortions of reality, difficulty determining reality from fantasy and the use of lying are driving forces for behavior. We know that lying can be innocuous by stretching the truth or an interest of a wish fulfillment. An individual may resort to lying because of fear of failure to meet certain or particular expectations and external approval. On the other hand, persistent lying reflects deep-rooted psychological problems and reflects a severe disturbance in conscience development and/or in the capacity of distinguishing reality from fantasy as in paranoid delusions.

Paranoids do not trust and their sense of reality is impaired. Being suspicious, arrogant, aggressive and megalomaniac, suggests that this paranoid is unable to perceive what normal people perceive. He picks out “a kernel of truth” or some fact for his statements. As a result, with suspicion, he distorts reality and is oblivious to the entire story of facts. He also incorporates the falsehoods within his own autistic way of thinking.  His subjective world is constructed only through his perceptions, which is autistically biased in his interpretation. The danger for the rest of us is that this paranoids distortion of reality rests only in favor of his autistic interpretive preoccupation .He can be logical and sound reasonable within his sustained systematized delusions. His lies, at times, can sound so convincing and believable. This paranoid never searches for truth. On the contrary, he searches for clues or pieces of information that fits his own biased conclusions.

In essence, we are faced with the delusions of a megalomaniac Donald. His many followers form a disturbed element and impaired conscience. This group is morally and ethically bankrupt and a grave danger to our country. Lying and delusions is the norm in his pursuit of power and control. He is proficient at deception.  His sheep consists of high school educated  white skinned folks,; Evangelicals waiting for Christ to return for only them; the top 1% of the economic ladder; a great number of  racists ; and too many head in the sand Republicans. Psychologically, the powerless seek and identify with an authoritative father figure.  Donald is a terrorist and many in his crowd are as well.

What about the scientific reality of Covid-19, economic catastrophe, systemic racism, inadequate health care, push to suppress voting for the populace, global warming, and the Doomsday Clock?  The first obligation of the president is to model obeying the law. Instead, we have a criminal who disrespects the law, and is running on” law and order?” He is paranoid and delusional. Do not forget that The Hatch Act was violated by this terrorist and his criminal party with their shameless TV propaganda event.