The Lunatics Are On The Grass: Can America Be Saved From The Sociopaths?

Just this morning a friend sent me a link to a New York Times article entitled, Recorded Sex Comments Cost Calif. Lawmaker His Job (9:37 a.m., AP, 9/10/09). It read like any other salacious tidbit of news, not too different in perspective from the Enquirer except that it was well-written and had an edgy sarcasm. (Even the New York Times has taken up an Entertainment tonight style. It’s depressing, but that’s another article.)

We find out that Mike Duvall was an ordinary, nearly inconspicuous and unproductive member of the California Assembly, that he was an Orange County Republican, that he’d once received a 100% rating from The Capitol Resources Institute (a conservative advocacy group) for his voting record on pro-family issues.

We also are informed that as of today, he’s a hit on YouTube for yet another sex scandal from an avowed right wing family man.

As the tale unfolds, Duvall was on a break from a committee meeting inside the Capitol building when he took the opportunity to brag to fellow Assemblyman Jeff Miller about a couple of affairs he was having. Neither noticed that an open microphone was on the table near them which recorded every word they said. KCAL-TV got a hold of it (one wonders how…) and aired his lurid comments.

Once it got on YouTube, it was all over for Mr. Duvall who was caught saying, “I’m getting into spanking her.”

The news media has assumed he was referring to Duvall’s affair with a female energy lobbyist. He described her underwear, the difference in their ages and how, at 36 (he’s in his mid-50’s), she’s getting “too old” for him and how he’d told her, “I’m going to have to trade you in.”

Then, still unconscious of the fact that his exploits were being recorded for posterity and that he was finally moving into the limelight with every word, he boasted of a second, simultaneous affair with another woman. “Oh, she is hot!”

So, once again, instead of concentrating our legislative minds or our public concerns on issues of water conservation, raging fires, increasing violence, overcrowding prisons, or renewable energy sources, we’re watching a politician pull down his pants and wag his weenie all over the media.

Another Sex Scandal to Distract Us

Personally, I don’t care about his sexual exploits although I feel for his wife and family and can only imagine their humiliation and anger.

What concerns me are two things about this entire scenario:

1. Americans can always be counted on to rubber neck an accident instead of keeping their hands on the wheel and steering straight. Our attention is far too easily fixated on sheer idiocy. So, now instead of addressing the fact that he was having a sexual affair with a lobbyist for Sempra Energy (a San Diego-based firm that operates San Diego Gas and Electric) while he was Vice Chairman of the Assembly Utilities Committee (and he thought she liked him for his sexual prowess!), we’re listening to tapes of him talking about “eye-patch underwear.”

2. Our leaders—from politicians to corporate decision-makers—are more narcissistic and sociopathic than ever. Most people don’t seem to understand how terribly dangerous that is.

Perhaps the two points are really one, because if we were not so docile, doped-up and easily duped into distraction by a couple of bags of Doritos and Sunday football, the sociopaths would have no hold on us. We’d see them for what they are and get rid of them.

But we are doped up. If we’re not eating, we’re drinking. If we’re not drinking, we’re popping pills. And if we’re not popping pills, we’re filling our lips full of collagen and our breasts full of silicon. We want sex and beauty forever. Who cares about corruption?

Anyone who’s looking can see we’re more concerned with our immediate creature comforts than our collective survival. We’d sell our political liberties for a coupon to Wal-Mart.

An example of true sociopathy at work? Here’s what Duvall said after the media exposed him: “I am deeply saddened that my inappropriate comments have become a major distraction for my colleagues in the Assembly…”

No mention of his family. No mention of his failure to perform his duties as a public servant. No mention of ethics. Just a short bow and a “sorry to bother you folks, shucks, don’t mind me none. ” And it wasn't his behavior that was the problem, it was his comment and that sorry little microphone that caught him. A swift little three-card Monty for those too busy with their Ipods to pay attention. No character, just sleight of hand.

Sociopathy as the New Political Culture

He’s not the only one. How many corporate officers were just bailed out by our tax dollars so they could continue paying themselves $13,000,000 a year salaries? How many $30,000 a year workers were laid off so they could? In one company’s case, it was at a cost of more than 600 jobs. That’s 600 families—men, women, and children—without income so one man wouldn’t have to change the size of his checkbook.

Or the marketing strategies of the executives at the pharmaceutical companies…which are once again under the gun for wooing doctors with lavish enticements to prescribe their medications off-label.

Or the media which has conspired with those corporate entities, employing every means of Viral Fear available to them, to keep us afraid, to keep us needy, and to keep us buying so their ratings stay up, up, up.

Sociopathy is actually a diagnosis representing a pathological state of utter selfishness. It is a manifestation of the sense that one is above rules or ethics, that one is superior to others, and that no one else matters.

A sociopath has no empathy, no remorse, and is unbound by conscience. They are also incredibly good pretenders. They can act as if they cared. They can make you feel that you’re in the presence of true benevolence and utter devotion…until you are no longer useful to them.

America cannot afford to be run by sociopaths and we cannot afford to be lulled by either their pretense or the “coupons” they are passing out. The only reason America is or ever has been a great country is because ordinary men and women have insisted it be so with every fiber of their beings. If we don’t continue to hold these “leaders” accountable, the lunatics will not only be on the grass, they’ll be running the asylum.