Life vs. Death of Republican Politics

[PsychoBabble]

Perhaps I should say life vs. death policies — because ultimately, the expected end-result of politicking should be public policy.

Rubber, meet road.

In our current political incarnation, there is only one clear conclusion to be drawn:

The Republicans/Conservatives are for death.

>> Death to the poor (and increasingly the middle class), giving them the “choice” of no health care, or of inadequate care that will only result in slightly slower death.

>> Death to the disabled, and mentally infirm, for the same reasons.

>> Death to the things that affirm and enhance LIFE, like education and the arts.

>> Death to neighbors, through militaristic policing.

>> Death to foreign neighbors, through unnecessary wars and "collateral damage."

Peace, good health, education, and an appreciation of the senses are the core pieces of positive humanity. Some would also add spirituality. Pursuing these both for ourselves, and those around us, is the core idea behind “common good.”

This. Is. Not. Rocket. Science.

You are either FOR the common good, or AGAINST it -- and you cannot reasonably ask others to be FOR you, when you consistently act AGAINST them.

You are either for LIFE, or for DEATH.

[PsychoBabble]

1. Freud understood life vs death ...

Sigmund Freud wrote that societies, along with individuals, are driven by two primary instincts. One is the instinct for life, Eros, the quest to love, nurture, protect and preserve. The second is the death instinct. The death instinct, called Thanatos by post-Freudians, is driven by fear, hatred and violence. It seeks the dissolution of all living things, including our own beings. One of these two forces, Freud wrote, is always ascendant. Societies in decline enthusiastically embrace the death instinct, as Freud observed in “Civilization and Its Discontents,” written on the eve of the rise of European fascism and World War II.

“It is in sadism, where the death instinct twists the erotic aim in its own sense and yet at the same time fully satisfies the erotic urge, that we succeed in obtaining the clearest insight into its nature and its relation to Eros,” Freud wrote. “But even where it emerges without any sexual purpose, in the blindest fury of destructiveness, we cannot fail to recognize that the satisfaction of the instinct is accompanied by an extraordinary high degree of narcissistic enjoyment, owing to its presenting the ego with a fulfillment of the latter’s old wishes for omnipotence.”

The lust for death, as Freud understood, is not, at first, morbid. It is exciting and seductive. I saw this in the wars I covered. A god-like power and adrenaline-driven fury, even euphoria, sweep over armed units and ethnic or religious groups given the license to destroy anything and anyone around them. Ernst Juenger captured this “monstrous desire for annihilation” in his World War I memoir, “Storm of Steel.”

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/13/dance-death