Do Trump, Netanyahu, and Their Ilk Believe They Are Virtuous?

That the United States of America is controlled by a criminally perverse, two party ruling class should be obvious to any reasonable (not rational, for the above-named people are very rational) person not living in what Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existential writer, called bad faith (mauvaise foi).

Bad faith is based on Sartre’s premise that people are radically free despite social and biological constraints; in each person’s consciousness they sense this but choose to play games, to perform for themselves and others, and to act as if they have no choices when they do. They deny their freedom.

This is not lying but a form of self-deception since one cannot lie to oneself for “the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know in my capacity as a deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived,” writes Sartre.

This should be so obvious but it escapes most people who imbibe psychobabble.

Lying is different since it involves other people. “The essence of the lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding,” added Sartre. This cynical consciousness that knows the truth but denies it to others is a perfect description of  politicians, propagandists, intelligence services, and their media mouthpieces.

They know they are lying and are proud of it, but of course they will never admit it. Regular people also lie regularly but with not the same tremendous social consequences.

People often say that certain people really believes their own lies, that they are deluded, but this is impossible.

I begin with this brief excursion into philosophy (and psychology) because I recently read a fine journalist, Patrick Lawrence, in an otherwise excellent article – “Trump, Bibi, and Ayn Rand’s ghost” – write the following about war criminals Trump and Netanyahu’s recent dinner meeting in which  Netanyahu shows Trump a letter he wrote nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, that Medea Benjamin of Code Pink rightly called “surreal” [my emphasis]:

We must reason through the matter such that we are able to recognize that these two appalling men were serious in their self-congratulation. The idea of themselves they presented before the media cameras is to them genuine: They sincerely understand themselves in this way—virtuous, courageous, standing heroically alone, bearing the world’s banner forward.

Of what are such people made? This is our question. Attempting our answer leads us beyond politics and policy and into the spheres of psychology and pathology. I have long contended that any true understanding of global affairs cannot leave out consideration of the mental and emotional makeup of those who, for better or worse, are in positions of leadership. The Israeli PM, a case in point, exhibits clear symptoms of clinical psychosis if by this we mean a frayed relationship with reality.

Now Patrick Lawrence most forcefully and eloquently often condemns Trump and Netanyahu and their ilk as the genocidal war criminals that they are. Because I admire his work so much, I hesitate to pick up on his point about their sincerity, but I think it is essential to do so because of its wider implications.

Sartre claimed “sincerity,” purportedly the anti-thesis of self-deception, takes one deeper into self-deception. It goes to Patrick’s  question of what are such people made, of what are we all made; it goes behind psychology to its philosophical presuppositions and beyond the issue of pathology to a theological analysis of evil.

While Lawrence’s analysis is focused not on these matters but on Ayn Rand’s influence on Trump, Netanyahu, and the wider individualistic culture – an astute analysis – it respectfully needs an a priori corrective.

I maintain that not for a second do Trump and Netanyahu believe they are genuine or virtuous or believe their own lies. They are the perfect examples of hypocrites, as in the word’s etymological sense of stage actor; pretender, dissembler, from the Greek hypokritēs. To repeat: it is impossible to believe one’s own lies since one knows they are not the truth one withholds.

Since it is obvious from their own words and actions and can be followed in real time video by any concerned person that they enthusiastically support the genocide of the Palestinians without an iota of compunction, can we say they are mentally ill?

I think not. That would suggest that if in some alternative universe they were tried for their crimes and convicted, they should be sent to a mental institution, not a prison, because they are sick.

They are far beyond sick and are the current examples of their nations’ predecessors’ support for massive war crimes for a very long time. Both the U.S.A. and Zionist Israel were founded on similar claims of being  God-ordained countries that hid the satanic violence they used against native peoples and anyone who dared to suggest God was not on their sides.

Are they, as Lawrence says of Netanyahu, out of touch with reality? I think not. In any case, whose reality? Those in power, with the corporate mass media and tech companies as accomplices, create their own reality, as in the famous quote attributed to a George W. Bush aid by Ron Suskind: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

This is even truer today with the use of artificial Intelligence. Their reality is not yours, mine, or Patrick Lawrence’s. Their facts are not ours.

In any case, to suggest Netanyahu is out of touch with “reality” would suggest mental illness, not evil intent. Sartre would say that to do so is to excuse him, which is clearly not Patrick’s intention. The result, however, of saying that Netanyahu and Trump sincerely think of themselves as genuine does exactly that.

One can, of course, reject Sartre’s philosophical premise about freedom, bad faith, and lying in favor of psychological and biological explanations. This is the modern approach, which is commonplace. It assumes much. It needs to be understood within the historical context of the decline of religion and the rise of science, modernism, and post-modernism. It is not scientific, however, but pseudo-scientific, and delusional on its own claims to being scientific. I maintain that it fails to comprehend the nature of evil.

But like Sartre and Dostoevsky, I too believe we are fundamentally free. Which is not to say we are not confronted with biological and social limitations on that freedom. We are. But fundamentally we have free will.

In the ancient tragedy Oedipus Rex, known in its Greek original as Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus commits two heinous acts: he kills his father and marries his mother. He commits crimes against society and sins against the gods. But he does so unknowingly, unconsciously, as the play makes clear.

Throughout the Western world in morality and law it has become accepted, as Aristotle argues in his Ethics, that consciousness and will are necessary for acts to be ethically bad or good.

If Netanyahu, Trump, and their ilk (to be clear, by ilk I mean Biden and former U.S. presidents and Israeli prime ministers before Netanyahu) are not conscious but believe they are being virtuous by mass murdering Palestinians and so many others, then they, like Oedipus, deserve sympathy. For they know not what they do. But they clearly know, so they deserve no sympathy. They deserve condemnation.

What could possess them, and all the other political leaders, to commit mass murder over and over again while reveling in their “accomplishments,” and to speak casually about using nuclear weapons? For that is what they do.

I should emphasize that I am not referring to individuals who commit murder and other horrible crimes but to political leaders backed by millions of supporters. Institutional leaders who quite rationally sit in offices discussing the best methods for slaughtering millions.

Why do they act this way? Why did Hitler? Harry Truman with Hiroshima and Nagasaki? George W. Bush with Iraq? You know all the names, or should. They are legion, as are the statistics. The demonic nature of U.S. history from the start is there for all to contemplate, as the late theologian David Ray Griffin has documented in a number of books. No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history, the cheap grace we bestow upon ourselves. It is demonic, as is the history of Zionism in Palestine.

So we are left with the question that has engaged people for millennia: What is the nature of evil? The demonic? While not here entering into a long analysis of this question, I will cast my vote with those, such as Soren Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Herman Melville, et al., who have claimed it goes much deeper than psychological sickness to a spiritual level and that the Enlightenment’s error was that it lacked a devil.

Satan is hard character to fathom, but when he is strutting his stuff, the consequences of his evil are blatantly real in the actions of those who have sold their souls for his favors.

In Melville’s Moby Dick the possessed Ahab says to Starbuck and to us:

Ahab is forever Ahab, man. This whole act is immutably decreed. ‘T’was rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant, I act under orders.

The same clarity of mind and will can be said of Trump, Netanyahu, and their ilk. They know from whence their orders come; they echo Ahab’s words that “from hell’s heart” and “for hate’s sake” they will kill the innocent and exult in the slaughter.

God and Satan battle on.

Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist….writer – beyond a cage of categories. His new book is AT THE LOST AND FOUND: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope (Clarity Press)

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