Trials of the Ubermensch

Think of what it is like. They are parachuted into life like any of us, another mouth to be fed, and evolve slowly into self-awareness. Somewhere in there a reactive suspicion of superiority emerges and its corollary, contempt. Insecurity in life is mastered only as a familial and social function. Their adjustment to the broader social world is unavoidably hierarchical and competitive, not cooperative, as an assumption. The matrix of superiority, contempt and insecurity plays out however it does, in a marginally healthy way or not. The constructs of competition and contempt (for the "losers") are unquestioned.

Apply to this all the variations of individual lives. Mitch McConnell inherits, through group identification, the unfathomable grudge of the defeated slave states. Multiply that by the thousands. Their hatred is focused on the agency of their humiliation or its nearest descendent, the federal government. Donald Trump is born so wealthy he can never be reassured of his own worth. He has to be rescued by his family and, later, beg the bankers for help. The psychological dissonance is unconquerable. Every interaction and innocent event is a battle now, needing to be couched in terms of competition and won, then gloated over and added to a list of glorious victories. John McCain, a legacy boy at a service academy, must be top gun to quell his feelings of inferiority, in compensation. He is nearly last in his class and survives a war and imprisonment. He returns and lands a beer-baron wife. George Bush fails at everything he does but is oblivious or convinced otherwise. He leaves the country, after his presidency, a shell of itself, its identity shattered. 

I never thought the United States would go down the road of self destruction. Where was the psychological injury? We had never lost a war and were fortunate beyond reason. Then I relocated to the South. Somebody lost a war. Somebody has a grudge and was humiliated. This is our story now. Add to the South the people with lesser tribal grudges and those with personal psychological injuries and you are on the road to hell, as we are now.