On the Massive Oedipus Complex of Republicans

It's easy enough to see the more egregious aspects of the Oedipal fixations of Republicans. Their presidential candidates--those seeking the office of national patriarch, nominal head and performative exemplar of masculinity--are all the sons of highly successful men, back as far as Reagan. Trump, Romney, McCain and Bush all had reasons to have father issues and have demonstrated a clear need to try to measure up and prove themselves, no matter that they had it made from birth and were almost irreversibly secure.

With George Bush the need was too transparent to demand analysis or explication. Observe how he had failed at everything and became president only through inherited wealth, family connections and repeated interventions when things went wrong. Eventually, a bipartisan panel including James Baker tried to save him from himself and the country from him. Their recommendations were ignored--the son's final, pathetic assertion of autonomy as he left the nation a shambles and a rudderless, hulking, fiery mess.

Fittingly, the Democrats Clinton and Obama, self-made men, were despised, reviled and attacked as usurpers at a level of extremity and irrationality reflecting the repressed, archetypal, delusional strength of the survival fantasies of Republican white men, who feel unconsciously threatened with annihilation by the dark, shadow forces of their insecurities and the inability to ever demonstrate actual self-worth. The feminine, nurturing side of the equation is in some ways even more compelling and shameful. 

The federal government represents mothering--the infantile font of sustenance and security, the source on which they all suckle. Their protestations against it, avowed attempts at avoidance and determination not to "marry the mother" all fail as they symbolically supplant their fathers and succumb to the warmth of the federal womb. I won't enumerate the sad specimens of arrestedness and compulsion but only mention Paul Ryan, whose life has been spent jealously depending on and sucking off the government. 

He probably decries it more than anyone. Similarly, most large corporations make their disgraceful profits by manipulating the government in their favor and taking advantage of the system. My only hope is that you, having read this, will have your eyes opened and see the sorry, submissive, self-serving mechanisms at work. 

Republicans continue to disclaim interest in the federal support they covet and, at the same time, reflexively take all they can get at the tavern and dispensary known as our national treasury, now to the exclusion of all other citizens as the disorder reaches its crescendo in Trump and his cast of crooks. When they rail against regulations and castigate bureaucracies as depending on the unjust proceeds of taxation you should see them as they are--small, frustrated men in denial of the reality of their fate.