You Can't Ignore the Sociopaths

Having done my civic duty, and worn a hairshirt for a day in the desert to atone for my vote for a truly bad president, I keep trying now to ignore the idiocy that passes for an election campaign in these United States.

But when Bishop Willard Romney refuses to withhold his endorsements of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, he reaffirms one of the many reasons why we simply cannot allow this man to become President of the United States.

Only a sick mind could come up with the kinds of obscene distortions about women and rape that Akin and, most recently, Mourdock have uttered in campaign appearances and never really recanted.  It is a sickness that seems to infect only Republicans: various pieces of legislation in GOP-controlled state legislatures, most recently Pennsylvania's, reflect the same kind of sociopathic ignorance. Of course,  the Bishop's tolerance of such obscenity comes as no surprise, given his own church's attitude toward women.  Mormon belief holds, in effect, that  they should be kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

Bishop Romney's own ignorance of geography ought to raise warning signals for those voters who care about foreign policy.  This guy thinks Iran's access to the sea is via Syria!  (Iran in fact has both northern and southern seacoasts, and there's a hunk of land called Iraq between it and Syria.)

Since I still cling to the quaint Jeffersonian idea of separation of church and state, I consider it supremely unwise for any nation aspiring to be a democratic republic to even consider allowing a bishop of any religion to be its president. But then I also think the founders were dead serious when they wrote the first ten amendments to their own Constitution, the ones we now call the Bill of Rights. The current President and his predecessor both seem to have repealed those amendments by presidential fiat. Who knows what further mischief would be done to them under the presidency of a bishop born to a CEO mentality?

I cannot even walk the dog without passing the Romney/Ryan and other Republican campaign signs in a neighbor's yard. I am well acquainted with this neighbor, who is an otherwise intelligent and successful man.  How can he support the delusional policies of the Republicans whose signs he displays?

Part of it, I think, has to do with the distorted American definition of "success." Whether an American is deemed "successful" depends entirely on how much money he or she has made and kept.

Bishop Willard Romney was born to wealth and used his money to acquire still more money.  In the process, he outsourced far more American jobs than he ever created.
But he is a "successful" man.

So was Attila the Hun.