MSNBC host Martin Bashir interviewed Stanton Peele, a psychologist and an "expert on addiction," this afternoon. Bashir urged Peele to psychologically evaluate supporters of the Tea Party. "It reminds us of addiction because addicts are seeking something that they can't have," Peele said. "They want a state of happiness or nirvana that can't be achieved except through an artificial substance and reminds us of the Norway situation, when people are thwarted at obtaining something they can't, have they often strike out and Norway is one kind of example to one kind of reaction to that kind of a frustration."
Bashir later asked: "So you're saying that they are delusional about the past and adamant about the future?"
"They are adamant about achieving something that's unachievable, which reminds us of a couple of things. It reminds us of delusion and psychosis," Peele responded.
Here's video of the exchange:
Yesterday, Democratic House members and Vice President Joe Biden reportedly called Tea Partiers "terrorists," apparently following the lead of manyliberals. And Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times compared supporters of the Tea Party and their allies in Congress to "cannibals," "vampires," "zombies," and "the metallic beasts in 'Alien.'"
Here's Bashir's full exchange:
BASHIR: What is the effect giving people their way all of the time? How does it shape our thinking behavior if by being adamant and dogmatic we get our way?
PEELE: Well, the way I think about it is they are pursuing goals that can't be achieved. It's sort of like a child who has some kind of fantasy, and they keep asking you to give them things to acquire that, but it's impossible to arrive at the goal that they want. The idyllic paths that they are pursuing probably never existed and certainly not something we can reach right now.
BASHIR: So you're saying that they are delusional about the past and adamant about the future?
PEELE: They are adamant about achieving something that's unachievable, which reminds us of a couple of things. it reminds us of delusion and psychosis. It reminds us of addiction because addicts are seeking something that they can't have. They want a state of happiness or nirvana that can't be achieved except through an artificial substance and reminds us of the Norway situation, when people are thwarted at obtaining something they can't, have they often strike out and Norway is one kind of example to one kind of reaction to that kind of a frustration.
BASHIR: But going back to the Tea Party in this country. Do you think that having achieved their goal, no new taxes. instead of this actually making them think about compromise in the future? It's actually simply going to harden them so this kind of battle this, kind of standoff, this kind of face-off is just going to become routine in Washington.
PEELE: Well, i'm looking at one beyond. they want no new taxes because they seek some kind of idyllic past. No new taxes won't bring them, won't bring them economic recovery so they will have to turn their attention to some other supposed method of attaining that until they go through all of them. Perhaps they can push through all of them. perhaps people become discontented and perhaps they will become discontented and people are likely to get riled up, and it could become a very angry movement could, potentially become a violent movement.
In his column for Tablet, Lee Smith asks, "The recent massacres in Oslo, Norway, and Hama, Syria, were both carried out by heartless sociopaths. Why does one of them—Syria’s Bashar al-Assad—continue to enjoy diplomatic relations with Washington?"
The horrific events in Norway last Friday have been difficult to process, and killer Anders Breivik's 1,500 page manifesto is a lot to digest. Fortunately, there have been some exceptionally good pieces written about the tragedy that help provide some context and understanding for what happened and why.
The Norwegian terrorist seems to have penned a long Unabomber-style manifesto, "2083: A European Declaration of Indpendence," which can be downloaded, for now at least, at this link.
Oslo—During the Second World War, Nazi Germany occupied Norway over five brutal years. By the time the Scandinavian nation was liberated by Allied forces and its indigenous resistance movement, more than 10,000 Norwegians had lost their lives and almost as many had spent time in German concentration camps throughout Europe.
In a major development that has been largely ignored or misrepresented in the American media, the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has obtained access to the full stash of over 250,000 classified American diplomatic cables previously obtained by WikiLeaks. The paper has been posting a steady stream of cables to its own website independently of the self-styled “whistleblower organization.”
Last week, the details of the plot to bomb New York City subways in 2009 expanded dramatically. We learned that the NYC plot was connected to two others, in the UK and Norway, and that all three can be traced back to senior al Qaeda leadership in northern Pakistan.
For anybody with a lingering belief that some form of socialism is benevolent, a visit to Norway, where I came during my first visit to Scandinavia, should settle any doubts: successful socialism is a fantasy.
Norway has oil wealth, a claim to superior public morality on which its awards of the Nobel Peace Prize are based, and a full-fledged social-democratic welfare system, based on confiscatory taxes. But even apart from its onerous tax levy, it has left ordinary Norwegians surprisingly poor. Once one leaves Oslo, which is drab, uninspiring, and depressing, and goes out to the countryside, many roads are as unpaved and potholed as in war-devastated and long-undeveloped Kosovo.
