“The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” – Carl Jung
In the Batman movie, The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger portrayed the ultimate rebel-without-a-cause. His character, the Joker, is an eerie reminder of what can happen to a boy whose childhood provides a maximum of abuse and no one to get even with. There’s no way of knowing if the Joker was joking about a drunk father carving a permanent smile into his face or if the the scars were self inflicted. Judging from the scoundrel’s need to lash out, it didn’t seem to matter who hurt him. His rage was so maddening the only target big enough was everyone.
The Joker is a comic book character but history offers two larger-than-life examples of angry boys who suffered severe dopamine deprivation and grew into hateful dopamine addicts. Paul Joseph Goebbels and Karl Christian Rove both grappled with childhood hostilities that demanded revenge. Oblivious to their madness, the demented duo were more than willing to let innocent bystanders pay for their tormentors’ sins.
Goebbels was short and frail with a deformed leg and club foot that produced a pronounced limp and a lifetime of derision. Even his Nazi uniform mocked the wannabee macho man by making him look like Barney Fife from the TV show Andy of Mayberry. Rove’s deformity wasn’t as obvious but a traumatic childhood carved a sociopath’s smile into his chipmunk cheeks. Was it the father who deserted him at birth? The stepfather who turned gay then walked away? The mother who took her life? Did the girl who gave 9 year old Karl a thrashing leave him with more than a bloody nose? What about a face that makes him look like the boy most likely to get bullied and least likely to get the girl?
Whatever the reasons, Karl limped over to the dark side where unethical tricksters are hailed with outstretched arms.
We’ll never know the damage wrought by the countless kids who got their egos kicked and went on to seethe in silence. We do know about calamities caused by two mental cripples whose misfortunes turned them into experts at manipulating the damaged psyches of troubled souls. Goebbels compensated for inadequacies through writing. Rove became a master debater. One can only imagine two reprobates licking lips, Joker style, when dirty tricks plus right-wing politics added up to a license to kill.
As fate would have it, the two real-life jokers had more in common than inadequacies and resentments; they were homophobes of the “what’s-wrong-with-this-picture” variety. Lost and longing for male approval and possibly more, both were enthralled by the swagger of macho pretenders. In helping the objects of their affections steal and solidify political power the smitten sycophants paved the low road for unspeakable crimes and deceptions. Step by step the nerds helped their unrequited love interests undermine democracies, justify invasions, torture, punish, kill, destroy, and trash the reputations of once proud nations.
Despite the incalculable price the planet paid for their misery, the lost boys failed to find acceptance among “real men” who used and berated them. Rove’s co-conspirators (jokers don’t have friends) mocked him with the nickname Turd Blossom. The gangsters exploiting Goebbels’ demeaned him with a borrowed name from a German fairy tale – Malicious Dwarf.
Jokers and criminals conspire because they serve one another’s base interests and because healthy humans are repulsed by miscreants. Sane people strive for ideals that bring out the best in others. Diseased dopamine addicts manipulate other sufferers’ pettiness, fears, and vindictiveness to build weak egos up by tearing victims down. The Malicious Dwarf didn’t give a damn about naziism and Turd Blossom only cares about conservative beliefs he can pervert to win acceptance from lawbreakers who pat his head with one hand while holding their noses with the other.
It’s frightening to realize the fate of our species keeps landing in the hands of tortured misfits who prove what psychologists and comic books have been telling us for decades. There is no substitute for parental love, and there aren’t enough shrinks to undo the crippling damage inflicted on traumatized egos. It’s no wonder why loving homes produce healthy adults, while dysfunctional childhoods breed destructive addicts. Until the world learns how to identify, expose, and defuse the tens of millions of young victims there will never be a shortage of obsessed victimizers ready, willing, and able to perpetuate the most vicious of cycles, the way the Malicious Dwarf did and Turd Blossom continues to do.
What do you think?
Is there any hope Karl Rove will awake from his dopamine-induced psychosis and try to make amends for all the damage he’s caused?
Will our species ever reach a point where the likes of Rove, Goebbels, and similar turds are exposed and treated instead of permitted to pretend they are human beings?
Discussion
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