I just started a new book by former venture capitalist, Bruce Gannon Gibney called A Generation of Sociopaths. His central thesis is that the boomer generation's reckless indulgence has degraded the foundation of American prosperity. I am not that far into the book but I think that before you blame all boomers - and there is lots of blame there for what H.S. Thompson called the "generation of swine," I think it goes deeper than that. I believe that there was a quite deliberate war on what conservatives saw as a betrayal of corporate interests and the anti-Soviet goals of the military industrial complex in Vietnam and a deliberate effort to replace the overwhelming prosperity,freedom and upward mobility of that era and the subsequent rise of anti-establishment ideas with a return to arch conservativism and the rise of Neo-liberal economic policies as personified by the Reagan presidency. The strategy is made quite clear in the famous Powell Memo which outlined an "Attack on America's Free Enterprise System." http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/ According to Gibney: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders describes pathology as: 1. ego centrism;self-esteem derived from personal power, gain or pleasure; goal setting based on personal gratification, absence of prosocial internal standards and associated failure to conform to lawful or cultural normative ethical behavior 2. lack of concern for the feelings, needs or suffering of others......incapacity for mutually intimate relationships with exploitation as a primary means of relating to others 3. disinhibition; [irresponsiblity, impulsivity, risk-taking] and antagonism {manipulativeness, deceitfulness, callousness and hostility] With this in mind I found this paragraph in Gibney that perfectly describe the current state of Neo-liberalism that functions in the American political sphere: Eventually, private behaviors congealed into a debased neo-liberalism, the sociopathic operating system that has dominated politics.....both right and left for more than three decades. Neo-liberalism emphasizes consumption over production, dogmatic deregulation over thoughtful oversight, permanent deficits instead of fiscal prudence, and capitalism liberated from the bounds of the state, though always free to replenish itself at the federal trough in the event of "sub-prime mortgages, junk bonds or collateralized debt obligations", living up to their names." Doesn't this describe perfectly where we are at at the end of the first two decades of the new millennium? A sociopathic avarice, deceit, imprudence and tawdry obsession with political power for it's own sake. The entire economy has been reshuffled as Powell described in his manifesto to create a generation burden with unrestrained, underfunded spending with accompanying cuts to services that has destroyed an era of overwhelming prosperity that existed before Neo-liberalism. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/art...boomers-mortgaged-the-future/article34414304/ I think describing a whole generation as sociopathic is wrong but I do think his description of Neo-liberalism and politics in the age of Trump as sociopathic is right on the money.
