An empire based on unrestrained capitalism, rampant militarism and violence, inequality and conspicuous greed — with no concern for preservation of the common good — is doomed to fail.

Long valued as an agent of upward mobility and progress, The American Dream has now turned pathological. It’s become sociopathic.

In a sociopathic society, anti-social behavior is the inevitable outcome of the dominant social values and power structures embedded within society itself. Over the past six decades, the USA has devolved into a full-blown sociopathic society.

Donald Trump epitomizes this trope.

Sociopaths only care about themselves and how much material wealth and power they can accumulate. They place more value on inanimate objects like assault rifles, cars, casinos and stock portfolios than they do on human beings.

The sociopath isn’t concerned with what anyone else thinks of them, either; all that matters is what they think of themselves.

Any kind of selfish, juvenile behavior they exhibit is perfectly acceptable because it gets them what they want — and for a true sociopath, their ‘rational self-interest’ is the only thing that matters. Your well-being is irrelevant. Most sociopathic behavior is perfectly legal. It is perpetrated by individuals as well as governments, financial institutions and corporations.

The relationship between the Trump mob and the rest of us is characterized by fear, distrust and class and racial animosity. As a result, there’s less compassion and more individualistic, sociopathic behavior. Sociopathic behavior is most prevalent — and dangerous — in the upper echelons of the social strata, not among the masses.

Remember the old Turkish adage, “The fish rots from the head...”

It means that when an organization, company, or government fails, the root cause is poor leadership at the top. Just as decay moves down from the head, corruption, absence of regulations or controls, bad rules and poor choices made by leaders flow down and ruin the rest of the society.

Prevailing social norms are largely constructed and enforced by the One Percent and do not necessarily represent the values or interests of the larger population. Most of our problems come from an institutionalized corporate environment of greed and corruption which places profits over people, fully sanctioned by a much larger sociopathic system.

America’s sociopathic ambitions coincide with the imperialistic desire for worldwide economic domination by the Military-Industrial Complex [MIC]. The planet’s resources and much of the human population are being sacrificed on an unsustainable path which will lead to virtual slavery for most of the population, and it risks destroying the system of capitalism from within.

De-regulation and Globalization is to blame for most of this. The economic agenda of the NEOCONS is a grave danger to civil society, and I would argue that they are intrinsically parasitic.

Laissez-faire capitalism is essentially a form of corporate welfare, undermining the most basic economic principles through unbridled monopolization and cartelism. Multinational Mega-corporations have always mooched a great deal of their wealth off the state.

Extreme inequality and growing class divisions are the inevitable results of neoliberal ideology. Over time, economic stagnation sets in and these divisions harden and worsen — intensified by attacks on unions and public services, until an epidemic of social problems threatens the existence of society itself.

Which is where we now stand.

The economic crash of 2008 was the predictable consequence of a vast financial Ponzi scheme designed to increase the profits of a corrupt, fascist economy – built on digital currency instead of tangible goods. It’s telling that stocks just hit record highs in the midst of a global immigration crisis, climate disasters of all kinds, and a grinding economic downturn caused by a pointless conflagration in the Middle East.

Eventually it will all come crashing down.

This roller-coaster economic model creates unsustainable debt: the systems in place must continually bankrupt themselves in order to survive. The severe ‘austerity’ measures advocated by disreputable economists are simply the expression of elitist preferences to delay the inevitable, while offering up yet another opportunity to punish the poor.

History shows that sociopathic societies are depressingly common: Ancient Rome; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union…

They differ from contemporary American society in one fundamental way, however: They didn’t pretend to be free.

[edited repost from 2014...]