The House Sociopath Caucus

Defining deviancy down in the United States Congress.

I almost fell out of my chair this past Sunday reading Romesh Ratnesar’s review of Jeremy W. Peters’s new book, Insurgency: How the Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted. I read the piece, in the New York Times Book Review, quaintly, on paper. It had actually been posted online way back on Feb. 22. Peters is a New York Times reporter. Yet the thing that made me almost fall out of my chair had not been reported in the news columns of the Times nor in any other major American newspaper. (A couple of British newspapers picked it up because they still maintain some capacity to be shocked by the derangement of American political culture.)

The thing that made me almost fall out of my chair was a paraphrase, and I did briefly wonder whether Ratnesar’s characterization was an exaggeration of what Peters wrote. It is not. Here is the relevant passage (from Peters):

That’s Hitler, Bannon thought, as the opening scene of Leni Riefenstahl’s seminal work of Nazi propaganda, Triumph of the Will, flashed through his mind. He meant it as a compliment.

The indifference of the public and the press to something Bannon probably related directly to Peters (who else would know what Bannon “thought”?) strike me as a classic example of what the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “defining deviancy down.” Socipaths now stalk the halls of power. We just call them Republicans.

There are so many sociopaths now in the House of Representatives that they constitute a virtual House Sociopath Caucus. In my latest New Republic column, I identify them by name. The piece went up this morning and not a soul has written to complain that my characterization is in the slightest bit unfair. Bill Eddy, the therapist, lawyer, and mediator whose book is pictured above, would argue that these people get elected not in spite of their being sociopaths but because of it.

You can read all about that and much else in my piece, here.