Can We Handle The Truth? Ron DeSantis And "Sadistic Personality Disorder"-- The Grand Inquisitor Of Guantánamo
Can We Handle The Truth? Ron DeSantis And "Sadistic Personality Disorder"-- The Grand Inquisitor Of Guantánamo
One of the mistakes which political analysts make is to project their own thinking onto individuals and organizations in order to explain the motivations of those in power, or power seekers and their followers. They frequently grasp at straws in looking for the rationales of criminal and anti-social behavior, writing off such phenomena as the consequence of personal political ambition, greed, religious beliefs, associations, and just plain old corruption. People like to hear simple explanations, and many writers are paid to make them up while on the surface sounding plausible. Or, the flip side of such projections is to descend into academic foppery and arguments tending toward socio-historical determinism, such as, "symptomatic of late-stage capitalism," or "representative of Patriarchical systems," or an even more vacuous euphemism, "trends toward reactionary populism." Such arguments usually come from experts who are in love with the sound of their own voices, hoping to be interviewed by "NPR" or to get a column in "Mother Jones."
Even more concerning is the degree to which in today's popular culture, we avoid responsibility for our own and other's actions by assigning a catchy label to society's most aberrant forms of behavior, calling it a syndrome, or disorder, which makes it easier to describe, more convenient to ignore, and easier to rationalize. After all, if someone has a "disorder," that means they too are victims of it, and should not be blamed for it or judged, rather, written about by experts appearing on "NPR" or writing in "Mother Jones" as a matter of "human interest." And we, because we are trying to figure out what is happening to us, hit the "share button" on these pieces hoping that our really smart Facebook friend who reads the "London Economist" will explain it all to us. So, in the search for coherency, we go to pundits, Wikipedia, a Thesaurus, and fact-checkers at Snopes instead of reading the book of reality sitting open, right there in front of us.
The ultimate but logical absurdity of such analysis would be a defense lawyer's arguments that their hypothetical client, who just committed a mass shooting at a Synagogue, was not in fact a Nazi motivated to commit a hate crime, but suffered from "SADS," Spontaneous Ammunition Discharge Syndrome, and was not in control of his actions. The shooter's "disorder" according to this lawyer was due to childhood trauma caused by overexposure to Warner Brothers cartoons featuring Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd, followed by graduation to playing "Grand Theft Auto" starting at age three. Who here believes that there is not a large resource base of professional psychiatric expert witnesses who make a living testifying in court cases for such defense lawyers making such arguments, everywhere and everyday? We have reached a point where the discovery and classification of new syndromes and disorders has become a cottage industry, and many people are overjoyed to find excuses for their own behavior by learning that they have one one of their own which they can talk about on Instagram. Absurd? Not really, but in fact in today's world, it's a kind of perverse meme, which both banalizes and trivializes actual serious disorders which are real and in need of attention.
Then, we have on occasion a unique circumstance like today's, where the aberrant criminal behavior of a notable and powerful person defies our typical attempts at description or explanation, academic or political, and you are left with only one word, a label, a disorder, or a syndrome to understand it. Psychopath.
There are some people who do things which are so blatantly anti-social, so characterized by violent intent and murderous hostile fantasies, so destructive and cruel in their essence, while otherwise being masked as products of rational and logical reasoning, that the only word which is remotely appropriate for them is "psychopath." And the implications of that word mean that it should never be used lightly in describing anyone, especially the Governor of a State, or prospective Presidential candidate. The word itself is much overused in relation to the actual small numbers of people who are thus diagnosed.
Yet, here we are. Ron DeSantis, is by all intents and in every sense of the word a textbook, walking, talking, breathing, dangerous psychopath. (My expertise on the matter comes from having worked for one for several decades, but that's another story) Any attempt to downplay the danger he represents with some sort of odds-making, statistical or poll related argument that he is not an imminent threat because he could not possibly win the GOP nomination, is the height of personal and political irresponsibility. The issue is emphatically not his chances of winning, rather, the potential for destruction his campaign itself represents. Writing him off in any way is mostly a fear reaction by those who prefer to not think through the implications of his incomprehensibly deep sickness, along with the speed and lethal nature of its potential spread.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadistic_personality_disorder
["Sadistic personality disorder was defined by a pervasive pattern egosyntonic of sadistic behavior. Individuals possessing sadistic personalities tend to display recurrent aggression and cruel behavior.[2][3][4] People with this disorder will use violence and aggression in an attempt to control and dominate others. When others refuse to submit to their will, they will increase the level of violence they use. Many sadists will verbally and emotionally abuse others rather than physically, purposefully manipulating others through the use of fear or shaming and humiliating others. Some people with this disorder will not abuse others, but will instead display a preoccupation with violence.[5][6] This disorder was thought to be caused by childhood trauma or being raised in by a family where one spouse is abused. Sadistic personality disorder was considered more common in men than women.[7]
According to the DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria Sadistic personality disorder is defined by a pervasive pattern of sadistic and cruel behavior that begins in early adulthood. It was defined by four of the following.
Has used physical cruelty or violence for the purpose of establishing dominance in a relationship (not merely to achieve some noninterpersonal goal, such as striking someone in order to rob him/her).
Humiliates or demeans people in the presence of others.
Has treated or disciplined someone under his/her control unusually harshly.
Is amused by, or takes pleasure in, the psychological or physical suffering of others (including animals).
Has lied for the purpose of harming or inflicting pain on others (not merely to achieve some other goal).
Gets other people to do what he/she wants by frightening them (through intimidation or even terror).
Restricts the autonomy of people with whom he or she has a close relationship, e.g., will not let spouse leave the house unaccompanied or permit teenage daughter to attend social functions.
Is fascinated by violence, weapons, injury, or torture.
This behavior must not be better explained by sexual sadism disorder and it must be directed towards more than one person.[7] "]
In most respects, DeSantis is far more dangerous than Donald Trump could ever be. I expect some resistance to this idea because of our national Trump-induced trauma of the last seven years, leading to January 6th, but I'll stand by it. Trump is mostly, for lack of a better word, veneer.
Consider the fake tan, fake comb-over, fake marriages to an array of fake trophy wives, some for purposes of breeding heirs only, others for photo-ops. Also there are the Kremlin motif palatial homes, with golden toilets and gilded furniture surrounded by full length mirrors everywhere, which would feature nicely pictured on magazine covers like "Bordello Life," or Good Whorehouse Keeping." And to sum up, there was Trump's most absurd attempt at maintaining that fake veneer, the four years of his impossibly fake Presidency, in which he literally faked his efforts at governing while in fact trying to personally profit from it, with no other purpose than to fund his legal defense in the upcoming trials for his fifty-year crime spree as the "Boss" of the Trump Organization. He was always all sizzle. And in answer to the proverbial question "where's the beef," it was barely visible, as we've since learned from Stormy Daniels' book.
Conversely, DeSantis deliberately cultivates the outward image of his actual inner personality, that of a torturer, an Inquisitor, an executioner, and an undertaker, in the tradition of antiquity's pseudo-Christian witch burners. He is the same, inside and out. He has described his home state as "God's waiting room." (supposedly because of the Florida senior residents age demographic) What, might I ask, does that imply about who and what he thinks he is? So, if Trump is thin veneer, DeSantis is Mahogany. The difference should be obvious to discriminating shoppers who prefer to scour resale shops for vintage furniture instead of buying at Ikea.
He claims to have a personal relationship with God. However, by all accounts, the very fact that we as an nation even for a moment accept his legitimacy as a presidential candidate, is an invitation for God to exact his judgment upon us, and we will deserve every bit of it if he ever succeeds.
The Ascent Of The Post 9-11 "JAG" Minister Of Torture-
DeSantis was, as is documented, trained as a lawyer. That is bad enough. Worse is that he became a Navy JAG (Judge Advocate General) after 9-11, where he was noticed by the friends of Dick Cheney, promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, and deployed to the US top security military prison at GITMO. Presumably his noticeable cruelty and lack of human emotion were highly valued by the Bush 43 team which groomed him for the deployment to which he was assigned. Which was to supervise the interrogation of prisoners there. We can speculate that he loved everything about his job, except for having to wear his white full dress uniform, because everything else about him is dark.
According to "The Guardian," April 28, 2023 profile:
["The future Florida governor and Republican presidential contender had been assigned to Guantánamo..., part of a small legal team tasked with ensuring the guards and other military personnel followed the law. He was the most junior JAG in the camp..."]
Based on The Guardian's reporting, there is circumstantial evidence pointing towards DeSantis involvement in a cover up of multiple suspicious deaths there which might have been murders disguised as suicides.
["In the middle of a June night 17 years ago in the Guantánamo prison camp, guards and medical orderlies were urgently summoned to one of the inmate clinics, where an emergency was unfolding.
Two inmates, Ali Abdullah Ahmed and Mani Shaman al-Utaybi, had been brought in dead. A third, Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, had been rushed to the hospital on the US naval base but was declared dead there soon afterwards. The three men were found hanging from their necks, with their hands and feet bound and rags in their throats.
It was the worst loss of life in the prison camp’s history – in the midst of a turbulent year in which there were hunger strikes and riots as well as the three deaths – and officers around the base were roused from their sleep and rushed to Camp Delta, the main internment centre.
R Adm Harry Harris arrived, the base commander who would go on to command the Pacific fleet, accompanied by Col Michael Bumgarner, the head of the overall prison complex. At some point, witnesses say, a more junior officer turned up, a 27-year-old navy lawyer, or judge advocate general (JAG), Lt Ron DeSantis.
Anyone who was on the scene would have known there were serious questions about the official account. According to that narrative, the dead men bound their hands and feet, stuck cloth deep down their own throats, fashioned nooses from strips of material, climbed on their washbasins with the noose around their neck and stepped off.
They had only been in the same prison block, Alpha, for 72 hours, in separate cells with empty cells in between. Alpha block was for high-security prisoners who were forbidden to mingle or even talk to each other. Yet the three men were alleged to have conspired to kill themselves in exactly the same manner at exactly the same time.
Any JAG would want to know how guys would die while they’re in a cell guarded by five guys, and how they could have been hanging long enough for rigor mortis and with a rag shoved down their throats,” Denbeaux said."]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/28/ron-desantis-guantanamo-bay-allegations
Additionally, to adequately grasp what DeSantis did there, this account in his home state newspaper the "Florida Bulldog" contains a graphic description [**warning***] from a largely vindicated prisoner there, since released and being interviewed widely.
["Now, however, an ex-Guantanamo detainee has come forward to allege that DeSantis actually had a much darker role at Gitmo. And his disturbing accusations about DeSantis have yet to be reported by any national or Florida-based news outlet despite the governor’s well-known presidential ambitions.
Mansoor Adayfi, formerly detainee #441 and also known as Abdul Rahman Ahmed, says JAG Officer Ron DeSantis observed, allowed and participated in illegal acts of torture to help put down a hunger strike in 2006 by dozens of detainees protesting their detention. DeSantis also covered up the torture, Adayfi says.
The Yemen-born Adayfi, held for 14 years without charges, was released in 2016 and flown to Serbia to start a new life after a review board determined he was not a threat to the U.S. He made his allegations about DeSantis in a Nov. 18 interview podcast of Eyes Left, hosted by U.S. Army veteran and anti-war activist Michael Prysner, a graduate of Florida Atlantic University.
“I saw a fucking handsome person who was coming. He said, ‘I’m here to ensure that you’re treated humanely.’ And we said, OK, this is our demand, you know. We’re not asking for much,” Adayfi said. He said DeSantis went on, “And if you have any problems, if you have any concerns, if you have…just talk to me.’ And you know we, we, we, we’re drowning in that place. I’m like, ‘Oh, this is cool.’ That person actually writing something. He will raise the concerns, but it was [a] piece of the game. What they were doing, they were, they were looking what’s [going to] hurt you more, to use against you.”
Adayfi, now 44, said DeSantis watched with amusement as he and other detainees were repeatedly force-fed Ensure, a “meal replacement” shake, through a nasal feeding tube pushed down their throats.
“Ron DeSantis was there and watching us. We were crying, screaming. We were tied to the feeding chair and that guy; he was watching that. He was laughing basically when they used to feed us, because…our stomach cannot hold this amount of Ensure. They used to pour Ensure, one can after another, one can after another. So, when he approached me, I said this is the way we are treated. He said, ‘You should start to eat.’ …I threw up on his face. Literally on his face.”]
Whether these "incidents" are ever fully investigated and aired publicly, the invariant in all is DeSantis' dispassionate cruelty, both in Guantánamo and later involvement in similar deployments in Iraq. Clearly, he absorbed these qualities early in life, and manifested them as psychopathologies as an adult. Then DeSantis brought them with him to advance his Navy career under propitious circumstances in which the ruling regime prioritized what they called "enhanced interrogation," a nice word for torture. We all remember the lawless disregard for human rights in the period after 9-11, when the Cheney-Bush administration used the attacks as pretexts to project an Imperial war strategy based on the lies about WMD in Iraq and elsewhere. DeSantis was, in this context, happy as a Pig in shit, having found a job which gave him both an outlet for his sadism and a training ground for his later ambitions.
We all saw the cruelty manifest in his Christmas Eve forced deportations (illegal deceptions in fact) of migrants procured from Texas and shipped to the homes of wealthy residents in Martha's Vineyard, with other such replays soon forthcoming. We also might remember the public utterances of shock, surprise, incredulity and mystification about the motives behind such cruel actions. And once again, we thirsted for and swallowed the simplest answers, such as "political stunt," a "fundraising grift" targeting his base, an "attempt to show up Trump," or the old stupid standby explanation "he's just owning the libs."
No. And yes, but no. It is not "that simple." Very few things of importance are. As more details emerge with regard to this and other background, what becomes evident is that what he has done is who he is, that he embodies the same form of psychopathology as did Adolf Hitler and his mass following of violent Brownshirts, mostly broken personalities, thugs, killers, and brutalized war veterans whose propensity for organized violence was forged under the inhuman conditions of trench warfare and mass death of The Great War, followed by years of street fighting with leftist paramilitaries throughout the turbulent Weimar period..
Our evaluation of the DeSantis threat must not be measured by arbitrary concepts like "electability" or "popularity." Instead, we need to see him as a lethal and highly transmissible virus which needs to be contained, and against which we need mass inoculation. He comes as death in a dark suit, walking amongst us on his heel lifts, still, in effect, supervising torture and covering up murder in the form of his "eliminationist" campaign against people labeled as woke, but whose only crimes are both being and defending victims of injustice.
His psychopathology is what drives his policies, informs his campaign strategy, determines his legislative agenda, and defines his potential threat level. Everything else is an add-on.
The greatest mistake we make in warfare of any kind is always to underestimate enemy capabilities, just as it was three years ago when we underestimated the danger of the lethal and mutating virus that arrived here, which started out small, then proceeded to kill one million Americans.
Let us not under any circumstances make the same mistake again.
