Wish-Fulfillment, Psychopathology and Bernie Sanders’ Vision of Socialism

Here’s the psychology of socialism, in 3 simple-to-understand components.

# 1: Wish-fulfillment

# 2: Eradication of the law of cause and effect

# 3: Virtue-signaling

Example:

Vermont Independent and self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders has a new plan to give a job, with $15 an hour minimum wage and health care benefits, to anyone “who wants or needs one.”

The job guarantee plan is missing some details, like how to pay for it, but Sanders has joined with Democrats in pushing proposals to make sure anyone who needs a job has an option to work on important public jobs like infrastructure, care giving, education or environmental projects, The Washington Post reported. [Source: The Daily Caller]

Here are the three components exhibited in Sanders’ plan:

Wish-fulfillment: Jobs. Who can argue with jobs? And who can argue with guaranteed jobs? No more worries about recessions, depressions or downturns. There’s always a job for everyone — regardless. To wish for something is to make it so. Just let legislator Bernie pass the bill, and then let President Bernie sign the bill into law, and there you have it — guaranteed jobs for all people, for all time. No more need to worry about the economy. It’s NOT “the economy, stupid,” after all. It’s the wish-fulfillment mechanism of a Senator.

Eradication of the law of cause and effect: What causes jobs? The existence of businesses. Businesses exist because they’re profitable. Businesses are profitable because many people wish to buy the goods or services offered by the business. When there are enough people who want a product or service that somebody can sell that product or service at a profit, employees are needed to keep the operation or enterprise going. Without the demand for the goods and services and the desire of some to make a profit, there are no jobs. Sanders’ proposal bypasses all of this. Sanders’ proposal, like any socialist idea, takes it for granted that good things can be brought into existence merely by the equivalent of a magic wand. Gee, why has the business world worked so hard all these years to create jobs, prosperity, profit and productivity? Who knew? All we needed was Bernie Sanders.

Virtue-signaling: The logical fallacies in socialism are so obvious it almost seems insulting to point them out. But here’s the rub: People want to be seen as advocating things that feel good. They worry they will be shamed or scolded if they come out against the socialist idea that there “ought to be a law mandating a $15/hour job for everyone.” They repress any doubts they have about the absurdity or logical contradictions in such proposals. Instead, they convert what should have been critical thinking and reasonable doubt into a campaign to show in front of others how they want everyone to feel good. On a grand scale, this develops into the Republican and Democratic parties, and most of the media. Virtue-signaling, in a word, means: “I like the intention here. Don’t talk to me about facts and logic. Others see I like the intention, and that makes it more valuable.”

This unhealthy and unwholesome psychology, rooted in logical fallacies, intellectual dishonesty and self-deception, forms the root of self-esteem problems and other psychological maladies in any individual. As with an individual, so too with a society.

America will have to diagnose and correct the problems of its intellectual, media and government elites if it’s to have any chance at all of surviving. We’ll know America is healthy again when Bernie Sanders’ ideas no longer make the news.

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