The George Santos GOP: Catch Us If You Can - Part I

George Santos reveals the GOP - Sam Ray © 2023 - Counter-Narcissist Intelligence

Art by Keith Greene 

New York’s hottest new Republican Reality TV show appeared to come out of nowhere. As a rule, I am not a Reality TV fan but I must admit it is entertaining to see which ridiculous lies will be exposed next, and if the Republican Party will ever do anything about a member who shamelessly lied about his entire life to get elected. Yes, Americans were tricked into electing a self-admitted con man, who has since been accepted and protected by the “GOP Leader.”  

Based on patterns of malignant narcissism consistently decoding and predicting almost everything Republicans say and do now, it has been obvious for years that there is no bottom to the depths the Republican Party and right-wing media will go for their own greed and power-lust, but George Santos is such a pathetic new low that I am not even sure which part of this morally bottomless story is more mind-blowing:

• That the Republicans sank so low that they supported someone for Congress who didn’t pass his own people’s basic background check.

• The utter failure of most local news in New York to inform voters of such an obvious liar and con man running to represent them in Congress.  

• The complete shamelessness and lack of conscience he displays in admitting his lies, as if it is normal behavior, and doesn’t have a care in the world.

• Republicans still seating him in Congress after he got publicly caught lying about nearly everything.

• Republicans were fine putting a confessed serial liar on Business and Science committees, and giving him top secret security clearance.

If you have any doubt George Santos is yet another obvious sign of the Republicans bottomless moral, ethical and ideological free-fall, here is a small sampling of lies he told to fool New York’s wealthiest district into supporting and electing him. Santos called it “embellishing his resume.”

• Claimed to go to a top New York high school but had to drop out due to Great Recession hard times. They have no record of him.

• Claimed to have a top university and masters degrees, but post-election admitted he, “didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.”

• Claimed to be a star volleyball player who got an athletic scholarship at a school he never went to.

• Claimed Jewish heritage, and then defended the falsehood as he said he is, “Jew-ish.”

• Claimed his grandparents fled the Nazi holocaust while records show they were born in Brazil.

• Claimed he came from generational wealth and owned 13 properties. Neither are true.

• Claimed his mother died in the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 but immigration records show she wasn’t in the country.

• Claimed he is married to a man, when he had only been married to a woman.

• Claimed he lost four employees at the Pulse LGBTQ nightclub shooting in Florida. None of the victims ever worked with him.

• Claimed he worked at Citibank and Goldman Sachs, but never did. He called these claims a “poor choice of words.”

• Claimed he is a skilled wealth manager but his most legitimate experience was put in mediation by the SEC for being a Ponzi scheme.

What may shock you as it once did me is that there is nothing illegal about lying in American politics. Somehow saying the moon is made of cheese was transformed from being an objectively proven falsehood into being considered political “free speech.” Isn’t it ironic that every other American can be fired from their job for lying on their resume, but for those we hire via election to be our “public servants,” lying about almost everything on their resume is neither illegal nor a deal-breaker for the Republican Party. Clearly this is a flaw in our politics that needs fixing. So why did Santos’ reality distortion field work on voters?

Since at least 2015, whenever anyone would call Republicans hypocrites, my reflex response was, “They are way, way, way past hypocrites” because I had been studying the psychological grooming and gaslighting of conservative and religious minds, via Republican elite propaganda since 1996, when predator Roger Ailles put out his Republican reality distortion field creature named “Fox News.”  Thankfully, a far less organized liar like George Santos has finally come along to make Republican dishonesty so obvious that even “conservative” media must admit it, or they reveal themselves as the hollow, morally hazardous and vacuous shills the well-informed know them to be. Regardless, the damage to the Republican Party has been done.

By accepting Santos in Congress, Republicans have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that truth no longer matters to them. All that is valued is telling voters what they want to hear to win elections, so they can give their owners, oops I mean “donors” everything they want out of our government, law and treasury.

When was the last time Republicans did anything positive for the majority of Americans that did not mostly benefit the Far Right elite who own, buy or control them? Virtually all they ever do is what is best for their owners and themselves, and yet through psychological grooming via Republican elite media, the poorly informed and true believers are continually misinformed and gaslit, “until the lie became the truth.” Essentially, the Rs have been becoming more detached from reality every day, but Santos proves even that may be giving them too much credit, since he was allowed by them to be completely detached from any reality to win.

You know there is something really rotten in the Republican Party when someone who lies about nearly everything in their resume and life story to get elected, is seated as a full member of congress, instead of sent packing. It’s all another New York tragic comedy like the once popular Seinfeld. The show was declared, “a comedy about nothing.” George Santos is a man about nothing, in a party about nothing, in a House that will accomplish nothing.

trump proved shameless lying is rewarded in Republican politics by those only interested in being told what they want to hear, and by the GOP elite who will “donate” to anyone willing to debase themselves by spinning shameless, greedy and self-serving compulsions like personal corporate socialism into “capitalism.” Gee, would George Santos, cheat or steal so people give him money?

With Santos, Republicans have finally made it 100% clear they have no interest in truth or democracy. They are all about power, money and control. What a suspicious coincidence narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths are also compulsively fixated on the exact same things.

Too much? If someone in your political party confesses to lying about their entire resume and biography to get elected, what is there for an ethics committee to figure out? The only way these behaviors are not removable offenses is if lying, tricking and conning voters, and forms of malignant narcissism are now acceptable behaviors for Republicans, and their voters.

To be clear, psychologically there is no bottom for the George Santos GOP. They are all locked in a bottomless death spiral, and they will only stop if we stop them, and even if they turn America into an authoritarian kleptocracy like the one they admire so much in Russia, they won’t stop, because by definition, pathological narcissists can’t stop themselves.

Some in media have called Santos “a sociopath," but then don't take the psychology any further with experts, get it completely wrong, or wimp out with a clickbait title and say, "maybe/maybe not I don’t know, but he's a fraud."  It is understandable though. I remember what it was like to understand politics well and think I had good general knowledge of psychology, but didn't. I have seen the same phenomenon in most of my favorite journalists and political experts for years now.

Indeed, these types of reality TV political train wrecks get a lot of media attention, but then the lessons are forgotten by the time the next similarly narcissistic train wreck overshadows it. One has to wonder how many local NY newspapers, news sites, TV and radio stations are owned and run by pro-Republican operations like Sinclair, Fox, or other shadowy, nefarious, anti-democratic shell companies feeding the public distraction and disinformation. On the bright side, Santos coming along finally vindicates and validates Cassandras shouting about the need for more warnings and firm barriers to protect our democracy from psychologically disordered predators.  

A main reason so few talk about this dangerous psychology even in mainstream media is because psychological ethics have been so skewed that those in psychology related professions and academia habitually follow the Goldwater Rule, which essentially prohibits those with the most knowledge from warning us of individual psychological dangers to our democracy. I can’t imagine being silenced by my profession for pointing out obviously dangerous patterns of behavior threatening my country.

They feel they must stay silent to avoid anyone questioning their professional ethics, aka putting their career in jeopardy, even if a clinical narcissist, sociopath or psychopath is running for Congress, or President, displaying all the shameless signs of someone 100% self-serving, and essentially saying, “Catch Me If You Can.”