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We live in a time when expertise of all kinds is denigrated. It should not be a surprise then that I, a rank amateur, can presume to present a social-anthropological hypothesis that explains the proliferation of asocial behavior in modern society. I have conjured my own version of social Darwinism, a very broad description of the evolution of humans as social creatures. Simplifying the timeline that runs from the origins of homo sapiens to Donald Trump, the thesis posits the following:

For thousands of years, our antecedents lived lives that were physical and brutish. As social groups developed, it was the brutes in the group- the most physically capable, the best hunters, the toughest warriors- in which the group vested authority. As organized civilizations developed, the need for brutes diminished as cooperative social interactions such as trade and the division of labor developed. Through the millennia of civilization’s evolution, brutes have been progressively selected out of the societal admixture. In modern technological societies, survival is no longer predicated on barbarism. To be sure, modern society still includes a cohort of uncivilized savages, but they are a minority. It is also true that certain societies embrace violence more than others. That said, we now live in a less violent and brutish world than our ancestors. (I exclude war from this analysis because war is a political act, organized violence to resolve disputes between groups.)

Most societies have some normative prescriptions to instruct its members on how to live in relative peace and harmony with each other. Unless they belong to a criminal subgroup that practices armed robbery as the way to material gain, rape as sexual release, and physical violence as conflict resolution, people will move through life by staying in the lane of acceptable social behavior.

Except, of course, for sociopaths. This is the core of my hypotheses: As the brutes have been selected out of the gene pool, they have given way to sociopaths, those people who ignore society’s norms. In brief, these are people possessing a grandiose sense of entitlement, who are pathological liars, who lack any sense of shame or remorse.  “Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a lack of regard for the moral or legal standards in the local culture. There is a marked inability to get along with others or abide by societal rules “.* It was this group that gave us Bernie Madoff, the Enron executives and now, Donald Trump.

I have thought along these lines for quite a while, and the hypothesis came into sharper focus when Trump, a classic sociopath, was elected as President. I wondered, as many others have, I am sure, how a society founded on the ideals of the Enlightenment had managed to select the most patently unfit person as its leader. The fact that modern society is beset with sociopaths was not the surprise; it was the idea that one had figured a way to game the system and propel himself to the top of the heap.

At this point, I happened upon a Twitter thread by Propane Jane.

The inhabitants of the Twitterverse represent a (large) microcosm of most populations: Academics, journalists, regular folks, politicians- including, of course, Tweeter-in-Chief, @realDonaldTrump. There are trolls who gang up on Tweeters who displease them, bots who disseminate propaganda, various zany characters, and, of course, haters. Among the tweeps I follow is “Propane Jane”, a woman from Texas whom I believe is a psychiatrist. She posted this thread last week, and it answered some questions.

A thread by Propane Jane™ (here condensed into paragraph form)

“The ONLY reasons Trump hasn’t served prison time or suffered any meaningful consequences to his untreated personality disorder are a) generational wealth b) he’s a White male. Do NOT mistake his privilege for innocence or intelligence. He commits and gets away with endless crimes precisely because he’s a narcissistic sociopath. His illness motivates him to break the law and disregard social/behavioral norms, it isn’t an “excuse” it’s merely an explanation of the phenomenon. As I’ve said repeatedly #onhere, Trump isn’t being held accountable for his actions because whether we want to admit it or not, American culture glorifies and exalts sociopathy.”

[See “Why Do Americans Like Sociopaths?”]

“The main reason narcissists & sociopaths are so treatment refractory/resistant is because we live in a society that normalizes their behavior and labels it shrewd rather than recognizing it as the dangerous illness and public menace that it truly is. We elect it to public office. The issue isn’t just Trump’s personal mental health issues, above all else the problem is we live in a society that doesn’t have the sense to recognize his presentation as dangerous, or the courage to set proper boundaries that protect our nation and the world from a madman. Ultimately, Donald Trump is nothing more than a garden variety sociopath, he only continues to act badly in ever more disinhibited ways because for 71 years American society has given him the undue privilege to do so.”

[You can read Jane’s full Daily Kos post from a year ago here.]

It is safe to say that as a society, we Americans are the largest group of enablers on the planet. It is very problematic when one of the snake oil salesmen is elected President. Let me be more precise: Donald Trump never sold the actual snake oil, just the idea.

And we bought it.

*You can see a general description of this pathology here.