Psychopaths have contempt for everyone else. Many of them feel no remorse for the advantage they take of others because they feel anyone so stupid as to fall for their stratagems deserves what they get.

The same is true of psychopathic nations. The tyrants who lead them use deceit and never act in good faith unless it suits their purpose of the moment. That their opponents are tricked they ascribe to their opponents’ stupidity and flaccidity. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin:A Real Democracy Cannot Protect Hamas)

Hitler would appeal to the peace-loving nature of the democracies that he confronted in the West by using the language of peace and indicating that the peace they all wanted only required a few more concessions. He used the Chamberlain’s true desire for peace to get Chamberlain to be complicit in his own lies, so that Chamberlain, in order to avoid cognitive dissonance, would argue on his own that Hitler really wanted peace. The unreality that this created made Britain sleepwalk into World War II, doomed millions to death, and very nearly saw Britain itself rubbed out or reduced to vassalage.

Tyrants generally set out their true aims to galvanize their people. Hitler hid from no one that he believed power was self-justifying and that he would use whatever power he needed to make sure that Germany became as dominant as genetics destined it to be. Lenin and his followers did not mince words about their aim for world revolution, though the timetable and the tactics could be flexible.

And the mullahs of Iran have been saying for nearly fifty years what their goals are — the eradication first of the Little Satan (Israel) and then the Great Satan (America).

The architect of the transformation of America, the soft-sell tyrannical project that is Obama’s life work, has always proceeded on contempt. Americans are too stupid to govern themselves — they must be deceived, not asked for a mandate, only presented with faits accomplis. So it was with Obamacare; so it was with the return to rigorous racialism written into law and culture; and so it has been with the deliberate appeasement of the mullahs of Iran.

Iran and its clients are always forthright about their aims other than when talking to the West directly. Their aims are our destruction. But they find it very useful to allow us to think that they really don’t mean what they say if it will allow them to strengthen themselves to the point where they need no longer be afraid of us.

From the hostage crisis at the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency until Obama’s presidency, American presidents treated Iran as the dangerous pariah state that it is, responding to its provocations by sanctions that kept it starved of the cash it needed to implement its wars, mostly fought through proxies. (READ MORE: Bidenpolitik: A Foreign Policy Without Coherence)

Obama, though, after lying about his aims, reversed course 180 degrees on Iran in his second term, downgraded relations with Israel as much as he felt he could get away with politically, and made what he sold as a treaty with Iran, bypassing, though, the Constitution’s requirements for treaty ratification. The treaty was presented duplicitously as constraining Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, when in fact it guaranteed Iran the ability to get the bomb within a decade.

Donald Trump reversed Obama’s course and renounced the pseudo-treaty for the dangerous fraud that it was.  He responded ferociously to Iran’s predations, taking out its chief terrorist and ratcheting up sanctions to the point that its Hamas, Houthi, and Hezbollah proxies barely made a peep during his entire presidency.

And Biden reversed the reverse, opening the cash spigot by lifting the oil sanctions. With billions of petro-revenue flooding in, the mullahs armed their bad-boys in Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza with all the weapons money could buy.

And in the meantime, Biden went beyond Obama in destroying America’s credibility as a deterrent force. The unprecedented debacle of the self-inflicted humiliation in Afghanistan showed something truly contemptible — the abandonment of America’s thousands of allies among the Afghan people to torture and death because — who needs to keep faith with their friends?

Psychopaths hold their marks as contemptible and feel justified in doing whatever they can get away with.

Putin saw it. Biden had said out loud that he’d tolerate a Russian attack on Ukraine if it weren’t too big. Putin took his opportunity and were it not for the brilliant defense of the Ukrainians, Biden would not have done anything much.

Xi saw it and sent his spy balloon on a humiliating slow-motion mission over American bases from sea to sea with no response. He came to San Francisco to tell Biden to his face that he is going to take Taiwan.

Now Iran shows clearly what it sees. It let loose its boys from Gaza, unleashing an orgy or rape and murder that began by taking the lives of over a thousand Israeli citizens. Its Houthis clients have effectively shut down the Red Sea to international commerce and have suffered no serious consequence. It’s Hezbollah clients have been escalating attacks against Americans and only get pro forma demonstrations of American displeasure as a result.

Now on Dec. 27th the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article headlined “Iran Revs Up Nuclear Program.” Large quantities of uranium are being refined to 60 percent of weapon-grade and the centrifuges now coordinated so that taking the final step to full weapon grade can be swift.

Tyrants hold their opponents in contempt always, but especially when they show that they have internalized the lies tyrants offer them and consciously ignore their openly sworn aims.

Democracies sometimes elevate leaders who are contemptible. But democracies, through embracing the distributed intelligence of its people, have a strength capable of surviving the misrule of the contemptibles who occasionally rise to the top. Democracies may and do suffer from the misrule of the Buchanans, the Chamberlains, the Bidens, and the Obamas, whose weakness empowers the worst in the world and whose bizarre ideologies and policies hollow out our morale. Yet for all that, democracies also have shown an indomitable ability to recoup their strength, return to their principles with courage and resolve, and carry through the fight to victory. (READ MORE: The Totalitarianism of Cultural Fog)

The people of America are wise to the lies. The corruption and incompetence of the current leadership is inspiring at last a well-earned contempt from the real sovereigns of the country — the people. Resist the lies, resist the truly contemptible, the tyrants and their enablers wherever they may be, and let us rededicate ourselves to the truths that are the source of greatness. The greatest battle is the spiritual battle to know who we are, to embrace truth, and to leave the contemptible behind. Without that spirit, our wealth and our weapons deter nothing. With it, we have already won the battle and we will win the war.