On Nov. 3, North Carolina Republican Madison Cawthorn became, at age 25, the youngest person ever elected to the U.S. Congress. And how did he rise to this historic occasion? Like this:

Yep, that was his first official tweet as a newly elected member of Congress. And while some of his fellow GOPers upbraided him for this classless, puerile utterance, others cheered him on. After all, this kind of behavior is not exactly out of the ordinary for Republicanoids these days — just look at how many retweets and likes this post got.

They have been rapidly turning America into a kindergarten filled with spoiled-rotten rich white brats. I call it infantiling , which may be a coined word, but infantilization doesn’t quite work — that means treating other people like children. Infantiling means behaving like a child — and turning the whole country into a nation of infantile people.

The process was already well underway even before a “reality TV” star was elected to the White House. And having him there unquestionably has greatly accelerated it. He has been a powerful lightning rod for everything that is vilest, nastiest, and most insane in human nature. And America’s worst elements have flocked to him like lemmings on meth.

The photos above depict one of his lowlights: in a speech in which he was berating a journalist who had dared to debunk one of his lies, he apparently mocked the journalist’s physical handicap. His bootlickers insisted that he was really doing no such thing; and to bolster their case, they presented footage of him behaving in a similar manner when making fun of other people who did not possess such a handicap. A careful analysis of the videos, however, seems to indicate that in no other case did he duplicate the type of gestures he did in this one, that appeared to be specifically mimicking a deformed hand.

Be that as it may, just pause for a moment to ponder that line of defense. We should excuse, they say, the way he ridiculed this one person in a juvenile manner, because he has a habit of ridiculing people in general in a juvenile manner. That’s supposed to make it acceptable somehow. That’s the highest they can manage to raise their bar.

They adore a “president” who perfectly embodies their childishness in just about every way imaginable. He always, without exception, refers to people he doesn’t like by juvenile nicknames: “Crooked Hillary”, “Crazy Bernie”, “Sleepy Joe”, “Phony Kamala”. In fact, he’s held strategy sessions with his advisers, at your expense, and during the middle of a deadly pandemic, to decide which juvenile nicknames to use.

His schoolyard behavior is hailed by his cultists as “strong leadership”. Their puerile fawning over him indicates that they seek a father figure as a leader; and not so coincidentally, many cult leaders and totalitarians package themselves in that fashion. MAGA cultists believe they have found the perfect father figure in DJT, despite his own extreme brattiness and abusive behavior toward his “family” (and quite possibly toward his trophy wives).

And virtually the entire GOP has taken its cue from him. During his impeachment proceedings, they threw daily tantrums over the audacity of trying to hold him accountable for his actions. Whenever someone gave a testimony, they rolled their eyes, belittled the witness, and made threats about what they were going to do the next time there was a Democrat in the White House. And despite the incontrovertible mountain of evidence, they dismissed the charges with a haughty wave of the hand.

Then after he was defeated in the next election, virtually all of them joined in the chorus of “voter fraud” and “stolen election”, even though they were unable to present absolutely any evidence to back these wild claims. The White House Occupant has indicated that he has no intention of conceding, and has done everything he can to make the transition difficult and leave as big a mess to clean up as he possibly can — apparently out of sheer childish spite.

Not surprisingly, Madison Cawthorn is a big fan of his. Equally unsurprisingly, he’s also obsessed with Hitler. After visiting Hitler’s vacation resort, he gleefully tweeted that the trip had been on his bucket list, and referred to the Nazi leader as the Führer. He is also a big fan of the (supposed purpose of) the Second Amendment, and has had multiple accusations against him of sexual misconduct.

All of this ties in together. Infantilism is a syndrome that entails self-gratification, delight in the misfortunes of others, bullying, aggression and arrogant love of power. All of this has become the new normal for right-wingers in America.