Witnessing the acts and utterances of Republican presidential candidates can be regarded as a helpful psychological exercise, a type of ‘exposure therapy’ involving the development of methods used to bear the presence of unbearable people who insist on evincing the history of human ignorance, duplicity and insanity.

The recent pepper spraying ‘incident’ at the University of California at Davis represents more than an opportunity to create a cleverly photoshopped, viral meme. The act is part and parcel of a larger collective mindset–a proclivity towards authoritarian overreaction now deeply internalized in daily life in the U.S.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is not a distraction from — but serves as an alternative to — the disingenuous theatrics staged by the political hacks of this faux republic.