MAGA Politicians and “The Bystander Effect”
On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese, was raped and murdered outside her apartment building in Queens, New York. The New York Times published an article claiming that thirty-seven witnesses saw or heard the attack, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid.
Though the number was erroneously inflated, “the apparent lack of reaction by numerous neighbors purported to have watched the scene or to have heard Genovese's cries for help,” opened an untapped area of psychological research “showing that contrary to common expectations, larger numbers of bystanders decrease the likelihood that someone will step forward and help a victim.”[65] Social psychologists, since the Genovese murder, have coined phrases like “diffusion of responsibility” or the “bystander effect” to explain this phenomenon, which is now a common feature in textbooks today.
Today, MAGA Republicans in the House and Senate huddle not only in cowardly silence and hypocrisy, they are case studies of "the “Bystander Effect.” They do not want to “get involved” in the rape and murder of the victim — our constitutional republic.
Certainly, the dim-witted MTG’s and Boebert’s among them subscribe to Trump’s entire kleptocratic agenda and fledgling dictatorship. But others, more sensate, understand that thwarting Trump, in any way, will close the spigots to their corporate donations, cost them plum committee assignments, have them primaried by more devout Trump stooges in the next election, and even have their lives and their families’ lives threatened.
They do not want to be involved. Hence their bystander silence in the face of Trump’s ravenous, and surprisingly easy, “deconstruction” of America.
Their safest bet is to hide in the crowd, therein “diffusing any responsibility,” hoping perhaps that segments of democracy might be saved, but if not, they are safe.
For the moment, at least.
