BEWARE OF THE PSYCHOPATH MY SON

[Pharaoh]

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/02/02073.html
http://carolynbaker.net


BEWARE OF THE PSYCHOPATH MY SON, By Clinton Callahan
Monday, 12 May 2008



I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn't seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again.


The answer is that civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been built on slavery and mass murder. Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, cheat, steal, torture, manipulate, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse, in order to establish their own sense of security through domination. The inventor of civilization - the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers - was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies - especially military hierarchies.


Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as their power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld - the overlapping criminal syndicates that lurk above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it.


During the past fifty years, psychopaths have gained almost absolute control of all the branches of government. You can notice this if you observe carefully that no matter what illegal thing a modern politician does, no one will really take him to task. All of the so called scandals that have come up, any one of which would have taken down an authentic administration, are just farces played out for the public, to distract them, to make them think that the democracy is still working.

[corkhead]

1. I thought this was a Mother's day post from Barbara Boosh

[Baby Snooks]

13. Barbara is quite proud of him....

She used to stand in the kitchen window in Midland and watch him stick firecrackers into the mouths of frogs, light the firecracker, and then toss the frog in the air and watch it explode.

No doubt she sat and watched the bombing of Baghdad and cherished the memory of her precious little boy. Not once, but twice. Like father, like son. So much for her "beautiful mind." But then she didn't bother with the dead frogs in Midland. Or the dead people in Baghdad. In both cases, that was something for the help, so to speak, to tend to.

[spinbaby]

2. A comma

would go a long ways towards clarifying this post.

[nichomachus]

5. Not really -- it could still be read two ways

[pretzel4gore]

3. cockroach society

the first codified laws were developed not to protect the strong from the weak, but other way around. And so the battle was joined, where strong men seeking riches/power confronted strong men who protected the victims of greedy bullies- civilization has emerged not from the monstrous, but from the wondrous deeds of humanity. It's a goddam pity the Europeans colonized the world, no matter how you look at it. The world woulda been ten thousand time more civilised, more interesting, RICHER, had slavery and warfare never been allowed, had Oz, for example, been developed by her people. There were spirits in all the lands, and most of them have fled forever. And God hates the assholes who did it to them. Just ask Jesus, if you want the truth

[riverdeep]

7. Slavery and warfare existed in other parts of the world.

Slavery existed, for example, in Africa long before the British colonies got involved. As for warfare, unfortunately there's no ethnicity that has a monopoly on that either.

[Wiley50]

4. Amen! i'm reading "Political Ponerology now.

But, yhe article at the links was written by Dr. Bartlett.

so, who is this Clinton Callahan and what does he have to do with it?

[CoffeeCat]

6. I remember asking a very wise...

...friend who is also a seasoned psychotherapist--why there is so much suffering in the
world and why people commit such horrible atrocities and abuses against one another--often
times against the more vulnerable.

She said, "Because we are still evolving as a species."

That makes a lot of sense. We're just cave dwellers--shedding our bad behavior and evolving
toward enlightenment. And we've got a long way to go.

I do however, fear sometimes, that the sociopaths and psychopaths among us, might thwart
that march toward enlightenment. Either they'll destroy the entire world or make their
pathologies en vogue--and enlightenment a sign of weakness.

Bush's behavior is a tip of the hat to abusers and psychopaths--it's ok to murder and harm
innocent people--and it's clever to lie about it in order to escape accountability.

Right now--dysfunctional and abusive behavior is urged and glorified.

This must change--or else we stop evolving--and eventually our species will kill itself off.

[bean fidhleir]

10. It's a lovely but dangerous idea

We're not evolving and can't, since the majority of our species is not isolated and the spontaneous mutations tend toward the mean (i.e., cancel out).

Any changes we want are going to have to come from inside our current, imperfect selves. We have to *decide* to create them. Or live and die with the changes the psychopaths create.

[tom_paine]

18. "Either they'll destroy the entire world or make their pathologies en vogue-and enlightenment a sign

of weakness" you said.

I think it maybe too late on both counts.

Perhaps not. The future is unwritten.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

8. Psycho politician? This belongs in GD-P

:rofl:

[riverdeep]

9. Ok, this article had some interesting points.

But it also seemed a bit simplistic. Right from the excerpt (I read the entire article), he says "if you observe carefully that no matter what illegal thing a modern politician does, no one will really take him to task." But is that really true? Elliot Spitzer easily comes to mind as a counterexample. It is largely true, however, that the powerful get away with a lot. Especially in this administration where no one has ever been held responsible for 9/11 or Katrina or Iraq.

It also involves some grand conspiracy types of explanation for our problems, which makes me nervous. There is this secret class of people that exist, pure evil, and they manipulate the whole world. There definitely is, as he calls it, an 'overworld' (as opposed to underworld). Bilderberg gives some idea of how they operate. Also, sociopaths definitely have a built-in advantage because the rules favor sociopathy. But only to an extent. Eventually, the rabble become wise, and someone has to pay. He assumes that sociopaths will be universally highly talented enough to get to the top. Or that sociopaths will cooperate with one another. There is no honor among thieves. What's to stop them from taking from each other?

Also, part of his solution involves a lot of 'ifs'. " If individuals simply sat down and refused to lift a hand to further one single aim of the psychopathic agenda, if people refused to pay taxes, if soldiers refused to fight, if government workers and corporate drones and prison guards refused to go to work..."

I don't want to give the impression I found the article useless. I found it intriguing and thought provoking. Sociopaths HAVE had a disproportionate influence on the formation of evil in societies.

[Echo In Light]

12. The "conspiratorial" aspects you're fearful of is the exact stratagem The Few Big rely on

As a means of staving off critical analysis, and trivializing what results it may yield. Oddly this approach seems to be highly effective among many who apparently can't understand how the very few {comparatively, with the rest of the world's population} who are beholden to powerful corporations and hollowed institutions share convergent interests, and aren't about to allow genuine democratic interference with the profits-over-people aims of the organizations they belong to and identify with.

Keep in mind that corporations are required by law to put their shareholders above any common good/public trust - this alone speaks volumes about the nature of many conspiracies, the spin and propaganda surrounding them, and the cultural directives which indoctrinate the collective consciousness into perceptions which favor the profits-over-people ideal. Many so called "conspiratorial" incidents revolve around corporate-govt relations, working together to expand corporate rights, preserving privilege {even with armed force}, while limiting corporate obligations. In other words, many will disavow the idea of conspiracy because by the time they've reached a certain age, the fundamental goals of those behind some corporate/political conspiracies are likewise similar to the aims and goals of the average person who has been raised to identify with the corporate culture mindset. This is why it's unseemly, uncool, unprofessional, etc, to give credence to conspiracy, a criminal charge tried in our courts every yr.

[tom_paine]

17. Maybe the article is a bit overgeneralized, but not that much.

First point, the fact that you bring up Spitzer actually REINFORCES Dr. Bartlett's thesis, instead of diminishing it, as you postulate.

Spitzer, whatever else he is, is NOT a Bushie and therefore gets no Bushie immunity, as Spitzer, Vitter, Gonzales, Goodling, Rove, and dozens of other Bushie psychopaths and felons. No, Spitzer is part oft he JFK/RFK/MLK/Wellstone group. I suppose he's lucky he didn't get murdered by the Bushies, ahem, have his small plane mysteriously crash, though the prostitution thing (which Vitter got a standing Ovation from his fellow Bushie Psychopaths in the Imperial Senate, further illustrating how this psychopathy is shamelessly going over the top obvious, now that the Bushies have almost fully reduced Amerika to a powerless slave nation) was certainly a bloodless way to achieve the same goals.

I am guessing that, at this stage of the game, the Bushies still want to use murder sparingly until, maybe during the reign of Emperor McCain but SURELY during the reign of Emperors Jeb or George P. Bush, things will be far enough along that the murders can be carried out with more impurity, which will give the Bushies the added advantage of having their "messages" delivered to opponents that much more clearly and directly.

Although can you really suppose there are many Democratic Congresspeople who, at least to themselves even if they dare not mention it in public, have made the obvious connection between the Anthrax Assassin who paralyzed a nation for MONTHS with fear then the investigation goes silent practically from Day One? Even if they dare not speak it aloud, they'd be blind fools not to suspect and thus the message is delivered.

In either case, the example of Spitzer actually reinforces Dr. Bartlett's thesis, which is not that "people in power get away with stuff" but that there is and always has been a SIGNIFICANT MINORITY if not a MAJORITY of all national leaders who are psychopaths of the variety who have learned impulse control (and thus do not wind up in prison with the half of their brethren who weren't rich enough or educated enough or well-connected enough to learn some impulse control combined with a rich and powerful family able to sweep under the carpet any impulse control "lapses") to further their goals of manipulating normals.

I also understand your aversion to the whole "secret societies" thing, and if this was seven years ago, I would probably help you laugh at and dismiss this "nutjob". But Skull and Bones is real, exposes have shown that they DO jerk off in a coffin and are forced to divulge their sexual histories. Newsday, I believe it was, planted cameras and mikes outside and caught their whole ritual on tape a few years ago. You can likely find it by Googling, if you wish to confirm what I am saying is true.

But that was seven years ago. For whatever reason, Bartlett is right that the Bushies have clearly sped up their program to eradicate the Constitution and Bill of Rights, as well as use Nazi-style propaganda tactics to program 30-40% of us to be unquestioningly obedient to their every whim, gullible to their every lie, no matter how obvious, transparent, self-serving, and shameless it is.

You can't tell me you haven't seen met or spoken to any of these frightening mentally-similar-to-Nazi-followers who are hard-core Bushies? If so, you have been living in a bottle and I would suggest you get out there, find some of these, and try to reason with them to see that I am not in any way shape or form exaggerating this ever-growing force of pre-programmed monsters that is providing the footsoldiers that are killing the nation.

The point being, and I am as much stunned to hear myself say this as you (seven years of watching the kinder and gentler recreation of the Third Reich will do that to a person...open their eyes in ways previously unimaginable) but it certainly looks to me as if his overworld, ruling criminal counterpart to the underworld, does in fact exist, if not as an actual organization then a de facto force.

Is it possible there is an alternate explanation? Of course. It could all just be a horrifying coincidence, like the conditions that lead the German Social Democrats to buckle before Hitler without mobilizing the millions who, in 1933, WERE READY TO FIGHT THE NAZIS, but who suffered a sort of collective nervous breakdown when the German Social Democrats and the rest behaved just like our Democrats before Bush, cowering, toadying, and basically abandoning the field of meaningful opposition.

Either way, the results are the same and the overall thesis of the 5% of controlled psychopaths (to differentiate them from the overt, uncontrolled psychopaths who form the bulk of the population of our violent prison population) so easily marshalling us normals like circus lions to do their evil bidding is not only believable, but supported in every age of history in every nation.

Seriously. Think about the 8000 years of human history. It is far easier to count the instances where nations were NOT ruled by psychopaths (most of Old America 1776-2000, Europe & Japan after WWII, Australia, a few others) than try to name all who were (Hitler, Stalin, Bush, Pol Pot, Papa Doc, Ferdinand Marcos, Charlemagne, every medieval duke and baron that ever lived pretty much, Shaka Zulu, Tojo and his Japanese Bushies, and on and on and on and ON).

I am not condemning your post nor saying it's worthless. Quite the contrary, it is an interesting viewpoint. Another thing I agree with you on: His solution is no solution at all, particularly in a fragmented, apathetic and TV-/Prozac-zombified society such as ours that has literally forgotten how to exercise it's collective rights as citizens in any meaningful way, let alone organize nation-spanning boycotts of doing the sociopath's work for them. Doubly so, considering the swift brutality of the Bushie reaction if even one segment of this hypothesized solution were ever to become real enough to become a threat to Bushie Psychopaths.

You know what would happen. People would be brutalized by tasers and rubber bullets and tear gas, perhaps even killed.

So I think you do make some valid points, but this article is far closer to the mark than perhaps it's over-generalization and conspiracy-mindedness suggest to you.

Regarding "conspiracy theories", consider this: I have long said it was axiomatic that the more totalitarian and UNfree a society is, the higher the percentage of "conspiracy theories" turn out to be actual criminal conspiracies.

Consider the extreme examples of nazi Germany and the Soviet Union: Both extremely authoritarian and unfree. Much worse than Imperial Amerika as she currently stands, but only in the realms of violence and brutality toward the subjects (this gap will narrow if any of these proposed boycotts even come close to being a reality). Honestly, I cannot find a whole lot beside window-dressing that differs us from the Soviets or Nazis politically.

In Imperial Amerika, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, each had a Constitution, and in each case said Constitution was overrode or nullified to be replaced with the Leader's Will.

In Imperial Amerika, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, the Leader's Will was obeyed 100% of the time. In Imperial Amerika, it's a mere 98% (HOORAY!)

In Imperial Amerika, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, the Bushie governments became, by far, the greatest purveyor of lies, telling them almost 100% of the time. In this, the three countries have not a nickel's worth of difference. All lies all the time is all lies all the time. It doesn't matter, for the purposes of this discussion WHAT lies are being told.

Bushies, Nazis and Soviets pursued the same judicial strategy, emphasizing Party Loyalty over the Rule of Law. In nations like ours, the Fuhrer IS the law.

OK, now I am going off on a tangent, but I am merely pointing out that these last seven years have certainly been an education, and after that, Bartlett's speculations seem not loony, but more explanatory of events than any of the Conventional Wisdom the Coincidence Theorists spew.

Oh, and by the way, one one point you are completely and totally off base. You said Eventually, the rabble become wise, and someone has to pay.

This does not always happen, and in fact may only happen a small minority of the time.

Look at Nazi Germany. The rabble NEVER got wise, but fought to the bitter end for Volk and Fuhrer.

Look at the Caesars of Rome. Sure, some of them got assassinated BY EACH OTHER. But the rabble never got wise, for four centuries after the Roman Republic got The Bush Treatment.

So, yes, I do dispute that one point of yours fully and forcefully.

[riverdeep]

21. Well considered response.

Spitzer was the first name to jump out at me. There are some on the Republican side, I'll easily concede not as many, like Mark Foley.

I still have trouble believing the unified world-wide cabal theory. As I said, what's to stop them from turning on each other? On the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler gruesomely and boldly took out the last remaining internal opposition to his ultimate plan. Many of those he took out were at one point his allies. Things like that have to cross the minds of people in this supposed upper echelon. At some point it becomes like the characters in 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre', everyone is eyeing each other suspiciously.

You're correct about the rabble's indifference. Most are more like pets than free men (free women don't even enter into it for most of history, or for that matter, today in most of the world). As long as they get some pellets, some hay, a wheel to run on- change and confronting power are on the back burner, to the extent it even gets to their awareness.

To introduce a new point, I am fascinated by his idea of being able to recognize evil at childhood, through a combo of observation and brain imaging. This of course brings up ethical considerations. What do we do with them? Can we destroy someone who hasn't yet acted out? Or put some sort of tag on them, and follow them closely? If someone had a case of a highly contagious, deadly disease, we would be morally justified in isolating them and generally violating their rights on the principle of greatest good. Couldn't we claim the same here?

[tom_paine]

22. You're last new point is exactly where the study of "political poenerology" hits a brick wall.

I go back to the fact that the system of checks and balances the Founding Fathers designed is still the greatest one ever devised to keep psychopaths out of power.

"Faction will be made to counter faction. Ambition will counter ambition," as Madison said 200 years ago or so.

And it worked. For 224 years it worked. It wasn't always perfect and the true promise of the Founding Fathers' vision was only beginning to be fulfilled in the 70s and early 80s, when the blessings of civil society began to be enjoyed by everyone, or closer to everyone than had ever enjoyed it before, blacks, women, and gays to name a few.

It could work again, I am convinced of that. There is nothing wrong with the system we inherited, the problem is with US...all of us have had a hand in letting this happen.

Having said that: psychopaths have rights, too, under the System of the Founding Fathers, and cannot nor should they be imprisoned, detained nor suffer any consequences on the basis of a psychological test (in the absence of committing a crime). A test, which as Madison and Jefferson would tell you if they were still alive, being administered by flawed human beings, would have the same potential for abuse that any other powerful entity does. Worse, depending on what the "penalty" for "failing" this test was.

Institutionalization? Sorry, that's what the Soviets and other Bushie types did to their dissenters.

The idea, as appealing as it might sound on paper, is as deeply unAmerican as one can get, pretty much. I realize you brought this up for discussion so please don't take this personally or as an ad hominem that I so strongly disagree. For all I know, so do you.

So, while this is a deeply fascinating concept, and I believe illuminates an ironclad human truth extending back to the cave, there is no way to act on it without being deeply unAmerican and perhaps psychotic one's self. We are deluding ourselves if we think that psychotics are only on the other side.

I will admit that the Bushies have been purposefully gathering America's "controlled psychotics" to them and programming many more to become that "secondary psychotic", whom I believe the author refers to as sociopaths to differentiate them from genetic psychopaths such as Bush and Cheney, with their Bushie Propaganda Machine and Lie Laundry.

There can be little doubt that because of this concentrated 20+ year effort that there are FAR more psychotics following the Bushies than in the normal American population, and yet they have that right.

In the Old USA (1776-2000, RIP), I must reiterate, even psychotics and Bushie Felons have rights. If we are ever to restore that great nation, we must ultimately reject the idea of testing people at childhood and punishing them or even forcibly therapizing them based on those results.

If we do not, then we ARE Bushies. It's as simple as that.

Ironically, though not surprisingly, the authoritarian Bushies have already begun to move in this direction which any person who is loyal to the Constitution and Bill of Rights with the customarily Bushie/Nazi/Orwell/Soviet-named Presidents Freedom Commission on Mental Health, which suggests universal childhood testing (and storing of those results by the HS and other Bushie agencies).

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul232.html

[Echo In Light]

11. Here's a good article on this phenomenon by Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Official Culture in America:
A Natural State of Psychopathy?
Laura Knight-Jadczyk

July 30, 2003: KAH - The subject of the extremely narrow point of view of most Americans as opposed to the majority of other peoples in the world came up in a conversation the other day. The people having the conversation were, as it happens, mostly American. One of them commented that Americans had been "programmed" to their point of view by mass media propaganda for a very long time and that it was simply a very normal part of American life and basically, always had been. She concluded, "Whoever denies it is either ignorant or has an agenda."

That may be so. It may be true that the "pied pipers" of denial have an agenda. But what, then, does one say or do about the ignorance of the vast majority of Americans? Why and how is it that the trap of Fascism is closing on them before their very eyes and no matter how many voices - the number is increasing every day - are raised to point out this danger, they simply do not seem to get it?
http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/official_culture.htm

[Time for change]

14. Very interesting and important article

People need to learn to think independently of how their society tries to program to think -- a task much easier said than done.

[GTurck]

15. I have thought this too...

That our country has been in thrall to amoral psychopaths/sociopaths at least Nixon with only one exception: Jimmy Carter.
Everything done on TV is to promote a life-style of sociopaths and that scares me even more than Bush, whom I abhor. That lifestyle is about greed, sex, and getting one's own way whether good or not. In other words we are letting our children and grand-children learn to be like them and even admire them.
Personally I have known such people and they are also deluded that everyone else thinks like them or should. They actually think that not speaking out is agreement - technically it is sort of - but that's another post. Most of us though just don't know how or what way to respond.
You can't engage someone like Dick Cheney whose well-modulated upper class voice belies the truly scare mind behind it who is also probably suffering other mental problems due to his by-pass surgery.
One way though is to be very true to one's own principles and when someone makes an accusation about them admit it. Just a few years ago when called, rather evilly, a liberal I responded that yes I am. Put my chin out to do it but in the end the non-sociopaths accept it and move on with whatever relationship there is: i.e. family or close friends. Few of us have out and out psychopaths to deal with at the grass-roots level. THANK GOOD! But we should be able to reach those who have been deluded and don't know it.

[bonito]

16. K&R n/t

[ensho]

19. you are speaking of a male thing - us women have no power

to cause or stop men's wars.

[jazzjunkysue]

20. READ IT ALL! Fabulous!

"Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic killers. The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing their fellow human beings make the best soldiers. And the 95% who are extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers — unless they are brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them (temporarily it is hoped) into functional psychopaths."

Which immediately begs the question,
If only 5% are killers, and 95% are not,

what percentage can live with having someone else do the killing for them, and are they psychopaths, too?

I was labeled a psychopath for refusing to accept the inevitability of the Iraq occupation. I was one of very few who would publicly dissent, and I was given a substantial amount of open self-righteous hostility for it.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard a middle class, comfortable american say "Kill them all. I don't care."

I got blank stares when I asked, 'Who are you talking about, exactly? Who's them?"

It wasn't so much that these uninformed people were cold-blooded or specifically angry about any one incident. It was just that they had been brainwashed into believing that anything else was unpatriotic.

"Support the troops" makes sense when you see it from this teacher's perspective.