Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich: Do We Have Psychopaths Misruling Our World?
I am posting this because it is a source of constant inner questioning for me. Truthfully, I just don't understand why people don't simply recognize a bully's tactics and walk away. But they don't. My grandson, 5, is demonstrating the same behavior and we are trying to teach him not to just follow a bully's instructions but to question them.
Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich: Do We Have Psychopaths Misruling Our World?
The serial misbehavior of these men was rationalized and excused for years, but it demonstrates a perpetual problem: ruling class impunity.
May 19, 2011 |
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In recent days the political news has been like an episode of some TV drama about high-level corruption – call it Criminal Minds meets The West Wing. The head of the International Monetary Fund – the global financial organization that sets terms for development aid -- was jailed in New York for allegedly assaulting a housemaid sexually at his hotel. Meanwhile, in California news broke that the state’s movie-star governor – known as both the Terminator and the Gropinator – fathered a love-child almost a decade ago and it didn’t come out until he was about to leave office.
Then, of course, there’s the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich, a poster child for bad behavior, launched last week with a series of disastrous missteps and rationalizations.
What the three men have in common, aside from wielding more influence than they can handle or deserve, is that their serial misbehavior went unchecked for years. In fact, it was rationalized as mere exuberance, frequently excused in “exceptional” people, when it actually demonstrated something else – ruling class impunity.
Ask yourself: Is it possible that these were isolated lapses in judgment? In other words, was this the only time Dominique Strauss-Kahn went after the help, or the only instance of Arnold Schwarzenegger cheating on his wife and exploiting those beneath him? Not too likely. And it’s surely not the only time Gingrich has excused his own bad behavior as a side effect of patriotism – while simultaneously trashing the basic humanity of a political opponent.
If these are patterns, why are millions so fascinated, often even seduced, by people whose behavior actually points to pathology? Perhaps we are wired to be attracted by psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, people so focused on their own central role in whatever takes place that the rest of us are sucked into their reality.
Think about entering a portal and emerging into the head of Donald Trump. What could that level of self-absorption be like? Begin by imagining a complete lack of empathy, one of the tell-tale signs of the psychopath.
Is Trump a psychopath? Well, he does score well on a 20 item checklist. And are there more psychopaths around us than we think? Not just serial killers and the violent type, but successful, powerful psychopaths who will do anything to win and affect our lives in profound ways?
The checklist, a way to help identify potential psychopaths among us, was developed by Bob Hare, a prison psychologist who conducted remarkable experiments and eventually codified his findings. Jon Ronson has provides an excellent history and analysis in his new book, The Psychopath Test.
Here’s the basic list, a collection of tendencies and an analytical tool to spot those who might be functioning psychopaths. The last two items relate specifically to criminals, but you don't have to be caught to have "criminal versatility." Keep in mind that having mild tendencies doesn’t make you a psychopath. But a high score – more than 30 on Hare’s 40 point scale – should be a warning sign. Personally, I give Trump and Gingrich high marks:
1.Glibness, superficial charm
2.Grandiose sense of self-worth
3.Need for stimulation, proneness to boredom
4.Pathological lying
5.Conning, manipulative
6.Lack of remorse or guilt
7.Shallow affect
8.Callous, lack of empathy
9.Parasitic lifestyle
10.Poor behavioral control
11.Promiscuous sexual behavior
12.Early behavior problems
13.Lack of realistic long-term goals
14.Impulsivity
15.Irresponsibility
16.Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17.Many short-term marital relationships
18.Juvenile delinquency
19.Revocation of conditional release
20.Criminal versatility
In his book, Ronson follows the trail of research about psychopaths, gets to know a few, and sees how they have affected society. For example, he tracks down Toto Constant, former leader of Haitian death squads backed by the CIA, who was given asylum in the US but restricted to Queens. Although the guy was basically in hiding, he still thought he was beloved in Haiti (#2), took no responsibility for his crimes (#16), and badly imitated strong emotions. Since psychopaths don’t experience emotions that same as other people (#7), they often compensate through imitation. But not all are excellent actors. Constant even thought he would someday be called back to “help” Haiti again (#13).
Psychopaths could be the reason the world seems so screwed up. If so, humanity’s tragic flaw may be that a few bad apples – people whose amygdalas don’t fire the right signals to their central nervous systems – really can spoil the whole barrel. Prime examples include the corporate psychopaths who trashed capitalism a few years back. To dig into that group check out Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, by Bob Hare and Paul Babiak. Examining these financial terrorists, you might well conclude that the conspiracy theory about shape-shifting lizards who secretly rule the world isn’t so far off. After all, psychopaths are often social shape-shifters.
So, the question is: Do psychopaths run the country and maybe the world? Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a strong candidate. Among recent presidents Nixon, Bush 2 and Clinton could qualify. The masters of the universe at places like Goldman Sachs are solid choices. And it only takes a few to destabilize a financial system, poison a community or destroy a business. Yet some studies suggest that, percentage-wise, there are more potential psychopaths among CEOs, directors and supervisors than in the general population, or even in prisons.
Who hasn’t known a business type who was borderline, a mercurial tyrant subject to fits of rage and impulsive acts? Or followed a public figure who was charming but also irresponsible, manipulative and self-aggrandizing? The tell-tale signs of the psychopath are often ignored or excused.
In his book, Ronson recalls a meeting with businessman Al Dunlop, a ruthless executive famous for his apparent joy in firing people. Together they go through Hare's psychopath checklist and Dunlop simply redefines many of the traits as aspects of leadership. Impulsiveness becomes quick analysis. Grandiose sense of self-worth? Absolutely, you have to believe in yourself, says Dunlop. Manipulative? Hey, that’s just leadership. Inability to feel deep emotions? Emotions are mostly nonsense, he says. And not feeling remorse frees you up to do great things.
Newt Gingrich would likely have a similar response if confronted with his own psychopathic tendencies. At the moment, he is engaging in a standard strategy – claiming redemption and re-inventing himself. In his case it's an epic rationalization that may not work.
It is widely agreed that Newt is an opportunist and a scoundrel. But that clearly doesn’t disqualify him from becoming president. Warren Harding, the Ohio senator who became president in 1920, carried on a 15-year affair both before and during his presidency. The "other woman," Nan Britton, gave birth to a son.
This was shortly after the end of World War I. People were disillusioned with Woodrow Wilson, and Democrats deserted the party to give Harding the biggest landslide in US history, 60 percent of the vote. That year Eugene Debs, who was in federal prison, got his best turnout, a million votes. Less than three years later, in the middle of a “goodwill” tour,” Harding dropped dead suddenly in San Francisco. He was replaced in August 1923 by Calvin Coolidge, a native Vermonter and Massachusetts governor who had been picked for vice-president in the original smoke-filled room.
Some people said Harding had been poisoned by his wife, Florence DeWolfe, a cold, snobbish banker’s daughter known as The Duchess. Rumors spread that she was trying to avoid disgrace, possibly even Harding’s impeachment. The administration had become notoriously corrupt. The Duchess fed the rumors by refusing to allow an autopsy.
It remains a mystery to this day. But Harding provided his own epitaph in advance. “I am not fit for this office and never should have been here,” he once admitted. That self-awareness suggests, despite his shortcomings, that at least he wasn’t a psychopath.
The point: if Warren Harding could become president, why not Newt Gingrich or someone equally disturbed? Just think of the future scandals and all the pathological behavior we would get to witness. Bad behavior is, after all, catnip for millions of information consumers. Can they ever really get enough?
This is adapted from Maverick Media’s Rebel News Round Up,* broadcast live at approximately 11:15 a.m. Friday on WOMM (105.9-FM/LP – The Radiator) in Burlington.
Re: Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich: Do We Have Psychopaths Misruling Our World?
This list is also a functional description of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or the "Dark Side" of the Hunters personality/physiology type, depending on your point of view.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by daynurse:
1.Glibness, superficial charm
2.Grandiose sense of self-worth
3.Need for stimulation, proneness to boredom
4.Pathological lying
5.Conning, manipulative
6.Lack of remorse or guilt
7.Shallow affect
8.Callous, lack of empathy
9.Parasitic lifestyle
10.Poor behavioral control
11.Promiscuous sexual behavior
12.Early behavior problems
13.Lack of realistic long-term goals
14.Impulsivity
15.Irresponsibility
16.Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17.Many short-term marital relationships
18.Juvenile delinquency
19.Revocation of conditional release
20.Criminal versatility
Re: Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich: Do We Have Psychopaths Misruling Our World?
Identification with the aggressor is a psychological phenomenon that was recognized many years ago by Anna Freud. See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identi..._the_aggressor
When someone admires or goes along with abusive people (and even dogs do it), it's because there are unresolved experiences that have left them with a sense of powerlessness (true for most of us in modern "advanced" cultures). There is a sense of safety from imagining being in the good graces of a powerful person - or an illusion of power from identifying ourselves with the powerful. Why else would people (men especially) become murderers upon the command of their superiors in the military. How else could wars be fought if this weren't the case? Hitler and Nazi Germany was a classic example.
My own view is that high need states (when one or more strong needs, including unconscious ones, are driving us) tend to narrow our attention and awareness. Most such needs are emotional, so it's not surprising that emotions would be considered a "problem." Empathy, caring and other human qualities are also impediments to an addiction to power. My guess is that powerful psychopaths for most of their lives have carried extreme unmet emotional needs. They have learned that power enables them to stay well-distracted from the sense of powerlessness that pervades the unresolved experiences from which those needs arose. There is nothing at all unusual about such experiences - or the unmet needs, unexpressed emotions or sense of powerlessness; most all of us carry them. The difference between us and those who abuse power is that we've never developed the ability to use power as a means of self-distraction but have instead come up with more benign - even socially rewarded - ways.
So the sickness of the powerful psychopath is simply an extreme case of the mind's response to wounding, which is to fragment consciousness in ways that "protect" us from our own deep sense of failure and powerlessness. Those of us who don't have the option to use power as a means of self-distraction may very well give up power to those who do have that option. This is how it becomes possible for positions of power to exist, and hence for those addicted to power to abuse it. And this is why the world is that way it is. Instead of coming together in mutual support to create the means for meeting our real needs, the self-distractive (and destructive) mind leads us to either abuse or give up power, keeping us in a terminal relationship that almost guarantees our needs will never be met. Indeed, our very survival is threatened by this deadly dance, in which we collectively resemble a cancer spreading over the earth, devouring its host.
The way out is to create community as a place of healing: as a place where the first priority is to support each other in experiencing our emotional needs being met. This is what I've experienced as the most effective way to get the mind to relax and allow self-awareness, acceptance and understanding to expand and include what has been hidden or buried within us. It is the only real antidote to lives based on an illusion of power or on using power in destructive ways.
CS
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by daynurse:
I am posting this because it is a source of constant inner questioning for me. Truthfully, I just don't understand why people don't simply recognize a bully's tactics and walk away. But they don't. My grandson, 5, is demonstrating the same behavior and we are trying to teach him not to just follow a bully's instructions but to question them.
Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich: Do We Have Psychopaths Misruling Our World?
Re: Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich: Do We Have Psychopaths Misruling Our World?
You've touched on the general awareness of all this. I want to get just a little more specific. I agree that it can be about our needs not met or even not met in appropriate ways. With many psychopaths (who have high emotional chaos so do acts of violence to numb themselves) and sociopaths (let's not forget them... who do things to feel through torture, killing and abuse using cleverness and intelligence), their unresolved issues are very often childhood physical or sexual abuse, not just emotional. It's epidemic. Hitler was beaten over and over as a child. And many of the world leaders were...well, I'll just stop there. It's enough to know that the level of dysfunction through generations of abuse occurs. There is just so much dissociative disorders exhibited (fragment consciousness to a more extreme). Even witnessing violence in a family that is like a battlefield of fighting can cause trauma and lead to PTSD. We have people who will follow orders for fear they will be hurt if they don't...a repetition from childhood experiences. People will follow orders because they will be shunned like when they were growing up. But they also can follow orders because they know they will be killed. This happened in the Mi Lai Massacre among other wars.
And to trust others to even get the healing is always a difficult step for many. It definitely takes a team or community to help in support of healing. The experiences need to be identified first for the healing to really start. What we can feel, we can heal.
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Posted in reply to the post by CSummer:
