Psychopaths rule the world

The psychologist Carl Jung estimated that in every 'society' could be found a 'psychopathic' thirty percent. It's sobering to think that over 60 percent of every society --even those we think most cultured --may be largely 'ruled' by about thirty percent who are utterly lacking the restraints that most of us associate with personal maturity, social cohesion, civilization itself.

A recent article by Dr. Kevin Barrett explores the dysfunctional underbelly of civilization which he says is "... largely the creation of psychopaths: all civilizations, he claims, are built upon 'slavery and mass murder'.

As I have written of Rome: it was in the death business having outsourced the more odious tasks to its 'Military/Industrial Complex' --the Praetorian Guard. Psychopaths, Dr. Barrett claims, 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.' [See: Is George Bush A Psychopath?]

Earlier the psychologist Carl Jung estimated that as many as thirty percent of any population is certifiably psychopathic. Similarly, Dr. Gustav Gilbert, whose task it was to keep Nazi war criminals alive until they could be hanged, summed it up simply: evil, he said, was the utter lack of empathy. Hannah Arendt (The New School, New York) wrote of the 'banality of evil'.

It has been pointed out that 'normal people do not function like the Bushes, Clintons, Keetings, Stalins or Hitlers'. Dysfunctional and/or psychopathic GOP behaviors include the GOP habit of indulging self-reinforcing delusions, repeating failed strategies, and reversing the normal sequence of 'cause and effect'. The Bush administration, for example, will cite its own wars of aggression as justification for increasing military spending.

 

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What tactics are left the people when 'insane' governments monopolize military force and weaponry. For the longer term, the people must realize that governments have no powers but those given them by the people. This is as true for totalitarian states as it is for democracies. As was said in the sixties: drop out! Don't feed the beast. Secondly, as we have seen, passive resistance is no guarantee that the 'establishment' will not murder in the name of the state --a mere 'legal abstraction'. One of the most cogent strategies that I have seen recently was found on OpEd News:

I will not work for you, buy from you, fight for you, or die for you, until the criminals are gone from the halls of our government."

That is a strategy that I have adopted; it will, at least, assuage your conscience. Many, however, don't have the luxury of going 'cold turkey'. Even so --there is little excuse for enriching Wal-Mart. There is NO excuse whatsoever for watching Fox or patronizing its advertisers. With any luck and some publicity, we might even begin an advertisers boycott of Fox. Now ---THAT will change things in the Fox boardroom. The sound of money 'walking' is the sound of people 'talking'. And telling the truth.

 

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