I’m surprised Africa and the Middle East - especially the parts that ave been reduced to rubble - don’t think Amerikkka is the worst blight on humanity in the current era.
The psychopath is a unique and quite dangerous subgroup within our species. He, or she, is capable of deadly manipulations executed with unbelievably cold, calculated intellectual and emotional maneuvers. Charming, lacking in empathy, guilt, responsibility and the normal range of human emotion, they move among us with an often impeccable mask that makes them virtually undetectable. There are several evolutionary hypotheses which attempt to explain their behavior, however the best fit is that they represent a cheating reproductive strategy, one geared towards the production of many offspring for which they afford no long term care.
Support for this thesis comes in a various forms. We know that psychopaths are callous, deceptive, promiscuous, and egocentric (Cleckley, 1941: 337-364). They are also mostly male: almost four times as many more psychopathic men then women (Sigvardsson, et al, 1982). This makes them ideal for mating with many women and then leaving them subsequently, once the deed is done, so to speak. It also confers a psychological advantage in that they have the ability to manipulate women by mimicking emotional attachment, or deceiving them about resources they can offer. The same is also true for female psychopaths, who can often create the impression of being in distress which elicits more financial and physical support from the men they mate with. There is a genetic basis to the trait, demonstrated in many twin adoption studies (Viding et al, 2005 & Larsson et al, 2006: 221-30).
Alternatively, Harpending and Draper (1988) proposed an anthropological hypothesis, in their study they discuss two tribes, the Kung Bushmen and the Mundurucu villagers, who fit two different ecological niches and how pro-social and antisocial behavior is a geographical adaptation. The first group, the Kung, live in the Kalahari desert of South Africa. It's a harsh environment, which forces all members of the tribe to contribute to their collective survival, reliable reciprocation of altruistic acts is crucial. The Kung form nuclear families, stable, long term relationships and thus have a strongly selective pressure on pro-social behavior. Reproductive success is thus dependent on consistent collective altruism.
The Mundurucu, on the other hand, live in the Amazon Basin, a lush environment with plentiful food. In their tribe, the women do most of the farming while the men compete physically and politically for social status. They spend most of their time engaging in gossip, fighting, planning warfare, and complex rituals, occasionally hunting for meat which can be traded for sex with the women. Here, reproductive success is dependent on the male's ability to compete in a social hierarchy; he needs good verbal skills, fearlessness to fight other men in physical competitions, and the ability to deceive women about the potential resources he can offer her. This environment favors the expression of the antisocial trait, which can potentially explain the evolutionary origin of psychopathy.
Another potential hypothesis is the need for a warrior caste within a group of evolving humans. Early competition among groups is suspected to have been high, often with groups competing for local resources and environmental niches. Baily (1995) suggests that aggressive inter-male competition for social status, and thus access to females was very prevalent in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, favoring men who lacked humanity's more empathic features.
While the two proposed alternatives have evidence and logic to support the reasons why there is a genetic basis to antisocial behavior in general, they fail to enumerate the evolutionary cause of psychopathy specifically. For example, if the anthropological perspective was accurate, we would expect men in the Mudurucu tribe to more accurately represent the full spectrum of psychopathic traits. While they do have more antisocial tendencies, they do manage to engage in long term, same sex relationships, and cooperate effectively in times of warfare. The western male psychopath seems to take antisocial behavior to a new level, beyond that which would be successful in this particular ecological niche. He never forms stable long term relationships, nor is able to cooperate within a group without being it's sole dominant member.
Baily's hypothesis tends to make more sense than the anthropological hypothesis, however there are several key points at which it fails to explain the profound psychological differences. Humans are, by nature, social organisms. We survive when we cooperate. While there may have been an early need for a violent subgroup in order to compete with other groups, it would have been virtually impossible to control a psychopath or a group of psychopaths for collective benefit and defense. This again, may have explained the genetic basis for some antisocial traits, but fails to plumb the depths and total differences between the psychopath and normal humans.
The sociobiological perspective, that psychopathy is an alternative reproductive strategy, is the only theory that explains the full manifestation of the condition. According to this theory, psychopathy would have a genetic basis, it has variable expression, it would be found most often in males who tend to be very promiscuous, and they would have an average level of fitness. Macmillian and Kofoed (1984) enumerated these predictions for antisocial personality traits in general, and added the condition would manifest at puberty and decline with age, and noted that the carriers tend to have low socioeconomic status. These last two predictions correlate with sociopathy, a learned form of antisocial behavior, but fail to correlate with psychopathy.
A portrait of the Psychopath
Understanding the phenomenon requires some discussion of the condition in depth. Serial killers, torturers, rapists, are all excellent candidates, however the phenomenon of psychopathy extends above and beyond violent criminals. Glib and grandiose, cunning and manipulative, no ability to comprehend responsibility, empathy, guilt or love, the most dangerous psychopaths escape detection and avoid the criminal justice system their entire lives. They are able to climb corporate ladders, acquire PhDs and MDs, law degrees or even act as religious or spiritual leaders (Hare, 1993:102-23), and it's often only too late their victims realize they are being milked of money, dedication, time or other resources. Sometimes the truth is so hard to bear that the victim's mind circumvents its realization as a measure of self-protection (Lobaczewski, 1998:107). They learn at a young age that they are different from the rest of us, and they quickly learn to construct a mask of normality that allows them to blend in. This mask can be so effective as to fool professionals trained in psychology. They can murder, torture, and rape with as much emotional concern as we carve a turkey or change a tire. In fact, some psychopaths are quite capable of fooling lie detector tests, as they do not have the same physiological reactions that normal humans do (Hare 1993: 1).
Later Russell worked out several scenarios for handling his problems with his wife and wrote them down on a piece of paper: 'Do nothing'; 'File for Paternity/Conciliation Court'; 'Take girls w/o Killing'; 'Take girls Killing 4'; 'Kill Girls and Justin.' His probation officer commentated that the list revealed, 'the mind of a man who could contemplate killing his own children with the detachment of someone considering various auto-insurance policies. It is the laundry list of a man without a soul. (Hare, 1993:55)
Every normal human being has a conscience, a part of their mind which allows them to quickly determine 'right' from 'wrong'. Typically this has to deal with our ability comprehend the results of our actions and how they affect other people, in the psychopath this higher function is completely absent. In its place is a malignant narcissism, a device that allows the individual to formulate quickly, coldly, and with complete emotional detachment (Hare, 1993:53) - How can I get what I want? Their desires are varied; money, sex, and power over others seem to be the most common, however some are content with a place to live, video games, and a work-free existence. How our actions affect others, empathizing, considering, and responsibility are all higher functions of the brain which are completely absent in the psychopath.
These desires force psychopaths to focus their manipulations on other people. The psychopath needs normal humans to do his dirty work, or to be his prey. He needs them to produce money, or be available for sex, to be his murder victim or perhaps to defend his character when exposed. All of their hungers require interaction with normal humans in order to be fulfilled. The psychopath views all others as objects, to be used, discarded, or destroyed as he sees fit. He cannot understand guilt, sadness, remorse, love, or true joy because he does not possess them. He can mimic them in order to elicit a desired response, but he does not truly possess them as normal human beings do. This dependency on others could be taken as evidence for frequency dependent selection.
He uses a preternatural charm as his primary weapon. Flattery and confidence mixed with their ability to 'read' normal humans allow them to change and adapt their personalities:
They identify a person's likes and dislikes, motives, needs, weak spots, and vulnerabilities. We all have 'buttons' that can be pushed, and psychopaths, more than most people, are always ready to push them. Second, many psychopaths come across as having excellent oral communication skills. In many cases, these skills are more apparent than real because of their readiness to jump right into a conversation without the social inhibitions that hamper most people. They make use of the fact that for many people the content of the message is less important than the way it is delivered. A confident, aggressive delivery style - often larded with jargon, cliches, and flowery phrases - makes up for the lack of substance and sincerity in their interactions with others. This skill, coupled with the belief that they deserve whatever they can take, allows psychopaths to use effectively what they learn about a person against the person as they interact with him or her - they know what to say and how to say it to exert influence. Third, they are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial - but convinced - verbal fluency allows them to change their personas skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan. They are known for their ability to don many masks, change 'who they are' depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim. Narcissistic people will find psychopaths to be solicitous of their need to get attention; anxious people will find them to be non-threatening and reassuring; many will find them exciting and fun to be with. Few will suspect that they are dealing with a psychopath who is playing up to their particular personality and vulnerabilities. In the great card game of life, psychopaths know what cards you hold, and they cheat.
Researchers who interact with known psychopaths regularly describe them as social chameleons. Chameleons, of course, have the capacity to assume the coloration of their environment in order to survive. When clinging to either a leaf or a branch, they turn green or brown, using their ability to change the color of their skin to blend into their surroundings. Thus, using nature's protection, they can remain invisible to their enemies, yet can sneak up on unsuspecting insects that make up their diet. They are the perfect invisible predator. Like chameleons, psychopaths can hide who they really are and mask their true intentions from their victims for extended periods. The psychopath is a near-perfect invisible human predator. (Hare & Babiak, 2006:37-39)
Criminal psychopaths frequently end up in jail, have higher recidivism rates, and demonstrate a vast versatility in their crimes (Hemphill et al, 1998: 139). Much more interesting, and often causing far more damage, are the non-criminal or white-collar psychopaths. Robert Hare provides many examples in Without Conscience and Snakes in Suits. They range from lawyers, to businessmen, doctors, psychiatrists, even clergymen - any position of power which can be used to further allow the psychopath to appear credible and trustworthy. The only apparent difference between these psychopaths and criminals is their ability to maintain a more effective mask of normality (Hare, 1999:109).
As you can see, there is no doubt that these individuals would not thrive in a tribal community, regardless of the ecological niche, nor be manageable as a warrior caste within a tribal group. In fact, Andrew Lobaczewski demonstrates how their pathological thought processes can infect the minds of normal humans, thus transmitting their narcissism, callousness, and manipulative traits (Lobaczewski, 2003: 102-28). An appropriate ideology, whether religious, political or otherwise, is used as a screen to justify their actions, with an 'ends justifying the means' mentality overriding normal human empathy and conscience. As such, if these individuals existed in a tribal community, they would either take it over, or be excluded over time. The difference lies in the psychological hygiene of the group, and its ability to spot pathological behavior and thought processes as such.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society
By Colin Todhunter
Global Research, May 09, 2013
When attempting to analyse what is happening in the world, it is important to appreciate past economic, social and political processes that led us to where we are today. Understanding the tectonic plates of history that led certain countries towards fascism, communism or capitalist liberal democracy, for example, is essential (1) (2).
At the same time, however, it can become easy for us to push aside the individual as we focus on theoretical perspectives that refer to the ‘underlying logic of capitalism’ or some other notion that draws heavily on theory. It can get to the point where individual motive or intent (agency) is airbrushed from the narrative because human action is deemed to have been shaped by the dead weight of history or forces beyond our control.
While not wishing to understate the role that such constraints have on human action, I wish to draw attention to researcher Stefan Verstappen who provides valuable insight into how individual agency has shaped and continues to shape society (3).
While Machiavellianism has long been associated with politics and public conduct, Verstappen shifts focus somewhat by arguing that people with psychopathic personalities have for thousands of years tended to grasp power and impose their views and deeds on the rest of us. In order to get power, he concludes that people cheat, kill or lie their way to the top. Whether it has been due to the butchery or lies of royalty, religious leaders, politicians or corporate oligarchs, nice guys have tended to finish last.
What leads him to conclude this?
Psychopathy is a personality disorder identified by characteristics such as a lack of empathy and remorse, criminality, anti-social behaviour, egocentricity, superficial charm, manipulativeness, irresponsibility, impulsivity and a parasitic lifestyle (4).
With that definition in mind, look around: the criminal, parasitic activities by bankers that have plunged millions into poverty; the destruction, war and death brought to countries in order that corporations profit by stealing resources; the dropping of atom bombs on innocent civilians in 1945 or the use of depleted uranium which again impacts innocent civilians; and the many other acts, from the use of death squads to false flag terror, that have brought untold misery to countless others just because powerholders wanted to hold onto power or to gain more power, or the wealthy wanted to hold onto their wealth or gain even more.
Based on these terrible deeds, it becomes easy to argue that the people ultimately responsible for them do not adhere to the same values as ordinary people. It may be even easier to conclude that it’s not the cream that rises to the top, but, in many cases, the scum.
Now such a scenario might seem awful enough, but the people who tend to control the world, the ones responsible for these acts, try to impose their warped world view and twisted values on everyone else. Hollywood films, commercials and political ideology are all engaged in forwarding the belief that it’s a dog eat dog world, war and violence abroad is necessary, competition and not cooperative is what counts, aggression and not passivity is the key to ‘success’ and that success equates with amassing huge amounts of personal wealth and lavish displays of conspicuous consumption.
“A person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests as amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc.” – definition of a psychopath from Dictionary.com
Again, bearing this definition in mind too, the acts mentioned above are not those of properly functioning social beings that contribute to a sense of communality, altruism, love or morality; quite the opposite in fact.
Yet this is the type of stuff that is rammed down our throats as constituting normality every day. Whether it’s the ‘Big Brother’ TV show or ‘The Apprentice’ show, these values are promoted day and night. The ‘Big Brother’ winner is the one who can survive and outdo the competition in terms of the duplicity and backstabbing involved along the way. The winner of ‘The Apprentice’ must be more aggressive, more duplicitous, more devious and cunning and more willing to trample over everyone else. And the winner is judged as such by a multi-millionaire who himself was cunning and ruthless enough to have made it to the top of the pile and has amassed millions for his own personal benefit. These are the role models to be admired and emulated!
These are the measures of success, of sanity, of normality.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
Apprentice competitors are highly driven individuals: not driven by a need to help humanity, but by egocentricity and greed. And, ultimately, these are the values that many mainstream opinion leaders, senior politicians and their corporate masters hold dear.
These values of egocentricity, aggression, competitiveness, duplicity and greed are not confined to some TV show. There are part of a much more sinister process. They are inextricably linked to and underpin the actions that resulted in the killing of half a million children in Iraq for geo-political gain (5) and the sending in of military forces into the jungles of India to beat, rape and dispose of a nation’s poorest people because they stand in the way of profit and greed (6).
From Congo and Libya to Syria and beyond, we witness the outcome of a terrifying mindset that is nurtured and encouraged throughout society.
Too many people have become “well adjusted to the values of a profoundly sick society,” whether residing in middle England, middle America or the gated communities of south Delhi or Mumbai. Humanity is being beaten down to be neurotic, vicious and to regard these traits as constituting normal, acceptable behaviour. Thanks to the media, this becomes engrained from an early age as comprising ‘common sense’, and those who question it are merely sneered at or ridiculed by a system that promotes a mass mindset immune to its own lies.
Whether this is all due to psychopathy, narcissism or ‘Machiavellian personalities’ is open to debate. Moreover, as implied at the outset, historical and sociological factors often compel usually decent people to act in terrible ways. The debate within academic sociology between structure and human agency is after all a very long one (7). Whatever the underlying reason, however, as a global community we are being force fed a diet of perverse values and destructive actions, all spuriously justified on the basis that ‘there is no alternative’ and ‘needs must’.
Corporate capitalism, consumerism, the new world order, a war on terror (or drugs or poverty, take your pick), neo-liberalism – call it what you will, but it’s all based on the filthy lie that those in control have wider humanity’s interests at heart. They don’t. By any means possible – war, murder, torture or propaganda, they seek to convince people otherwise. What price human life? None whatsoever for such people.
Notes
1) Robert Brenner (1976), “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe”.Past and Present 70
2) Barrington Moore (1993) [First published 1966]. Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: lord and peasant in the making of the modern world (with a new foreword by Edward Friedman and James C. Scott ed.). Boston: Beacon Press.
3) Defense Against the Psychopath (2013): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQkDvO3hz1w
4) Polaschek, D. L. L., Patrick, C. J., Lilienfeld, S. O. (15 December 2011). “Psychopathic Personality: Bridging the Gap Between Scientific Evidence and Public Policy”. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 12 (3): 95–162.
5) Reuters report (2000), UN Says Sanctions Have Killed Some 500,000 Iraqi Children: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072100-03.htm
6) BBC Newsnight interview with Arundhati Roy (2011): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrYQmRBdMPQ
7) Colin Hay (2001), What Place for Ideas in the Structure-Agency Debate? Globalisation as a ‘Process Without a Subject’: http://www.criticalrealism.com/archive/cshay_wpisad.html
It’s a special breed of people who can deny workers a cost of living pay increase while pocketing a hundred thousand dollar a week pay cheque.
It’s a special breed who can take people’s livelihoods or risk their health and safety to add a few cents to the share price.
Research names that breed: psychopaths. Capitalism is built by and for them.
Here’s part of an article from Stuff on the subject and there’s plenty of other info out there, most notably the documentary The Corporation (isn’t it amazing how ‘hey, our economic system is controlled by psychopaths isn’t considered major news yet we do nothing about it):
The question is whether being a psychopath comes with the territory of being a boss. Not that all bosses are psychopaths, most are decent.
But do the traits of a workplace psychopath, the charm and the ruthlessness, make it easier to become a boss? Research in the past suggests that most psychopaths are of normal intelligence. More like Tony Soprano than Hannibal Lecter.
According to research cited, managers scored higher on measures of psychopathy than the overall population. Some who had very high scores were candidates for, or held, senior positions.
“The very skills that make the psychopath so unpleasant (and sometimes abusive) in society can facilitate a career in business even in the face of negative performance ratings,” the researchers said.
Another study When Executives Rake in Millions: Meanness in Organizations [pdf] found that bosses who make big bucks are much meaner to their employees compared to executives who aren’t earning massive salaries
What are the danger signals? Jo Owen at BNET identifies six traits to watch out for: they are highly egocentric and the world revolves around them; they have superficial charm and will say anything to get their way; they feel no guilt or shame about their actions; they take excessive risks; they blame others or completely deny there are problems and they are highly manipulative.
And of course, they will will back stab anyone they think is in their way or anyone deemed to be unnecessary.
All these traits helped them climb the greasy corporate ladder. Still, one of the problems in identifying the corporate psychopath is that it’s a world in which some of the defining characteristics are commonplace. Many successful managers and executives can be grandiose and narcissistic.
Let’s face it, there has to be something wrong with your mental wiring if you’re a Rob Fyfe or a Paul Reynolds or one of that other rarefied breed who call themselves ‘wealth creators’. These guys pocket millions of dollars a year, more than anyone can possible need to live even a lavish lifestyle (Reynolds gets an extra quarter of a million a year for flights home to Scotland). At the same time, they’ll rip of cabin crew and lines engineers to the point where the only option the workers have to protect their livelihoods is to go on strike. What kind of human being is willing to impose such suffering on others for a personal gain that they don’t actually need? The answer is simple.
If anything, these people seem to reveal in industrial action – they love putting the boot into the people who actually make the organisation function. The cult of personality at Air NZ and the way it was turned against the Zeal workers was scary (although, ultimately, Fyfe lost so badly that the Zeal brand had to be replaced). It’s so bad in the case of Telecom that they’ve lost a large chunk of their engineering workforce, who have left the industry altogether. But that ultimately self-destructive mindset is a key feature of psychopathology and capitalism. The value of Telecom has plummeted under Reynolds while he has kept on taking the pay cheques.
The capitalist edifice is a parasite on the economy and society. Sitting between those who do the work and the work they produce, it siphons off most of the wealth for an elite whose true economic contribution is conspicuously un-examined and just assumed to be vital.
Much as the psychopath doesn’t contribute to society but exploits its weakness, the capitalist has created a niche that is said to be crucial, in fact said to be the fount of wealth, but, in reality, the capitalist creates neither the capital he owns or the wealth that is produced with it. That is all done by someone else, the capitalist just owns everything.
“What if we’re living in a world full of super-social psychopaths?” is the question posed by Tristam Vivian Adams early on in his book The Psychopath Factory: How Capitalism Organizes Empathy. Scary, as the term “psychopath” immediately triggers thoughts about people like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, or even Anders Breivik. Psychopaths, by the time we hear about them in the news, have committed atrocious crimes. Adams, however, starts his discussion of the super-social psychopath with a bit more controversy by proposing we differentiate between the diagnosis of psychopathy and its often-assumed criminal origin. To offer his readers opportunities for the empathy and identification needed for such an undertaking, Adams analyzes only famous fictional psychopaths, such as Hannibal Lecter of the Silence of the Lambs series, Patrick Bateman of American Psycho, or Tom Ripley of the Talented Mr. Ripley series. While it is easy to fall into the trap of perpetuating stigma by reinforcing fictional character stereotypes, Adams, for the most part, manages to use these characters as original examples of fully formed humans who exhibit psychopathological behaviors, but whose fictional narratives allow readers (those who have a deeper knowledge of them through popular culture) to see them in larger contexts beyond their criminal record.
By establishing an emotional connection with the reader through familiar fictional psychopaths early on, Adams shows that psychopathological behavior does not necessarily have to be linked to actual in-real-life mass murders. The theoretical framework of fiction serves to comfortably invite the reader into examination of his or her very own aspirations at the contemporary workplace. Looking from the Fordist assembly line model to Wall Street sharks of the 1980s and 90s, one commonplace idea is that successful capitalism eliminates all forms of warmth, feelings, and empathy. Time is money, and those who work hard and shut off emotions will make it to the top. In the current age of start-up tech companies, the work place has shifted once more. While the Fordist model still differentiates between labor in public and leisure in private, the new model suggests a metamorphosis of both worlds: the worker is encouraged to perform at work as he would at home. Top desired jobs feature ping-pong tables and unlimited frozen yogurt; no one works “for” anyone but only “with someone.” As Adams points out, common contemporary phrases like “don’t call me ‘boss’” contribute to this idea of no hierarchy at the workplace—instead we have a mere performance of equality, according to Adams. As Adams demonstrates in a number of work space scenarios, the ping-pong table, the frozen yogurt, “no ‘bosses’ and ‘colleagues’ but only ‘friends’” serve, ultimately, the larger goals of capitalist production: the happy worker is a good worker.
In this world of super-social work spaces, Bateman or Ripley would make great managers, Adams provocatively suggests, not because they are “criminal, selfish, or status obsessed,” but because they have mastered performances of charm and empathy needed to climb up the corporate ladder. Empathy becomes a tool, a strategy that works in the service of capitalism. Once we look at empathy as a skill set on a CV rather than simply human capacity for compassion, Adams’ question about living in a world of super-social psychopaths takes on a whole new meaning: psychopathology, in Adams’ theory, is no longer defined by deception and lies, but instead elevated by society as a desired attribute to make it in the corporate world.
Adams’ book advocates for a change of perception of psychopathy. Instead of treating it like a mental disorder, a lack or surplus of a given health condition, he proposes we look at psychopathy as a contagious sickness. Competition among colleagues has moved beyond public achievements like fancy degrees and work experience. The competent and successful worker will be able to use empathy as a method to show off that he or she is more than just a good worker.
“The psychopath is not,” as Adams says, “…a failed script, a subject outside of the social or working code, but an example of capitalist code itself” (104). Confrontational in its urge to open our eyes to the role each and every one of us plays in the construction of a capitalist society, the book prompts readers to wonder which other aspects of contemporary life serve the same purposes.
Furthermore, The Psychopath Factory left this reader wondering what other discourses beyond empathy might illustrate examples of the “capitalist code” gone awry. In an age of rising nationalisms, we might wonder, is Adams’ capacious diagnosis of psychopathology tethered only to capitalist aspirations?
While reading the book, the reader is left questioning her or his own subject position. Am I a psychopath? Am I, at times, too, only performing empathy? Which codes at work make me fall into exactly these scripts of super-social psychopaths, whether the script is not really caring about a colleague’s failure or participating in a team excursion that performs camaraderie rather than living it? Adams forces us to see our own ways of organizing emotions in the interest of our professional status. And while he is certainly critiquing the status quo as such, he also walks us through the genealogy that led to the necessity of curbing emotions for the sake of capitalism in the first place. Adams presents psychopathy as a necessary construct for success, born out of an appropriation of emotions for capitalist motives.
Psychopathy is one of the most stigmatized diagnoses in current media representations. Adams is one of the first to venture into the uncharted territory of freeing psychopathy from its stigma of criminality, a process that we have started to undertake for mental disorders such as bipolar disease or schizophrenia, but that still seems taboo for conditions such as pedophilia or psychopathy. Once we understand psychopathy as a spectrum, as a scale that moves between small daily acts of faking empathy to, at the very top, murdering someone in cold blood, we can start interrogating our own daily acts and contributions to the capitalist system. It is only when we admit to the super-social psychopath in ourselves that the question from the beginning of the book, “what if we are living in a world full of super-social psychopaths?,” no longer prompts a fear of being murdered, but instead suggests agency, will, and the ability to change what is in our own hands. In this sense, Adams’ book serves as a wonderful spark, critiquing capitalist society from the refreshingly new perspective of psychopathology. It will surely awaken many future debates around pathology, performativity, and where to locate failure within the capitalist system.
“This induced ‘state of emergency’ is designed to prepare the American public, politically and psychologically, to maintain the momentum of the U.S. imperial offensive in the world.”
The only people that can make Russiagate fade away are the ones that invented it in the first place: the spooks, Wall Street Democrats and institutional servants of capital that gathered in Hillary Clinton’s overstuffed campaign tent, last year, to plot the next moves of a beleaguered U.S. empire.
Although a Bernie Sanders’ upset in 2016 had always been a statistical impossibility, Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican Party machinery had destabilized the duopoly political system at a time of great stress for U.S. imperialism.
The previous year, the Russian military had set up shop in Syria, blocking U.S.-backed jihadists from ousting the secular, Arab nationalist government of Bashar al Assad. It was Vladimir Putin’s answer to the global military offensive launched by Barack Obama in 2011, with NATO’s overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, followed immediately by the jihadist push into Syria; the Washington-engineered 2014 coup in Ukraine, on Russia’s doorstep; and, also beginning in 2011, Obama’s military “pivot” to the Pacific to confront China.
“Putin changed the game board in 2015.”
U.S. imperialism was on a roll, with a vengeance, occupying most of Africa and recovering the momentum lost with George W. Bush’s humiliating defeat in Iraq. But Putin changed the game board in 2015, militarily intervening in Syria and declaring, with the world as his witness at the opening of the UN General Assembly, that the U.S. had been acting as a de facto ally of the very jihadists that it claimed to be fighting in its global war on terror. The 21st century’s biggest lie had been exposed with a Russian megaphone, and confronted by Russian arms. America’s jihadist foot soldiers were put on the run.
Perhaps even more fundamental, the bell tolled resoundingly on the terminal decline of U.S. empire when the International Monetary Fund announced that China had surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest economy , based on “purchasing power parity.” The “American Century” — whenever it was supposed to have begun — was now definitively over, despite the U.S. expending more on weapons than the rest of the world, combined. As 2014 came to end, Washington’s mood turned morbid, yet meaner and more desperate than ever.
“The bell tolled resoundingly on the terminal decline of U.S. empire when the International Monetary Fund announced that China had surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest economy, based on ‘purchasing power parity’.”
That same year, the domestic U.S. pot boiled over, as Black protest reawakened in Ferguson, Missouri, after a fitful, two-generation-long sleep. The centrality of race was reasserted in the world’s first white settler state, further darkening the mood of a white populace whose skin privilege could not save them from the ravages of capitalist austerity and enforced, general precariousness. Donald Trump decided to make his move to seize the commanding heights of the White Man’s Party.
The Orange Menace, a calculating real estate racist whose mass media marketing strategy is mistaken for “populism,” ran a counter-establishment campaign that challenged the Lords of Capitals’ right to move money and jobs across borders at will, and — horror of horrors! — questioned the need for the U.S. to wage endless wars around the world.
President Obama’s Trans Pacific Partnership was already dead as the general election campaign began, but Trump’s capture of the Republican Party — the most reliable backer of the free flow of capital — was deeply disturbing to the capitalist order. When Trump’s mass base — top-heavy with self-styled American “patriots” — failed to recoil at their candidate’s apparent willingness to explore some kind of détente with Russia, the national security state descended into utter panic. If Trump’s “middle American” (white, socially right-wing) fans could not be counted on to give unquestioning support to U.S. imperial war policy, then where was the popular base to sustain Washington’s military offensive in the world?
“Their actual agenda was preservation of the global capitalist order and sustaining the momentum of the U.S. military offensive that was begun in 2011.”
From that point on, Trump was viewed as an existential threat by most of the U.S. ruling class and its attendant national security and military-industrial complex sectors, and by the corporate media that represents their interests. They rushed into Hillary Clinton’s Big Tent, claiming to make common cause with Blacks and other minorities. However, their actual agenda was preservation of the global capitalist order and sustaining the momentum of the U.S. military offensive that was begun in 2011.
The CIA, in particular, made Trump their National Security Enemy #1. They are the main architects of Russiagate — a “conspiracy” in which the predicate Kremlin “crime” of DNC document-stealing remains unproven, and which pales into almost laughable insignificance when compared to decades of U.S. wars of regime change, economic strangulation, assassinations, and outright genocide around the world. Syria and Congo (6 million-plus dead) are crimes of the worst order known to humankind. Russiagate is a lie that would be no more than a Russian diplomatic blunder, even if true.
“Russiagate is an artificial crisis that was made necessary by the actual crisis of U.S. imperialism.”
Repeat: “Russiagate is an artificial crisis that was made necessary by the actual crisis of U.S. imperialism.”
Repeat: “Russiagate is an artificial crisis that was made necessary by the actual crisis of U.S. imperialism.”
The corporate media are the public agents of the mass psychological operation. With media consolidation at such an advanced state, it turns out to be not all that difficult for a handful of media conglomerates, each tied inextricably to finance capital and in close collaboration with one of the corporate parties and all of the intelligence outfits, to create and sustain a “state of emergency” for a long period of time — more than year, so far. This induced “state of emergency” is designed to prepare the American public, politically and psychologically, to maintain the momentum of the U.S. imperial offensive in the world, by demonizing Russia as an internal, as well as external, threat to the United States. In other words, Russiagate is an artificial crisis that was made necessary by the actual crisis of U.S. imperialism — its economic decline and military dependence on jihadist foot soldiers, and just as importantly, the utter collapse of U.S. moral authority in the world.
The U.S. imperial orbit is shrinking, dramatically. Russiagate is the domestic response to this geopolitical reality. The real “conspirators” – the spooks, Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the Clintonite leaders of the Democratic Party, and the corporate media that serves them all — are shrinking the American people’s political vision to Halloween dimensions. Not only are there Russians lurking in every dark corner and under every bed, but they can buy a U.S. election or foment civil disturbance and political unrest for about $100,000 — the price of a luxury car.
The corporate state makes no pretense of addressing social inequality or white supremacy. It practices only the politics of vengeance. It uses coercion, fear, violence, police terror and mass incarceration as social control. Our cells of resistance have to be rebuilt from scratch.
The next episode in distraction politics: Some bullshit about Assangegate... In Amerikkka, journalism works like this > pick a political side (OTT lunatic or Fakely Progressive) and then prepare to be brainwashed accordingly. Truth is negligible.
This account was set up to raise funds for a Blackfoot Language program to assist in saving the Blackfoot Language and to purchase computer and sound and video editing equipment. Our group hopes to produce video and audio content for educational purposes and for use in the schools where Blackfoot is spoken. We would also like to produce a radio program for the new Calgary Indigenous radio station that will be on air in the coming months. Please donate to this worthy cause as it is important that the Indigenous Languages in Canada are preserved for future generations. Hopefully with this initiative we will help the younger generation of Blackfoot children gain fluency in the Blackfoot language.
Tar sands have been dubbed the largest – and most destructive – industrial project in human history. And Canada is on the forefront of their exploitation
This week, the Canadian government will be in Bonn touting Canada’s climate plan. It will be joined by Canadian oil companies working to put a green hue on Canadian tarsands – but the world shouldn’t be fooled.
The truth is, Canada cannot yet meet its own arguably weak climate targets. The country plans to expand oil and gas production despite evidence that this is inconsistent with Paris goals. Then, there is the issue of the toxic sludge of waste products from Canada’s tar sands destruction, which form what are known as tailings ponds.
As of this year, these ponds hold 1 trillion litres of sludge that is unlike any other industrial by-product in the world. They contain a unique cocktail of toxic chemicals and hydrocarbons that will remain in molasses-like suspension for centuries if left alone.
These open, unlined ponds currently cover 220 sq km, an area of land equivalent to 73 New York Central Parks. A single tailings pond - the Mildred Lake Settling Basin - has been identified by the US Department of the Interior as the world’s largest dam.
Also note that the same oil companies who produce these poisonous oil-bogs are constantly saturating Canadian media throughout the country with bright and sunny advertisements, trying to normalize what they do and get people thinking that they’re “environmentally conscious” when in reality they’re absolutely legendary for cutting corners, bypassing legal regulations, buying politicians, attempting to sway elections at every level by exploiting media monopolies, and outright poisoning or displacing people to get at the oil under their land.
St. Louis cops "exercised their discretion in an arbitrary and retaliatory fashion to punish protesters for voicing criticism of police," the judge ruled.
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