do you think barack obama is a sociopath

DSM-IV Definition

Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a lack of regard for the moral or legal standards in the local culture. There is a marked inability to get along with others or abide by societal rules. Individuals with this disorder are sometimes called psychopaths or sociopaths.

Diagnostic Criteria (DSM-IV)

1. Since the age of fifteen there has been a disregard for and violation of the right's of others, those right's considered normal by the local culture, as indicated by at least three of the following:
A. Repeated acts that could lead to arrest.
B. Conning for pleasure or profit, repeated lying, or the use of aliases.
C. Failure to plan ahead or being impulsive.
D. Repeated assaults on others.
E. Reckless when it comes to their or others safety.
F. Poor work behavior or failure to honor financial obligations.
G. Rationalizing the pain they inflict on others.

2. At least eighteen years in age.

3. Evidence of a Conduct Disorder, with its onset before the age of fifteen.

4. Symptoms not due to another mental disorder.

A, B, E, G

holy shit my brother is a sociopath, good to know

Difficult to say. Jon Ronson's book touches on whether politics is dominated by psycho/sociopaths and ends up unable to fully throw its weight behind whether the standard definition of the term is even a valid one. Went with 'maybe'.

everything is p much dominated by psycho/sociopaths tbf

i tend to think the most genuinely decent and humane people don't have the cold-eyed ambition to achieve the level of power required to influence the world via politics, but maybe that's a harsh generalization.

It's something Robert Hare, who designed the test for psychopathy, seems to believe, iirc. High-functioning psychopaths have the right combination of superficial charm, emotional distance, ability to lie convincingly and snap-decision making to get ahead. It's often applied more to corporate titans than politicians but is valid for both, in theory. The trouble is that the test is so subjective it's easy to apply parts of it to anyone you think's kind of a dick.

one of my least favorite things about the present age is ready access to the text of the DSM resulting in a lot of armchair diagnosing. true sociopathy is actually very rare. a happily married sociopath with a couple of well-adjusted children: this is a concept I'd be very surprised to find any doctor taking seriously. to say that people have "sociopathic tendencies" is meaningless; everybody's capable of putting the blinkers on to shut out the pain of others, for example. "rationalizing the pain they inflict on others"? you could make the case that all non-vegetarians are to some degree sociopathic on this criteria.

sorry this is hobby-horse thing w/me, you get a lot of teens now saying "I think I'm a sociopath" when they're just normal egocentric teens & I think it's really unhealthy, sociopathy's a real thing and the likelihood is that few of us will ever even run across a true one in our lives.

that said it's otm that to really wanna be president there's gotta be something wrong w/you but that something probably isn't total inability to understand that there are other people in the world besides yourself

emotional distance = snap decision making, or close to it at least, imo

xp animals != 'others' imo

Calculating != sociopathic

putting all of aerosmith's reasonable objections to the question aside i think the answer is:

yes

however, i think human brains aren't really designed to handle the amount of power, influence + responsibility that level of office entails and some disassociation from morality is going to happen like 90% of the time.

like i don't think you have to be a sociopath to become president, but i think you'll develop some manifestation of sociopathy when you become president for sure

arguably, it's not even disassociation from morality so much as an ability to focus on a different kind of morality that deals less with the individual and more on large groups of ppl

one of my least favorite things about the present age is ready access to the text of the DSM resulting in a lot of armchair diagnosing

So true. I have arguments with students over their readiness to call people romantically and sexually interested in them as "stalkers," or when they attach "issues" to any dilemma (e.g. "He has jealousy issues" instead of "he's a jealous guy").

oh that is so true, alfred – and aero (to an extent...). my kids are constantly calling each other "creeps" in the same way.

What I mean is that I agree with you in spirit, aero, but tbh I think there actually a lot of sociopaths under the too-broad definitions of the DSM IV, and only a few of them are dangerous or actually "actively" sociopathic. I don't blame people for self-pathologizing, but rather for understandably subordinating themselves (or their peers) to an elastic, inarticulate, definition that is overly inclusive, essentially ridic, and offers a convient expl. for abberant behavior. A lot of the ODD students I worked with a few years back are nascent/will likely be sociopaths by even the most stringent interpretation of the DSM-IV definition, but I suspect many of them will lead normal lives, get married, etc. In part, this is b/c the pattern of antisocial actions/bad choices made in the past do not nec. correlate w. a likelihood to commit those same offenses in the future, at least in a way that is outwardly harmful (although 'distasteful' and 'dickish' are an entirely different beast).

I am sorry that is all jumbled together. What it means is that yes, people who are not trained should not run to the DSM for explanation, but when they do they are at least... a little right... much of the time. The pathologies are fungible, and accepting of half-truths: they're not strictly descriptive. Nonetheless, I don't think a lot of sociopaths are diagnosed b/c the level of success/manifestation of "quirks" the exhibit are just acceptable enough to pass muster.

arguably, it's not even disassociation from morality so much as an ability to focus on a different kind of morality that deals less with the individual and more on large groups of ppl

― carpy deems (darraghmac), Friday, 6 January 2012 00:40 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is true & exemplified by his reluctance to unnecessarily disturb the peaceful prejudices of millions, by limiting needle exchange programmes, killing the programmes themselves affecting many fewer

this maybe plays into the whole deep-down-he's-a-nice-guy fanfiction thing, but what seems really frustrating, whenever you read some reaction he's made to liberal complaints, is that it's more the ability to compartmentalise things that have happened into events or tallies, rather than issues; so it becomes about how people on either side couldn't expect everything to line up with their preference, rather than whether a thing is demonstrably okay or not. like i feel like some of the presidential bubble thing must just be taking a weird detached angle that sees everything as successfully or unsuccessfully manoeuvred dealmaking, rather than positive or negative results

Truman was a nice guy from Missouri who had little qualms about dropping two A-bombs.

I look at Obama and see a remarkable poise and equanimity: it's clear he doesn't need the presidency to aggrandize himself; he would succeed at almost anything he tried. But those same qualities lead to the kind of equanimity that allowed the far less erudite Truman to put head to pillow without a care in the world about incinerated children.

more like socioPATHETIC

how weird to think that adding the word pathetic to the charge of sociopathy somehow makes that charge more severe

once you're accusing someone of sociopathy, imo, you're basically accusing them of being the worst possible human there is

but imagine doing a shitty job at being the worst possible human there is

if only :(

answer: no

capitalism forces us all to be sociopaths

sounds like a Gang of Four title.

Don't you have to be apathetic to be socio/psychopath? And yeah, apathetic characters tend to get far in life cuz they don't have emotional burden

how did you vote lorax?

I didn't vote but I think Obama has feelings because he's a democrat :/

true

lol @ anyone who really thinks obama is a sociopath

moments like these really give me warm feelings about our little fucked up ilx community here xp

not interesting enough to be one

is a murderer, of course

choom gang

Aero otmx10000000. He is a basically well-intentioned dude (nb: I think most people are in general well-intentioned dudes) who has made a bunch of disappointing choices with the power he's been given, with a bunch of shitty consequences.

If he were a legit sociopath then Dreams From My Father would be a seriously fucked-up read.

aero otm about obama being an excellent president, well said

a happily married sociopath with a couple of well-adjusted children: this is a concept I'd be very surprised to find any doctor taking seriously.

Dennis Rader, the BTK killer? For certain values of "happily" and "well adjusted" anyway. But certainly he's an outlier.

He is a basically well-intentioned dude

that is balls.

CTRL-F 'Excellent'

not interesting enough to be one

some ppl in this threads need to have obama be both evil + banal is really weird. is your loathing so extreme that it can support two contradictory impulses?

(or, maybe the more obvious answer, are you just students of arendt?)

That'll never catch on like "friends of Dorothy."

He is banal for a US president. They all belong in prison.

i think you're drifting into absolute incoherency

sipping on champagne, opining, "oh my, i find his criminal murderous sociopathy so banal. mmm."

head of modern US = head of mob family x 10,0000

"i do declare, how many ppl did that fascist kill today? oh, only thirty-two? yawn. he should surely be in prison if i could only muster up the stamina to care."

blow me

Anyone see that BBC documentary about the brain last year where the guy making found out he was a psychopath? He went home to his wife and kids and they were like "yeah, we always kind of suspected it"

lol i like the image of a slightly unhinged bon vivant contrarian, i suggest you full commit to this persona morbs

xp what doc is that? i would really like to watch it!

NN that was a great documentary indeed.

xp

you can't be a "contrarian" when you're stating the obvious; foreign blood is the mother's milk of American existence.

*spoons caviar onto a cracker*

I think the image you're painting is more appropriate for "comfortable Obama-voting lemming"

*combs hair luxuriously*

It was called The Brain: A Secret History. There were four episodes i think

there was the nyer piece on psychopathy too, tho that fell definitely on the there are psychos everywhere all around us end of the spectrum

off topic, Michael Mosley's story about his "psychopath" brains here

hes worse than a sociopath - hes a liberal

wait so you're telling me that there are people with invisible illnesses all around me and i don't know about it?????

!!! http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_seabrook

srsly good thread

good article, thanks for that. xp

this is a pet obsession of mine. after doing research on violence and criminality around '04 I became convinced that neurological study is the only path to resolve the issue of aberrant violence in the long term.

at the time I couldn't find much evidence of any serious or promising scientific study of the biological bases for violence, in fact, this was the only text I could find on it:

http://www.amazon.com/Neurobiology-Violence-2nd-Jan-Volavka/dp/1585620815

and this article which followed a large cohort group of children in new zealand:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/297/5582/851.abstract

a lot of studies of violence have become mired down in political wrangling and (sometimes rightfully so) paranoia about the motives of the researchers, and it doesn't have a clear path to profitability so it doesn't get funding. interesting to see that kiehl started working on these issues around the same time I was thinking about them.

I don't find hare all that scientific in his approach, there's valuable info in "without conscience" but too much is pop psychology fluff.

I find it interesting that there's no discipline devoted to the study of violence, there isn't even a name for it, and there's a lot of work to be done.

i'm sure any govt could see hardcore €€€€$$$$£££ savings in addressing even a small % of the violence in society, tbf

certainly - the cost of violence to society is immense, and others have made the connection, but funding research that seriously and systematically gets to the root causes of violent behavior seems to be rare. as kiehl points out in that article, schizophrenia research gets a lot more funding, while being an issue that affects far fewer people. it's almost like we accept violence as a part of life, and the go-to strategy is to punish the violent or employ the known treatment methods. however, psychopaths/sociopaths are immune to all known treatment options (hare does deserve some credit for advancing this notion btw), so it's a nearly ground floor proposition at this point.

yeah i'd imagine that convincing joe public/govt that violence has a cause beyond 'circumstances' would be a tough ask

"i do declare, how many ppl did that fascist kill today? oh, only thirty-two? yawn. he should surely be in prison if i could only muster up the stamina to care."

― Mordy, Friday, January 6, 2012 3:06 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

blow me

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 6, 2012 3:08 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the politics thread finally justifies itself with the deep lol I got from this exchange

that Morbius is otm kinda goes w/o saying though, I mean isn't that why ppl troll him, there's almost no point in being John the Baptist about how fucked up America is - if you're head of the U.S., you lead a country that's up there with the most bloodthirsty regimes of all time, one that's really managed to frame its own behavior in a way that people can just blithely accept, making its excesses easier to stomach; Obama's not a sociopath but the U.S. kinda is, only the U.S. isn't a person, so it can't be

l'état, say what?

aero bang otm

and tho i don't believe all states are fundamentally bloodthirsty, you have to factor in the US's sheer logistic ability to inflict violence as part of the problem

i don't even get how you can be totally sanctimonious about THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE and also be a total asshole who seems to hate 99% of all people

i think the one usually stokes the other tbh

cause & effect?

xp otm

we talked about this a little in another thread recently. the statistic i've read on american sociopaths is 4% of the population, although who knows if that's accurate. (america's percentage is unusually high -- something to be said i think for the warping effect of corporate calvinism, or maybe just for its tendency to reward the compassionless.) some of them (the smart and talented ones, which is probably about as small a percentage of the sociopath population as it is of the general) are no doubt in positions of power but i'm pretty sure most politicians are just people making decisions, and as you get higher up the ladder those decisions increase both in weight and in abstraction, so then suddenly you're robot-bombing kids. it's not just america (although again corporate culture doesn't help): it's powerful states. i doubt many of our presidents have been sociopaths. (maybe johnson.) i'm not even sure stalin was a sociopath.

important to remember how truly alien this disease is, so far as we understand it: you are literally incapable of experiencing love or empathy and you are permanently held at a contemptuous disconnect from the entire living universe, which is kinda like the christian conception of hell. like aero says it's easy to be plenty opportunistic or ambitious or murderous or manipulative without actually being a loveless machine. in fact the whole problem is how easy it is!

if you're head of the U.S., you lead a country that's up there with the most bloodthirsty regimes of all time...

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, January 6, 2012 5:30 PM (6 minutes ago)

hah i like how even americans' deprecatory sentiments about their own country tend towards the grandiose & hyperbolic

hate to break it to u, but america wouldn't even be mid-table if ranked alongside turco-mongolic despotisms of the dark ages in terms of i) proportion of enemies killed ii) luridity or iii) nefariousness

I don't think that's true nak - I think you're factoring in only conquest & luridity whereas the U.S. really is in a position of "if we don't help you out, guess what, your children starve by the millions...guess you'll wanna agree with this policy of ours & act like we like, wouldn't want more children to starve." The U.S. has greater power to ease suffering than any country literally ever; it doles out this power like Haile Selassie showering coins on the crowds below his podium.

that doesn't equate strictly to bloodthirstiness however, so much as insularity in the service of a weird post-colonialism-by-default

and also be a total asshole who seems to hate 99% of all people

I just seem this way on the interwebs

I'm kinda w/Nakh on this one; I shy away from the more extreme condemnations of the US if only 'cause it looks like typical American self-regard

I don't think that's true nak - I think you're factoring in only conquest & luridity whereas the U.S. really is in a position of "if we don't help you out, guess what, your children starve by the millions...guess you'll wanna agree with this policy of ours & act like we like, wouldn't want more children to starve."

I think this is a really offensive, paternalistic definition of "bloodthirsty" that is dripping with condescension and privilege, tbh.

yah instrumental rationalism doesn't really compete in the bloodthirstiness stakes with saying 'surrender or death' to a city and then killing them all once they surrender

can i get a slo-mo of that de facto po-co, bro?

also, slavery, also the U.S. vs. Native America & the depth of the horror there, I'll put that level of outrage up against any dictator you can name

taking blankets from smallpox infirmaries and giving them as gifts to native Americans so that they'll get fucking smallpox

slavery

and also be a total asshole who seems to hate 99% of all people

I just seem this way on the interwebs

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 6, 2012 12:52 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i mean it's cool, me too pretty much

that complicates the argument xps -- i was considering USAISAMONSTER in only its post-1945 incarnation

i'm not gonna get into a dick-waving mass-murder competition but i think you can safely attribute a good portion of those crimes to the British Empire along with plenty of others

also Pol Pot doesn't get to kill 1/4 of the Cambodian population without the U.S. turning a blind eye

post 1945 USA = http://www.yourprops.com/movieprops/original/4e01d9ba3b7e9/Of-Mice-and-Men-1992/Lennie-s-John-Malkovich-Screen-Worn-Costume.jpg

but i think you can safely attribute a good portion of those crimes to the British Empire along with plenty of others

yeah but at some point in the U.S.'s history of breaking literally every treaty ever made with Native America you gotta say "yep, America, you are special, you have elevated being a dick to people to new levels"

why do Americans act like no other country owned slaves or murdered indigenous populations

yes, our history is full of monstrous acts, much like PRACTICALLY EVERY COUNTRY ON EARTH, BECAUSE PEOPLE IN GENERAL ARE VICIOUS ANIMALS; this doesn't actually make us special snowflakes

this is why you're so high on the authoritarian axis

people are lovely cuddly vegans who get led astray by their monstrous leaders, c'mon

slavery is just what people did for thousands of years. still is.

native american "relations" are easily the most painful things to learn about for a patriotic u.s. kid, or at least they were for me. a country wanting land and inventing a reason it's no problem for it to kill everyone on it is nothing new though. at all. if america seems particularly heinous it's probably because of how hypocritical it is to do all the standard power stuff after all that talk about the rights of man.

http://wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/maps/historical/famine_1847.gif

Nevar forget

www.irelandstory.com

let's keep it legal dude

dammit when did autolinking stop working?

yah post-westphalian 'liberal' 'democratic' nation states mostly have ignominies on their copybook comparable to USA in type if not in scale

once a term like "post-westphalian" comes in it becomes clear to me that I'm way out of my league

that's strictly unnecessary but u know whenever the fiction of the noble & wise & civilized state came into being

that'd be rome wouldn't it

Plato?

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sportsprose/paul-westphal-sacramento-kings.jpg

that was my first thought as well Dr Morbius!

They are 1-0 in the post westphalian era

aero,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia

...initiating a new system of political order in central Europe, later called Westphalian sovereignty, based upon the concept of a sovereign state

I just seem this way on the interwebs

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 6, 2012 12:52 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i mean it's cool, me too pretty much

― we bought a zoo in a hopeless place (some dude), Friday, January 6, 2012 9:54 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

never forget

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww-88rwt4ms

xps to aero: plato's got Ideas but rome is when you see an actual functioning state whose people come over centuries to believe that their system of social organization is the truth and the Way and the highest ideal and that the best thing for the world would be if it were entirely covered by and its entire population reeducated for and assimilated into the roman state. or i don't know maybe everyone thinks that and they just came the closest. (until the corporations!)

Also, even if we're just talking North America, Canada and Mexico's histories are full of iniquity, too

Let's not be so occident-centric as to pass over China w/o out noting all the ppls they've fucked with.

I think Athens thought of itself as a benevolent nation-state enriching the world, didn't it, and imparting philosophy etc?

americans are a pretty isolated species w/o much understanding of how the actions of their nations affect the world (this includes some of the more idiotic politicians, too.) we're fortunate enough to be bordered by two exceptionally loyal allies and to have tens of thousands of miles between us and our worst "enemies", which basically means that no one's ever fucked with us because we're taking care of business from another hemisphere.

xp disgusting savages

athens was snotty about how great its democracy was and after they were eclipsed by rome they certainly consoled themselves with the (not unreasonable) idea that the romans were a bunch of assholes whose only redeeming qualities came from their association with and philosophical infection by the greeks but iirc and perhaps i totally don't, the delian league was more hands-off than the roman republic? athens comes to trade with you (on their terms) and get you to help them fight their enemies; rome comes to Make You Like Them. or at least to hand your entire country over to the direct control of one of their generals. because why wouldn't you want to be part of civilization.

www.irelandstory.com

let's keep it legal dude

Wait is that "Ireland Story" or "Ireland's Tory?"

Ha, I saw the same thing

Trying to understand where the question's coming from: is there something about Obama that seems particularly sociopathic or is it just that he's the current US president and US presidents seem sociopathic generally?

(I think I basically agree with DJP's last post, which is another reason I think Political Compass is broken.)

The interesting thing about Rome is that as an imperial power, it at least granted citizenship to its conquered people. Apologists for American post-colonial 'imperialism' generally don't bring this up much.

what have the romans ever done vers US

I can't count how many times I have quoted Voltaire's Le premier roi fut un soldat heureux (The first king was a successful soldier) on ILX and not usually in this thread's context but perhaps the corallary to Dan's point above is that we may all be disgusting animals but our leaders tend to be examplary in the savagery.

"There, take the crown, and, with the crown, my curse"

what have the romans ever done vers US

Have you even seen our Capitols?

well OBVIOUSLY the capitols that goes without SAYING

for all the standard hand-wringing about Are We In The Waning Gibbon Phase Of Our Imperial Decline i think that if there's a glib u.s./rome comparison to be made it's to the late republic; i keep waiting for a charismatic general to ride in and "fix" "everything"

just noticed above that i switched the argument halfway through: aero is right that athens was a believer in "the noble & wise & civilized state"; i just meant that they didn't try so hard to remake the world in their image.

rome didn't get to take the entire world down w/ it

thank god for the muslims and china

i keep waiting for a charismatic general to ride in and "fix" "everything"

The sympathy I have for the super-conservative Constitution we have mainly stems from the fact that the founders were well aware that most democracies had ended in dictatorship before them (many have veered that way since) and somehow the US hasn't.

Let's not be so occident-centric as to pass over China w/o out noting all the ppls they've fucked with.

― Do you know what the secret of comity is? (Michael White), Friday, January 6, 2012 1:20 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

hey hey, how about japan

also Pol Pot doesn't get to kill 1/4 of the Cambodian population without the U.S. turning a blind eye

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, January 6, 2012 11:56 AM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the US actively supported the Khmer Rouge it turns out

do you think henry kissinger is a sociopath?

xxxp well the romans too were very proud of There Are No Kings In Rome (and the emperors to the end were the "servants" of SPQR) but yeah our anti-king systems have def gotten more sophisticated; still not sure if they can stand up against a sufficiently big crisis. we'll see!

i keep waiting for a charismatic general to ride in and "fix" "everything"

you and the corner both, buddy

man that new yorker article is disturbing...

do you think henry kissinger is a sociopath?

yes

i don't!

being grievously immoral isn't a mental illness

well it should be

I hate to be the moral relativist here, but wrt to much of our assholery last century there was a 'Cold' War on and it's not as if Stalin and Mao were exactly spotless when it came to shedding blood.

Look what evil has done to Kissinger:

http://images.artnet.com/images_US/magazine/features/finch/finch9-8-08-1.jpg

did you guys read this esquire article about newt gingrich? its primary source is his jilted ex-wife (well, one of them) so i guess grain of salt but oh man it's like the most interesting thing i've ever read. important line:

But she's happy to say nice things about him, too. As a husband, she says, he was affectionate, fun, awkward, eager, endlessly inquisitive. Once, she asked him why he was always so full of questions, and he said, "I found that if I listen, I'll learn more. And people like to talk to me."

That's completely Newt, she says. There was something missing inside, so he had to think his way into doing the right thing. "Newt trained himself. He wasn't a natural. He doesn't have natural instincts and insights. Everything has to be a thought process first. It took years and years. It wasn't, 'I have this insight, I am compelled, I can do no other.' It was step by step by step by step, and it was all mental, all learned behavior."

I'm not sure where I come down on the whole sociopath vs 'grievously immoral' question. Perhaps it has to do w/temperament. Maybe one kills you all w/robot drones nonchalantly and the other has to agonize a moment or something.

I'd love to read more about Newt but - actually I think I got my fill of the swine back in the 90's and wish he'd be raptured by aliens or something so he never occupied a single moment of my psyche.

i'm not a shrink here, but what the hell, let me explound. in my experience (some personal, some reading) sociopathy/psychopathy involves a critical lack of judgement or even consideration of the future. the past too, makes no real difference. there is no personal through-line that has to be obeyed. even taking a second-order kind of machiavellian judgement of someone else that "if i'm nice to them right now i can get something later" is just beyond them. if they feel the need to hurt someone right that second they will do so and if called on it there's always an excuse. even accepting the appearance of fault is not possible, so trying to keep yourself in check lest anyone begin to hate you -- that kind of future-oriented imagination is just not there.

political actors have some kind of insane drive to succeed and dominate and identify all good ideals with their own success, but all the successful ones have, at least, equally insane patience and ability to plan which yr psychos just don't.

this doesn't look that convincing now that i've typed it out.

I don't agree with that at all. Columbine shooter Eric Harris was like nearly an archetypal sociopath and he did all that stuff: planning, strategic use of nice-making, acceptance of blame for "wrongdoing," etc.

hmm yeah ok.

his whole plan, tho, was "kill people", not "run for office"

he just figured he'd go straight for the former without bothering with the latter.

"Do I really need to spend a bunch of money on a campaign when I can kill people *right now*"

You know how we say you'd have to be insane to want to run for President?

Hanging in Oval Office:

http://www.playle.com/pictures/PMK49467.jpg

I found the Onion's "Obama asks why he should run again" story this week to be disappointingly reactionary.

no joke i was tempted to post that in here

xp

"Do I really need to spend a bunch of money on a campaign when I can kill people *right now*"

lol

do you think henry kissinger is a sociopath?

this seems a greater possibility to me but again my first objection this line of thinking is anybody whose credentials are under an MA in psychology trying to say who is or isn't a sociopath is really dumb in the first place; people trying to do so for public figures who they don't know personally is even dumber. like, the people who could actually get "antisocial personality disorder" on your Axis II line would be the first to tell you that you probably don't know much about a politician's personality based on his record or his public image

tl;dr version "underrated a hates fun"

so would mitt romney's habit of looking like he wants to kill whoever disagrees with him at a given moment, that awkward hate-smile that he uses, mean that he is not detached enough to actually qualify for psychopathy?

right, that's what i meant really, deciding upon courses of action that kill a few million in SE asia is a moral problem but not a psychological one.

at some point itt we will hash out the whole foucaldian deal etc etc but if those categories mean anything, that how i'd break it down to an extent.

xp

so would mitt romney's habit of looking like he wants to kill whoever disagrees with him at a given moment, that awkward hate-smile that he uses, mean that he is not detached enough to actually qualify for psychopathy?

lol I have a real weakness for wanting to diagnose that dude, probably because you can see that whatever the pathology is, he has a very hard time hiding it & has some things he really really wishes he could say - that "corporations are people, my friend" moment seemed so telling, irresistible armchair-PhD bait

isn't it easy just to call these goblins fucking crazy?

that underwear is pretty uncomfortable remember

xp

obama is a super terrible person, its probably not relevant how "mentally ill" he is

woah-oh-oh
corporations
are peeeopllll-lle
my friend

romney isn't a psychopath he is an actual android assembled by someone's r&d division.

obama is a super terrible person,

but he loves his children

romney is just a successful mormon, he seems like all the other successful mormons I know, except more successful

like his weirdness is pretty much the weirdness of every mormon I've ever met + an MBA

and do you feel scared? Iiiii doooo! Corpor-ations are people!

loool

if you guys don't mind I think DJP & I'll just walk down memory lane inserting "corporations are people" into some old jams

"successful" is right: romney's mission years were spent in france, where he converted hundreds of frenchmen to mormonism

romney is just a successful mormon

CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE
I AM THE FATHER, THE FATHER OF NOTHING

mediate
try not to hate
love your mate
a white black slate
like pretty kate
had sex ornate
corporations are people

"You've gone too far this time"
But I'm dancing on the valentine
I tell you somebody's fooling around
With my chances on the dangerline
I'll cross that bridge when I find it
Another day to make my stand
High time is no time for deciding
Corporations are people too

sure no insufficient evidence to decide

You rescue me
You are my faith
My hope
My liberty
And when there is darkness all around
You shine bright for me
You are the guiding light
To MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
To MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Corporations are people
To MEEE!

Robert's got a quick hand.
He'll look around the room, he won't tell you his plan.
He's got a rolled cigarette, hanging out his mouth he's a cowboy kid.
Yeah, he found a six shooter gun.
In his dad's closet hidden with a box of fun things, and I don't even know what.
But he's coming for you, yeah he's coming for you
Corporations are people too

We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
'Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance
Well they're no friends of mine
I say, we can go where we want to
A place where they will never find
And we can act like we come from out of this world
Leave the real one far behind
And corporations are people

NOW YOU'RE PUNCHING & YOU'RE KICKING & YOU'RE SHOUTING AT ME
I.E., YOU'RE TAKING ME TO COURT FOR SHITTY POLICY

Corporations are people
To MEEE!

djp you are the fucking king

corporations are people
where do they all come from?
corporations are people
where do they all belong?

And now you're givin' me
Givin' me
Nothing but shattered dreams
Shattered dreams
Feels like I should run away
Run away
Corporations are people, ooh-hoo

(is this thread dead yet or do I need to keep going)

posters are people too

In Europe and America, there's a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Krushchev said we will bury you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the corporations are people too

can't believe nobody's done depeche mode

NOW YOU'RE PUNCHING & YOU'RE KICKING & YOU'RE SHOUTING AT ME
I.E., YOU'RE TAKING ME TO COURT FOR SHITTY POLICY

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, January 6, 2012 2:55 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm taking a ride with my best friend
He said corporations are people too

ah I c+f'd 'so why should it be'

why do Americans act like no other country owned slaves or murdered indigenous populations

American exceptionalism

Corporations are people
So why should it be
You and I can't get along with Mitt Romney?

LOL

All you ever wanted
All you ever needed
is here in my arms
Words are very
unnecessary
Corporations are people too

I'll take you to the highest mountain
To the depths of the deepest sea
Corporations are people
Believe me

people
people who need corporations
are the luckiest corporations in the world
with one corporation, one very special corporation
no more hunger and thirst
but first be a person who needs corporations
corporations who need people
are the luckiest people/corporations in the world

man, this thread got really shitty

More like sociopathic imo

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Not lopsided enough.

man, this thread got really shitty

who could have foreseen such a fate for the thread "do you think barack obama is a sociopath"

i think every thread that becomes about 40 posts worth of parody song lyrics will end up that way

the lesson here, insofar as one exists, ought to be that the characters of executive politicians are seldom known, and no amount of tendentious 'novelistic' psychologizing really approximates

thus i dont see kissinger as a sociopath, nor cheney who has probably been described more often in those terms (if only because it wasn't such a common pejorative back then)

tbf tho didnt cheney str8 up shoot a bro in the face and then make him apologize for the inconvenience of it all?

cheney has ideals, that's why he's so evil.

i think he quites enjoys being portrayed in such terms by the left, and he has a naturally uncouth manner which exacerbates it

cheney has the demeanour of a rabid dog. mad dog cheney. all of these people should be killed immediately though.

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/12/2010/12/kadyrov_4.jpg

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/bill-clinton-cake-chef.html

sociopath y/n

tbf tho didnt cheney str8 up shoot a bro in the face and then make him apologize for the inconvenience of it all?

^^^

didnt clinton get called a sociopath on the reg by the great right wing conspiracy? he might be the first great ~sociopath~ politician

nakh's right that glib armchair psychoanalysis is even worse w/ public figures than it is w/ people you actually know. just for fun though: i'm reading the hilariously long+detailed robert caro LBJ bio and idk how accurate it's supposed to be or anything but caro portrays johnson as a hyperambitious (well sure) pathological liar (fair enough) who inspires intense dominated loyalty in some (fine) and straight up creeps others out (ok) while exhibiting no discernible ideology (hmm) but only a zeligesque willingness to fiercely profess the beliefs of whomever he's talking to (huh) and pushing an heiress into marriage by lying to her about shared interests before dropping all pretense and treating her like a servant (well) and never expressing any trustworthy emotions except glee in victory and anger in defeat (...) and just generally acting from childhood like someone incapable of feeling either restraint or remorse. so idk! maybe?

lol that i'm one of four "sures," but i kinda feel like sociopathy at that level of power is a feature not a bug

somewhere morbs just twitched

do u think of it as cohering within individual psyches or just as some 'institutional psychosis' thing? xp

the only way to repair the damage done by this thread is to watch the Kool and the Gang "Joanna" video 30 times

i think a little bit of both. i think the kind of person who can run for and become president in the united states is already someone deeply compromised by a willingness to compromise, make deals to get support, lie, fake emotion... to have that kind of self-control over the things you say, the way you say them, the rigorous discipline to campaign every day and not get burnt out or wearied or frustrated. that kind of profile is already susceptible to making decisions once in office that i would consider sociopathic. i'm not sure that it's actually synonymous w/ sociopathy as is popularly understood (esp as a distinct disorder from psychopathy brought about by a traumatic event), but there's some sort of sociopathy.

and it may be a feature of the office, too. bc if someone came to me and asked me to make some of the decisions the president is asked to make (for example: launching military strikes on Libya or not intervening and possibly watching a massacre unfold in Bengazi) i would be paralyzed. i labor over far more inconsequential questions in my day to day life and ask for loads of advice and think about things for awhile, etc. it seems to me like a president often has to make a decision that could have far reaching consequences either way and they have to make it quickly. and someone who could do something like that, or could learn to do something like that, may find that other decisions become easier to make - like ones that have terrible impacts on real life human beings. and they're already so engrained in a culture of compromising their values and acceding to the wishes of wealthy donors and supporters and lobbyists that one more compromise doesn't affect them the way the first one might affect you and me. and even if they can somehow keep themselves from compromise, they are surrounded by aides and other politicians who are equally self-serving and self-absorbed and so there's a fundamentally fucked up political culture in DC whose waters they are swimming in.

and at the same time, i don't know you can be the president of the united states and not be all of that. this is a position of power that is almost ahistorical. why wouldn't it have a profound impact on the psychology of the office holder?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ_XGrqlMsE

none of us know shit about Barack Obama cept he's a lousy president.

but he may be the best lousy president you're getting anytime soon

yah i guess morbs

i quite like that tho, i think ~inscrutabiliy~ in a basic and not-at-all elevated sense is a common trait among presidents etc

i think tony blair is 'readable' to an unusual degree, cuz he is such a wet sort of religiose shithead

That's a pre-acceptance speech film soundbite, darraghmac

(but y'know, worse than W on civil liberties/executive power)

i know my level, tbh

the other reason i answered 'sure' is that 'sure' is such a casual thing. like 'sure, why not?' it seems like a pretty reasonable explanation to me. i don't know if it's true obv,

Morbs do you think Obama is a lousy president because the job entails lousiness or do you think within the standards of the job he is in the lower tier?

i think Morbs is just contrarian-coded software

i think Morbs is at least 90 percent right about stuff but he makes a fun windmill to tilt at?

the type of president morbs could bring himself to praise could never make president

not to say morbs is wrong either

under the current auction style, no kidding

the type of president morbs could bring himself to praise could never make president

not to say morbs is wrong either

― carpy deems (darraghmac), Friday, January 6, 2012 8:43 PM (26 minutes ago)

sure but doesn't mean we have to grade on a curve

agreed, but by the same token it does make the grade pretty pointless. name a world leader that compares well against theoretical perfection

AARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH FUCKING "PERFECTION" AGAIN

GEORGE W BUSH = "PERFECTION"

one for the c&p merchants there

tbf deems u are being pretty glib

read that as AARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH FUCKING WITH "PROTECTION" AGAIN

perhaps but the type of president morbs could bring himself to praise could never make president is v. true

as glib as the curve comment, also tbf

mezzanine all the way xps

no i mean name a world leader that compares well against theoretical perfection

vaclav harbl?

yah u could say that bill clinton, haughey, havel, mobuto, major, suharto, zemin and maybe a few dozen other ghouls of recent times have done better at their respective self-affirmed 'projects' than obama

not forgetting big nursultan nazabayev

yeah i know nakh, but that was a response to the notion that grading on a curve was somehow invalid. What's the alternative to grading obama against the realistic other options, if it isn't comparing him to the unrealistic other options- hence 'theoretical'

a) (american) voters are idiots
b) ppl who submit themselves to such a process process are power-mad and fucked in the head

we are grading on a curve

yeah i know nakh, but that was a response to the notion that grading on a curve was somehow invalid. What's the alternative to grading obama against the realistic other options, if it isn't comparing him to the unrealistic other options- hence 'theoretical'

― carpy deems (darraghmac), Friday, January 6, 2012 9:48 PM (14 minutes ago)

well yeah it's impossible not to grade any president on a curve, just for the fun of it i guess, why not, but it's not like, necessary, is what i was saying

k3v, did u vote w/ me?

lol it's 3am here there's no way i'm deciphering that

i didn't vote

i haven't read every word of this thread but i think i agree with your main thesis, that 1) only someone of a certain personality could even want this job and 2) the scope and difficulty of the decisions, especially in our era, would probably break even a decent person. i think it's possible that obama is a decent person who's obviously done many unconscionable things, it's even very possible that it tears him apart inside and in his private life, to the extent to which that even exists.

http://soundcloud.com/peacemanmusic/kumbaya-feat-barrack-obama
http://soundcloud.com/peacemanmusic/kumbaya-feat-barrack-obama
http://soundcloud.com/peacemanmusic/kumbaya-feat-barrack-obama
http://soundcloud.com/peacemanmusic/kumbaya-feat-barrack-obama
http://soundcloud.com/peacemanmusic/kumbaya-feat-barrack-obama
http://soundcloud.com/peacemanmusic/kumbaya-feat-barrack-obama

i think a little bit of both. i think the kind of person who can run for and become president in the united states is already someone deeply compromised by a willingness to compromise, make deals to get support, lie, fake emotion... to have that kind of self-control over the things you say, the way you say them, the rigorous discipline to campaign every day and not get burnt out or wearied or frustrated. that kind of profile is already susceptible to making decisions once in office that i would consider sociopathic. i'm not sure that it's actually synonymous w/ sociopathy as is popularly understood (esp as a distinct disorder from psychopathy brought about by a traumatic event), but there's some sort of sociopathy.

yah i can buy some of this, i need to read more about the subject but the theories positing a high proportion of latent 'clinical' sociopaths who don't actually kill/steal/etc aren't that persuasive. though 'some sort of sociopathy' seems a necessary adjunct to highly intrumental executive behaviours, a level of indifference to the second order consequences of decisions cf...

and it may be a feature of the office, too. bc if someone came to me and asked me to make some of the decisions the president is asked to make (for example: launching military strikes on Libya or not intervening and possibly watching a massacre unfold in Bengazi) i would be paralyzed. i labor over far more inconsequential questions in my day to day life and ask for loads of advice and think about things for awhile, etc. it seems to me like a president often has to make a decision that could have far reaching consequences either way and they have to make it quickly. and someone who could do something like that, or could learn to do something like that, may find that other decisions become easier to make - like ones that have terrible impacts on real life human beings.

in this sense obama doesn't seem particularly 'decisive', in that he seems to vacillate and wait for a moment and consults academic/specialist advisers. but as with the osama 'hit' there is some notable capacity to isolate a decision to its fundamentals and execute in short order.

and they're already so engrained in a culture of compromising their values and acceding to the wishes of wealthy donors and supporters and lobbyists that one more compromise doesn't affect them the way the first one might affect you and me. and even if they can somehow keep themselves from compromise, they are surrounded by aides and other politicians who are equally self-serving and self-absorbed and so there's a fundamentally fucked up political culture in DC whose waters they are swimming in.

this kinda seems like another topic. i don't see obama as classically venal like clinton or gwb or whoever, rather he is obsessed with calculations and leverages in a way that seems more self-consciously strategic. this is possibly a total rationalization on the part of the platonically minded politician that doesn't elevate them in any way beyond the average huckster.

but if/when obama does things like approve bills that curtail federal funding for needle exchange programs, presumably writing it off as another necessary concession, there is a transparent sort of amorality involved. even if it is part of a wider fabric of decisions that are subject to some moral evaluations, in the instance it appears an act of callousness that cannot be attributed to institutional malaise alone.

so yeah straight out calling virtually any liberal democratic politician a psychopath is usually bad rhetoric or tendentious speculation, but there is certainly some level of abstraction from moral harm among otherwise 'exemplary' people which warrants consideration as pathology.

nakh you are wrong about sociopathy inasmuch as it is wrong to assume that sociopaths will kill.

ut if/when obama does things like approve bills that curtail federal funding for needle exchange programs, presumably writing it off as another necessary concession, there is a transparent sort of amorality involved. even if it is part of a wider fabric of decisions that are subject to some moral evaluations, in the instance it appears an act of callousness that cannot be attributed to institutional malaise alone.

sadly wrong again. poor homeless drug addicts are always marginal casualties, and cutting an exchange program isnt simply amoral (it is), it's just brutal political calculus.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx2lmrILie1qzk2upo1_400.jpg

nakh you are wrong about sociopathy inasmuch as it is wrong to assume that sociopaths will kill.

nah u misunderstand, i didn't infer that sociopaths are /necessarily/ killers, rather that projections of ~4% of the population displaying sociopathy say more about the elasticity of the term than anything else. cuz some categorical difference must be established between that tiny proportion replete with serial murderers and the 'latent' group believed to predominate in executive positions.

sadly wrong again. poor homeless drug addicts are always marginal casualties, and cutting an exchange program isnt simply amoral (it is), it's just brutal political calculus.

and again you misread, the suggestion was exactly that this 'brutal political calculus' is amoral. the rationalization that ~marginal casualties~ are necessary might be made in the belief that it serves a larger good , cf churchill's destruction of the french fleet. the capacity to tolerate ~marginal casualties~ seems like a necessary condition for being president, a selective indifference to moral harm. this might not be as rare a trait as fully exhibited sociopathy, and i expect mordy is right when he suggests it is cultivated by experience, because the everyday decisions of a president require an extraordinary level of abstraction.

also you can make a decision like that and, y'know, be correct because maths

I found the Onion's "Obama asks why he should run again" story this week to be disappointingly reactionary.

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 6, 2012 2:26 PM

Agree that it's obvious and clunky for the first few paragraphs, but I love Sources within the president's new "One Goddamn Reason" campaign, and this captures Obama so perfectly, I hear it in his own voice:

"Can anyone out there name a pro?" continued Obama, gesturing at the silent crowd with his pen. "That's okay. I asked a bunch of people in Pittsburgh the same exact question yesterday, and they couldn't, either."

ah ok tbf i was iphoning that stuff in also beer

Obama ain't no Nixon ... and Nixon is the closest thing to a sociopath that we've had in the Oval Office.

Look at some of the pics of Obama hanging with his kids or playing hoops. He can be pretty much a normal human away from office.

IMHO, if we're really worried about a mentally unstable individual being in the Oval Office then we'd be doing everything in our power to see that Newt Gingrich goes no further in the GOP primaries. and i don't even know if Newt (as wretched as he is) would qualify as a "sociopath."

do you think barack obama is a

allopath
bypath
footpath
homeopath
homoeopath
hydropath
kinesipath
multipath
naturopath
neuropath
osteopath
psychopath
racepath
sidepath
telepath
towpath
warpath

muslim
communist

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/df/DeannaTroi.jpg/250px-DeannaTroi.jpg

do you think barack obama is a

allopath
bypath
footpath
homeopath
homoeopath
hydropath
kinesipath
multipath
naturopath
neuropath
osteopath
psychopath
racepath
sidepath
telepath
towpath
warpath

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFUEgFdP5zE

I hope someone starts a "What Does Barack Obama Think You're Interested In?" thread. (No need to answer that.)

http://diorpaint.tumblr.com/post/16113154136/to-me-i-feel-like-obama-has-been-setting-a-good

Making ageist jokes about helpless elderly women:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zUsV7Tj2zY

I see you've carried over your love of very important stuff over from the GOP scrum

so, u know

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/dear-andrew-sullivan-why-focus-on-obamas-dumbest-critics/251528/

I agree--Jude Law is one of our finest actors.

Can we have a thread like this for Dr. Morbs?

kidding, I love you, man

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

this is really fascinating

That was discussed here: lPsychopaths (Adult and Otherwise)

oh thx

I think it has relevance here, though--look closely at the eyes.

http://news1.capitalbay.com/thumbnail.php?file=images/obama_333460398.png&size=article_medium

I think I see tiny skulls that are on fire which equals murdering people.

I don't care why he murders women & children frankly (he did want to be Chief Stooge of Amerikka, duh)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/05/the-presidents-kill-list.html

From k3vin k's NYT article:

He’s still screaming bloody murder, so I say, ‘Michael, I thought we brainstormed so we could avoid all this drama today.’ He stopped dead, in the middle of the screaming, turned to me and said in this flat, adult voice, ‘Well, you didn’t think that through very clearly then, did you?’ ”

This child's behavior has a very cogent explanation: demonic possession.

The article is pretty much Haidt doing his thing but !!! in the middle of the photo

bombs mourners and rescuers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/us-drones-strikes-target-rescuers-pakistan

offends donors!

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/27/120827fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=2

donors are sociopaths

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/04/does_obama_just_hate_his_job/

ha

this is weird slash fic:

Obama is a naturally empathic individual, whose diverse, mobile, international background made him unusually able when it came to assessing new social situations and reading more than people say.

Pareene otm in today's column:

It’s just that Lehrer asked incredibly stupid questions. I know it thrilled Chuck Todd that this was a “serious,” “policy-heavy” debate, but the candidates just had one argument about Romney’s vague tax plan — making the same points repeatedly — for more than the first half-hour. Lehrer’s insistence on asking the candidates to confirm that they have different ideas about things was bizarre — Ralph Nader was not onstage arguing that they were Tweedledum and Tweedledee

man didn't think i'd say this but nader being onstage would have been better for everyone.

pareene's take on the debate was the best one i saw.

if Obama hates himself it wd make him marginally more humane in my eyes

lol

bump

You put forward in the book this idea of Putin’s pleonexia, his insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others. Looking at the way he reacted with the Kursk submarine disaster and the sieges in Beslan and Moscow Theater do you think Putin is almost sort of like a sociopath or psychopathic kind of character?

My researcher suggested that very early on. His working theory is that Putin is a psychopath, but I’m not in the business of passing psychiatric diagnoses, especially on people I have actually never met personally. I think it’s as good an explanation as there is out there, but in a way it doesn’t matter. Not all psychopaths become tyrants, and certainly not all psychopaths kill people that they perceive as traitors or have the opposition to them running under constant threat of death and bodily harm. So I think in a sense once a person comes into government office, or at least until he has left government office, his personal psychiatry is beside the point. His behavior is what’s important.

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102758/Facing-Putin-Extended-Interview.aspx

Brutality is just another face of power.

what about 'power is just another face of brutality'?

You can't fit the bigger box inside the smaller one.

power enable one type of brutality -- the multiplier effect of antisocial tendencies given operative force (the wider set of brutalities being committed by the disenfranchised among their own kind); power is intrinsically brutal

'Brutality is just another face of power' is true but it's also rather vague, it's difficult to create a 'x abstract noun is just another face of y abstract noun' statement that can never be true

wrt the putin dude -- the last sentence seems completely awry, his behaviour is what is important but his behaviour seems to derive heavily from his personal psychopathology

putin seems like the most obviously psychopathic statesman of the current era, i wonder how many ordinary russians see him in that way, and how many of those still support him

The idea wouldn't have much traction, I think. Particularly given the relatively recent history of actual psychopaths involved in high-level Russian politics.

It's more obvious he's incompetent.

there's a good chance putin is an actual actual psychopath

My thinking runs like this. Power in the social or political sense is defined by one's ability to bring the actions of others into alignment with one's will or to frustrate the ability of others to enforce their will. Brutality is but one instrument of power. The ability to disburse money and rewards is another. Mastery of persuasion and ideas is a third. I hope this makes my thought less vague to you.

maybe the term has less weight in russia given the communist (and not entirely extinct) tradition of psychiatry-as-oppression, 'sluggishly progressive schizoprhenia' and other pseudo-disorders

not all psychopaths behave like beria

Explanation attempts for the Russian apartment bombings

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Many different explanations have been given for the Russian apartment bombings.

You might want to consider whether russia's political culture is pathological. If so, then it would encourage and reward pathological behavior from its leaders, requiring that those whose pathology is not innate to mimic pathology as a means to advancement.

A Google search on "pathology of power" (quotes included) cites over 3 million hits.

If you believe that Putin ordered false flag bombings, murders journalists, was completely indifferent to collateral damage in the Moscow Theatre siege, etc, you would think he is a psychopath. These are treated in Russia roughly as seriously as the allegations that Tony Blair ordered the murder of David Kelly are in the UK, though.

the third of those seems more or less true though indifference to loss life in hostage situations would is not psychopathy, whether the apartment bombings had some level of fsb involvement seems unclear (as does the death of david kelly, unless you are a true believer in whatever the coroner said) though the wiki page is blackly humourous (not arguing putin had any involvement in this ftr)

evidence for putin's psychopathy is based more on affect, demeanour and anecdotes from inner circle like those surrounding the georgian war)

so many copy errors there jesus

sv do you not think putin seems psychopathic in a liberal but not completely elastic use of the term?

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102758/Facing-Putin-Extended-Interview.aspx

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Sunday, November 17, 2013 2:22 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

lol.

The outcome of the theatre seige almost certainly owed a huge amount to operational incompetence, tbh.

It is difficult to say. My inexpert opinion would be that he probably does have elements of a psychopathic personality. He does seem to be able to distance himself emotionally from the consequences of his darker actions.

That said, how do we judge Yeltsin's affect when he was jovially creaming off millions as people starved to death / died for lack of basic medicines? Or the western politicians who actively colluded in enriching gangsters at vast human cost to the Russian people in the belief that an imperfect market economy was worth however many hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, etc?

It is hard not to fall back on the banality that anyone who can make those kinds of moral compromises without throwing themselves off a bridge probably has something wrong with them.

idk it seems putin is over a borderline beyond yr usual instrumentalist pragmatic child killing IMF bruh into something more coldly hostile and vicious but who knows shit about putin, nobody has conclusively proven or dispelled all those rumours that he has amassed a huge private fortune

wary of 1) the tendency to overdiagnose "hot" pathologies and 2) attempts by non-experts to diagnose anyone, let alone people with heavily managed images whom youve never met

but, sure, putins a sociopath. capitalism makes sociopaths of us all.

Are psychopath and sociopath not interchangeable terms?

i think so yeah

sociopath is used with the same intent as psychopath but in contexts when you don't want to play pretend psychologist, i think

and yet

yeah i know. these terms are contested within their sphere of specialist use tho, right? never mind amongst non-specialists. personally i figure it's better to talk about behaviours than inherent personality types or illnesses unless the latter has some therapeutic worth, and even then i'm not sure how much therapeutic worth there is in labelling.

Thomas Frank talks to Adolph Reed Jr.:

Obama’s a highly intelligent man. You’ve met him.

Yes.

Maybe he’s a cipher in the sense that he’s a symbol. But he’s not a cipher of a human.

I don’t know. Look, I’ve taught a bunch of versions of him.

You mean you’ve had people like him as students?

Yeah. So his cohort in the Ivy League. His style. There’s superficial polish or there’s a polish that may go down to the core. I don’t know. A performance of a judicious intellectuality. A capacity to show an ability to understand and empathize with multiple sides of an argument. Obama has described himself in that way himself in one or maybe both of his books and elsewhere. He’s said that he has this knack for encouraging people to see a better world for themselves through him.

Yeah, he’s like a blank slate.

Right. Which in a less charitable moment you might say is like a sociopath.

Come on now!

I’m not saying that. But I’m just saying. I’m not saying he’s a sociopath but…

That (blank slate personality) seems like the classic … the kind of people who lead the Democratic Party. Only he’s got considerably more charisma than most of them.

He’s better at it than most. And this is another point that I make. That any public figure, especially a politician or a figure in a movement, is going to be like a hologram that’s created by the array of forces that he or she feels the need to respond to. That’s how it was that we got more out of Richard Nixon from the left than we’ve gotten from either Clinton or Obama.

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/09/we_are_all_right_wingers_now_how_fox_news_ineffective_liberals_corporate_dems_and_gop_money_captured_everything/

a real sociopath would not be pardoning all these ppl

what if he's like the joker in that nolan batman movie and is letting the worst criminals out to play

almost all non-violent drug offenders i thought?

i agree that obama is the joker from the movies

otm

can everyone plz stop using the word 'sociopath'

you just did it

use/mention distinction buddy

(i was kidding)

gbx, noted sociopath

the newly free cons will be hunted by drones