All-Purpose NuILX thread for American Politics

i get what dlh is saying and i don't think it's circular; i think it's just simplistic. that's why i have a problem with convenient labels like "psychopath" in the first place. i know there are definitely people who meet the theoretical criteria of "psychopath" pretty strongly but i think it works better as a description of a tendency or a pole than a state of being.

i want to say something about performativity here but i don't know enough about it other than to say that i think there is a complex sort of interplay going on here that magnetizes certain aspects of people in the context of organizational culture which is shaped by material realities and progress narratives etc etc.

Much (not necessarily all) empiricism pretty clear that

i) you gotta find some *really* fucked-up people to torture other people
ii) people that *really* fucked-up aren't extremely hard to come by

:(

xp oh i would agree re: "a tendency or a pole". what we're calling psychopaths here are really just the people in whom the standard human drive to Explore Expand Exploit Exterminate is at its purest -- and this drive has done a lot for us, has contributed hugely to our runaway success as a species, but as pretty much every prophet of every religion has now told us about 829579238592 times it will be what eventually destroys us if we can't give precedence to our concomitant drive, as social animals, to love and empathize and nurture and shepherd, which is the drive psychopaths don't have, or at least don't have much of. and if our social systems are built along psychopathic lines, that second drive withers in lots of normal non-pathological people.

i dunno though i'm making this stuff up.

simplistic undoubtedly.

I'm reading Wodehouse now and am thinking that a world run by Jeeves would be very close to the society in Mein Kampf.

it's that Auden line re how any society run by artists would be the worst sort of fascism.

there's a short story narrated by jeeves (bertie takes it into his head to marry and have children, jeeves arranges for a traumatic experience to "cure" this spell of irrationality) that's a really unsettling reading experience, because without any overt acknowledgement of what's happening, jeeves is unmasked as thoroughly evil.

it's called, chillingly, "bertie changes his mind".

While it's an interesting idea, I think it's probably a little facile to call any single-minded focus psychopathy. And I also think that truly sociopathic traits often become apparent and problematic, whether in politics or business.

Somewhat relevant in more specific fashion to this discussion is Xgau('s conveniently responsibility-free, but not incorrect voice of objection) in an article today:

One advantage of my fluency is that it buttresses my right to voice my disdain for those who turn human beings into abstractions by making abstractions the substance of their private subcultural argot -- who think primarily in numbers. But it also buttresses my admiration for an economist like Chang, who takes care to deploy numbers humanistically.

http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Rock-Roll/Dark-Night-of-the-Quants/ba-p/6525

With respect to vocabulary, I'd echo/respond that you can quantify lots of things in policymaking, but also recognize that some benefits and costs must be considered even if they are unquantifiable.

I'm talking about something different, though, I imagine.

or they have the desire to be non-pathological, to tell themselves that they're doing the right thing! but they've been led along a certain path. it's hard for them to go back, like it is for all of us. so they trick themselves into thinking that they're actually helping people when they aren't. people aren't that smart about themselves, looking at themselves in a larger context. confirmation bias and context create the illusion that a middle manager is doing his best and providing for those who are closest to him. hive mentality in the face of a harsh world. i think it's the same thing with someone directing a waterboarding, or the person following orders during a waterboarding. and i think it'll take some major material crash and burn before we start to 1) realize that we're eating ourselves alive and 2) face the hard-as-hell way out of it.

i guess what i'm saying is i don't think psychopathology/death drive/body without organs/whatever you want to call it can be isolated and quarantined, or i'm suspicious of the move to do that, or i even think that labeling/isolating/blaming can actually be a feature of psychopathology in the first place, or certainly abet it.

xposts

btw i didn't mean simplistic as a jeer, i'm totally making all this up too and when it comes down to it i completely agree with you

xposts it's not the single-minded focus, it's the literal inability to perceive other living things as anything except sources of profit -- like xgau says, thinking in numbers. to actual clinical sociopaths other people are just pieces to be manipulated in a search for personal pleasure/comfort/power. and like i (sort of) said, i think the majority of corporate executives, even the stereotypical gordon gekko cutthroat raider guys (and gals), are probably totally normal and loving w/ their families and neighbors and naturally value all kinds of things that don't have dollar signs on them. but the machines they serve don't.

so they trick themselves into thinking that they're actually helping people when they aren't. people aren't that smart about themselves, looking at themselves in a larger context. confirmation bias and context create the illusion that a middle manager is doing his best and providing for those who are closest to him.

yeah this is key i think.

making so much up lol. hay out of straw. call it whatever you want, that uhhhhhh "single-minded focus" is definitely fucked up. xxp

a middle manager is doing his best and providing for those who are closest to him. hive mentality in the face of a harsh world. i think it's the same thing with someone directing a waterboarding

Outside of the rest of the discussion: I just don't get this part. The responsibility levels seem so different to me. Torture spoken of as somehow equivalent to the place of a middle manager, not, like, an executioner or something?

We're all talking about Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia aren't we

well torture, at least as far as i understand how it works currently in the us military, is just as bureaucratically entrenched, with a shared responsibility among many people and policies (some more than others), as fucking people out of their mortgages is. xp

the visionary is protecting the nation and the executioner is just following orders.

best illustration of how distant people can get from other people w/r/t u.s. military torture is still don rumsfeld's scribbled margin note next to the authorization request for "stress positions" at guantanamo: "i stand for eight hours a day! why only four?"

(don rumsfeld in general a pretty rich seam for this sort of thing)

rumsfeld is a psychopath

haha otm

yah but
but
gnnh

welcome to Indefinite Detention Land btw

(with "serious reservations" of course)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/us/politics/obama-signs-military-spending-bill.html?_r=1&hp

Happy New Year!!!

dexneb can tell us how it was politically necessary.

http://news.yahoo.com/republican-candidate-romney-veto-immigration-dream-act-023856783.html

To be fair, his defense of it is pretty sound:

"If I'm the president of the United States I want to end illegal immigration so that we can protect legal immigration. I like legal immigration."

smh

pandering at its best

I mean you'd think even the most hardened anti-illegal people would see the 'serve military' caveat in lieu of school and at least appreciate that but noooooo

there's a GOP thread

nothing like starting the new year off with a nice hit piece: http://exiledonline.com/failing-up-with-joshua-foust-meet-the-evil-genius-massacre-denier-who-shills-for-war-profiteers/

calling a dude who was bullied a twerp and making fun of his height maybe not the best look but other than that

ive been seeing that feud play out on twitter over the last couple weeks... really hard to take any of these people seriously when they are all so bad at zinging

yeah that dude is trying so hard to be taibbi

foust is a dick though i remember him being all "occupy wall street should get a job" stick to foreign policy bro

yeah he def seems like an idiot

heh kev you know that ames and taibbi co-edited the exile for years

no! that explains so much though seriously

that actual signing statement is like unabashedly evil. "I personally won't use these powers, think they're wrong, but let me sign them into law in case somebody more bloodthirsty than me becomes President at some point"

otm