until sociopaths and psychopaths are removed from positions of power

[Javaman]

we will always have wars and denigration of the poor and weak.

I am so heartfelt sad today.

[Samrob]

1. I feel as you do.

[Rebl2]

9. Same here

[BadgerMom]

13. Right there with you both.

[Ponietz]

2. Unless we incentivize the rich and powerful to obey the law

this country has no chance of surviving.

[area51]

5. +1 n/t

[malaise]

3. Sadly the real enemies here are the Slobfather, his fellow ReTHUGs

and their goons at home and abroad. Putin is doing this with American help.
If this isn't treason, please tell me what is?
The Slobfather should have been in a prison cell after the first impeachment.

[pandr32]

10. Agreed, but he is greased really well

He will blame this all on Biden and the high cost of gas and heating fuel will influence voters who can't see past their own noses.

[dchill]

11. I know you are right - and I hate it!

[mopinko]

4. until we learn to recognize mental illness/psychopathy when we see it, we are doomed in many ways.

ppl even here will argue that tdfg's brain is just fine, he's just evil.
i guess we've come to associate mi w not being responsible for actions. i dont know how often it actually plays out in court that way, but i doubt it works very often. and criminally insane gets you locked up.
but despite clear statements and descriptions by shrinks, ppl insist he is still a thinking, reasoning being. and we tie ourselves in knots trying to understand his demented world.

our understanding of human nature and the human brain are woefully inadequate. until we get over that, insane people will continue to rise to power. even tho the whole play book is straight out of the dsm.

[MLAA]

8. +1

[DSandra]

14. Instead we glamorize it

We envy their supposed fearlessness and lack of emotion. We like characters like James Bond and Sherlock Holmes (among many others) who are pretty much sociopaths. Psychopaths especially have charm which we like but is the predators bait. We have to realize the destruction that psychopaths, sociopaths, and pathological narcissists are doing all around us in society and essentially have them removed from positions of power and keep them out.

[mopinko]

17. we give them the corner office.

the ex worked for one for 20 yrs. i swear we'd still be together if it had been otherwise.
they are, indeed, everywhere. and usually lavishly rewarded.

[inthewind21]

23. And they

Have been given that with the consent and complacency of the American government AND public. Greed, guns everywhere, school shootings, corporate welfare, vanishing middle class, stagnant wages, skyrocketing prices, shitty healthcare, schools that are being taken over daily by lunatics, the complete rejection of science, a global pandemic with no end in sight, in your face flat our bigotry and racism freely displayed in public by citizens AND elected officials.

It has ALL been allowed to fester by the government AND the citizenry of these United States. Millions of US citizens voted and gave us Trump, Gosar, Boebart, Greene, Hawley, Jordan etc. Was Russia involved? I say absolutely. But that didn't matter, did it? That was allowed to slide as well.

The press, the DOJ, the congress ALL handled Trump with kid gloves under the guise of "respect the office" as if this were just any other administration. And our entire government was allowed to be infected. By the time the press, the congress etc. woke the hell up an did start publicly calling out the insanity, on occasion, it was way too late, the wound was already badly infected and festering . Anyone but me remember the respected scientists that just sat there silent and let Trump suggest in a national broadcast maybe the public should ingest disinfectant?

The congress is running amok. The DOJ is playing by the same rules of engagement and decorum as if it were still 1970. The police are out of control and now practically untouchable. You have members of congress bringing guns to the Capital and openly calling for other members assassination yet remain seated members. Our capital was stormed Jan 6. The military was held back, the police were out numbered and we all sat and watched it on live tv. It was nothing short of a miracle that 1/6 wasn't successful. No mass arrests, ONE shot fired. The SS and the few capital police, they were ALL that was defending our Capital, our sacred seat of government, the Peoples House. Yet the majority of those storming are still walking the streets and ALL of the high level coordinators/instigators are still collecting their pay checks compliments of the tax payer and running amok in congress with zero consequence. Because for some reason we are still operating as if the rules of decorum and civility are still in play.

We are now burning books in the country. BURNING BOOKS FOR FUCKS SAKE! Let that sink in for a minute. What's next, a holy crusade, witch trials, burning at the stake, blood letting? THIS is where we are.

[DSandra]

24. Here is a very good documentary just on Psychopaths

(If you don’t have time to watch it, just see the first 10 minutes of it)

And compare what they say to what’s going on around us now. And see how their traits are greatly rewarded in our society, and how our culture has let them get to the top of much of the institutions of our society.

[Irish_Dem]

6. The mental health community kept warning the public about Trump.

But few seemed to care.

Charismatic sociopaths are very attractive to a lot of people.
They tap into the dark underbelly of human nature with ease.

[usonian]

7. Does Power Corrupt or Are the Corruptible Attracted to Power?

Interesting article/book review.

https://thecrowdedbookcase.com/2022/01/05/does-power-corrupt-or-are-the-corruptible-attracted-to-power/

It’s a familiar story: A corrupt leader rises to power, is often willingly allowed to do so, and proceeds to leave a trail of destruction in his wake (it’s usually, but not always, a male). We see this time and time again throughout history and across the globe. But we never seem to learn. How can we account for this?
The conventional answer is to blame power itself, as in the proverbial saying “power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But as political scientist Brian Klaas explains in his latest book, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, things are not so simple. While power can indeed corrupt, more often bad people are drawn to positions of power in the first place, and pursue these positions within systems that actually encourage bad behavior. To ensure that the right people are placed in power, we have to do more than focus only on individuals; we need to fix the underlying systems that allow them to thrive.

This seems to sum it up. What's rewarded is what people generally do, even when it goes against their "better judgment." So, politicians are rewarded with power not for their virtue, but for winning a slugfest, and they get fabulous benefits that everyone should get (channeling my inner Bernie), and religions are full of pharisees instead of humble and gracious people.

Do you remember the campaign finance law that almost got passed? Citizens United? ( a.k.a. One Dollar, One Vote)

Put in terms of racism, the main force behind many politicians, Ibram X. Kendi writes in the epilogue to "Stamped From the Beginning":

Any effective solution to eradicating American racism must involve Americans committed to antiracist pol-icies seizing and maintaining power over institutions, neighborhoods, counties, states, nations—the world. It makes no sense to sit back and put the future in the hands of people committed to racist policies, or people who regularly sail with the wind of self-interest, toward racism today, toward antiracism tomorrow. An antiracist America can only be guaranteed if principled antiracists are in power, and then antiracist policies become the law of the land, and then antiracist ideas become the common sense of the people, and then the antiracist common sense of the people holds those antiracist leaders and policies accountable.

I endorse this message!

And that is why I urge people to tune out the doomposting and focus on getting principled people into positions of power. There's great power in teamwork. I am posting action links here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216380145

And I ask for additions. If one takes nothing else from this, I quote one linked article:

All of us need to roll up our sleeves to help kick some GOP butt.

[Cozmo]

12. Democracy doesn't just happen, you have to nurture it like the flower that it is

Putin is on the attack, grabbing power for his own gratification and he is buying up the republican party to achieve those ends. First it was insidious and now it is blatantly clear what it going on. We as Democrats need to stand together and not give voice to the willful bullshit that is the GQP. I do not care to hear their propaganda and will not discuss it any further. Doing so gives credence to republican lunacy.

[ancianita]

15. Corporations are psychopathic and promote psychopathic insurgencies under any pretext

-- in that world, it's called PR.

[ancianita]

16. Corporations are psychopathic and promote psychopathic insurgencies under any pretext

-- in that world, it's called PR -- which their human tools in government call geopolitics, through which they run divisive scripts for culture wars. Private corporate militaries are the violent wing of corporate pathology. Now, human run governments' militaries are on the defensive. As they've been in the courts, the workforce and in the cyber and real world environment.

[Javaman]

18. PR and propaganda...

The manipulation of the American mind: Edward Bernays and the birth of public relations

https://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393

snip

Having seen how effective propaganda could be during war, Bernays wondered whether it might prove equally useful during peacetime.

Yet propaganda had acquired a somewhat pejorative connotation (which would be further magnified during World War II), so Bernays promoted the term “public relations.”

Drawing on the insights of his Uncle Sigmund – a relationship Bernays was always quick to mention – he developed an approach he dubbed “the engineering of consent.” He provided leaders the means to “control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it.” To do so, it was necessary to appeal not to the rational part of the mind, but the unconscious.

[ancianita]

19. Now we're past its abstract or TV ad practice. We're live now as a thread in what's become the very

fabric of how the M(ilitary)I(ndustrial)C(omplex) and corporate insurgency has stealthily woven its way into human run governments.

The U.S. Constitution was written for humans, not corporations. Follow all money the policy it buys to their origins, and you'll know the human allies from human enemies.

Or the psychopaths will bring us humans down, and they'll make sure that we don't know what hit us, just point at some "who's" as the "enemy."

The Russian oligarchic fossil big corp pathology is on full display in Ukraine, sent, so far, to scare Ukrainians and their leaders into capitulating. Those humans have GOT to win the battles that come after these Russian tools' preview attacks.

[maxsolomon]

20. Sociopathic MALE leaders are a constant in World History.

In the former Russian Empire alone: Putin, Lukashenko, Nazarbayev.

Assad, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Orban.

The 20th Century is strewn with them.

Then you have sociopathic Monarchs. That list goes back to the dawn of history.

Human societies return to Authoritarianism again and again. It is a depressing thought.

[calimary]

21. Toxic masculinity. The GOP is awash in it.

Gotta swagger their tough-guy crap around in public.

The only conclusion I can come to is - they must be failures in bed.

[BlueJac]

22. K&R