{"id":49245,"date":"2019-10-29T12:16:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T17:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49245"},"modified":"2019-10-29T12:16:04","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T17:16:04","slug":"the-politics-of-tyranny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49245","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Tyranny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2019\/10\/29\/the-politics-of-tyranny\/\">The Politics of Tyranny<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/david-freeman\/are-politicians-psychopaths_b_1818648.html\">Politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths<\/a>. I think you would find no expert in the field of sociopathy\/psychopathy\/antisocial personality disorder who would dispute this\u2026 That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience was and is a bitter pill for our society to swallow \u2014 but it does explain a great many things, shamelessly deceitful political behavior being one.\u201d<\/p><p>\u2014Dr. Martha Stout, clinical psychologist and former instructor at Harvard Medical School<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twenty years ago, a newspaper headline asked the question: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/q-whats-the-difference-between-a-politician-and-a-psychopath-a-none-1361687.html\">What\u2019s the difference between a politician and a psychopath?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The answer, then and now, remains the same:&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/q-whats-the-difference-between-a-politician-and-a-psychopath-a-none-1361687.html\">None<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/q-whats-the-difference-between-a-politician-and-a-psychopath-a-none-1361687.html\">no difference<\/a>&nbsp;between psychopaths and politicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nor is there much of a difference between the havoc wreaked on innocent lives by uncaring, unfeeling, selfish, irresponsible, parasitic criminals and&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2013\/06\/07\/congressmen-come-and-go-but-corruption-is-here-to-stay.html\">elected officials who lie to their constituents<\/a>, trade political favors for campaign contributions, turn a blind eye to the wishes of the electorate, cheat taxpayers out of hard-earned dollars, favor the corporate elite, entrench the military industrial complex, and spare little thought for the impact their thoughtless actions and hastily passed legislation might have on defenseless citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Psychopaths and politicians both have a tendency to be&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/q-whats-the-difference-between-a-politician-and-a-psychopath-a-none-1361687.html\">selfish, callous, remorseless users of others, irresponsible, pathological liars<\/a>, glib, con artists, lacking in remorse and shallow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Charismatic politicians, like criminal psychopaths,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/q-whats-the-difference-between-a-politician-and-a-psychopath-a-none-1361687.html\">exhibit a failure to accept responsibility for their actions<\/a>, have a high sense of self-worth, are chronically unstable, have socially deviant lifestyles, need constant stimulation, have parasitic lifestyles and possess unrealistic goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It doesn\u2019t matter whether you\u2019re talking about Democrats or Republicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Political psychopaths are all largely cut from the same pathological cloth, brimming with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2012\/07\">seemingly easy charm and boasting calculating minds<\/a>. Such leaders eventually create pathocracies: totalitarian societies bent on power, control, and destruction of both freedom in general and those who exercise their freedoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Politics of Tyranny \u201cPoliticians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths. I think you would find no expert in the field of sociopathy\/psychopathy\/antisocial personality disorder who would dispute this\u2026 That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience was and is a bitter pill for our society [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5493,13197,1577,1492],"class_list":["post-49245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-john-w-whitehead","tag-politicians","tag-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49246,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49245\/revisions\/49246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}