The Psychopathic Origins of Bush/GOP Wars, Torture, and Injustice

[Joanne98]

If Bush can immunize himself for his own crimes after he's committed them, then he can, likewise, prosecute you for breaking laws for which he has yet to issue a decree! There is a word for this: tyranny! The people of England beheaded a King for less egregious offenses. This outcome has flowed from a single spring: GOP psychopathy!

Bush has effectively repealed the Bill of Rights while immunizing himself after the fact from prosecution for laws he's already broken, specifically, federal statutes prescribing the death penalty for war crimes resulting in death.

These crimes should be listed at the top of the indictment against Bush. There are, in fact, no exceptions under the law. Not even for 'Presidents'. Certainly not for those who have convinced themselves that they are 'dictators'.

Over the years we came to expect nothing less than excellent reporting from Bill Moyers and it reasonable to conclude that that is the very reason Moyers is not seen regularly on PBS today. Since the stolen election of 2000, every journalist of integrity has paid a price. In his analysis of the motion picture --The Lives of Others --Moyers quoted Roger Hebert who had made the obvious analogy between the Bush administration and that of East Germany during the height of the Cold War.

"The movie is relevant today, as our government ignores habeas corpus, practices secret torture and asks for the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on its citizens. Such tactics did not save East Germany. They destroyed it by making it a country it's most loyal citizens could no longer believe in."

Moyer's has said what many still fear to say: a secret government has mushroomed in the United States.

The Bush Injustice Department

Bush's criminal and unconstitutional assault of the Bill of Rights as much as the well-planned campaign of frauds intended to justify the attack and invasion of Iraq stem from an identifiable 'conservative mindset', a pathology, which psychologists have lately categorized as 'psychopathy'. Bob Altermeyer calls these people RWA, or Right Wing Authoritarians. I like 'psychopath'! It's shorter, precise, and has a longer history. As a result of his numerous interviews of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, Dr. Gustav Gilbert identified a common psychopathic symptom --an 'utter lack of empathy'! On this subject, I recommend John Dean's 'Conservatives Without Consciences', in which Dean cites the work of Bob Altemeyer who sums up his own work accurately and wittily in The Authoritarians.

'Authoritarians' are submissive to authority as were Hitler's Nazi minions but they are, like Adolph Hitler and George W. Bush, tyrannical when they are themselves in power, positions of 'authority'. This mentality is most surely the origin of the Nazi war criminal defense: "But ve vere only folloving orters!"

With eagerly subservient Republican majorities controlling both houses of Congress, Bush and his vice-president could do anything they wanted. And so they did. Greed ruled, the rich got big, big tax cuts, the environment took one body blow <190> after another, religious opinions decided scientific issues, the country went to war, and so on. Bush and his allies had the political and military power to impose their will at home and abroad, it seemed, and they most decidedly used it.

A stunning, and widely overlooked example of the arrogance that followed streaked across the sky in 2002 when the administration refused to sign onto the International Criminal Court. This court was established by over a hundred nations, including virtually all of the United States' allies, to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, and so on when the country for whom they acted would not or could not do the prosecuting itself. It is a "court of last resort" in the human race's defense against brutality.

Why on earth would the United States, as one of the conveners of the Nuremberg Trials and conceivers of the charge, "crimes against humanity," want nothing to do with this agreement? The motivation did not become clear until later. But not only did America refuse to ratify the treaty, in 2002 Congress passed an act that allowed the United States to punish nations that did join in the international effort to prosecute the worst crimes anyone could commit! Talk about throwing your weight around, and in a way that insulted almost every friend you had on the planet.

But the social dominators classically overreached. Using military power in Iraq to "get Saddam" produced, not a shining democracy, but a lot of dead Americans, at least fifty times as many dead Iraqis, and the predicted civil war. The "war on terrorism" backfired considerably, as enraged Muslims around the world, with little or no connection to al Qaeda, formed their own "home-grown" terrorist cells bent on suicide attacks--especially after news of American atrocities in Iraq raced around the globe. Occupying Iraq tied down most of America's mobile ground forces, preventing their use against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan which had supported the 9/11 attacks, and making American troops easy targets in the kind of guerilla warfare that produces revenge-driven massacres within even elite units.

--Bob Altemyer, The Authoritarians

Both Altemeyer and Dean are confirmed in their opinions of the state of the American conservative movement by 'conservative' criticism leveled at them. It is characterized by fallacious appeals to authority and orthodoxy --tactics that are observed to be rampant throughout 'conservative' politics.

Their work does not appear to have earned widespread acceptance among academic psychologists. No matter: in Dean's mind, as he spends the bulk of Conservatives Without Conscience arguing, the theory of the authoritarian personality establishes the malevolence of conservatives as scientific fact.

Dean, of course, speaks from the 'experience' of having been a 'Goldwater Conservative'. I speak from the experience of having interviewed numerous 'conservatives' and, in the process collecting a series of 'self-reinforcing' rationalizations.

Is it true, for example, that "Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us"? Maybe Altemeyer thinks that anyone who answers "yes" pines for a charismatic nationalist leader a la—who else?—Adolf Hitler. But, in fact, any effective political leader could fit the description. In the civil-rights era, for example, did not our country "desperately need" (to rectify injustice) a "mighty leader" (he certainly had a large following) such as the sainted Martin Luther King Jr. who was willing to "do what it takes" (organize marches and boycotts) to "stamp out" (end) "sinfulness" (segregation) and "radical new ways" (racist backlash)? Logical consistency would compel nearly everyone to agree with the statement, no matter how provocatively phrased. If it turns out that only conservatives say that they agree, this shows only that conservatives understand the meaning of words.

--Conformity Without Conscience, The American Conservative

The refutation misses the point that 'conservatives' --statistically --will never recognize any other condition. In other words, ANY status quo will always be seen by the RWA as requiring a strong leader. Nothing is proven. The 'conservative' mindset just repeats a faulty premise.

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/07/15/the_psychopathic_origins_of_bush_gop_war_1

[indepat]

1. Notwithstanding how compelling the evidence and arguments, far too many in the Congress,

sitting on Federal courts, in the media, and the general public do not have enough of a problem with it all, in its totality, to put a stop to it, including countless Dems in Congress figurative lathering at the mouth and jumping their their collective assholes to give junior everything unconstitutional he wanted re FISA. :D

[truth2power]

2. Bush is a psychopath. How horrifying is that?...

Indifferent to the violence he perpetrates on others. Seems casual when describing events in Iraq that are seen as horrific by many in the general population. No evidence that he ever loses sleep over troubling world events. Callous.

Lack of empathy. The emotion truly isn't wired into his brain. Stilted descriptions of how he is affected by the grief of others: "I hug the mothers.." The subtlties of emotion escape him.

When describing his response and his tears following the death of his sister, Robin, he used the word "lacrimate". Curious. Lacrimate is a clinical term, lacking in emotionality. This story is perhaps apocryphal, but if true, it raises questions about whether he understands the difference.

Rooted in the present. Is fond of saying, "That's a hypothetical. I don't deal in hypotheticals". On one level I see that as not wanting to go on record with something that may come back to bite him, later, or he flat doesn't know the answer. But on another level it shows a profound inability to consider, or care about, the consequences of his behavior.

Puts words together in strange ways. Doesn't seem to monitor his own speech.

cruelty to animals (as a youngster)

Poor internal controls/poor social skills - i.e. the incident with the German chancellor, and others.

Sadistic.

And on & on. :evilfrown:

[mwb970]

3. Who knew that having a psychopathic president for 8 years would be a problem?

I knew something was wrong with bush before he stole the first election. Apparently not enough of my countrymen were able to see it until it was too late.

[truth2power]

4. Well, that's the other thing...

"Apparently not enough of my countrymen were able to see it until it was too late."

It seems that many people are actually drawn to psychopaths. Something about the fascination at looking at our own dark side.

It has been, and will be, our undoing as a country.