{"id":1322,"date":"2003-02-11T15:23:00","date_gmt":"2003-02-11T19:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=1322"},"modified":"2003-02-11T15:23:00","modified_gmt":"2003-02-11T19:23:00","slug":"so-it-goes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2003\/02\/11\/15\/23\/so-it-goes\/","title":{"rendered":"So It Goes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nice interview with Kurt Vonnegut<\/a> here.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdetat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdChristians,\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete\u00ef\u00bf\u00bds foot. The classic medical text on PPs is “The Mask of Sanity” by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The psycho book<\/a> he quotes is really worth reading, but at $100+ it’s a library item for me! A central dogma of Hervey, and many psychopathologists, is that the way our society is constructed today — with anomie and looser affiliations and kinship bonds than in earlier Western societies — enables cunning psychopaths to attain positions of power and authority. They are the corporate tax dodgers and the polluters and the tobacco barons and the weapons manufacturers we see all around us. They know what they do harms others but them have no empathy… they simply don’t care.<\/p>\n

Today we can look back with the perspective of history and ask why the Late Empire Romans, to give one example, consented to be ruled by a Patrician class that was increasingly depraved and feckless. Or we look back a century or two and marvel that slavers enjoyed high social status and huge capitalizations in those societies. I wonder will future historians judge us so harshly for allowing our politics and business to be monopolized by functioning, adored psychopaths?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nice interview with Kurt Vonnegut here. I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t