Are republicans psychopaths?

[mwb970]

Inspired by today's episode of "This American Life", I looked up the PCL-R test they are discussing to see what the definition of a "psychopath" is. Wikipedia lists a number of behavioral items looked for in the diagnosis of psychopathy. As I read them, it struck me that a surprising number of these items, especially the ones under "Factor 1", appear to apply to the republicans of today that we are all so weary of. Here are the factors. What do you think?

Factor 1
Aggressive narcissism
Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Emotionally shallow
Callous/lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Factor 2
Socially deviant lifestyle
Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
Parasitic lifestyle
Poor behavioral control
Promiscuous sexual behavior
Lack of realistic, long-term goals
Impulsiveness
Irresponsibility
Juvenile delinquency
Early behavioral problems
Revocation of conditional release

Traits not correlated with either factor
Many short-term marital relationships
Criminal versatility

[RKP5637]

1. Yes! And I think unbridled loosely regulated capitalism appeals to and rewards

sociopathic behavior, as well as, republican leanings.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

12. Bingo. n/t

[BlueCaliDem]

2. I believe I've read that a psychopath is a sociopath who's murdered

before. Otherwise, sans murder factor, they remain sociopaths.

But there is ZERO doubt in my mind Republicans are sociopaths. The innate lack of empathy and sympathy for the difficulties of their fellow American says it all.

[Ohio Joe]

3. There is definitely a disconnect from reality going on

Not sure what the technical term is... I'll just go with batshit crazy.

[RKP5637]

7. Yep, they're batshit crazy! I really don't get how any reasonably intelligent and

caring individual can listen to the batshit crazy and walk away saying, "yep, that's exactly what I want for the US, my family and me." I'm embarrassed other countries hear the batshit crazy the republicans spew.

[txlibdem]

4. The wealthy certainly are psychopaths

And where do we put psychopaths? In a padded cell, about 8' by 10'.

[hughee99]

5. To be honest, this is a fairly decent description of politicians in general. n/t

[originalpckelly]

8. Bingo.

Unfortunately.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

6. THE REPUBS ARE BULLIES..... ALL OF THEM

BINGO

[RKP5637]

9. Yep! Someone was saying to me recently the republicans are really like the

schoolyard bullies one knew as a kid.

[sixmile]

10. Psychopaths come in every color,

age, political leaning, sex, race, socio-economic status, country, etc.

For example, I just read a story about a dog who was buried up to its neck and shot forty times and survived in Malta. I am sure the 'person' who did this is a psychopath. Beyond that I can't be sure of anything.

[kenny blankenship]

11. Some of them-but I think you'd find psychos overrepresented w/in the power broker ranks of any party

Too bad we can't make them all (political office holders and party officials) take psych evaluations before letting them hold power. If you want to push a broom in a Walmart they'll make you piss in a jar first. But then rules are for little people.

[RKP5637]

32. Excellent Point!!! "... (political office holders and party officials) take psych evaluations before

letting them hold power."

When you study some of these politicians holding or wanting to hold power it's sadly not hard to conclude some of them aren't playing with a full deck of cards IMO.

[larkrake]

13. sociopaths fit them better, even the smart ones are anti-human entities

[themadstork]

14. Our culture encourages antisocial behavior

so many people will come off as a sort of pseudo-psychopath. Genuine psychopathy is not nearly common enough to account for mass repub behavior.

More likely they're victims of state propaganda. It's disturbing how the intellectual tradition that is American conservatism has (in its popular manifestation) devolved into an inane nationalism. State apologism is not a genuine political stance, just noise. Most of the conservatives I debate stuff with don't really speak to you, they just make noise and take that for discussion.

[Cherchez la Femme]

15. Why yes. Yes they are.

We go after serial killers, pedophiles, & the like with a true vengeance.
After all, they destroy families. Truly they do, and truly it's horrible.


But we, rather our elected officials, give a pass to the psychopaths on Wall Street and in government (those same officials, who? WE elected!) who ruin entire economies, entire countries


A large part of that, which I've noticed especially in the past 2+ years, is done by politicians with a D after their names,

so that's OK then!


It's not electing them for good governance, but for "Winning" in itself.

Because it's not the Principle, it's "Message Control" no matter what the message really means.
It's "Unity" no matter what we're really 'unified' for or against.

It's not the Principle, it's the Person.




Hmm. Perhaps we ought to take a little longer look at the traits and factors of psychopathy and then have a good long look in the mirror.

Naahhhh, who'm I kidding? :eyes:

[Tikki]

16. Many to most have low self-esteem when it comes to living outside of their...

Self-determined comfort zone. Poor impulse control, also.


Tikki

[hfojvt]

17. as a math/physics major, I like for things to be quantified and measurable

all of those things sound like human traits that we all have to one degree or other.

Aggressive narcissism - define "agressive"

Glibness/superficial charm - charm is probably a job requirement for a politician. You are not gonna get elected, from any party, without having it.

Grandiose sense of self-worth - Being in Congress makes you part of a pretty small group. There are about 1200 professional baseball players and only 100 US Senators, and 435 Representatives, and, unfortunately, the turnover is very small too, so the cummulative membership is much smaller. It also makes you famous, and gives you power over staff and campaign workers who are probably sometimeds adoring. It's probably hard to stay grounded.

Pathological lying - Again though, lying seems to be a very human trait. Other than giving many public statements, I am not sure that politicians do more of this than anyone else.

Cunning/manipulative - Again, it seems to me that all people do this to a degree. I certainly do. It seems like a requirement to staying alive.

Lack of remorse or guilt - Unknown here. In politics people are always attacking you for statements. Sometimes, if you express remorse, that just makes you look worse than if you defend what you said. One can easily point to prominent Democrats like Clinton, Edwards, and Jesse Jackson in those regards. Certainly no remorse was expressed during the cover-ups.

Emotionally shallow - Again, how are you measuring this?

Callous/lack of empathy - Again, this is common to humanity, to a degree.

Failure to accept responsibility for own actions - we all do this, especially when 'responsibility' is tied to 'punishment' and punishment is very rarely about 'fixing the problem'. That is, if an arsonist burns down a house, we don't 'punish' him by making him re-build a house (which would be a lot of hard work). Instead we lock him up.

Factor 2

Socially deviant lifestyle - in what way? Aren't some people gonna say that about pot smokers and GLBT? Which deviations are acceptable? Don't I, myself, 'deviate from the normal' by remaining unmarried, by riding a bicycle and by recycling?

Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom - sounds like any teenager to me

Parasitic lifestyle - Isn't that what the other side is gonna say about people who live on welfare? Who among us wouldn't love to win the lottery and be free from our 'boring' and/or stressful jobs?

Poor behavioral control - Not sure I can cast stones here. I think we all can 'lose it'.

Promiscuous sexual behavior - Now I can point fingers if I want to be intellectually dishonest. The rest of the world is certainly far more promiscuous than myself, but, alas, that is only because I don't get a lot of offers :argh: Humans do like sex, but not everybody who strays from monogamy is a psychopath.

Lack of realistic, long-term goals - Huh? Newt Gingrich has the delusional idea that he can be President, but he's not likely to ever be as poor as I am. I think most of them do all right. The corporate world takes care of its own.

Impulsiveness - Not seeing a lot of examples

Irresponsibility - Again, examples?

Juvenile delinquency - Like many of us did not do irresponsible things in our youth.

Early behavioral problems - Again, lots of people have those.

Traits not correlated with either factor

Many short-term marital relationships - Aha, like Dennis Kucinich? So anybody who divorces a few times is a psychopath?

[themadstork]

18. Good luck trying to quantify and measure human personality.

I submit that not all problems can be solved from within the same intellectual framework. And if you're unwilling to tackle psychology on its own terms, it'd probably be more productive to stick to the maths.

Say you were a practicing therapist? Could you bring yourself to diagnose or not diagnose major depression? Or would you explain to your patients how we all have these symptoms, to one degree or another?

[coalition_unwilling]

19. Serious question: what is the difference between 'psychopath' and

'sociopath'? There must be a difference, otherwise why have two distinct terms.

Any psycho professionals out there care to explain?

[themadstork]

20. Not much of a difference.

Basically interchangeable. Some odd distinctions float around, usually with "psychopath" meaning a more severe case, or a violent sociopath.

[Odin2005]

22. Sociopath = made bad (by environment). Psychopath = Born bad.

[coalition_unwilling]

25. Interesting. The Wiki article makes it sound like there can be

'primary' psychopaths (born bad) and 'secondary' psychopaths (made bad). Sounds like a secondary psychopath is a close analogue to a sociopath.

[bluerum]

21. Not really in question, is it? It is simply a matter of degree.

[Odin2005]

23. It's culturally-ingrained sociopathy.

They are taught that Greed is Good and that the poor are poor because they are lazy.

[lumberjack_jeff]

24. Republican's aren't psychopaths, but psychopaths are republicans.

Try reading Millionnaire Republican. If you can handle more than one chapter, you have a stronger stomach than me.

[Odin2005]

28. I have suspected that John Edwards is a sociopath.

[Cronus Protagonist]

30. BLAGO is surely one

No question in my mind.

Cheney & Rumsfeld too.

[Liquorice]

35. I think he's more of a narcissist, but some of the symptoms of those two

disorders do overlap.

[Viking 1]

26. Naw

Just sociopaths is all. :-)

[JohnnyLib2]

27. No. That term doesn't fit 55 million or so folks.

Sheesh.

[mia]

29. Discription seems to fits some behavior disordered kids -

can't imagine that they are all going to grow up to be Republicans.

[cliffordu]

31. Maybe, but according to your list I make the grade.,.......

MUUAHAHAAHHAAHHAH HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH HAHHA HA

[StarburstClock]

33. Yes most are, a few others are pathological liars, racists and sellout whores.

I'm not saying that to be opinionated, it's a fact.

[Liquorice]

34. Psychopaths only make up 1% of the population, so it's not possible

that republicans are all psychopaths. Psychopathology is very severe and rare, although I did read that they show up in larger numbers among politicians and high-level business people. Of course the prisons are also full of them.

[Kablooie]

36. Actually #1 probably applies to 80% of all politicians, R, D, and other.

[RandomThoughts]

37. That looks like an interesting thing to discuss.

Although responding to such things would be narcissistic.

I am however due beer and travel money, and many experiences.

[cali]

38. this is stupid.

[Welibs]

39. Republicans are narcissistic socio/psychopaths. I have said many times for years that

Republicans don't display emotions because they can't.

If you look at the extreme right they are all the same. They have no compassion and NO problem telling Granny she has to find a bridge to live under because the Koch's need her little bitty pension.

The GOP cares about the GOP, the rich and corporate and themselves and it stops there. Anyone beneath that is worthless and so are their lives.

Cutting off access to health care, lifelines and vital services to Granny, children, the sick and disabled shows that they have NO sense of decency or morality.

If you can do this to the most vulnerable you have no conscience.