Politicians: Disproportionately Psychopathic—References

Politicians often act on “whims, fancy, and sudden childish notions.” Awareness is at ignorant level, typically “does not know about” key factors. They listen with “little attention,” react with “remarkable irrelevancy” to reality due to “ignorance.” There is “a special failure of communication in dealing with heads of state.” “It is a feature of government that the more important the problem, the further [up the political structure] it tends to be removed from handling from anyone well acquainted with the subject.” — Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China (New York: Macmillan Co, 1970), pp 241, 404, 405, 464, respectively.
For politicians, content is a mere 10%!! Non-verbal communication is 60%! with vocal tonality, pitch, and pauses 30%. Recall is a mere 25%. Reference: Stanley Zareff, “Literally Speaking,” 14 Worth (#1) 46-48 (January 2005). This low level of mental performance and memory does not meet the requirements of passing exams even in grade school! Children are required to do far better than paying attention to facts merely 10%, recalling merely 25%! the below "F" (failure) level, indeed, indicative of mental retardation.
This data is long known. For example, “The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.” — Thomas Paine (1737-1809).
“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to office,” says Aesop, c. 550 B.C. And, “none but unprincipled and beastly men in society assume the mastery over their fellows, as it is among bulls, bears, and cocks,” says ancient historian Polybius (205 B.C. - 125 B.C.), lib. 4.
Another ancient source says likewise: leaders are typically the “basest of men,” says Daniel 4:17. Ancient King Nebuchadnezzar was the best world leader, the “head of gold,” Daniel 2:32 and 38. Politicians and rulers thereafter would be “inferior” to Nebuchadnezzar, says Daniel 2:39-43. Nebuchadnezzar was mentally ill for seven years, with lycanthropic symptoms, living and eating grass like an animal, hair long as feathers, fingernails and toenails like birds' claws, Daniel 2:32-33. This went on for some seven years, Daniel 2:34-36, until his “understanding” and “reason returned.” Politicians after him would be even worse, “inferior,” Daniel 2:39. Bottom line: The scum rises to the top, Jeremiah 17:9; Daniel 4:17 in context of, e.g., Luke 4:5-6, Matthew 4:8, Hosea 8:4, and 2 Timothy 3:13. Note politician description in psychopathology terms in Luke 18:2, wholly disrespectful, self-absorbed, narcissistic.
Note politician descriptions in wild animal terms. See, e.g., Daniel 7:4 (lion with wings); Daniel 7:5 (beast like a bear), Daniel 7:6 (leopard with wings), Daniel 7:7 (a dreadful and terrible ten-horned beast with iron teeth); and Revelation 17:3 (a red seven-headed, ten-horned beast with blasphemous names).
This shows politicians growing ever more evil and depraved, "waxing worse and worse," 2 Timothy 3:13.
Modern political leaders are disproportionately smokers. The significance of this fact used to be known, that smokers are disproportionately mentally ill and damaged. After decades of observations of such leaders, Tolstoy had warned against having smokers as leaders: “The brain becomes numbed by the nicotine.” What Tolstoy called “conscience” thus expires, as impulse control is impaired (abulia, anomie, psychopathy). Tolstoy cited an example, a smoker who began assaulting an aged woman with a knife, wounding her badly. He then shrank from killing her, but after smoking two cigars, dazing his brain, he then completed the knife-murder.—Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Why Do People Intoxicate Themselves? (10 June 1890), p 10 [Excerpt].
Note pertinent medical / analytical findings on politicians' widespread mental abnormality:

  • World Health Organization, “Wide research needed to solve the problems of mental illness,” World Mental Health, Vol 12, pages 138-141 (WHO Press Release, October 1960) says that “people with psychopathic make-up often become leaders” / “les postes de commandement sont souvent assumés par des personnes à tendances psychopathiques”

  • Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (New York: Praeger Pub, 1975), says at p xi, “The psychopath in a position of supreme power is almost a common-place.”

  • Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life, 5th ed (Scott, Foresman & Co, 1976), p 10, by James Covington Coleman, Ph.D., summarizes the 1960 WHO data thus: “individuals with psychopathic personality makeup, who tend to exploit power for selfish purposes and have little concern for ethical values or social progress, often become leaders”;

  • Prof. Michael P. Ghiglieri, Ph.D., Dark Side of Man (Reading, MA.: Perseus Books, 1999), says at p 230, “. . . madmen—and slightly mad men—still rise to lead nations”; and

  • Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” by John T. Jost, Jack Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski, Frank J. Sulloway, 129 Psychological Bulletin (#2) 339-375 (May 2003), cites politician symptoms. Note also: “the Conservative [pro-war] Party was . . the stupidest party. . . . I did not . . . say that . . . Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.” (Public and Parliamentary Speeches, 31 May 1866, pp. 85-86.)           “Stupidity is much the same the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so those whose opinions and feelings are emanations from their own nature and faculties.” (Subjection of Women, Chapter I, p. 273)—John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).

  • "The Power of Political Misinformation" (Washington Post, 15 Sept. 2008, p A6), shows that conservatives are more prone to believing falsehoods, with this proneness increasing after being told the truth. Said another way, "No need to tell the neocons facts, they just get dumber, and dumber." Such conservatives are "utterly immune to the truth -- and indeed, the truth only makes them dig deeper into their fantasy world," says Allen L. Roland, Ph.D., "Dealing with Right Wing Conservatives" (18 October 2008). They are in medical terms, unresponsive to stimuli.

  • The Authoritarians," by Prof. Robert Altemeyer (Univ of Manitoba, 2006) (concerns such individuals as "very aggressive . . . hostile . . . almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence . . . dogmatic . . . hypocrites, from top to bottom . . . two-faced, and . . . one face never notices the other [and] give the flimsiest of excuses and even outright lies about things they’ve done wrong [and] the rank-and-file believe them.")

  • Kurt Vonnegut, "Custodians of chaos" (The Guardian, 21 January 2006) "There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president." See confirmatory data by Jonathan R. T. Davidson, MD; Kathryn M. Connor, MD; and Marvin Swartz, MD, "Mental Illness In U.S. Presidents Between 1776 and 1974: A Review of Biographical Sources," Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease 194 (#1): 47-51, January 2006.

  • H.L. Mencken says, “People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men.” (Details, 1922: "shallow fellows, ignorant of the grave matters they deal with and too stupid to learn. . . . incompetent and imbecile, and not only incompetent and imbecile, but also incurably dishonest . . . in the hands of small groups of narrow, ignorant, and unconscionable manipulators . . .”)

  • Robert LeFevre, in his essay, Aggression is Wrong, says “Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible.”

  • James Bovard, in Freedom in Chains, says “Governments and citizens blend together only in the imagination of political theorists. Government is, and always will be, an alien power over private citizens.”

  • Kevin Barrett, Ph.D., in "Twilight of the Psychopaths” (11 June 2008), says “Civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been based on slavery and 'warfare.' Incidentally, the latter term is a euphemism for mass murder.”

  • John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience (2006)

  • William F. Weld (Masschusetts Governor 1991-1997), says “You can lead the House [politicians] to order, but you can't make it [them] think.”

  • Jean Jacques Rousseau, in his Constitutional Project for Corsica (1765), Foreword, para. 1, says “the abuse of political institutions follows so closely upon their establishment that it is hardly worthwhile to set them up, only to see them degenerate so rapidly.”

  • Ralph Nader, in “United States Congress: A Graveyard for Democracy and Justice”   (Thursday, 19 January 2012), says “Will someone call a psychiatrist? This is a Congress that is beyond dysfunctional.”

  • “I wonder if the people we elect into office are given a mental test and if so, is it before or after they are elected?” (Macomb Daily, 27 October 2013), p A-17 (Mt. Clemens Reader "Sound Off" inquiry). Response cited federal hiring criteria precluding hiring applicants with "medical findings which . . . would make him a hazard to himself or others," per Federal Government Standard Form 78, "Certificate of Medical Examination" ("Conclusions" section, 1969 ed), but added, this form is not used for politicians, but only for regular employees.

  • Aspects of politican mental disorder include but are not limited to abulia,   dyscalculia and acalculia,   dyslexia,   fragmentation,   schizophasia,   confabulation,   delusions including of grandeur,   psychopathology,   time disorientation,   unresponsiveness to normal stimuli, autistic, and anosognosia.

  • For example, note data cited by Kenneth Braun, "Class of ‘05 Lawmakers’ Drinking and Driving Is Double the State Average" (20 February 2010). "Former Michigan House Speaker Craig DeRoche, R-Novi, was arrested Feb. 12 [2010] for suspicion of drunken driving. This is the eighth alcohol-related driving incident for the 110 House members who took the oath of office with DeRoche when he became the speaker in January 2005. That’s a rate of almost 7.3 percent over five years — more than double the state average for drinking and driving arrests, according to data compiled annually by the Michigan State Police. Six lawmakers committed the eight infractions, with two of them chalking up two each since 2005. Media accounts show that one of those two — former Rep. Virgil Smith, D-Detroit — was convicted once in 2004, again in 2006, and was pulled over a third time earlier this year." (Such data helps explain why Michigan politicians never investigate the non-enforcement of the alcoholism prevention law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, nor express concern about the many other costs of non-enforcement.)

  • Symptoms such as “inability to think on higher conceptual levels,”   “Impairment of inner reality and ethical controls,”   “concrete and impoverished” “ideation,”   “a tendency to confabulate,” fragmentation,   disconnection from reality, etc., are often conspicuous. Reference James C. Coleman, Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life, supra pp. 460-461. Symptoms can also include "Impairment of learning, comprehension, and judgment—with ideation tending to be concrete and impoverished—and with inability to think on higher conceptual levels and to plan.” The mental "inability . . . to plan" can typically lead to crises, forcing last minute panic-style efforts to deal with such politicians-created crises.

  • Note also that when politicians' “ideation” is “concrete and impoverished,”   showing "inability to think on higher conceptual levels,"   they then “do not respond to and are not motivated by normal stimuli”   such as abstract concepts and principles as distinct from personal self-incident situations or "sob stories," but rather they passively behave   “like cattle, sitting around until someone tells them what to do next,”   e.g., by providing specific concrete examples such as arise when some problem or personal sob story incident receives widespread media coverage, or affects them personally, reference Lyle Tussing, Ph.D., Psychology for Better Living, 5th edition (New York: John Wiley, 1959), pp. 361-2.

  • They "have no consciences. They are not guided by a sense of right or wrong. They seem to be unaffected by the feelings of others, including feelings of distress caused by their actions. Straying from a decent way of treating people, or violating ethical codes causes no anxiety . . . They suffer no remorse, no guilt, no shame. They are free to do anything, no matter how harmful," says David Schwartz, Ph.D., "The Rise of the Second-String Psychopaths" (CommonDreams.org, 5 June 2011)

  • "Psychology books are packed with studies of the personality traits of men like [this]. They often possess a superficial charm and above-average intelligence. They rise to the top of large organizations, even nations. They usually aren't obviously irrational, at least at the beginning. They arre shameless liars, as long as the lie serves their purpose. Among their characteristics are glibness, lack of empathy, an inability to accept responsibility or recognize the impact of their behavior on others--the things that make a narcissist [and] a short attention span," say Guy Lawson and William Oldham, The Brotherhoods: The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia (New York: Scribner, 2006), Chapter 7, "The Amazing Life and Times of 'Gaspipe' Gasso," § 1, "The Prospect," p. 146.
    Now we are in the “sound bite” era. Written information is abbreviated, perfunctory, superficial. The public gets seconds or maybe a minute for crucial information on choosing leadership. (This contrasts with, say, the Lincoln era, when hours were involved, not mere seconds). Try the "sound bite" method on other subjects, say, tell the physics, chemistry, history, or other teacher, you’ve got two minutes (be generous with the time!) to teach the subject! See how that works!
    The psychopathic traits of politicians are so well established that they are evident not only in history and medicine, but also in, for example, fiction and jokes. See, e.g., House of Cards (1990), To Play the King (1993), and The Final Cut (BBC, 1995); and Senator Claire McCaskill's remark: "In Washington, we know there's a huge difference between a prostitute and a politician. There are some things a prostitute won't do," she said (Washington Post, 22 March 2010.) And see search term: "politicians psychopaths."

    10 of the Biggest Lies in History

    "How to Tell If Someone Is a Sociopath ("A sociopath is characterized by the deficit of social emotions such as love, guilt, shame or remorse. According to the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the sociopath lacks “a sense of moral responsibility and social conscience.” Sociopaths often scheme to manipulate others without regard to consequences of inflicting harm. It is the cold-hearted way the sociopath reacts to his victims that illustrates his lack of moral compass and detachment from other human beings." Read more.)

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