Tea and psychopathy

I have been totally fascinated by this on the subject of the Wall Street meltdown that brought us to our present unpleasant situation; an elaborate hypothesis on what made it happen is that the "chaotic nature of the modern corporation", with its "rapid change, constant renewal", and ruthless turnover, stopped the boards and other responsible parties from noticing that the companies were being rapidly taken over by charming, charismatic, psychopaths.

Psychopaths who seemed to them not just normal, but "ideal leaders".

This psychopath, the Persian king Xerxes, has a soft spot--he's in love with his tree. I love how the music is heartrendingly beautiful and hilarious at the same time because of the repeated word vegetabile. The YouTubist has thoughtfully provided the aria's one-sentence text so we can follow it.

Psychopaths whose... [jump]

single-minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement to the exclusion of all other considerations has led to an abandonment of the old-fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or of any real notion of corporate social responsibility.

As things crumbled, they were

glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done. They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events, are very convincing in blaming others for what has happened and have no doubts about their own worth and value. They are happy to walk away from the economic disaster that they have managed to bring about, with huge payoffs and with new roles advising governments how to prevent such economic disasters.

Yup, sounds about right. The scholar who came up with the idea, Clive Boddy, says that it needs some clinical research, but I don't think I really need to wait. I'm ready to adopt the theory and start extending it, to politicians.

But there is something pretty uncomfortable that I would like to pick at here; it's the thing I was worrying about the other day, on the subject of Bill Clinton, one of the politicians I'm fondest of, who didn't hesitate, once, to have a mentally retarded man put to death for some temporary political advantage (see the bottom footnote here). It's easy to call Rick Perry a psychopath, sticking out his chest like a rutting pigeon (I guess only mammals rut--what is it pigeons do?) and lying more easily than he can remember what his beloved Bible says. But when it's the one you happily voted for, twice, remembering the Ricky Rector story perfectly clearly, it feels a little odd.

And then you come to Barack Obama, as recently described by Glenn Greenwald:

The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth...

Greenwald reduces people like me to a kind of Pecksniffian idiocy--he's my psychopath, and I'm voting for him in any case, and you don't expect me to vote for that racist gold bug Ron Paul just because he is some bizarre kind of fascist pacifist, do you?--to which the reply is really Matthew 7:5,

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Not that we couldn't argue point by point that it isn't quite like that, that Obama doesn't mean it that way, that his hands are tied, etc., etc. But that's reducing to legalistic quibbles something that is a real problem. These things really happened, and Obama's name is on every one of them. Not to mention the idea that indefinite detention without trial for anybody is within the powers of government as described in our Constitution, about which Greenwald has written eloquently many times.

I still am voting for him, of course, and I intend to feel good about it. But Greenwald really deserves a more sophisticated argument than the kind he has been getting.

The trial of the English costermonger Bill Burns, first man ever to be prosecuted for cruelty to animals, with the star witness at center.