The Ascendence of Sociopaths in US Governance
Posted by freedomforall 10 years ago to History
By Doug Casey, Casey Research
So is there a root cause of all the problems I've cited? If we can find it, it may tell us how we personally can best respond to the problems.
In this article, I'm going to argue that the US government, in particular, is being overrun by the wrong kind of person. It's a trend that's been in motion for many years but has now reached a point of no return. In other words, a type of moral rot has become so prevalent that it's institutional in nature. There is not going to be, therefore, any serious change in the direction in which the US is headed until a genuine crisis topples the existing order. Until then, the trend will accelerate.
The reason is that a certain class of people – sociopaths – are now fully in control of major American institutions. Their beliefs and attitudes are insinuated throughout the economic, political, intellectual and psychological/spiritual fabric of the US.
So is there a root cause of all the problems I've cited? If we can find it, it may tell us how we personally can best respond to the problems.
In this article, I'm going to argue that the US government, in particular, is being overrun by the wrong kind of person. It's a trend that's been in motion for many years but has now reached a point of no return. In other words, a type of moral rot has become so prevalent that it's institutional in nature. There is not going to be, therefore, any serious change in the direction in which the US is headed until a genuine crisis topples the existing order. Until then, the trend will accelerate.
The reason is that a certain class of people – sociopaths – are now fully in control of major American institutions. Their beliefs and attitudes are insinuated throughout the economic, political, intellectual and psychological/spiritual fabric of the US.
I can remember being in grade school and learning about feudalism, and thinking how horrible it was that there was a class of elites with special rights above everyone else. I was so happy and proud to live in a free society. Well, it's occurring to me these days that only the name has changed; it seems throughout history there has been a power elite of parasites in different guises. Government today is very much like the Mafia running a protection racket, but I believe those in control stay behind the scenes.
I've often said that the mere act of seeking unearned power is a corrupted act in and of itself. Anyone who chooses this path is not to be trusted.
I'd like the US of A with the clock turned back about 40 years (omitting racism and VietNam.) But wishing doesn't get it done, and the banksters won't surrender; this is their third time legally controlling money in the USA. Jefferson and Jackson had the guts to boot them out the other 2 times.
I have a friend who has dual citizenship in Belize from his grandmother. He is moving soon IIRC,
We, and those who think like us, really need to create a Gulch in real space.
As for convenience, everywhere else in the world is less convenient than the US, even in western countries as in Europe. Convenience is part of the chains that bind us in the US.
Are sociopaths born or made? Like termites who morph into whatever function is needed, people who get into positions of power acquire new characteristics. Remember the disastrous prison experiment done with students, where the "guards" developed sadistic and sociopathic traits and behaviors while the "prisoner" roles became dysfunctional and psychotic? The role dictates the script.
We entrust some of our fellow citizens with roles of managing our country, and soon mission creep sets in, and then a line is crossed. From earnest, responsible agents they turn into authoritarians, and to protect their functions they develop rules, laws, policies, systems of secrecy, and lose sight of the original mission and of who hired them, whose public servants they are. And every step is exquisitely rationalized.
And when is the time to correct this deviation? Before undeclared wars, assassinations, "kill lists", drone attacks on civilians, domestic spying, militarized police, and Constitutional affronts become the norm. The steamroller is rumbling over us, and morphing more and more people into the sociopathic mindset, at both ends of the ladder.
Now the wrong people are "eternally vigilant", Big Brother watching the rest of us. And who watches the watchers? All those industrious peeping toms poring over all our emails and phone calls and correspondence--who checks up on them, the wardens of the virtual prison our society has become? Who are these minions with license to kill?
The irony is, it can happen anywhere, even in the best-intentioned groups. Free will and objective thought have yielded the field to the most primitive, pre-reason, animal-level, emotion-driven, alpha-male algorithm of power and control, rationalized as right.
We delude ourselves if we think that some 70 or 700 or even 7000 rational and competent Gulchian individuals can save the world where 7 billion are struggling for their very existences on the tribal level and where genocide is seen as the most expedient way to settle conflicts.
All the horrors around us come from diseased ideas. And those ideas use people's emotions as their armored vehicles.
The time for good ideas has never been more desperate, and we may be too late already to win without global catastrophe. But as Rand said, for all you who care--"don't let it go."
My opinion is that we entrust people with more power than we should. Most people are good, but I haven't met one that I think is incorruptible. Some people may think they are, but I think they just haven't been exposed to the specific stimulus that affects them, for example, a parent who desperately wants his child to attend the "right" university. We, the people, really must be eternally vigilant. Decentralization of power would be a first step to lower the temptation for all 'public servants.'
Timely, I was just watching "Nicky's Family" last night with my wife on Netflix. And you're sitting there, watching the men and women who were rescued from German-occupied Czechoslovakia as little children, as they return to their homeland to look for their parents, to find nobody. To tell about the letters their parents wrote to them saying they were ordered to a new camp called Auschwitz, and then they never heard from them again. The stories they heard from a family friend, who was in charge of the dead bodies in the camps, who said they recognized their mother with 10 children as she came into the camp, and was immediately sent to the gas chambers with the children. The family friend told her to go into a corner and sing with the children so they would breathe the gas and die faster rather than suffer.
There is no shortage of evil on this planet. And very few have the means, the courage, or the influence to successfully oppose it. Rare men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer come along once in a while to oppose them, but even they cannot always succeed, as he ultimately was unsuccessful at resisting Hitler's rule.
Education can slow this process down, but it is only a matter of time before enough people tune it out that a new batch of evil is able ot rise again.
Some liberty lovers undertake political office (such as myself) in order to return the political environment back to the minimalist entity that we believe it should be. We take it as a short term sacrifice to take action, but not as a "calling." Rarely would you hear one of us say that we're seeking political office to "make a difference" other than to reduce government.
Just like what Yuri Bezmenov said: "You're stuck with them. There's nothing you can do to change their minds. Only when they have a boot to their throat will they understand, but not until then."
Back to the question that no one seems to answer: where to?
Libertarians, who tend to be more intelligent, better informed and very definitely more independent than average, are going to be in a touchy situation as the crisis deepens. Most aren't going to buy into the groupthink that inevitably accompanies war and other major crises. As such, they'll be seen as unreliable, even traitors.