I’ve seen the footage about the Milgram experiment, but not the one about the Stanford experiment. The frightening thing about the first, to me, is that no one will ever know how s/he would react in those circumstances. Just how much faith do we have in our authority figures? I’m sure we all have more than we’re willing to admit. But–and there is a ‘but’–my nephew was in Afghanistan for 16 mo. He was the top marksman in his unit. One day he was told to shoot a “family burro” that had been hobbled in a open field. He protested, he just didn’t want to kill the little animal. But he was ordered to do it because, his CO told him, it might have been put in the field to lure the soldiers into a mine field–or it might be packed with explosives, controlled remotely, that would detonate if a soldier tried to save it. My nephew shot and killed it. Now here’s the ‘but.’ My nephew is still suffering from PTSD, not just because of the trauma of that incident, of course, but it played it’s part. And I think that’s what’s happened to a lot of our young soldiers–they follow the orders, at a tremendous cost to their mental health.
The Stanford experiment was like watching the Abu Ghraib film clips all over again–the bags over the ‘prisoners’ heads, stripping them for ‘de-lousing’, the degradation of it all. I wondered if the Abu Ghraib guards learned that or if they were specially chosen because they were bullies to start with. The one called John Wayne was very disturbing because he’s always maintained he had ‘created’ a character and was ‘playing a part.’
Police departments seem notorious for the number of disturbed bullies on the payroll. It’s even more frightening, if what I’ve read is true, if Homeland Security is selling military equipment to certain PDs and training SWAT teams as Special Forces. (Google The Militarization of American Police.)
The problem is, as has been pointed out in this thread, how do you weed out the potential psychopaths before they act psychopathically–Before they’re elected–especially when the bulk of the electorate are conditioned to bow to authority?
Thanks for sharing, Chakra. Remember Shakespeare, “The evil men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones.”–Julius Caesar
Ok, Moreno, if you feel you have strong evidence that these people are being drive by personal financial gain, and that this is occluding any feelings of remorse or guilt for the deaths of thousands in the wars they need in order to get this financial gain, we’ll go with the “psychopath” label. But you do understand my point, don’t you? I’m not trying to absolve these people from culpability, I’m trying to be cautious about what conclusions I arrive at and what opinions I end up buying into, and also to admonish anyone engaged in a discussion like this to do the same; I’ve been trying to recommend a few cognitive rules: for example, question whether any seemingly psychopathic behavior is the result of a real lack of concern or guilt about committing wrongs or a result of moral relativism. I feel that in the latter case, there’s still hope of reasoning with the person. In the former, the person will simply play games with your attempts to reason. I feel this is a very important distinction to make. But if you feel you have strong evidence that we’re dealing with the former case, then let’s go with that (not that it’s hard for me to imagine).
BTW, how much are you generalizing this? It sounds like your charge of psychopathy is limited to the Bush regime, but do you mean to say that all politicians are psychotic?
You may be right about the racism thing, but if you extend this to things like rocks and trees, then you’re essentially saying everyone’s a potential psychopath. It might take an idiot to not see that blacks are human beings too, capable of feeling pain and emotional hurt just as much as anyone else, but does it take an idiot to believe rocks don’t feel pain? Does the fact that I could smash a rock with a hammer without batting an eye mean that I have no conscience? And what if rocks are in a constant state of pain until they get smashed by a hammer? What if I’m guilty of negligence when I pass by a rock on the street without kicking it?
Yes, it requires a socially acquired thought system to suppress the guilt one would otherwise feel when treating other groups as not being worth consideration as fully human, and I suppose that would qualify one as a “conditioned” psychopath, but there are other things over which I don’t think there is any guilt to suppress, things like rocks, trees, oceans, etc., things which if damaged don’t suffer any harm or pain. If I’m wrong in this, it’s not because I’m in denial, it’s because human beings don’t naturally anthropomorphize these kinds of things.
Of course, there is an indirect human (and animal) cost to damaging the environment, and if one goes ahead and does something damaging to the environment knowing about this indirect cost, and doesn’t feel the least bit remorse or guilt, then I would qualify that as psychopathic. (Just to get the logic straight though, if that individual talked himself out of knowing that there would be these harmful indirect costs to others, and in that way eased his conscience, I’d be less inclined to call him “psychotic”–maybe a different kind of psychopath, but this is veering away from the standard definition, which, from what I understand, requires knowing full well you’re causing harm or hurting people and yet not caring at all).
I’m not interested in signs, I want to know the truth.
My position is that before we go to war and violently overthrow those in power, we better damn well know if they really are psychopaths or not. I will not slit the throat of a politician based on a feeling. What I’m concerned about is that what the common citizen sees as corruption or psychopathy is what any citizen would end up doing if he entered into politics and got elected; and I don’t mean because the system and the power he’d gain would slowly chew away at his conscience until it was gone, but because, being in that position, being informed by the details of the situations he has to face (some of which being classified information), for the first time having to take seriously the potential consequences of not going to war, not harming the environment, not bailing out large corporations, he may just end up making decisions that he never would have dreamed he’d make before entering into that position. Would it be the decisions that a psychopath would make? Oh, probably. But I don’t know that a non-psychopath would not make those same decisions.
Even if there’s a chance your country could still be a republic, it means there are those in politics, even perhaps those in power, who are there trying to do the right thing, trying to help you, and if you go to war with them, you will not only be shooting yourself in the foot, but undermining everything that’s supposed to make a democratic republic work.
Could it be this: Imagine a young politician early in his career actually caring passionately for some cause–maybe to give better working opportunities to women, or maybe to work on peaceful relations with other countries rather than war–this is before any corrupting influence can be exacted on him. He furthers his career as time goes on and he makes decisions on what’s worth the cause he’s fighting for and what’s not. Suppose, for example, that he has to lay off a few employees who are working under him in order to save money–this is bad for their careers obviously, but he feels it is worth it because of the higher moral goal (opportunities for women, peace with other nations, whatever)–so he does it. As he moves further along in his career, he may have to make bigger sacrifices for the sake of his goal–say, he has to lie or cheat, or say he has to frame someone who is opposing him, put him in jail so he’s out of the way–he may tell himself the guy’s a crook anyway (obviously, since he’s fighting against a moral goal–women, peace, whatever). Now there comes a point when he had passed the point of no return, a point at which he has sacrificed too much to just turn around and say “you know, I’ve been thinking about it and I think I was wrong. I no longer think it’s worth the goal of giving women greater working opportunities or striving for peace with other nations.” If he did that, he would be accountable for all the deplorable actions in his past. So now, a psychological twist begins to take place in his mind–he begins to exaggerate the moral worth of the goal he originally set out to fight for; now almost anything can be worth the goal. Pushed to the extreme, he might end up investing his entire moral sensibility into this one goal, meaning that for him it becomes the only moral concern there is, and that everything else must serve that single moral concern. Would this be yet another kind of psychopath? It would be an interesting kind because it would be based, not on a lack or conscience or moral compass, but a conscience or moral compass whose energies and focus have become so distorted and twisted out of wack that he is made into a crazed fanatic.
Fair enough, but I think it makes a huge difference in terms of how we treat them or go about solving the problem.
I think as long as the guy has a camera up that says “smile, you’re on camera!”, and he has the video of the guy stealing, then any case against him will go nowhere. You wouldn’t believe the way they’d trample the kid’s rights if he came to court with this case trying to sue.
JK… you must mean the law and how it’s set up to allow shop lifters to sue their victims for exposing their crime… or do you mean how the lawyer would aid a felon in suing his victim in order to make a buck?
Can’t it be both? It is a broken window policy of sorts. Things like this are the broken windows that convince people they can get away with more crap…
Though evidence points towards an increase in cops being the reason for a drop in crime, not the “broken window” policy of Giuliani… The theory holds for the analogy.
Eh, not really. I’m a biased conservative, I don’t think both sides are equally right about much of anything at all. My point is that the left has their ways of manipulating public opinion (spending union dues on political campaigns, hegemony over education, consumer media, and journalism), and the conservatives have their ways of manipulating public opinion- corporate funding of commercials, candidates, and research, and religious speech. Lizbeth wants to ‘get the money out of politics’, but she only wants to get the conservative money out of politics, and she just happens to be a liberal. I’m saying that first of all that’s obviously just an agenda to make sure her side doesn’t lose elections anymore, and that secondly, campaign finance reform as a general rule is subject to that same sort of problem because different factions/agenda get their funding from such wildly different sources that you can’t make a rule that affects them all equally.
Again- is there any reason why it’s bad for the Koch Brothers to make a commercial advocating A, but good for Michael Moore to make a movie advocating B? Lizbeth appeared to give a defense of this, THEN went on to say that she wasn’t defending Michael Moore, so I guess I’ll call that question unanswered for now. She doesn’t think religion should have an influence on politics. Why not, when there are equally impassioned and supernaturally-inclined environmentalists that have plenty of influence?
Well then she should admit it and say "I think conservatives are wrong, so here's my ideas on how to make sure conservatives don't have the same influence over the political process that liberals do", instead of pretending this is about 'fairness' or 'the people' or whatever. What do you think? Is "To make sure particular political views I'm opposed to don't have a voice" what campaign finance reform should be all about?
In Summary- It’s not like I think I’m winning some moral victory by pointing out Lizbeth has a political bias. The point is, her suggestions exist only to further the ends of that bias, they wouldn’t actually make anything more fair!
Ucci, thanks for putting this into perspective for me.
Hmmm… there’s a difference between disagreeing with one side of a debate and not wanting them to benefit equally with everyone else. One could say “I think the cure to cancer is to dump melted chocolate all over one’s head, and if I get into power, I’m going to enforce this policy in health care all across the nation.” I could disagree with this vehemently and not want this guy or his adherents to ever get into power; I would want people like myself and my adherents to get into power so that we can allow the medical industry to continue in their search for the cure to cancer in the usual scientific manner. But that doesn’t mean I want to the other faction to get cancer and die; I would want everyone, even them, to benefit from the cure should it be found.
I know that’s probably not want you nor Liz meant, nor what you think the other meant, but I wanted to put it out there just for clarification. To sum up: not wanting the other faction to have power isn’t always “being unfair” and it isn’t always at the expense of “the people”.
Keeping with your analogy, the problem isn’t in you not wanting these other people from getting into power because you disagree with them. The problem arises when the only way to solve cancer is your way. All of their supporters, and how they raise money, are blocked, legally. That is one of the problems with what Liz suggests is that it is a predetermined right way to fight for a political cause often revolves around how you side fights. It is fine to think the chocolate coalition is wrong, to work against them, but it is not fine to make it illegal (or detrimental) to be in the chocolate coalition…
Personal Example: I find Marxism and its derivatives to be foolish, bad policy all to often promoted by people that believe “they” would be the ones in charge and so have no problem pressing it forward. It could be considered a OK action to stop these people from gathering, from fundraising, from attempting to push their policies through. (I personally would find such an action to be at least as repugnant as I find Marxism).
A standing theory, that they have never proved wrong, is that such an action is OK with the progressives. This idea has been formed not just from seeing their actions, but also actual published progressive books supporting the idea. While the right thinks that the left is at worst dangerously wrong, the left thinks the right is Evil. Evil people do not have to be dealt with fairly. I believe this is an aspect of what Ucc is explaining.
They are going to anyway- with some Pac or special organization or arrangement. I’d like all financing to be public, so people can know where money is coming from, especially for donations over some high amount. I’d like to keep foreign money out of our elections. I can’t think of much justification for restrictions other than that.
My gripe is that none of this was presented as Liz's master plan on how to make sure liberals don't lose elections anymore. If that's what she wanted and that's what she thought would benefit the people, then this would be a very different conversation- for one thing, I'd have to admit that her proposals would probably [i]work[/i] to that end.
Your analogy breaks down because dumping chocolate all over one's head is a neutral action- we all get sticky, and we all avoid cancer if it works. What Liz wants is to restrict how some people participate in the political process, but not others. How is that a desire for what's better for everyone?
No. You aren't. You're seeing people on T.V., or hearing about what they did interpreted through the mouth of your favorite media personalities. You didn't follow Bush around and observe him doing shit. I'm not being facetious here- I can't even spell it. The people who are actually trained and paid to discern who is a sociopath or a psychopath would never make that diagnosis on the basis of what they heard about somebody on a T.V. show. If you can't see the difference between "Diagnosing somebody with a mental condition on the basis of observation" and "Forming an opinion of somebody based on what I heard on the internet about them", then I don't know what to tell you.
Of course they fucking do! I haven’t heard a good word about Hitler or Stalin in my entire life! How could that not play a role in what I think of them? I’ve looked at the facts as much as I am able and as best I can tell, the consensus about their actions is correct. What I’m not going to do is diagnose them with some particular mental condition because I don’t know them.
But you don't know their response. You don't know what's in their conscience. You say you aren't judging based on political ideology, but theirs and yours are literally all the information you have. You have to understand- thinking it's reasonable to talk about Bush and Hitler in the same sentence as though they are guilty of the same kinds of things makes you a political radical. You're just using the language of mental health to justify your radicalism, which is exactly what I expressed concern to gib about. It's a recursive problem- gib wants mental diagnosis to be part of the political process to help us pick good candidates. You want to use mental diagnoses as pejoratives to sling at people who do things you are ideologically opposed to. The result? Your ideological statements gain evidence and support purely through the means you use to phrase them. "If I call Bush a psychopath instead of an asshole, my beliefs become stronger, because a psychopath is a particular thing that nobody wants as a president". Swap out the pejorative with something that sounds more professional, a little equivocation, and [i]boom,[/i] you have an educated opinion instead of just invective.
If this is indeed what Liz wants, I think it’s a bit extreme, but that doesn’t mean she wants conservatives or progressives to suffer any more than my restricting those who want to poor chocolate all over cancer patients’ heads from getting into the medical profession means that I want them to get cancer. I believe that by restricting them, I’m contributing to helping fight cancer for everyone. I may be wrong–maybe dumping chocolate on their heads does cure cancer–and I may be extreme–maybe barring them from the medical profession is too much–but that says nothing of my desire to help everyone.
I’ll let Liz speak for herself about weather this represents her views or not.
I speak for myself, as I should and have tried to do throughout this thread, I what I say is accepted as that.
Ucci, I’ve tried to find a correlation between the AFP nationwide, TV commercial (advertisement) and Michael Moore’s, released in movie theaters worldwide, documentary films. For the life of me, I can’t see it! It’s like trying to correlate casaba melons and zucchini! They both grow on vines and that’s it. I can’t describe it any other way and I do not understand why you continue to try to compare the two. I really, truly, don’t!
Nor do I understand why you continue to try to ascribe words to me–put words in my mouth–that I’ve never said.
You are a conservative. Yeah, Rah Rah, Huzzah!, beat the drums softly.
So?
I’m not a conservative. I’m not a progressive. If I feel campaign financing, as it is today, needs to be ‘reformed,’ than that’s my opinion and the ‘reform’ should be extended to include any single-source contributor no matter what s/he ‘backs.’ I’d say the same thing about George Soros if I read a headline that said, “George Soros has promised $3M to the DNC to defeat John Boehner and the Republican party in the next election.” I haven’t read such a headline.
As for religion in politics, I’ve already said that I wouldn’t think of ‘ousting’ a candidate because of her/his religious affiliation. However, the Founders were Deists–and believed in some sort of ‘Higher Power,’ that couldn’t be defined and had no place in politics. They were also Masons, so our currency exhibits Masonic symbols–the pyramid and the All-Seeing Eye, for example–but I think the Constitution makes it very clear, because it’s about the structure of a federal government, that there is a separation that should exist between whatever anyone holds religiously and politics. There is no state religion; there is no religion. The US is supposed to be a secular confederation of secular states.
I was born and raised as a Roman Catholic. I do not deny that, nor do I deny what I learned. I’ve just tried to remove the Church, as an institution, while studying its basic philosophy, and either accepting or rejected parts of that philosophy. I would never try to convince any one else to live as I live. I also don’t want anyone else telling me to live as they live–especially not if anything like that could become a perquisite for living. By that, I mean I don’t want to have religion a part of the legal requirements for the things that are required–for marriage, in what hospital I can receive treatment, whether or not I can own a home where I want to, where and how I can be buried–and on and on. Leave Religion (but not religious people) out of politics!
Politics in the US–and maybe in the world–are no longer (is no longer?)–a question of what political party is in ascendance. To me, it’s a question of which corporation will achieve control. We’ve spent a century under the control of the Seven Sisters of the oil corporations, but we may not have realized it. Now, it seems to me, the struggle for control of politics has expanded to include pharmas, agricorps, energy corps, you name it. The consumer market has gone way beyond simple manufacturing of ‘real’ goods to involve every aspect of our daily lives–and it’s global.
We are all responsible for the choices we make. I hope, because I can only hope, that the choices we make are our own rather than a corporation’s choice.
You said I shouldn’t compare the Koch brothers with George Soros and choose Soros because of his childhood background. I don’t; I choose neither. Really!
But I must, because I’m biased think about how the Koch brothers have interests in ‘fracking’ for natural gas–as well as petroleum refining, chemicals, fertilizers, the overall use of petroleum by-products in such industries, as well as the development of plastics, building pipelines, ranching, stock market commodity trading, etc., etc., etc. George Soros made his billions by gambling in the stock market.
That’s about as far as I’ve gotten in the research I’ve done, so far. Yes, what I think I’ve learned is undoubtedly biased.
But I’ve also read conservative publications on line and have tried to understand that PoV, as well. If you don’t believe me, so be it. I’m not going to be around 30yrs. from now, but I hope that some remnant of my life will be and I hope I’ll be able to contribute some small part to a future for them that isn’t one of dominance by one philosophy if it means repression of their way of living.
To me, that doesn’t mean involvement in party politics. It does, however, mean being able to choose what I believe is my best choice for the future.
I get what you’re saying- I think capitalism is good for socialists for example, even if they aren’t smart enough to realize it. But that’s not the same thing as saying that if I take measures to make sure socialists are banned from public speaking or whatever, I’m doing it for the good of the socialists.
Why? Why are you trying to find a correlation between one specific example of a commercial released by a group you don’t like, and Michael Moore’s entire body of work? Nobody asked you to, and I don’t see how it’s pertinent. How about we just say that that one example is a really bad commercial that shouldn’t have been made, and that’s why you insist on using it as your example in the first place (God knows I didn’t pick it), and we move on to the general question of if privately funded T.V. commercials are somehow worse for the political process than privately funded documentaries?
Again- a corporation makes a political commercial saying people should believe A. Michael Moore makes a documentary saying that people should believe not-A. You seem to what to curtail the first, but not the second. Tell me why one is damaging to the political process in a way that the other is not. It doesn't matter if you think they are apples and oranges, you should be able to tell me why one is damaging to the political process and the other is not, in the same way that I can tell you why mosquitos are a public health threat and wool socks are not- even though mosquitos and wool socks are completely different from each other. So answer the question, already.
THAT part of what you said is -semi-nonpartisan. It’s a bad idea, but it’s nonpartisan. But you’ve also criticized corporations making political ads, religion having influence over the political process, and conservative lobbying groups influencing public opinion. I mean sure, we both know that limitations on single source donations will hurt conservatives a little more because they tend to get the wealthy vote, but that’s a mild enough bias that I can overlook it; the real problem though is that it’s easy to come down against this or that sort of campaign donation when you already know the schools, the journalists and hollywood are going to put out your political message for free no matter what gets donated to whom.
That's the thing I want to make very clear to you, because it has a huge impact on how I interpret what you're saying; you can disagree, but from MY point of view, almost every university, almost every journalist, and almost every hollywood movie is going to advocate for the progressive/DNC agenda without the democrats having to spend a dime on it. That's what I think- not important if you agree, just understand thats the perspective I'm coming from. So when a progressive comes along and says we need to put controls on who can donate to political campaigns, I can't help but think "Oh, well, how convenient that would be FOR YOU." It's like Israel saying to the palestinians "Let's both agree not to use suicide bombers and attacks on civilian population centers". It sounds good, but Israel has tanks and targeted airstrike capability so obviously they make out way better on that deal.
So you're going to have to explain to me what this means. Suppose I think abortion is immoral because it says so in my holy book, and therefore I donate to candidates that want to outlaw abortion. Should I be stopped? Suppose I am a candidate who thinks abortion is immoral because it says so in my holy book- should I not be allowed to run for office? Should I be allowed to run for office, but only if I publicly condemn abortion for reasons other than the ones I actually believe? Suppose you think abortion is immoral because it says so in your favorite NON holy book. What should you get to do that the religious person doesn't get to do? If the Supreme Court or Congress or whomever discover that the majority of people who think abortion is wrong think it for religious reasons, does that mean ipso facto that abortion should be permitted? If I can convince people that abortion is immoral without mentioning religion at all, but a journalist goes through my trash and discovers that I'm secretly a very religious person, are my arguments thereby invalidated?
What's the substance here, in other words?
That sounds like you should be completely happy with the way things are right now. So why bring it up? What is it that you think religion i(not religious people) is doing in politics that it ought not be?
I never said I wasn’t happy with the way things are now with respect to religion and politics. I just hope it stays that way.
I’ve become bored with your replies to me, ucci. I’ve gone way beyond feeling frustrated by them. Your attempts at discussion are feeble, at best. I’m done with it.
That may be true, but you can tell yourself that and believe it. You could tell yourself that eventually they’ll come around–after seeing how a capitalist system benefits them too–and then all our rivalries will disolve.
Perhaps I’m belabouring the point, but I want to stress it for deeper reasons than just arbitering between you and Liz. I feel it’s important in these debates to remember that at the deepest levels, each side of every faction (or most factions, I guess), we’re all still striving to achieve the same ends: happiness for all, liberty for all, equality of respect and opportunity, etc. ← I realize that some (or all) of these are open to debate and even clear definition, but my point is that I think the majority of people, regardless of what side of this or that debate/faction they’re on, would like, and maybe are still trying, to cooperate with each other, to find peace and agreement with each other, an arrangement by which everyone can live happily together. That is to say, there is still, I believe, on some level, in most people, the desire and intent to find some arrangement by which everyone can get along. I feel that I have to stress this because if I don’t, I fear that we’ll be all the more likely to lose sight of it, and then it will be all the more likely that we won’t be striving for a common goal any longer (and then we become like the Jews and the Arabs, or the Catholics and the Protestants, or the blacks and the KKK, etc.).
Hmm… why is that? I mean, why do you think liberal ideologies (is that right?) got into the school system, journalism, and Hollywood? Does it just appeal to the masses more?
As for the religion thing, I think the purpose behind the separation between church and state is to prevent laws from being created which are based exclusively (read: without any regard for what the people want) on religious doctrine. So same sex marriage being illegal because the Bible says it’s wrong, or because God says so, and not because that’s the way the majority want it. A system in which church and state are separate is a system in which the laws are determine by popular vote.
Many studies have shown throughout time particular people are naturally drawn towards specific fields. It holds true for every type of person, black, white, woman, males. Every division, if left to their own devices naturally gravitate towards those fields. Many claims of racism, sexism and other stupid arguments, have been made as a result of these movements, so they are well documented. Is it not hard to believe that something like political philosophy is also motivating in the same ways. The cultures that create a Conservative is going to respect and drive a person towards a field, the same is true for Liberals, or any other aspect. That these fields attract specific groups is going to result in a natural insulation against outside viewpoints… To a point… (Source (Its a couple of paragraphs down))
I stand with, based on this argument and a understanding that Liberals are drawn towards Journalism, that Conservatives interact with Liberal opinions far more than the reverse. People have to seek out Conservative opinion, Liberal opinion is everywhere, so much so most people don’t even notice it.
Don’t believe me? Take a month, listen to nothing but Conservative radio and read Conservative books (I can provide a very good list). Then “rejoin” the populous, go to a movie. You’ll start to see how saturated it is. It’s like air, it takes being removed to really notice.
As to this, at current, most studies still show the US to be a right leaning country, so the masses in your question accounts for less than 50%. It is closer to 35% (with about 40% being conservative…). I think this is a problem of American Media being the only thing “outsiders” see. It would be a bad idea to assume it represents most of the country.
