You Don’t Have To Be A Psychopath

…to be a politician. But it helps:

Psychopathy is a personality disorder manifested in people who use a mixture of charm, manipulation, intimidation, and occasionally violence to control others, in order to satisfy their own selfish needs. Although the concept of psychopathy has been known for centuries, the FBI leads the world in the research effort to develop a series of assessment tools, to evaluate the personality traits and behaviors attributable to psychopaths.

Interpersonal traits include glibness, superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, and the manipulation of others. The affective traits include a lack of remorse and/or guilt, shallow affect, a lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility. The lifestyle behaviors include stimulation-seeking behavior, impulsivity, irresponsibility, parasitic orientation, and a lack of realistic life goals.

Research has demonstrated that in those criminals who are psychopathic, scores vary, ranging from a high degree of psychopathy to some measure of psychopathy. However, not all violent offenders are psychopaths and not all psychopaths are violent offenders. If violent offenders are psychopathic, they are able to assault, rape, and murder without concern for legal, moral, or social consequences. This allows them to do what they want, whenever they want. Ironically, these same traits exist in men and women who are drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political officeholders.

Words to remember every voting day.

5 thoughts on “You Don’t Have To Be A Psychopath”

  1. I always thought psychopaths were rare in society, but actually their percentage in the general population is quite high. You can’t really win an argument with them. Plugging your ears and clubbing them over the head is about the only way to go.

    Outside of court, it’s very difficult to criminalize lying. Even in court it’s not easy… you know, depending on what is, is.

    Modern society accepts lying as the norm, but it really is evil.

  2. Modern society accepts lying as the norm, but it really is evil.

    A “modern” society that accepts lying as the norm will not long remain a modern society.

  3. Who said that actually wanting a political office should automatically disqualify a person from ever getting it? A. C. Clarke?

Comments are closed.