Creating a sociopathic nation

No one realized that we were slowly creating a nation of near sociopaths. Or that those with the strongest sociopathic tendencies would be the most likely to rise up in the new corporate system. But that is exactly what we are becoming. A sociopathic nation.

To be sure, much of the financial support of the libertarian astroturf movement comes from men who are only concerned with their profit. Are the Koch brothers ideological sociopaths or are they just plain old sociopaths motivated by greed. Who knows? But within that movement are true believers - people who have convinced themselves, or allowed themselves to be convinced, that caring about, feeling sympathy for, or concerning oneself in any way with their fellow man is not only unnecessary, but actually a bad thing. An almost religion based on live and let die.

The result of this new religion, the worship of greed and selfishness, is the imminent breakdown of American society. We are watching unravel every day. As it must. A society based on the social code of every-man-for-himself cannot survive. Nor would we want it to.

So I was listening to the Thom Hartmann Show this morning in which he did a horrific segment on William Hickman, a cold blooded child murderer, whom Ayn Rand idolized. In her journal circa 1928, Ayn Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent murderer, William Edward Hickman. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she wrote.

So while Paul Ryan's bold economic plan is to literally take food from the mouths of babes (cutting food stamps) and put it into the hands of our aristocratic royalists, you now may have some understanding of the how starving America's children and euthanizing our elderly fits right into a philosophy that considers most of us worthless, unworthy of love--we are all (except the chosen elite) mere "lice."

One reason why most countries don’t find the time to embrace her thinking is that Ayn Rand is a textbook sociopath. Literally a sociopath: Ayn Rand, in her notebooks, worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of “ideal man” that Rand promoted in her more famous books — ideas which were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America’s most recent economic catastrophe — former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox — along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, Rep. Paul Ryan, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
Read more at Mark Ames: Paul Ryan

The loudest of all the Republicans, right-wing attack-dog pundits and the Teabagger mobs fighting to kill health care reform and eviscerate “entitlement programs” increasingly hold up Ayn Rand as their guru. Sales of her books have soared in the past couple of years; one poll ranked “Atlas Shrugged” as the second most influential book of the 20th century, after The Bible.
Read more at Mark Ames: Paul Ryan

In 1928, the writer Ayn Rand began planning a novel called The Little Street, whose hero, Danny Renahan, was to be based on "what Hickman suggested to [her]." The novel was never finished, but Rand wrote notes for it which were published after her death in the book Journals of Ayn Rand. Rand wanted the hero of her novel to be "A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me."[3] Rand scholars Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Jennifer Burns both interpret Rand's interest in Hickman as a sign of her early admiration of the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, especially since she several times referred to Hickman as a "Superman" (in the Nietzschean sense).[4][5]

She so admired - admired - the man's "pure reason and enlightened self-interest" that in her novel the Little Street, she deliberately modeled the hero 'Danny Renahan' after him. According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Renahan was intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.)

Much has been made of the influence of Nietzsche on Rand's writing, but while much of the attitude of her writing could be attributed to Nietzsche, one must wonder how much influence actually came from the man referred to above who so influenced her novel "The Little Street". Of The Fountainhead's hero, Howard Roark: He "has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world."

"The first thing that impresses me about the case is the ferocious rage of a whole society against one man. No matter what the man did, there is always something loathsome in the 'virtuous' indignation and mass-hatred of the 'majority.'... It is repulsive to see all these beings with worse sins and crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a criminal...

"This is not just the case of a terrible crime. It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. It is the fact that a crime has been committed by one man, alone; that this man knew it was against all laws of humanity and intended that way; that he does not want to recognize it as a crime and that he feels superior to all. It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul."

Quote: Originally Posted by darkbeaver

Already the Americans starve even when their stomachs are full cuz the food isn't real for decades it makes cancer an industry and it makes us stupid enough to elect sociopaths.

Quote: Originally Posted by EagleSmack

And WE'RE crazy?

Quote: Originally Posted by EagleSmack

And WE'RE crazy?

Quote: Originally Posted by EagleSmack

And some CC members it would appear.

Quote: Originally Posted by EagleSmack

And some CC members it would appear.

What men in power don’t realise is that if it is a woman’s body, it is not the state’s property but hers and hers alone to decide for.

For example, today on the 700 Club’s “Bring It On” segment where viewers ask Robertson questions, one man wondered how he should go about repairing his marriage with a wife who “insults” him and once tried to attack him.

“Well, you could become a Muslim and you could beat her,” Robertson responded. “This man’s got to stand up to her and he can’t let her get away with this stuff,” Robertson continued, “I don’t think we condone wife-beating these days but something has got to be done.”
He later said the woman is a “rebellious child” and pondered if she has psychological problems. Robertson told the viewer that since he “can’t divorce her according to the Scripture, so I say: move to Saudi Arabia.”

Quote: Originally Posted by Redmonton_Rebel

See above sociopath.

What Hitler did was evil, but what you and slime like you are doing could take us all out.

Like I said, you're a sociopath.

Quote: Originally Posted by EagleSmack

This is the OP, Red Rebel attacking one of our Mods. I think he gets a little too worked up about things.

Quote: Originally Posted by Redmonton_Rebel

Like I said, is it any wonder that there's so many problems in America when you have total sociopaths with so much power. .

Quote: Originally Posted by darkbeaver

Things appear all the time to you lower Americans.

"What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" (This declaration is made by the heroine Kira, Rand's stand-in; it is quoted in The Ideas of Ayn Rand by Ronald Merrill, pp. 38 - 39; the passage was altered when the book was reissued years after its original publication.)

On the value of human life: Man "is man only so long as he functions in accordance with the nature of a rational being. When he chooses to function otherwise, he is no longer man. There is no proper name for the thing which he then becomes ... When a man chooses to act in a sub-human manner, it is no longer proper for him to survive nor to be happy." (Journals, pp. 253-254, 288.)

Quote: Originally Posted by Redmonton_Rebel

They should apply a test to all candidates for high public office to determine whether or not they have a conscience, it really doesn't matter what your ideology is if you lack the ability to care or even understand the consequences of your actions on other people. The press used to provide some of this function, but it no longer does.

This applies to Dems and Republicans equally, America has had far too many politicians in the last few decades who almost completely lacked the ability to see beyond their own narrow interests.

Anyone who follows the philosophy of someone like Ayn Rand who saw the rest of us as worthless should be seen for the sociopaths they are.

Just read some of this ****:




This from a woman who saw a serial killer as brave and independent, the jurors who convicted him as lowlifes and who's had a profound influence on conservative thinking for decades. There's a reason America is in shambles, the kind of every man for himself BS that the right keeps spouting is producing the very conditions that are killing the country, it should be obvious that if you take all the wealth and give it to a tiny minority the whole nation falls apart, you're not creating a healthy society, you're in effect killing it.

Which is the definition of sociopathy.

Quote: Originally Posted by EagleSmack

What kind of things?

This ought to be good.

Quote: Originally Posted by darkbeaver

ememies, gods, abortion issues, gay marriage issues and sketchy wars for freedom and the funniest of all democracy, Donald Trump, visions of invincibility, green shoots, equality, benevolent Presidents all these and more appear

Quote: Originally Posted by EagleSmack

This is the OP, Red Rebel attacking one of our Mods in another thread. I think he gets a little too worked up about things.

If anything , people without conscience tend to believe their way of being in the world is superior to ours. They often speak of the naivete of other people and their ridiculous scruples, or of their curiosity about why so many people are unwilling to manipulate others, even in the service of their most important ambitions. Or that they theorize that all people are the same-unscrupulous, like them-but are dishonestly playacting something mythical called "conscience." By this later proposition, the only straightforward and honest people in the world are they themselves. They are being "real" in a society of phonies.