Political Parties as Psychopaths

Our internals are abusive, rotten and corrupt while we try to project an image of civilized behaviour and fair play externally in our foreign relations. Foreign friends may be fooled, but citizens must recognize psychopathic behaviour for what it is.

By batsman

In my previous write-up (Is a Psychopath Ruining Your Life?), I mentioned some reports arguing that corporations behave as medically and legally defined psychopaths if they were human. So it is that people who form corporations are able to achieve lots more and make more profits without having to trouble with conscience. 

Just looking at oil spills and other disasters is enough. There are plenty of oil spills all over the world. The unfortunate thing is when they occur in underdeveloped countries such as Papua New Guinea or Nigeria, the ordinary people whose lives are ruined do not have the means and connections to get adequate compensation and the big corporations get away with it (e.g. in the case of Bhopal where there was another disaster of a different kind) whereas in places such as the US, people may actually be able to squeeze more compensation than their actual losses because they have the support of their institutions and media. 

Some of the reasons why corporations have a tendency to act like psychopaths seem clear. Conscience is a human thing while corporations are not human. For this reason alone, corporations which are controlled by groups of humans called directors and shareholders can afford to conveniently place social responsibility, guilt or conscience aside or “share” it until no one feels any remorse anymore and hide under the corporate motive of making profits or increasing shareholder value. And if they are big enough and able to form monopolies, they even have the cow-sense to believe that enjoyment of market share is their right and entitlement. This is probably the reason why some corporations screw up – arrogance is a valid cause for making mistakes. 

So it is that corporations do have some human feelings such as arrogance, egotism, elitism and entitlement, but are able to dispense with guilt and conscience. These are classic conditions for psychopaths to breed and do well. 

There are exceptions of course. Companies which are headed and controlled by a decent CEO or owner often show signs of morality or conscience. Thus it is a good thing to have more Warren Buffets around. 

I would like to take the argument to another plane. I think it is even more probable that political parties exhibit even more pronounced traits of psychopathy especially when their support base is racial in character. 

So it is/was that in places such as Germany, Israel, Rwanda and Bosnia, political parties act as such huge psychopaths and create so many individual psychopaths among people that often times huge swathes of ordinary people become psychopathic if only temporarily. Most of the time it is because of the feeling of absolute power and racial pride and entitlement that is not accompanied by any human feelings of remorse or conscience. These are classic conditions for genocide to occur. 

In Malaysia an increasingly unhealthy political climate is creating conditions for more and more psychopaths to exist and flourish while those who stand up to these psychopaths are detained under the ISA, brought to trial under trumped up charges or forced into exile. When these psychopaths organize under NGOs, political parties, political movements or even start blogs, we all face evil of truly humongous proportions. 

In Malaysia, general elections are conducted every 4 or 5 years. Voters have the right to choose their government and have the same right to change their minds in the next elections if they feel they have made a mistake. Power holders who treat elections as life or death issues, play dirty tricks or abuse their power to victimize the opposition in order to hold on to power must either be desperate to cover up their corruption and criminal acts or have a marked psychopathic tendency. 

It is advisable to pull back from the brink and the only way is to stand up to these psychopaths. Buckling under these psychopaths is to make them feel even more powerful and even more righteous and hence become even more insane and more brutal. Does anyone have any other ideas to improve the situation? 

Here, I would like to discuss the rather special case of USA. Internally, the USA seems to have all the proper checks and balances. People have recourse to an excellent judicial system to address grievances. Internally, the USA seems to be a very good place to live. 

Unfortunately, in terms of external behaviour, the US faces few if no checks and balances. In its role as international policeman (based on its record of good internal checks and balances and excellent judicial system), it faces few challenges to its authority and has turned into a psychopath now that the Soviet Union no longer poses as a challenge to its international power. 

It launches wars of aggression based on the principle of pre-emptive strike (meaning it can whack you good and proper just because it suspects you of being antagonistic) and its own intelligence reports which have too often proved faulty or even purposefully misleading. It suffers no pang of guilt for displacing millions of refugees and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives because of faulty intelligence and false suspicions and it feels it is entitled to continue to act as international policeman and human rights champion. If this is not psychopathic, I don’t know what is. So not only political parties can be psychopathic, governments and even countries can be too. 

Recently however, it has suffered a disastrous financial set back and this has affected its self-confidence somewhat. As a result it is now re-appraising its blind support for the Zionists in Palestine (US questions its unwavering support for Israel | World news | The Guardian). It appears that only when it is feeling less than all-powerful does it have any review of its foreign actions and policies. More than likely it is because the US Zionist lobby has also suffered from the financial disaster and is less powerful than it used to be. 

So it is that a small psychopath called Britain is feeling the heat from a big psychopath called the US because one of its (probably psychopathic) corporations (don’t forget it’s chief honcho is capable of enjoying watching yacht races while people’s lives are being ruined by the oil spill and his own company’s share price is taking a dive) made a mistake with deep sea drilling. Britain is getting what it dishes out to small and weak countries and whining nauseatingly about it. Psychopaths thrive on power and privilege. 

This has important lessons for us. At no time can we allow any political party with a racial support base to be all-powerful (especially ones that use consultants with an Israeli – US background) even if it claims to be the good guy. We must use our votes to stop corruption, sin and abuse of power as well as to build proper checks and balances such as a half decent judicial system and maybe if we are lucky – a half decent police force. 

In a sense we are the opposite of the USA. Our internals are abusive, rotten and corrupt while we try to project an image of civilized behaviour and fair play externally in our foreign relations. Foreign friends may be fooled, but citizens must recognize psychopathic behaviour for what it is.