rigorousintuition.ca

"Those who have put out the peoples eyes reproach them for their blindness." -- John Milton

WoW -- This Rosen character could be the leading candidate for an example of self-righteous political Sophistry. His spin on circular reasoning is the MOST Moebius-like I've ever seen, ie. start out with a premise, follow it with excrutiating attention & focus until you demonstrate it actually means the opposite of what you claim, and insist that's the PROOF of your argument.

Try calling into his top rated talk show in Denver on KOA sometime (in your early 20s). I never did call -- I would have said "fuck" too much and would have just been screened out. But I would listen to him everyday as a "kid", just to bone up on the fascist stream of thought. He's a "Brazil" (not the country but the movie) fascist, a pencil pusher. He's also a brilliant shut-downer of debate -- he is a human moebius strip. He completely destroyed some creationists once, just embarrassed them, but his politics are absolutely selfish. He's a water carrier for the old school republican party. Probably not the tea party, from what I know of him. He has never had any time for religion, probably because the lie of organized religion is beneath his technofascist sensibilities.

He also apparently "lost his shirt" in the Madoff bullshit and was fairly big news a couple years ago. But he lost millions in the same scams he epitomizes and espouses just under the "different guises" of the all powerful logo and sponsorship.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/18 ... etail.html

Read that. And yet he still publishes shit that undermines those "under him" on a daily basis. Total sniveling cocksucker to the corporatists.

It seems to me that the basic underlying belief of both the sociopatholigarchs and their minions in the so-called "tea party" is:

I got mine; get your f---ing own.

Those who don't "got" at the moment still have this attitude.

Sadly, many (loudly) profess to be Christians, though I believe that Jesus may not be too thrilled with their practice of his teachings.

Which to me shows that they totally are ignorant of the very beliefs they profess.

I've tried to understand why the tea party believers feel this way.

They feel they have worked hard for what they have. They see that they played by the rules and they are resentful that somewhere, someone is getting something for free, something they don't deserve. In a weird way, it is all about selfishness and jealousy.

Some of this attitude about welfare, etc. is warranted. I personally know of people who could work, but have found life so much "easier" on the dole. But I realize that the majority of people who draw do so legitimately. With any program, there will be a small minority who abuse the system. That should be policed and corrected.

But the Tea Partiers just go back to their core belief of "I got mine, get your f---ing own" and that is their ultimate answer to any type of social welfare or public works. They don't believe in being "their brothers keeper".

Meanwhile the Sociopatholigarchs are busy reinforcing these beliefs in said minions through radio, MSM and cable talking heads, and laughing all the way to the bank.

It's a really sickening state of affairs.

This piece from The Telegraph supports the idea that a disproportionate number of psychopaths---by their lack of empathy, their desire to hold power over others, their facility as glib liars and their readiness to do 'whatever it takes'---will acquire positions of power and responsibility. These 'advantages' will constantly win out. Among the higher socioeconomic ranks, I think the number is probably higher than one in 25.

One in 25 business leaders 'could be a psychopath'
As many as one in 25 company bosses could be a psychopath, according to a new study.

By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent

7:30AM BST 02 Sep 2011

Psychopaths are defined by their lack of moral instincts, but many are able to hide this by a natural ability to charm and manipulate both their seniors and subordinates.

While some psychopaths are outwardly aggressive and destructive, factors like a happy upbringing can help others to mimic colleagues and fit in at work.

The capacity of the 'successful psychopath' to identify and outwardly display the qualities corporate leaders admire helps them climb the career ladder quickly despite being poor managers.

This makes it virtually impossible to tell the difference between a psychopath and a genuinely good boss, leading psychologists said in a BBC Horizon programme to be screened on Wednesday.

Paul Babiak, a New York psychologist, said: "Psychopaths really aren't the kind of person you think they are ... you could be living with or married to one for 20 years or more and not know that person is a psychopath.

"Part of the problem is that the very things we're looking for in our leaders, the psychopath can easily mimic.

"Their natural tendency is to be charming. Take that charm and couch it in the right business language and it sounds like charismatic leadership".

Prof Bob Hare of the University of British Columbia in Canada said as many as one in 100 Americans have some psychopathic characteristics.

He added: "A psychopath can actually put themselves in your skin, intellectually not emotionally.

"What this allows them to do is use words to manipulate and con and to interact with you without the baggage of feeling your pain."

: Horizon: Are You Good Or Evil? will be screened on BBC TWO at 9pm on Wednesday, September 7

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... opath.html

^^ Including our competitors boss yeah?

my contribution

http://www.fbinaa.org/files/public/janfeb2010issue.pdf

Elvis wrote:This piece from The Telegraph supports the idea that a disproportionate number of psychopaths---by their lack of empathy, their desire to hold power over others, their facility as glib liars and their readiness to do 'whatever it takes'---will acquire positions of power and responsibility. These 'advantages' will constantly win out. Among the higher socioeconomic ranks, I think the number is probably higher than one in 25.

Are you kidding? It's more like 1 in 10 for the population as a whole. Probably higher. In ordinary functions of work and commuting almost everyone spends at least a little time every day acting like a psychopath just to adapt to what is considered normal. The "winner" behavioral type honored for strivers and bosses is of a ruthless and cruel, lying sack of shit. Among actual operative leaders of the society ("power elite" as opposed to "ruling class") being a heartless prick is practically a requirement! Remember, at the top we're producing new aggressive wars every three years, ignoring the genocides that result. The military trains young pepole in psychopathy. The MIC's idea of cutting-edge research is in microchipping your nervous system to maximize productivity. The whole top levels of the bankster class just got away with the world's biggest and most obvious financial fraud ever (and justify everything they did). The corporate media froths over single child-murders for months at a time while failing to cover anything that would be of consequence in a democracy. The billionaire's sport is to demonize teachers and break the wages of people making 1/1000 what they do. Candidates for political office, many of whom know better, pander to maximized stupidity. People who believe in whatever they do and can play their roles with gusto obviously have an advantage. I'd have to think a minimum of a third of the power elite are mentally ill in ways that would be described as psychopathic or sociopathic if diagnosed. (All the major players of the Bush regime were obvious.) It's a big advantage.

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We have met the enemy...

The word is spreading on the net. Google search found this - a poster named "jules" in comment (# 69) to this OP:

Quick link: Who goes to right wing rallies, and why?
By Kim on August 24, 2011

I don’t always agree with Bernard Keane but I think he is right on the money on the question of the demographics and motivations of participants in right wing rallies such as the recent ones in Canberra, in his first paragraph:

…the motivating force behind these groups appears to be more about expressing resentment about social and economic change in recent decades, and particularly because such changes have delivered nothing but difficulties for the demographics we’re talking about: social change has undermined the once-dominant status of older white heteros-xual people and males in particular, and, in the Australian context, economic changes have squeezed them, along with everyone else, into a far more competitive, market-based economy that no longer delivers the sort of certainty they grew up with and that Generation X, in particular, never had.

For such people, Gillard’s gender (and unmarried status) or Obama’s race are not so much a problem as a high-profile, indeed inescapable, symbol of how much the world has changed and changed in ways that deliver nothing but pain for such people.

I think there’s probably an aspect of the phenomenon he identifies in the second para, but I am very far from being as confident as he is that racism and sexism are not a big part of the picture.

He’s also spot on about the ludicrous claims about ‘censorship’. And about the way the Coalition is essentially using this diffuse ressentiment to contribute to its recreation of the febrile atmosphere of 1975.

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2011/08/24/qu ... s-and-why/

Thats me dude.

I was working on the principle that the more places it ends up the better.

Its a great word.

That site is rather straight tho.

I like that site, dude.

It has its moments, tho its times its so ... straight.

Not sexuality wise but ... well they are all sociologist academics so they have certain worldviews. Well not all of them are academics but you know what I mean.

Its a great site for a stoush tho.

Ok - I'm being harsh, its a good site for Aussie lefties cos there rally are fuck all of us.

"See, I'm a trader. I don't really care about that kind of stuff."

Stock trader: Europe will collapse because ‘Goldman Sachs rules the world’

Posted on 09.26.11
By Stephen C. Webster

...

Rastani added: “Personally, I’ve been dreaming of this moment for three years. I have a confession, which is, I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession. I dream of another moment like this. Why? Because people don’t seem to really remember. The depression in the 30′s wasn’t just about a market crash. There were some people who were prepared to make money from that crash. I think anybody can do that.”

“What I would say to everybody is, get prepared. It’s not the time right now to, wishfully thinking the government’s going to sort things out. The governments don’t rule the world. Goldman Sachs rules the world. Goldman Sachs does not care about this rescue package, neither does the big funds.”

“In less than 12 months, my prediction is, the savings of millions of people is going to vanish. And this is just the beginning.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/ ... the-world/

blanc wrote:"Someone was paid, and probably quite well, to write something that should have been Swiftian satire but sadly isn't."

tangential question. Do sociopaths, including oligarchical, understand satire or indeed have a sense of humour? Can anyone call to mind one who is good for a laugh?

You know, that is really an excellent question. A sense of humor, even a dark sense of humor, seems to require at least some capacity for empathy, even if the end result is anything but empathetic to the subject of the "humor."

And yes, you're right: I have noticed that people in the category of narcissists, sociopaths, etc. do seem to have a noticeably low HQ (or as I tend to think of it: "Humor Quotient"). And even when they do have a sense of humor, it is usually very under-developed.

Thanks for bringing this up.

I brought the humour question up because of an observation. To explain, I spent some time with r.a. perpetrators without knowing of their crimes (another story). Various things on looking back give me that 'I should have known' feeling, incidents which stuck in the mind as being odd without obviously being elucidating. Of these, several incidents, but one in particular, of one of them telling a joke. Its hard to describe verbally communication which goes on at a non verbal level, but the strong sense that the joke teller did not comprehend the joke and was observing our reactions like some kind of white coated researcher staring into a dish at a bunch of cells. The eyes were as cold as a dead fish's. Looking back, I supposed that the world of the psychopath is too literal to understand humour. Humour relies on empathy, but also on shared boundries, a kind of moral compass, and a keen sense of one's own hypocricy in presenting one face to the world and thinking or doing something else. They have no such sense of hypocricy or dishonesty - fooling others by a structure of lies, double talk, cover story is as essential and natural as eating a slice of toast for breakfast. No shame about it. They don't share boundries or moral sense.