*Cartoon: Martyn Turner, used with permission: https://www.facebook.com/martynturnercartoons/ . http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/martyn-turner
First published August 5
It’s time for celebrity psychopath! The risible freak show that is the current US administration might not be exceptional.
Although psychopathy is normally associated with serial killers like Ted Bundy, he exhibited traits that are far from uncommon in everyday society. Psychopaths, apparently, are prolific amongst the general population and our leaders are not lacking. Many commentators have suggested that Toe Knee A Butt is a narcissist and/or a sociopath, but according to a fascinating interview by Richard Fidler with David Gillespie ( http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/conversations-david-gillespie/8717944 ), these are euphemisms for psychopathy.
And what are the criteria? Untrustworthy, serial liar, self-referential, self-aggrandising, manipulative, domineering, parasitic, disruptive, lacking in empathy, need I go on?
Of course, Trump is the arch-psychopath according to these criteria with truth now a value-free commodity that can be bent and moulded like putty to affix the glass to whatever window he wants to look through that day, or frequently that minute. And it becomes so exceptional for Dump, Toe Knee, J Edgar Tuber, Scumo, Krudd and others to tell the truth that if they do, it will not, and cannot, be believed because serial lying is the norm. The thing about proven liars is that you can never trust them.
But what is driving this? Could it be that the truth no longer serves the interest of those in power? Consider the problems facing the Western world, and above all the need to ensure that the ‘haves’ continue to increase their share. Using traditional logic, this theft should be impossible when considering economic, scientific, social or ethical reasoning. Use these lenses to view any of our current dysfunctions and the policies fail to make sense. This neoliberal boat will not float if fairness, justice, the environment and social cohesion are considered as worth pursuing. Human rights, whether constitutional as in a Bill of Rights, or institutional as in a Commission, are anathema to those seeking to diminish those very values.
So, did this drive the already loony to their current psychopathy, or were they well on the way beforehand?
Perhaps they searched and found a niche in which their ‘talents’ were most suited? Krudd was well-known for his toxic behaviour from early in his career in the Queensland government. However, the term ‘compassionate Conservative’ is perhaps one of the most pejorative oxymorons regarding these questions. We know what is good for you, and that is why we are making you poorer and your life even harder.
Lack of empathy is axiomatic to the multi-layered mantras preached by the psychopaths – rising tides, floating boats and effects trickling down. Caring for others, especially by those with a Christian bent, does not involve locking up people in concentration camps where, if they ever emerge and survive, will probably need lifelong psychiatric care – all done under the pretence that this physical and psychological torture is required to stop others drowning, while simultaneously trying to please their fellow psychopaths in society. Caring for others does not entail penalising society’s weakest and least able to resist. Caring for others does not involve sanctioning the environmental horrors currently underway. But what these ‘caring’ people most promote is the continuing enrichment of the few. As an elderly academic commented, ‘The trickle-down effect involves the rich pissing on the poor’. Empathy is not in their vocabulary.
With neoliberalism in meltdown, the psychopaths are now being primed for the war against equality. Any mention of the less well-off being favoured is met with cries of ‘class envy’. We may not become Greece but it should be noted that a major growth industry in the UK is food banks to service the pauperisation of society. Hence, psychopathic leaders and their acolytes are more likely to become the norm in the West as equality of any sort is not on the menu. We are undergoing the deliberalisation, dehumanisation and toxification of what were once ‘green and pleasant lands’. Daring to speak out may even become as dangerous as it is in Turkey today. For there is one thing, according to David Gillespie, that psychopaths abhor – being confronted and called to account.
*Mike Buky taught carpentry and navigation in Tonga and has seen enough dead coral to be frightened. He arrived in Australia on board sailing yacht Kadoona in 1998 after a ten year passage from the UK. After graduating at the University of the Surfing Sunshine Coast, in International Politics, and after a second operation he emigrated to Tasmania with his first mate, Trisha, to the aroboreally-challenged NW of Tasmania where they grow vegies and try not to be run over by logging trucks.
