ARE ROMNEY AND RYAN SOCIOPATHS?
November
5, 2012
One
in 25 people that you know has no conscience and can do anything, to anyone,
without guilt, shame, or remorse.
This is the assertion of psychologist
Martha Stout. I had an “aha” moment after learning about sociopaths; it
explains much about human behavior that has long baffled me, and it might shed light on the character and
motives of the two men at the top of the GOP ticket. I will leave it to people
more intimate with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to judge, as I am dependent for
clues upon what information makes it into the media spotlight. But, both Romney
and Ryan conspicuously exhibit behaviors that suggest they are members of that
4% who lack a conscience.
Stout calls sociopaths “ice people” and says they often have “a kind of glow or charisma that makes them
more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They’re more
spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else.”
Without genuine human connections, Stout says, sociopaths tend to be
fundamentally bored, so they stimulate and entertain themselves by playing
games with other people. They are manipulators, thrilled by winning,
dominating, making others jump through hoops. The clues Stout shares that bring
to mind Mitt Romney especially are that sociopaths are commonly and casually
deceitful, and they are generally attracted to power.
Stout was on the staff of Harvard Medical
School for 25 years, working with victims of emotional trauma. She eventually
grew curious about the people capable of inflicting the horrors she heard about
from her clients. What she discovered is that 4% of the population lacks a
conscience. These conscience-free people are termed sociopaths or psychopaths.
Sociopaths, she says, appear to figure out early in life that they are
different from others, and they learn to mimic the emotional responses of
non-sociopaths. The result is that people do not realize sociopaths are playing
by a very different set of rules. Stout wrote a book, The
Sociopath Next Door, because she thinks we can see through the
act and protect ourselves from these people if we know what to look for.
These are sociopathic markers gathered
from Martha Stout’s writings, and from Doctors Paul Babiak
and Robert Hare, along with some of my own observations.
·
Sociopaths are attracted to positions of
power, and the more helpless their subordinates, the better.
·
Sociopaths learn to appear to be kind
and good, often extraordinarily so.
Projecting a polished image of goodness is vital to sociopaths and they
put a lot of energy into impressing people with their goodness, their power,
their accomplishments, or their acquisitions.
·
They sometimes lie for no particular reason,
when the truth would serve just as well.
·
They are superficial, and use people as a means
to an end.
·
Most sociopaths are not criminals, in a legal
sense; they make up only 20% of the incarcerated.
·
They enjoy risk, but not responsibility.
·
They frequently engage in flattery.
·
They particularly enjoy corrupting or
debasing the innocent, noble or pure of heart.
·
They have above average rates of alcohol or
drug abuse, suicide, and they are often hypochondriacs.
·
They are narcissistic and supremely self
absorbed, with an excessive need for admiration.
·
They have a sense of superiority,
grandiosity, and entitlement.
·
They will use the pity play to gain sympathy
or cooperation.
·
They may make themselves the center of
attention by hogging conversation or belittling others.
·
They are not mentally ill (and thereby
treatable), they simply lack the capacity to love or feel empathy.
·
They have no internal moral compass, but they
need to fool people and they enjoy power and manipulating others, so the
codified rules and moral authority of organized religion can be useful tools
for them. Tragically, religious hierarchies have long been a favored refuge of
the conscienceless.
·
Corporations are sociopathic by charter so
sociopaths rise naturally to the tops of these institutions.
·
Government, of course, is a sociopath magnet.
Imagine the competitive advantage in business or politics of being totally without
scruples and able to do whatever it takes to defeat a competitor or opponent
who suffers from the afflictions of ethics and a conscience. The power of high
office is like a drug to sociopaths.
·
They have just one mood, no extremes of
happiness or sadness, no matter the circumstance. They are unmoved even at the
death of people they supposedly love.
·
They have infatuations and obsessions, and
can be possessive, but they do not truly love others.
·
Money is their measure of everything and they
obsess on controlling it.
·
Charity is a useful tool and they engage in
charity to be seen, to score points for future use or to polish their façade of
goodness.
·
They are masters at making others feel guilty
while appearing to be altruistic, ill-used or self-sacrificing.
·
Their cruelty and manipulations can be clever
and subtle, and they play mind games to dislodge a victim’s trust in his or her
own perceptions.
·
The sociopaths I know are all married- to
people they can control- but their children mostly see through them.
·
Twin studies suggest there is both nature
(genetics) and nurture (environment) involved in creating a sociopath.
Sociopathy runs in families.
·
Sociopaths take aging hard as it reduces sex
appeal, a valuable tool, and they tend to fight it with sometimes absurd
results.
·
They accrue skills over time, but never
wisdom.
·
They seem to lack intuition and, while they
lie frequently to others, they cannot easily tell when someone is dishonest
with them.
·
They are frequently respected leaders, bastions
of community, school, church, or business.
·
They may have many acquaintances, and maybe
pawns or sycophants, but they have no real friends.
·
Sociopaths do not see themselves as broken;
they think people of conscience have the deficiency.
The misery and devastation this 4% of
society wreaks is highly disproportionate to their small number. Sociopaths are
the people who start wars, scar children, outsource jobs to countries with slave
wages, and crash economies for personal gain. They are the kindly, smiling,
child molesters, con artists, and toxic polluters. The prospect of the saber
rattling Mitt in control of the most powerful military on earth, sans
conscience, is very, very scary to me. Sociopaths blind-side us with behavior
that is simply unfathomable to those in possession of a conscience. Possibly
the most intriguing point Stout offers is that there is actually a test; the brains of sociopaths differ
neurologically from the brains of others.
If you monitor electrical activity in
the brain of a person with emotions, there is a reaction to emotional words
like love or mother- not so with a sociopath. When sociopaths are given a
decision task involving emotional topics, brain imaging finds that they use the
part of the brain non-sociopaths use to solve algebra problems. If only we
could get Romney and Ryan in the MRI machine and ask them questions!
The bald-faced BS generously issuing
from the lips of Mitt Romney these days suggests that he has a sociopathic
compulsion to deceive. Perhaps the reason President Obama froze up during the
first presidential debate was that he was in shock at the stunning transformation
of Mitt
into an unrecognizable moderate, after the ultra conservative act he has been
performing in his road show of late. Mitt also does not seem the least bit
embarrassed when his lies are discovered and refuted- another sociopathic red
flag. He is even “doubling
down”
on a thoroughly refuted lie in ads he
is currently running in Ohio. Sociopaths, incapable of feeling shame, are
typically unfazed when their deceits are uncovered- they go on as if nothing
happened. Mitt spews major, whoppers
about Obama’s record, and he changes his story and positions
depending on who he is talking to. This goes way beyond the fuzzy, evasive “politi-speak”
of your typical politician. There are numerous reputable groups tracking Mitt’s
torrent of
untruths and reversals. Here are a few of his flip
flops, for example.
·
Abortions should be safe and legal. Roe v.
Wade should be overturned.
·
He’s for stem cell research. He’s against
stem cell research.
·
He likes health care mandates and they work.
Mandates are unconstitutional.
·
He’s a moderate. He’s severely conservative.
·
He would be stronger on gay rights than
Senator Ted Kennedy. He supports a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
·
He supported and signed an assault weapons
ban in Massachusetts. He’s against any gun control legislation.
·
He was proud of his health-care legislation in
Massachusetts (the model for Obamacare.) He disowns the healthcare system he
established in MA.
·
He thinks the planet is getting warmer,
humans are contributing, and he pushed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
He questions climate-change science.
·
The dog was in an “air tight” kennel of the
roof of his car for a 12 hour drive. The dog likes the “fresh air” riding on
the roof.
Accounts of
people impacted by “eyes of a snake” Mitt Romney, abound on the web. Mass
Knows Mitt, lets
residents of his home state of Massachusetts post their experiences with Mitt;
it’s not pretty and a lot of them describe a sociopathic character. People
recount that he cooked the books, claiming to balance the budget and lower
taxes, while really shifting payments onto citizens and cutting essential
services. They seem to think he only took the job as a stepping stone to run
for president, which he did on their dime, while “badmouthing” their state.
There are the
multiple well documented Bain lies, and the verified story, which Mitt
conveniently forgets, of his cruel attack on a gay schoolmate back in high school. There is also
the account of the Mormon mother of four, Carrel Sheldon,
whose pregnancy threatened her life. The woman was accidentally overdosed on
blood thinner which caused heavy internal bleeding and severe kidney damage. Her
life was “clearly in peril” and her doctor told her the pregnancy could be
fatal, so he recommended she abort. The woman asked advice of her stake
president, a Mormon official and Harvard-trained physician, who told her to
protect her own life so she could continue caring for her children. Mitt, a
Mormon bishop at the time, came to Sheldon uninvited and told her the 8 week fetus
was more important than she was. “There was no empathy forthcoming from Romney,
according to Sheldon, no warmth or sympathy” at this difficult and frightening
time. Sheldon says Romney yelled at her and called her a liar and “didn't seem
to care a lick about her personal well-being.”
Then there is
the sordid tale of Delphi. Romney is running ads where
pensioners of auto parts manufacturer Delphi bizarrely blame Obama for cutting
their pensions after the auto bailout. The real reason the pensions were cut is
that the sociopathic vulture fund, Elliot Management, which took control of
Delphi for pennies on the dollar, refuses to pay what is owed retirees, electing
to spend Delphi’s ample new profits (made possible by U.S. taxpayers), to buy
up other companies. Taxpayers spent billions saving Delphi, upon whom GM and
Chrysler depend for steering columns. Meanwhile, Romney and company shipped
every single union job at Delphi
to China. Romney’s stake in the vulture fund has made him at least $15 million
and possibly as much as $115 million- tax free as Delphi’s headquarters were
moved to a tax haven.
Between the
copious deceit, the shameless hypocrisy, the profiteering and greed, his
driving lust for power, and his cruelty, condescension, and absence of empathy,
Mitt Romney seems a close match for
the profile of a sociopath.
The primary thing that makes me
suspect Paul Ryan might also be a sociopath is his enthusiasm for the
philosophy of writer Ayn Rand. Paul Ryan said in a speech in 2005 “I grew up
reading Ayn Rand, and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value
systems are and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s
required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff.” Ryan says Rand
is the reason he went into politics, and he gives Rand’s books, ironically, as Christmas
presents! An article on the GOP’s religion woes quotes the “napkin” version of Ayn Rand’s
philosophy:
“Rand's novels are vehicles for a system of thought known as Objectivism.
Rand developed this philosophy at the length of Tolstoy, with the intellectual
pretensions of Hegel, but it can be summarized on a napkin. Reason is
everything. Religion is a fraud. Selfishness is a virtue. Altruism is a crime
against human excellence. Self-sacrifice is weakness. Weakness is
contemptible.”
This atheistic philosophy is
conspicuously at odds with Paul Ryan’s professed Catholic faith, and Ryan has
attempted to distance himself from Rand after some folks noticed this
incongruity. I imagine, however, that Ayn Rand’s elevation of selfishness and
greed into supreme virtues spoke to something deep in Ryan’s psyche. His
formerly unbridled worship of Rand’s philosophy suggests that he delightedly
recognized in her ideas something that gelled with his natural inclinations. Ayn
Rand is a cheerleader, proudly trumpeting the sociopathic value system-
survival of the fittest, contempt for the sick, the weak, the disabled, the
poor, or the unlucky. Let the orphans starve does not go over well with some
Christians, however, so Ryan has had to verbally dance away from the edge on
Rand. Ryan’s fiscally fraudulent, Republican approved budget, however, is clearly based on the
fundamentals of Rand’s philosophy, so we can see where his heart (such as it
is) actually lies.
Stout
says we may protect ourselves from sociopaths by being aware that not everyone
we meet is controlled by a sense of connectedness and responsibility to others.
She instructs us to question authority, to watch for small lies, to suspect
flattery and the pity play. If you spot the façade of a probable sociopath, she
says, refuse to be sucked into their games. If you must deal with them, call
them on their deceit, their cruelty, or their manipulations. I say, protect
yourself and don’t worry too much about hurting a sociopath’s feelings, because
they have none. I would also suggest that it is not a great idea to vote a
person into the most powerful position on earth after he shows signs of being a
sociopath, free of conscience and capable of doing anything, to anyone, without
guilt, shame, or remorse.
