A nuclear apocalypse is something we see as solidly in the realm of somewhat antiquated science fiction. The Fallout series of video games is set in a “retrofuturistic” future, that is, a future as imagined from the 1950s, and takes as its central premise a central anxiety of that decade, nuclear war. We are now occasionally treated to declassified government plans for dealing with such a catastrophe, such as the recent declassification of a speech written for Elizabeth II in the event of nuclear war. Such artifacts are treated as relics of the past, reminding us of fears now allayed. Now instead of The Day After, the 1983 TV movie on the aftermath of a nuclear war, we fret about biotechnology in Rise of the Planet of the Apes or climatological catastrophes in 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow. But the demons of the past are not dead.

According to the Arms Control Association, nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons exist in the world today, including more than 3,000 at this moment sitting atop missiles ready for launch. These weapons are a mortal threat to every man, woman, and child on this planet. At any moment, everything we have built, all our art and science, all our lives and all our loved ones, could be snuffed out at the whim of a politician, or even more chillingly, by accident.

The history of nuclear near-misses is well worth examining, but during this centennial year of the outbreak of the Great War, the whims of politicians deserve our focus. For all their careful pretense of competence, history reveals that the great statesmen are as inept at war and peace as they are at running the DMV. During the July Crisis of 1914, the wise statesmen of Europe each entirely misjudged the others and stumbled blindly into a catastrophic war. A minor crisis in a comparatively obscure (to the West) corner of Europe became, by stumbles and errors, a cataclysm.

Last summer, a war between the United States and its allies in Western Europe and Syria, a Russian ally hosting a small Russian military base, was narrowly averted. At this moment, Russia and the West are jockeying for influence and control over Ukraine, and shots have already been fired in Slovyansk. Our leaders have confidently unleashed war on Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Pakistan just over the last ten years, and casually discuss possibly attacking Iran and Syria while aggressively “confronting” Russia today. When we talk about war, we gamble with the end of our civilization. Such an end seems remote now, just as a world war seemed to most Europeans in July, 1914. But the missiles are still armed. If one crisis runs out of control, if one of these eminently fallible politicians feels cornered or spiteful or just like his bluff won’t be called, everything we have built in the West since the last time we inadvertently destroyed our own civilization in the middle of the first millennium of the Common Era could be lost, to say nothing of the millennia-old civilizations of Asia and Africa.

The end of a civilization is a difficult thing to contemplate. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road does an excellent job, as does the aforementioned Fallout series. But for a more concrete example, Bryan Ward-Perkins’s The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization is superb. While much recent scholarship, following Peter Brown’s classic The World of Late Antiquity, has emphasized continuities between classical antiquity and the medieval world that followed, Ward-Perkins emphasizes the human costs of the collapse of classical Mediterranean civilization. The disintegration of trade networks and the concomitant collapse of the division of labor led to a dramatic decline in quality of life as well as population levels- in less antiseptic terms, mass suffering and death. Progress in the West was set back dramatically; a thousand years would pass before Europeans could build anything like the Pantheon and nearly two thousand before medicine surpassed the achievements of the Greeks and Romans. Countless works of art, literature, philosophy, science and mathematics were lost, as well as much priceless practical knowledge- clean, fresh water would not become a regular feature of urban life in Europe again for centuries.

When the politicians and their media minions begin to bloviate about the need for “resolve,” for “action,” they are betting everything we as a species have achieved on their latest pet concern. Many terrible things are happening and will happen around the world. But whenever any nation, especially a great power, bares its teeth at another, we hope that this latest crisis du jour won’t be the last thing we get to fret about over a printed newspaper or a tablet screen. The end of everything is what we talk about when we talk about war.

Ataques aéreos dos Estados Unidos, visantes a punir e a dissuadir Assad e a degradar sua instituição militar, mas não a derrubar seu regime, aumentariam o investimento dos Estados Unidos na guerra civil síria e tornariam ainda maiores as probabilidades de intervenção ulterior. A interveção anterior de Obama é o que nos levou a este ponto. Em vez de ficar longe desse conflito regional, ele declarou que Assad tem de sair; designou o uso de armas químicas como “linha vermelha” cujo cruzamento acarretaria reação dos Estados Unidos; e armou e ademais auxiliou a oposição a Assad, que é dominada por jihadistas no estilo da al-Qaeda, que não nutrem sentimentos positivos em relação aos Estados Unidos. Uma vez presidente estadunidense faça dessas coisas, passos adicionais serão quase inevitáveis, se não por outra razão que a “credibilidade estadunidense” ser dita estar em jogo.

Já se pode ouvir os falcões da guerra verberando Obama por seus ataques punitivos “meramente simbólicos” que não tiveram efeito real na guerra civil. Uma vez tendo dado esse passo, conseguirá Obama resistir à pressão por imposição de uma zona de voo proibido ou mais bombardeios? Ele e a instituição militar não parecem entusiasmados com ir mais fundo, mas a pressão política poderá ser formidável. Será que o povo estadunidense manterá sua oposição a envolvimento mais pleno quando a mídia noticiosa aumentar o volume dos tambores de guerra? Quanto tempo antes que as fotos da zona de guerra criem aprovação pública para “intervenção humanitária,” para a qual os falcões então apontarão em apoio de sua causa?

Não se equivoquem: os Estados Unidos estariam cometendo ato de guerra à Síria — e, a julgar pela intervenção na Líbia em 2011, estariam-no fazendo inconstitucionalmente, sem autorização do Congresso. Se a história nos ensina algo, é que tal guerra será imprevisível. Mesmo ataques “cirúrgicos” limitados poderão ter consequências não pretendidas (mortes de civis e perdas estadunidenses) e provocar reações imprevistas, inclusive dos aliados da Síria Irã e Hezbollah.

Explorar alegações não fundamentadas acerca de armas químicas também envolve risco de repetir as trapalhadas de há uma década, quando inteligência questionável foi usada para justificar guerra ilícita de agressão ao Iraque. Haverá base para confiança nas alegações de que as forças de Assad usaram armas químicas? Talvez o tenham feito, mas alguma coisa não faz sentido. Assad tinha muito a perder com o uso delas, enquanto os rebeldes muito a ganhar: intervenção ocidental em seu favor. (Em maio membro da Comissão de Investigação Independente da Síria das Nações Unidas concluiu que os rebeldes podem ter usado armas químicas à época.) Como escreve Peter Hitchens,

O que poderia ter tomado [Assad] para que ele fizesse algo tão insano? Ele estava, até aquele evento, na verdade indo bastante bem em sua guerra contra os rebeldes sunitas. Quaisquer ganhos concebíveis decorrentes do uso de armas químicas seriam neutralizados um milhão de vezes pelo risco diplomático. Não faz sentido.

Hitchens urge cautela:

Parece-me haver diversos motivos para sermos cautelosos. O primeiro é que temos a tendência de acreditar em coisas ruins a respeito daqueles que já decidimos serem inimigos, especialmente em democracias onde eleitores têm de ser persuadidos a assinar o vasto cheque em branco da guerra.

Finalmente, é grotesco ver autoridades do governo dos Estados Unidos, como o Secretário de Estado John Kerry, condenando as táticas de guerra de alguém como “moralmente obscenas” devendo “chocar a consciência do mundo.” Desde 1945 o governo dos Estados Unidos deflagra guerras de agressão com violação da lei internacional. Torturou prisioneiros detidos sem acusação. Lançou bombas atômicas em centros civis, e usou napalm, Agente Laranja, explosivos de urânio empobrecido, e armas incendiárias de  fósforo branco. Fez bombardeios de arraso e incendiários em cidades. As minas terrestres não explodidas e bombas de fragmentação ainda ameaçam os povos do Vietnã e do Cambódia. (Dezenas de milhares de pessoas já foram mortas ou feridas desde que a guerra terminou em 1975.)

Hoje o governo dos Estados Unidos cruelmente inflige sofrimento a homens, mulheres e crianças iranianos por meio de sanções econômicas praticamente totais — do mesmo modo que o fez ao povo iraquiano de 1990 a 2003. Ademais ameaça guerra de agressão ao Irã.

E embora seletivamente lamente a crise humanitária na Síria, a administração Obama banca o governo militar do Egito, que massacrou mais de mil manifestantes nas ruas, e a repressão a palestinos por Israel.

O governo dos Estados Unidos deveria pôr a própria casa em ordem e parar de dar lições de moral aos outros.

Artigo original afixado por Sheldon Richman 29 de agosto de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

U.S. airstrikes, intended to punish and deter Assad and degrade his military but not overthrow his regime, would deepen the U.S. investment in the Syrian civil war and increase the chances of further intervention. Obama’s previous intervention is what has brought us to this point. Instead of steering clear of this regional conflict, he declared that Assad must go; designated the use of chemical weapons as a “red line” the crossing of which would bring a U.S. response; and armed and otherwise aided Assad’s opposition, which is dominated by al-Qaeda-style jihadists who have no good feelings toward America. Once an American president does these things, further steps are almost inevitable if for no other reason than that “American credibility” will be said to be at stake.

One can already hear the war hawks berating Obama for his “merely symbolic” punitive airstrike that had no real effect on the civil war. Once he’s taken that step, will Obama be able to resist the pressure for imposing a no-fly zone or for more bombing? He and the military seem unenthusiastic about getting in deeper, but political pressure can be formidable. Will the American people maintain their opposition to fuller involvement when the news media turn up the volume of the war drums? How long before the pictures from the war zone create public approval for “humanitarian intervention,” which the hawks will then point to in support of their cause?

Make no mistake: the United States would be committing an act of war against Syria — and judging by the 2011 Libyan intervention, it would be doing so unconstitutionally, without congressional authorization. If history teaches us anything, it is that war is unpredictable. Even limited “surgical” strikes can have unintended consequences (civilian deaths and American losses) and could elicit unanticipated responses, including from Syria’s allies Iran and Hezbollah.

Exploiting unsubstantiated allegations about chemical weapons also runs the risk of repeating the blunder of a decade ago, when dubious intelligence was used to justify an unlawful war of aggression against Iraq. Are there grounds for confidence in the claims that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons? Maybe they did, but something does not add up. Assad has much to lose by their use, while the rebels have much to gain: Western intervention on their behalf. (In May a member of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria concluded that the rebels may have used chemical weapons at that time.) As Peter Hitchens writes,

What could possibly have possessed [Assad] to do something so completely crazy? He was, until this event, actually doing quite well in his war against the Sunni rebels. Any conceivable gains from using chemical weapons would be cancelled out a million times by the diplomatic risk. It does not make sense.

Hitchens urges caution:

It seems to me that there are several reasons to be careful. The first is that we seek to believe evil of those we have already decided to be enemies, especially in democracies where voters must be persuaded to sign the vast blank cheque of war.

Finally, it is grotesque to see officials of the U.S. government, such as Secretary of State John Kerry, condemning anyone’s war tactics as something “morally obscene” that should “shock the conscience of the world.” Since 1945, the U.S. government has launched aggressive wars in violation of international law. It has tortured prisoners detained without charge. It has dropped atomic bombs on civilian centers, and used napalm, Agent Orange, depleted-uranium shells, and white phosphorus incendiary weapons. It has carpet bombed and firebombed cities. America’s unexploded landmines and cluster bombs still threaten the people of Vietnam and Cambodia. (Tens of thousands have been killed or injured since the war ended in 1975.)

Today the U.S. government cruelly inflicts suffering on Iranian men, women, and childrenthrough virtually comprehensive economic sanctions — just as it did to the Iraqi people from 1990 to 2003. It also threatens aggressive war against Iran.

And while it selectively laments the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the Obama administration bankrolls Egypt’s military government, which massacred over a thousand street demonstrators, and Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.

The U.S. government should get its own house in order and quit lecturing others.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Estados Unidos Não Têm Autoridade Moral Para Condenar Assad.

Violence has become our foreign policy – it is the status quo. Our nation-state acts as an agent of terror to occupied territories and lesser states under its influence. The system will stop at no cost. As Bush-era “shock and awe” grew unpopular, the system was able to change the face of its aggression with the Obama era drone wars.

Perhaps what is most disturbing is the support the public lauds on politicians who support aggressive foreign policy. This represents the decaying moral fabric of the nation – the economy, scandals and social issues dominate public thought. Hawks such as Lindsey Graham (waging an all out assault on the habeas corpus), vulgar libertarians such as Rand Paul (whose filibuster, cheered as patriotic by the very people who supported the invasion of Iraq, did not call for the end of drone attacks overseas, only to protect us Americans) and let’s not forget the most effective evil, the noble peace prize-winning Commander-in-Chief (whose NDAA effectively silences dissent, much more ominous than the Patriot Act – who he himself signed again) are all popular politicians. What has become of the anti-war movement?

Our foreign policy is morally unjust. As our troops are separated from their loved ones, flown overseas, killed and maimed, so too are innocent people in our occupied territories. Towns and villages are bombed, occasions such as weddings, birthdays and funerals are bombed, first responders are bombed, men, women and children are murdered, families are torn apart, hundreds of thousands are displaced, people are indefinitely detained and tortured in detainment. Our tax dollars fund this inconceivable aggression, but what is the scandal – the targeting of political groups? What about state sanctioned murder?

We are laying waste to helpless people, who have often been repressed by dictators and authoritarian regimes we placed in power. Where is our national conscience? We were hurt when people cheered September 11^th, but then acted just as barbaric at the news of Bin Laden’s death. How do we not get it?

Change must come from within. The system will obviously still act, regardless of falling public support for the war. But, we are an obedient society. The more we obey the harsher the state becomes, and the more it is able stop dissent. With laws such as the NDAA, the state has defined what is just, but it is the state that is unjust.

The state says in order to uphold the American way we must be strong, and our economy must grow at any cost – this rhetoric is championed by conservatives and liberals alike. We can stand for this no more. We need freed markets, we need to decentralize our institutions, we need to develop alternatives to power, we need to change our moral consciousness. Humanity needs peace.

Our crisis is institutional, but also moral and intellectual. If the government will not stop the war, we must stop the government. Will we?

Num artigo opinativo acerca da “crise” coreana (“Já Desde Agora Sou Contra a Próxima Guerra, e Você Também Deveria Ser,” 4 de abril), Tom Knapp escreveu, a respeito de suas impressões negativas a respeito da Coreia do Norte:

“a maior parte do que penso que sei a respeito dela é em realidade apenas aquilo que outros governos resolveram contar-me. E esses outros governos sistematicamente mentem — para todo mundo, acerca de tudo, diariamente, como questão de política …”

O atual alarmismo de guerra martelado pelo governo dos Estados Unidos (e por notícias transmitidas por cabo — se é que há qualquer diferença) confirma plenamente o ceticismo de Knapp. Olhemos mais de perto por trás da versão oficial dos eventos na Coreia ao longo das várias décadas passadas:

O arcabouço padronizado acerca da Guerra da Coreia é o de agressão indiscutível e sem provocação pelo Norte, começando com uma súbita e maciça invasão cruzando a Linha Demarcatória. Na verdade, contudo, os anos que levaram à guerra caracterizaram-se por incursões através da fronteira por parte de ambos os lados, amiúde envolvendo milhares de soldados.

A versão norte-coreana dos eventos era a de que o regime de Seul havia conduzido ataques maciços de artilharia cruzando a fronteira nos dias 23 e 24, seguidos de incursão sul-coreana de surpresa contra a cidadezinha de Haeju. O relatório militar estadunidense da situação no crepúsculo do dia 25 dizia que os norte-coreanos haviam capturado todo o território três milhas ao sul do Rio Imjin — exceto a área do “contra-ataque de Haeju.” John Gunther, em sua biografia de MacArthur, descreve ter sido informado, no dia 25, por membro de alto escalão da ocupação estadunidense: “Acaba de acontecer uma grande reportagem. Os sul-coreanos atacaram a Coreia do Norte!”

Ao eclodir a guerra, o ditador sul-coreano Syngman Rhee ordenou o massacre de pelo menos 100.000 dissidentes esquerdistas, com a aquiescência do comando militar dos Estados Unidos. Entre as vítimas contaram-se dezenas de milhares de prisioneiros políticos encarcerados por Rhee nos anos anteriores. O regime esvaziou suas prisões, enfileirou os prisioneiros e os fuzilou, despejando seus cadáveres em trincheiras cavadas às pressas. Autoridades militares dos Estados Unidos estiveram presentes a alguns dos assassínios em massa; a instituição militar dos Estados Unidos, na realidade, fotografou alguns deles.

À guisa de antecedentes históricos, o sistema coreano de governo que havia emergido no vácuo deixado pela retirada do Japão em 1945 era uma federação frouxa de comunas autogovernadas, onde o grande e influente movimento anarquista coreano desempenhava papel importante. Autoridades militares soviéticas e estadunidenses, em suas esferas respectivas, rapidamente acabaram com aquilo. Os estadunidenses, obviamente desconfiados de anarquistas ou esquerdistas de qualquer tipo, estimularam aristocratas destituídos de seus bens a formarem um regime militar que prendeu, na casa das dezenas de milhares, anarquistas que houvera destituído de seus bens e, em poucos anos, aproveitou-se da guerra para dar cabo deles de uma vez por todas.

De volta ao presente: As ameaças de Kim Jong Un de retaliação nuclear a alvos estadunidenses têm lugar no contexto de exercícios navais conjuntos de larga escala estadunidenses-sul-coreanos dentro de águas territoriais norte-coreanas. Os Estados Unidos alegam tratarem-se de águas sul-coreanas baseados unicamente numa linha de demarcação unilateralmente traçada pelos Estados Unidos, ao final da Guerra da Coreia. A linha traçada pelos Estados Unidos não é confirmada por qualquer tratado, nem é reconhecida por qualquer órgão internacional. E, pelos padrões normais para cálculo de águas territoriais segundo a lei internacional, as reivindicações da Coreia do Norte das águas onde os exercícios tiveram lugar é inteiramente legítima.

Assim, pois, ao serem vistos os eventos fora do prisma distorcedor das afirmações oficiais dos Estados Unidos e de seus papagaios na mídia, o que realmente aconteceu é que a Coreia do Norte reagiu a uma enorme provocação e a plausível ameaça mediante advertir de retaliação na eventualidade de ataque.

“OK,” poderá você estar dizendo. “Mesmo, porém, que tudo isso seja verdade, reagir a uma provocação ao largo das águas norte-coreanas vociferando acerca de alvos nucleares nos Estados Unidos é um pouco demais, não é?”

Bem, é certamente algo imoral. Um estado reagir à agressão militar de outro estado dizendo que matará, ou ameaçando matar, sua população civil é monstruoso. E, se é monstruoso, é monstruoso quem quer que o faça. Seria monstruoso também se algum país puramente hipotético, o único país do mundo com armas atômicas, as usasse para matar diversas centenas de milhares de civis em duas cidades japonesas. Seria monstruoso se algum país puramente hipotético com centenas de bombardeiros de longo alcance tivesse tido, como política militar oficial, fazer uso em primeiro lugar de armas nucleares para atingir todo centro populacional importante na União das Repúblicas Socialistas Soviéticas em retaliação a uma incursão convencional na Europa Ocidental.

O governo dos Estados Unidos é um estado. E mentir — deliberadamente, cinicamente — onde mentir sirva a seus interesses é o que os estados fazem. Não permita que milhões de pessoas morram por causa de uma mentira.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 5 de abril de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

“most of what I think I know about it is really just what other governments choose to tell me. And those other governments routinely lie — to everyone, about everything, day in and day out, as a matter of policy …”

The current war scare drummed up by the US government (and by cable news — if there’s any difference) fully bears out Knapp’s skepticism. Let’s take a closer look behind the official version of events in Korea over the past several decades:

The standard framing of the Korean War is an unambiguous, unprovoked aggression by the North, beginning with a sudden and massive invasion across the Demarcation Line. But in fact the years leading up to the war featured constant cross-border incursions by both sides, often involving thousands of troops.

The North Korean version of events was that the Seoul regime had conducted a large-scale artillery bombardment across the border on the 23rd and 24th, followed by a surprise South Korean raid on the town of Haeju. The American military status report at nightfall June 25 said the North Koreans had captured all territory three miles south of the Imjin River — except for the area of the “Haeju counterattack.” John Gunther, in his biography of MacArthur, recounts being informed by a high-ranking member of the American occupation on the 25th: “A big story has just broken. The South Koreans have attacked North Korea!”

As war broke out, South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee ordered the massacre of at least 100,000 leftist dissidents with the acquiescence of the US military command. The victims included tens of thousands of political prisoners imprisoned by Rhee in the preceding years. The regime emptied its prisons, lined up the prisoners and shot them, dumping their bodies into hastily dug trenches. US military officers were present at some of these mass killings;  the US military actually photographed some of them.

By way of background, the Korean system of governance that had emerged in the vacuum left by Japan’s 1945 withdrawal was a loose federation of self-governing communes, in which the large and influential Korean anarchist movement played a major role. Soviet and American military authorities, in their respective spheres, quickly put an end to this. The Americans, obviously suspicious of anarchists or leftists of any kind, encouraged dispossessed aristocrats to form a military regime which imprisoned by the tens of thousands the anarchists it had dispossessed and, in a few years’ time, took advantage of the war to finish them off once and for all.

Fast forward to the present: Kim Jong Un’s threats of nuclear retaliation against American targets take place against the backdrop of large-scale joint US-South Korean naval exercises inside North Korean territorial waters. The US claims them as South Korean waters based solely on a demarcation line unilaterally drawn by the United States at the end of the Korean War. The US-drawn line is not confirmed by any treaty or recognized by any international body. And by the normal standards for calculating territorial waters under international law, North Korea’s claims to the waters in which the exercises took place are entirely legitimate.

So, viewing events from outside the distorting ideological prism of official US statements and their parrots in the media, what really happened is that North Korea responded to an enormous provocation and a credible threat by warning of retaliation in the event of attack.

“OK,” you may be saying. “But even if all that stuff’s true, responding to an offshore provocation in North Korean waters with bluster about nuclear targets in the US is kinda nuts, isn’t it?”

Well, it’s certainly immoral. For one state to respond to another state’s military aggression by killing, or threatening to kill, its civilian population is monstrous. And if it’s monstrous, it’s monstrous when anyone does it. It would also be monstrous if some purely hypothetical country, the only country in the world with atomic weapons, used them to kill several hundred thousand civilians in two Japanese cities. It would be monstrous if some purely hypothetical country with hundreds of long-range bombers had had, as its official military policy, making first use of nuclear weapons and hitting every major population center in the USSR in retaliation for a conventional incursion into Western Europe.

The US government is a state. And lying — deliberately, shamelessly — whenever it serves their interests is what states do. Don’t let millions die for a lie.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Ignorância é Força: Edição Kim Jong Un.
• Spanish, La Fuerza está en la Ignorancia: Edición Kim Jon Un.

Pathocracy – “A system of government where a small pathological minority takes over a society of normal people.” – Andrew M. Lobaczewski in Political Ponerology

Kyriarchy – A social hierarchy based on domination rather than spontaneous, voluntary order. All states are necessarily kyriarchical because the government is a monopoly on violence. Psychopaths rise to the top of coercive hierarchies like helium balloons rise to the ceilings of rooms.

Psychopathy

“Psychopaths are social predators and like all predators they are looking for feeding grounds. Wherever you get power, prestige and money you will find them.”

-Robert Hare, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, leading psychopathy researcher

It requires a certain mindset to want to rule others. This person believes they are qualified to and morally justified in making life-changing decisions for millions at the point of a gun (state law).

Desire to rule is one thing, but the qualities that enable one to rise in the political hierarchy are perhaps rarer and more pernicious. Psychopaths are manipulative, charming, narcissistic and excellent liars. Most importantly, they score low on the empathy scale — showing little or no remorse for inflicting suffering (and readily violate the non-aggression principle). As children, many psychopaths torture animals and bully peers. They learn to mimic the normal outward display of emotionality, but it is purely an act.

It is easy to compromise your morals if you don’t have any. Being a politician means lying. The job description includes making back room deals and compromising on campaign promises. People often joke about politicians being heartless, deceitful, untrustworthy, self-aggrandizing and vindictive. But perhaps they must be to become politicians.

We all know some genuinely good people (perhaps a bit egotistical) who serve as state functionaries. Local politicians, even many Congresspeople appear genuinely motivated to do what they think is right (by force, naturally). But the lower eschelon of power is not where the psychopaths aggregate. Some leading psychologists hypothesize that the higher one looks up the hierarchy, the lower the empathy. From John Ronson’s The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry:

“Sociopaths love power. They love winning. If you take loving kindness out of the human brain, there’s not much left except the will to win.” [Said Martha Stout, psychologist of psychopathy].

“Which means you’ll find a preponderance of them at the top of the tree?”

“Yes,” she said. The higher you go up the ladder, the greater the number sociopaths you’ll find there.”

There is a physiologically conserved brain abnormality among psychopaths. Also see this study. The possibility of genetically fixed psychopathy will not sit well with those that wish to believe in environmental rather than biological determinism. The leading psychologists of psychopathy believe it is fixed. Psychopathy and sociopathy are not “mental illnesses,” which come and go and can be treated pharmacologically. The utter absence of empathy is permanent.

Furthermore, psychopaths and sociopaths make up about 1% of the population, according to the FBI.

From an interview with Robert Hare:

Bob said it’s always a nice surprise when a psychopath speaks openly about their inability to feel emotions. Most of them pretend to feel. When they see us non-psychopaths crying or scared or moved by human suffering, or whatever, they think it’s fascinating. They study us and learn how to ape us, like space creatures trying to blend in, but if we keep our eyes open, we can spot the fakery. (p. 100-101)

“I should never have done all my research in prisons. I should have spent my time inside the Stock Exchange as well.”

I looked at Bob. “Really?” I said.

He nodded.

“But surely stock-market psychopaths can’t be as bad as serial-killer psychopaths,” I said.

“Serial killers ruin families.” Bob shrugged. “Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies.”

This– Bob was saying –was the straightforward solution to the greatest mystery of all: Why is the world so unfair? Why all that savage economic injustice, those brutal wars, the everyday corporate cruelty? The answer: psychopaths. That part of the brain that doesn’t function right. You’re standing on an escalator and you watch the people going past on the opposite escalator. If you could climb inside their brains, you would see we aren’t all the same.

We aren’t all good people just trying to do good. Some of us are psychopaths. And psychopaths are to blame for this brutal, misshapen society. They’re the jagged rocks thrown into the still pond. (p. 112)

“If some political or business leader had a psychopathically hoodlum childhood, wouldn’t it come out in the press and ruin them?” I said.

“They find ways to bury it,” Bob replied. “Anyway, Early Behavior Problems don’t necessarily mean ending up in Juvenile Hall. It could mean, say, secretly torturing animals.” He paused. “But getting access to people like that can be difficult. Prisoners are easy. They like meeting researchers. It breaks up the monotony of their day. But CEOs, politicians …” Bob looked at me. “It’s a really big story,” he said. “It’s a story that could change forever the way people see the world.” (p. 118)

 Implications

There has been a surge in theories about “corporate psychopaths,” [1] [2] (see Hare and Babiak’s Snakes in Suits and Paul Lawrence’s Driven to Lead ) but inquiry into the more obvious form, political psychopathy, despite some coverage (“The Startling Accuracy of Referring to Politicians as Psychopaths.” The Atlantic), has not really entered the public consciousness.

One pioneering researcher, named Andrew M. Lobaczewski, has established the prevailing framework for statist psychopathy in his monumental work “Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes,” (PDF) which itself scarcely made it out of Communist Poland with its researchers hunted down, tortured and killed by the local state authorities.

Lobaczewski’s book is actually the synthesis of the work of several Polish thinkers who formed a theoretical school of psychology that was borne from the Nazi and Communist occupations — naturally, the researchers focused on the psychology of evil, which is derived from poneros, the New Testament Greek for “innate evil.” His harrowing story can be read here.

The manuscript, having been burned in Poland, survived only in Lobaczewski’s mind as he immigrated to the U.S. Ironically, unable to get it published

he enlisted the help of his compatriot, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had just previously served as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser and who initially praised the book and promised to help get the book published. Unfortunately, after some time spent corresponding Brzezinski became silent, responding only to the effect that it was a pity it hadn’t worked out. In Łobaczewski’s words, “he strangled the matter, treacherously”.

 Not surprising behavior for a tactical genius and probable psychopath, himself.

Bob Altermeyer, like Lobaczewski, has come to similar conclusions in his description of the “Authoritarians” (PDF).

Some notable individuals I suspect of being  “authoritarian”  at the very least: Henry Kissinger, George H.W. Bush, Zbiginiew Brzezinski, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Hank Paulson and yes, the statist messiah, Lord Obama.

Let’s briefly remind ourselves of some of the recent, U.S. perpetrated atrocities (that we know of — there are still a lot of classified files):

The Burning of Samar, Philippine-American War, September-October 1901: “This was one of the worst single atrocities of the Philippine-American War, which was itself one of the worst colonial wars fought by the U.S. government. The U.S. government claims and military sources generally claim about 34,000 Filipino combatant deaths and perhaps 200,000 civilian deaths; estimates based on before- and after-war population counts indicate that as many as a million Filipinos may have been killed in the war and the epidemic cholera outbreak toward its end. U.S. tactics included scorched-earth destruction of villages, mass reprisals and massacres like in Samar, the widespread use of concentration camps (reconcentrados or “protected zones”) for counter-insurgency (one of the major factors in the outbreaks of disease) and the widespread use of torture tactics such as the revival of the medieval/early modern “water cure” torture.” – Charles W. Johnson

Japanese Internment under FDR (1944): Over 100,000 innocent Japanese people put in concentration camps

Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki under Truman (1945): At least 200,000 killed and wounded, mostly civilians

Firebombing of Tokyo (esp. Operation Meetinghouse, in the middle of the night March 9-10 1945). “The Tokyo raid has been widely overshadowed because of the later atomic bombings, and because the talk about terror-bombing with incendiary bombs mostly focused on Dresden in the European theater, but the March 9-10 raid is widely considered the most destructive non-nuclear air raid in the history of the earth, burned over 100,000 people to death and left over 1,000,000 people homeless in a single night of firebombing. It was also the inaugural raid of the low-altitude napalm firebombing campaign of 67 cities on the Japanese home islands, between March and August of 1945, which taken as a whole is one of the greatest wartime atrocities in human history.” -CWJ

Bombing of Dresden, also under FDR (1945): Over 20,000 civilians fire bombed

Tuskeegee and Guatemala Syphilis Experiments: Civilians who thought they were getting “free” government healthcare were infected with syphilis. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic were also deeply involved in the Eugenics movement, which involved forced sterilization through prisons, juvenile detention facilities, asylums, and state welfare and medical “aid” programs between 1907-1979. Some state-by-state data compiled here.

Spraying agent orange and seeding landmines throughout Southeast Asia

Operation Northwoods (1962) (Declassified original document): A false flag terror campaign which included blowing up military and civilian machinery to justify an invasion of Cuba. JFK turned down the offer from the Joint Chiefs of Staff — perhaps he wasn’t a psychopath, or was and merely thought this tactic unwise.

MK ULTRA (195?-73): 80 institutions, including 44 colleges and universities, colluded with the CIA in administering drugs without the consent of the subjects and engaging in psychological torture.

Kent State and Jackson State massacres, May 1970: Peaceful student protestors murdered by police and national guard.

Madeleine Albright‘s famous statement that the U.S. imposed 1990s Iraqi economic sanction which led to the death of over 500,000 children was “worth it.” Video. History is repeating in Iran right now.

Invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan with fabricated causes belli: Hundreds of thousands did not survive these imperialist excursions.  I think this classic Rumsfeld video sums it up nicely.

Illegal drone killings: Over 300 children killed in Pakistan alone. Obama appeared to cry for the Sandy Hook children (N=20), but none for the hundreds or thousands he’s ultimately responsible for killing. Illegal operations are also ongoing in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and likely elsewhere. Also see the widely acclaimed report, Living Under Drones.

Note: The CIA killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim propagandist and U.S. native living abroad in Yemen. Then, two weeks later, they drone struck his 16 year old son, Denver-native Abdulrahman, on his way to a barbecue. Neither the father nor the son were provided due process — Bush tortured, Obama just kills.

When prompted for an explanation, former White House Press Secretary and MSNBC contributor Robert Gibbs simply stated that Abdulmahman “should [have] had a more responsible father.” (Seriously, here’s the video).

You can bet if the kid’s name had been Timmy Johnson things would be different.

Conclusion

Hopefully I have convinced you that our rulers are psychopaths and that the lack of empathy and aptitude for manipulation are advantageous for ambitious politicians. Psychopaths are drawn to power and rise to the top in hierarchies.

That being said, it’s not even necessary that our rulers actually be psychopaths. Supposedly “normal” individuals commit hideous atrocities when given orders by an authority figure, propagandized, or put in a position of power. Abu Grahib, the Stanford Prison Experiment, Stanley Milgram’s Shock Experiment, and any of the myriad wartime slaughter of innocents is sufficient to bolster this case:

Power is not to be conquered, it is to be destroyed. It is tyrannical by nature, whether exercised by a king, a dictator or an elected president. The only difference with the parliamentarian “democracy” is that the modern slave has the illusion of choosing the master he will obey. The vote has made him an accomplice to the tyranny that oppresses him. He is not a slave because masters exist; masters exist because he elects to remain a slave. -Jean Francois Brient