JFK, Churchill, and Hitler

JFK, Churchill, and Hitler weren't successful, they were the problem.

I've seen Harper's scary eyes

I've seen Harper's scary eyes under Totenkopf and Red Star caps and am certain that he now wears glasses to cover them and give him a more studious look. The same reason his patron's, Manning's, handlers changed his glasses and wardrobe.

Harper is a megalomaniac/fundamentalist mental case of very low intelligence, without conscience, who gets his orders from years of miseducation and "God".

He's not a criminal by any stretch, his actions are directed by faith, beliefs and compulsions.

As we'll find out in the next couple of years, when he lowers the boom to make Canada "more competitive" by selling it off.

Ed Deak.

This article only deals with

This article only deals with out political elite; how about our business and economic elite? They're the ones who have created the global financial mess with the aid of our political elite. Our world is being run by psychopaths.

The problem with personality

Of course, in a democracy, we should have some responsibility for choosing leaders who do what we want to see done. Stephen Harper could be a nemish or a psychopath, but we (or 40% of us) elected him. We knew when we did it that he wasn't going to do anything about climate change. We knew he'd loosened the banking regulations so we could follow the Americans into a mortgage bubble. We knew he'd dithered about stimulus, and was planning to shift to austerity policies. We knew he was planning to increase economic inequality and squeeze public services. Likewise, we had some idea what Jack Layton, Michael Ignatieff, Elizabeth May, Stéphane Dion, Alexa McDonough, and Jean Chrétien (after his first term) were planning to do, whether they were manic-depressive, drunk, the second coming of Francis of Assisi, or a pencil-pushing bureaucrat. In our system, it's not the leader. Or it shouldn't be.

The Extraordinary Madnesses of Individuals and Crowds....

"...mentally healthy political leaders do well in untroubled times. When a crisis hits, however, only the insanely great will do." the article.

LOL. Certainly an interesting perspective. Though I suspect, as is the general problem with psychiatry, tending to the simplistic when there is really more to it. As in, for example, the argument of some students of human behaviour, including myself, and including some psychiatrists, that there are times when depression and other forms of certainly "eccentric" behaviour, up to and including violence, are entirely appropriate responses.

"If you ain't depressed, it just shows you don't know what the fuck is going on."

Certainly, however, there is frequently displayed amongst ruling classes and their tame political elites, psychopathic and sociopathic evidences. Indeed, we could all doubtless create an impressive list... yes, left and right. :-)

I too have seen into Harper's eyes, and George Bush's, sitting there in that grade school classroom, when he was "supposedly" first notified of the again "supposed" 911 attack of Al Quida. Scary shit... especially in that he didn't look surprised at all.

We are all probably "mad"... it being but a matter of degree, one to another. It is but that for most of us, we are not positioned socially or politically where our petty megalomanias can really do much harm... unlike my above indicated "ruling" elites.

Which is why the best argument response to this reality and the key to the future of our species is... a profound and equally shared democracy over the economy and such politics as is required. To act as a wide spread, and again "shared" system of checks and balances over each other's, and our collective madness.

:-) Love, Peace and Revolution

really?

It's an interesting thesis that may have validity, but the choice of examples casts doubt on the analysis. George W. Bush was an admitted addict (to alcohol) and wasted the first four decades of his life in a haze. Nixon was very likely clinically paranoid, and THAT was his downfall. His response to adversity was hardly mentally healthy. Bush's impulsive behaviour and black and white thinking is common among people with addiction.

Interesting premise, perhaps,

Interesting premise, perhaps, but imo, this book make things more complicated than need be.

Look, if a politician or CEO in power endorses and passes a majority of pieces of legislation or make decisions that will work against the public good, health, and (even future) welfare, one can say that leader is either incredibly stupid, abysmally selfish, CORRUPT, or mentally ill (and there's some cross-over with these).

Likewise, if the majority of decisions made are beneficial for the long-term general public welfare, it is likely that the leader is a sane, rational, altruistic, salt-of-the-earth type, and probably moderately or highly intelligent.

By the way, a rational and/or intelligent person taking several medical drugs (as with Kennedy) can by no means necessarily be cast as "insane" or a person "without good judgment." On the other hand, an already emotionally or mentally imbalanced person or someone of low mental acuity taking those exact same drugs might easily tip into mental instability or criminal insanity, or in the case of the latter, be persuaded to undertake criminal or evil actions.

Where to start??

Psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi raises these points in proposing a strange argument: mentally healthy political leaders do well in untroubled times. When a crisis hits, however, only the insanely great will do.

The stigma we impose on mental disease makes this a hard thesis to accept.

I have a hard time accepting anyone but the mentally deranged prefer to play politics than to do what is right for the people. Self delusion is a cognitive disorder that we all must deal with at some level. Now that may be the 'norm' but does that mean that its normalcy makes it right?

(Most of the Nazis on trial at Nuremburg, when tested, were as sane as a similarly tested group of Kansas state troopers.)

LOL. Yeah, I'd be looking to the state trooper group to find a baseline for sanity. /sarcasm

We always like to think of ourselves as mentally healthy, and of our preferred political leaders as equally healthy.

There's the rub. Who is mentally healthy at all times? We all have a very finicky brain to deal with, a brain that processes and largely creates our entire reality. Our perception of things governs our thinking. Collectively change our perception and in the process our thinking changes.

We now know that the biggest threat to Canadians is Islamicism. Our PM made that abundantly clear a few days ago (again). As a Christian man, an educated man, a man of high social standing, he is the epitome of normal. But is he mentally healthy?

And I must add, how Fiat Lux can claim Stephen Harper is "not a criminal by any stretch" is, to my way of understanding the world and what constitutes crime (regardless of the existence of a state's legally sanctioned conviction), a truly mad finding of fact.

In conclusion, normalizing insanity does not make us sane. It just makes us less likely to see it in ourselves and others.

I've spent a lot of time in

I've spent a lot of time in the company of high executives, CEOs , in their offices, homes, boardrooms.

Some were decent guys, some were decent until the subject became money, some were outright pigs.

This was why I gave up portrait painting, although it would have made me rich, as I didn't want to glorify them.

The most interesting part was the abysmal ignorance of most, of anything outside their narrow fields, their alcoholic wives.

One wife I knew committed suicide, another killed by her husband for using the company's "hospitality suite", I've built, for extra activities.

Some were very unhappy in their jobs, as they consciously and subconsciously knew that they were forced to be crooks and I had 2-3 requests to take them on as apprentices, they were so fed up in their lives, where they heard nothing else but "money" and how to screw people out of it.

I couldn't count how many times I've heard : "You're a very lucky guy Ed, doing what you do making people happy!"

The world has always been run by outright nutcases, and crooks, and will be run by them, until humanity wakes up and start making decisions.

Which is, to the best of my recollection, the reason and purpose of democracy ????

Of course, that would involve learning what the hell is going on, and some time off from texting and pulling pictures across screens with their fingers.

Used to be called "addiction", now "high tech". Just as "stealing and robbery" are now called "wealth creation"

Ed Deak.

Madness and Perfection

"(Most of the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg, when tested, were as sane as a similarly tested group of Kansas state troopers.)" igbymac/

Indeed. It was one of the most interesting outcomes of all the studies done on those deeply involved in the Nazi era. And after a busy day of selecting out and doing the paper work on those Jews, communists and others scheduled for the ovens, most were fully capable of going to their homes in the evening, and being perceived by the families as lovingly attentive and outstanding fathers and husbands.

So, clearly our definition(s) of "insanity" are far from perfect too. There can be a sickness, twistedness to one's ideas and logic in one area, of philosophy and politics for example, about power and the class, racial and other lines between peoples, that leaves one's overall "functioning" mental health relatively unaffected. (The Mafia crime families are another, engaged daily in prostitution, murder and wheeling and dealing in life destroying drugs of every description, who are also loving parents and husbands in separated lives.)

Clearly, there are layers and layers to people, which seem fully capable, more or less and to varying degree, of being separated one from the other... as if never communicating between each and the other.

It's what makes people, and some of the things in which we engage, such as economics, , politics and warfare (this latter politics by another means) so freaking dangerous. Indeed, it is almost certain that we are truly the most dangerous predators upon the planet... even to each other.

On the other hand, we are also fully capable of self-sacrifice and the highest idealism. It's in choosing how and around what we reveal the precise nature of our sanity or lack thereof. And there are clearly times of "insanity" (the Nazis, the Inquisition, Salem's witch hunts, and now, the hysteria around Islam), in which it can be difficult sometimes to tell, as I suspect Ed may know, who is what... and maybe all are stark raving insane.

You live your life... and leave it to others after you, to decide to what degree you were sane or insane. Even then, they may be judging you from the view of their own particular madnesses.

Perfection is ever pursued, and never achieved.

Even I have been accused of being stark raving mad.... of having a head full of snakes. 8-D LOL

So he has opinions, who cares?

To be a successfull author you need to be ready to write what will sell!

So this guy pick a controversial subject and spouts a bunch of opinions, and presto he is on the way to book of the month!

The contributors to this site also have some ideas that could fill books, maybe the Tyee should reserve the rights to comments made here and cash in?

When people are brought up

When people are brought up from day one to "believe", any crimes they may commit in the service of the "faith" is quite normal.

As far the nazis were concerned, anti semitism and racism were accepted facts all over Europe. Not the killing, but he hate. The killing part was only in the last few years and by people who knew that they were following God's orders.

We all had very good Jewish friends, I never again played chess in the memory of of one of my best friends killed in Auschwitz, but at the same time we also knew that Jews were crooked and degenerate, planning to rape Christian girls and steal everybody blind.

This is what "education" is about. Just as the Muslims who blow themselves up to kill other Muslims of other tribes and sects, believe, that it will give them a fast trip to the 7th level of heaven, where virgins are waiting to fill all their wishes..

Ask Harper how old the world is ? He won't answer, because he "knows" that it was created in 7 days, 7,000 years ago.

Of course, some of us wake up, some never and where mental illness comes in is when somebody "believes" against all facts.

Taught in universities as "economics".

Ed Deak.

ed deak

Once again, you provide reason for me to nod, and to feel there is at least one other person in this province who can see and understand at least some of the madness coming down on all of us.

Way to go, Ed Deak! I hope to one day learn how to cut through the bulldung and get to the nub of the matter the way you do.

I've seen those eyes, too.
Be afraid, be very afraid.

look, anne cameron

It's damn simple. Stephen Harper believes in a personal god, and certainly enough to broadcast his ownership of such an ancient piece of mythology.

Is that not more than ample to know he is not of sound reason? Why do we even consider such folks capable of overseeing a nation?

It is us who need the learning,

News flash just in!! We are not going to ever catch on to the game and be able to act. It's all theatre.

Psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi......

..."strangely" enough doesn't delve into psychopathy.......

Appears to overlook the psychopaths

I have not read the book, but based on this article it appears to treat those with emotional symptoms as "ill" and those with a lack of emotional response as "normal".

I tend to believe that the far more rampant mental illness amongst leaders (especially in business and modern politics) is psychopathy. These are the folks who do not feel empathy, are dishonest, and who tend to be systematic and calculating in their approach without regard to emotion.

I have always considered Stephen Harper to be a classic example of a psychopathic personality.

It is a bit curious that this article/book cites those with sincere emotional response as ill, and those with a lack of emotional response as normal.

In fact, I suspect that many current politicians, on all sides, would approach a diagnosis of psychopathic personality disorder. I especially see it in those who arise from the backrooms.

Amor de Cosmos

"... tend to believe that the far more rampant mental illness amongst leaders (especially in business and modern politics) is psychopathy. These are the folks who do not feel empathy, are dishonest, and who tend to be systematic and calculating in their approach without regard to emotion." Amor de Cosmos.

I agree entirely.It is the strong, silent type male ideal... the psychopath. Though most don't connect the dots, of course. The brief period I was in the infantry, though I didn't realize it at the time, we were in fact being "conditioned" under arms, to be precisely "psychopathic".

It is a widespread phenomena, again to varying degrees... often with a charming smile, good manners, and even the appearance of "obedience". The airforce colonel, the head of their leading training facility who killed young women and fantasized over their panties, while highly praised, promoted and valued at the highest levels in the military AND political establishments.

Highly, creative, utter nonsense

It's so easy to look back and label persons. The term bipolar is very recent and can hardly be assigned to persons who lived decades ago. Where is the supportive evidence for all these claims? Wanna-be-famous-psychiatrists write anything in hopes of BIG SALES. Suggest this BigPharma pusher try something to lessen his delusional state of omnipotence. Ativan, anyone?

Jerry

http://www.alternet.org/books/145819/ayn_rand,_hugely_popular_author_and_inspiration_to_right-wing_leaders,_was_a_big_admirer_of_serial_killer/

monty

If we could look forward, perhaps we'd avoid didsaterous leaders.......

I've long believed that

I've long believed that people running for important , especially elected offices should undergo unanimous psychiatric examination, in writing, by 3 independent doctors, and then the results published in a language anybody can understand.

Should make some interesting reading.

Now, the usual question comes up from the faithful: " Would you.....?" etc.

Of course, if I would run for any important office, I never had the desire to do. This should be part of the conditions for running.

Ed Deak.

Inside Harper's Head

Whether you think Stevie Harper is a homoclite, a homophobe, or homogenized milk doesn't alter the fact that his actions vis-a- vis climate change and his zany ultra right political ethos suggest he is a sociopath.

RickW and Ayn Rand

Oh, indeed RickW, re Ayn Rand, and I should have probably elaborated on this... there have always been, and I suggest we are and will see more female psychopaths. (A case in point, the female Nazi guard at Auschwitz in Poland, who had a lampshade and other items made out of the skin of personally "terminated" inmates. The case has even been made, though who really knows this far away in time, for Cleopatra and Katharine The Great.)

Thus far, the dominance of male chauvinism has doubtless acted to intimidate/suppress the female psychopath, certainly culturally, But now, in the relatively "more equal" leadership race to be CEOs and political leaders, the parallels of which we will/are seeing at other levels (female violence generally, typically still against each other), we will, I predict, see evidence of more female psychopathy in business, politics and elsewhere. (Psychopathy, in my view, grows out of the pursuit of leadership and domination, to here largely a male dominant arena, is one of the aberrant aspects of it, in the final analysis "gender neutral" in all likelihood. Though again, there is the "testosterone factor" that may act to make psychopathy more behaviourally male typical still.

Still, I think what I said was "pretty much" true... unfeeling, uncaring, evidencing no "compassion weaknesses"... has been a more typically male pursued ideal, found throughout the culture. (Never say you are sorry. It's a sign of weakness.)
Though certainly in more recent story telling, in books and on the screens, the similarly "unfeeling, cold killer machine" female is also more and more present.
Still, in my view, the answer to psychopathy, at the levels it most typically manifests itself in public life, is empowerment of the masses through extensive, all-inclusive democracy, and improved mass understanding of what it is and how it manifests itself. And making the strong, unfeeling, dominant "type" less desirable to men AND women... so that it gets minimally reproduced through mate choice and breeding. 8-D lol (Which is neither an argument for "femme" males or "butch" females, as one who prefers "la difference":-)

Millions. eh?

>>Ghaemi argues that George W. Bush is a mentally healthy homoclite, and for that very reason was the wrong man to deal with 9/11. He couldn't understand the mind of a Bin Laden, but he could launch orthodox wars that cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars... and feel as good about it as the Nuremburg Nazis felt about their own deeds. (Ghaemi finds Tony Blair equally healthy and equally unrepentant.)<<

Millions of lives? Really?

So, this is an author who can "feel good" about violating Godwin's Law, exaggerating the WOT body count by millions and diagnosing politicians he has never met, solely on the basis of anecdotes from news reports and history books? Isn't this just another case of science being misused/abused for political purposes?

Sociopathic folks

Our world is operated by huge money in various pools all operating under a corporate umbrella.

If we use the model that one judges what was planted not by the roots but by the fruit, we find sociopathic behaviours to be a required commodity for leadership in our strongest institutions.

We know that corporations are legally mandated to behave in sociopathic ways -- read UBC Law Professor Joel Bakan's The Corporation: The pathological pursuit of Profit and Power for a detailed look.

In order to operate such an organization as required by law, regardless of one's personal make-up, the decisions of the organization must be made in a sociopathic way. If not, one is simply replaced by a person capable of carrying out the needed behaviour.

Couple the positive reinforcement a person receives for being a success in the corporate world, and soon one adopts these behaviours as his or her own. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.

The Empirical Evidence...

"About 303 times as many people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq than in the ghastly attacks of September 11, 2001." (And Iraq had dick all to do with 911 or "weapons of mass destruction". A separate and special crime in itself. And what actually happened in 911 is still much up for debate.)

Secondly, 912,967 total "known" persons have been killed to August 10,2010, in Iraq and Afghanistan alone .... (See the website below for an explanation of the sources for these figures to this date.)

http://www.unknownnews.org/casualties.html

Additionally, 1,739, 547 persons, mostly civilians in these two countries have been injured. And we haven't even begun yet to tally the numbers killed across the Middle East, or whose lives have been in other ways destroyed, or in renditions to waterboarding and other tortures, civil and other unrests provoked by these wars. (And this all said, many deaths and casualties are not tracked, and the true figures may not be known for many years... which is typical of wars of this type.)

In conclusion, just over my lifetime since the last so-called "Great War" the US Empire has been engaged in one war after another, around the entire globe, in typically relatively backward and poor countries, against peasant peoples, ill equipped or able to stand up to the imperial predations of the Empire. (And they have still, most, in the end, been able to defeat the US Empire... at great and tragic price.) If we throw in their Western European "imperial" allies, that is a whole other can of worms in this macabre imperial war history of recent decades.

The reality is that "Amerika" has brought down much of its own recent misery upon itself, such as 911 and economic collapse etc.... as a byproduct of this crime wave of theirs, across the globe.

Millions. Yes, millions have been killed by the US Empire in the period since the end of WW2, by torture, guns, napalm, uranium hardened artillery shells and chemicals such as Agent Orange. Your arguments justifying your rwinger "faith" view lack the weight of believability or justice.

65 million have been killed

65 million have been killed in WW2, most of them civilians.

I don't know how many have been killed in Europe by bombers, mostly USAF, but whole cities have been leveled, because the bombers couldn't hit military targets, so they flattened the cities, killing millions of civilians.

They used to come over in an endless row of square blocks of about 50 planes in each, one plane fired a certain coloured rocket and they all dropped their bombs at the same time, called "carpet bombing"

We now have the B 52s over our heads all the time every day, practicing for whatever, each flight costing many thousands of dollars each time, while the country is broke.

Wars are the typical example of "Wealth can not be created, only taken"

Ed Deak.

If this story reveals our leader's sanity

...than I want no part of it.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175442/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_how_washington_creates_global_instability/

And it should go without saying, Canada is complicit in this hostile takeover of the planet, with Stephen Harper never even contemplating a little Christian 'do unto others'.

Crawford? Be honest. What happened?

Your review doesn't seem up to the standards of your best work. It looks embarrassingly sophomoric. “Gee whiz readers! Look what this here big shrink says! Kennedy and Hitler were Huge Dopers! Nixon? Never just a crook. But shucks, those crazy people, regardless of how corrupt they may be, make terrific pols when times are tuff! This guy says so, so it must be true, huh?”

Must be? This book seems like credible Science to you? How?

How credulous is hyperbole like “Startling new book linking leadership to mental illness suggests being too well balanced may be dangerous.“

So? What's next? “Hurry! Supplies are limited!”

A less breathless review?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/books/a-first-rate-madness-by-nassir-ghaemi-review.html?_r=1

“Suffice it to say that Dr. Ghaemi thinks he has come up with important insights. He may, like some of our best-known leaders, be unrealistic in his beliefs.“

Crawford, if you'd like to review something similar, especially concerning problems caused by the ethically unhinged, look at the works of Dr. Robert D. Hare. In particular, “Snakes in Suits” or an earlier work, “Without Conscience.” These texts decidedly are not exercises in political apologetics tilted to defend the kind of people Dr. Ghaemi seems to think are hot stuff in a crisis.

Years ago, jokingly, I asked a friend, a psych professor, why he hadn't put together some kind of coffee table version of, “I'M OK: You're OK.” His response was measured. “I'd have to spend more time mastering very fine points in physics, chemistry, and biology: that's first.” I asked why this was so, he replied, “At my level, weaknesses in these areas would be attacked ruthlessly by my colleagues. That and I'd look ridiculous. Human psychology is far more important and infinitely more complex than can be rendered into such texts. The money? It wouldn't be worth it.”

Insanity in Politics

What I see missing from the conversation is consideration of the 'insanitizing' effect on any individual of being required at any time, but particularly at times of crisis, to make decisions that impact the lives of perhaps millions, or actually end them, without any consideration for their individual 'worth' or circumstances. Google civilian casualty figures from WW2 bombing raids (by all combatants) and ask yourself how the term sane or 'great' can attach itself to the mass incineration of thousands.

We conceive of government lead by ideas, generating policy forged by objective debate. We settle instead for de-facto leadership by a single chief rather than from an assembly led by ideas forging policy in a crucible of objective debate. In a complex world we remain tribal, educated but primitive.

Hard to imagine insanity not being an integral element of such a reality, manifest in leaders and policy.