As always, (It feels so good to be able to use the word "ALWAYS" once again concerning Keith) Keith Olbermann delivered an emotional Special Comment last night. As I listened with tears welling up, (along with a silent roar of laughter at Olbermann's astonishing wit and sarcasm) I thought to myself, it's so good to have you back on the air.
For years, in the past I had sat in front of my TV with tears flowing down my face during one of Keith’s dissertations about some human topic or event concerning the strength or despair of the "human condition" (Pure Theatre of the Absurd is what I like to call it.). These comments of hope (or anger) helped diminish my cynicism just a little and made me believe there was perhaps hope for us tragic human creatures. But always these feelings of encouragement were short lived because some other psychopathic saga (usually of a political nature) would come down the pike, bringing with it a puff of (GOP) gloom.
Please watch Keith Olbermann's special comment of June 23, 2011 but have a tissue handy.
Then maybe you might like to read the very (unfortunately) accurate descriptive reality from the article below...The Rise of the Second-String Psychopaths BY David Schwartz.
Will life ever have a silver lining as the song "Look for a Silver Lining" suggests? I hope so but I'm not too enthusiastic about it, but as long as Keith Olbermann stays on the air, I will have a resource to help get me through this journey called LIFE (in one -- whole stable mental-- piece). thinkingblue
The Rise of the Second-String Psychopaths
by David Schwartz
The great writer Kurt Vonnegut titled his final book A Man without a Country. He was the man; the country was the United States of America. Vonnegut felt that his country had disappeared right under his – and the Constitution’s – feet, through what he called “the sleaziest, low-comedy Keystone Cops-style coup d’état imaginable.” He was talking about the Bush administration. Were Vonnegut still alive in the post-Bush era, he would not have felt that his country had returned.
How had our country disappeared? Vonnegut proposed that among the contributing factors was that it had been invaded – as if by the Martians – by people with a particularly frightening mental illness. People with this illness were termed psychopaths. (The term nowadays is anti-social personality disorder.) These are terms for people who are smart, personable, and engaging, but who have no consciences. They are not guided by a sense of right or wrong. They seem to be unaffected by the feelings of others, including feelings of distress caused by their actions. Straying from a decent way of treating people, or violating ethical codes causes no anxiety, the anxiety which is what causes the rest of us to moderate our more greedy impulses. If most children feel anxiety when they are pilfering the forbidden cookie jar, psychopaths feel just fine. They can devour the cookies, shatter the jar as evidence and stuff it in the trash can. When accused, they can argue with apparent sincerity that the cookie jar has been missing for at least a week. There suffer no remorse, no guilt, no shame. They are free to do anything, no matter how harmful.
Psychopaths can be very tricky to recognize. As psychiatrist Dr. Hervey Cleckly wrote in his classic The Mask of Sanity in 1941, psychopaths are not technically insane. They don’t have a psychosis, like schizophrenia. They are experts in appearing normal. They can act the role of a caring, concerned executive, even though they actually do not seem to experience such feelings. If they hurt somebody, they don’t modify their behavior.
The United States corporate and government spheres have become, Vonnegut suggested, a perfect habitat for psychopaths. What has allowed so many psychopaths to rise so high in corporations, and then government, he wrote,
“is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin’ day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don’t give a fuck what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich!"
In a country in which much of human culture has been rendered into machines for the manufacture of money, psychopaths are the ideal leaders. They are very focused. They are outcome oriented. They are frequently charming, and usually very bright and able. They can lay off thousands of people, or deny people health care, or have them waterboarded, and it does not disturb their sleep. They can be impressively confident. Psychopaths can be dynamic leaders of enterprises, but are handicapped by their lack of feelings for relationships. They may be accomplished captains of industry, or senators, or surgeons, but their families are frequently abused and miserable. Most psychotherapists have seen the wives or husband or children of such accomplished people.
Since psychopaths are usually very smart, they can be quite competent at impersonating regular human beings in positions of power. Since they don’t care how their actions affect people, they can rise to great height in enterprises dealing with power and money. They can manufacture bombs or run hospitals. Whatever the undertaking, it is all the same to them. It’s just business. MORE HERE