As I was reading the Hillarious Maureen Dowds coulumn
…but there’s something eerie going on in this race.
Hillary grows more and more glowy as Obama grows more and more wan.
Is she draining him of his precious bodily fluids? Leeching his magic? Siphoning off his aura?
it occurred to me that this sounds familiar, that I’ve seen this emotional vampirism before – in a psychopath brother of my best friend. At the time, the guy was a pain in the neck, and, quite unexpectedly, his behavior could be explained… Back then I looked up stuff and was surprised at how low-key the criteria were that suggest affirmative diagnosis. So I did it again, and and it was scary:
Factor1: Aggressive narcissism
1. Glibness / superficial charm
2. Grandiose sense of self-worth
3. Pathological lying
4. Cunning / manipulative
5. Lack of remorse or guilt
6. Shallow
7. Callous / lack of empathy
8. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
9. Promiscuous sexual behavior
It very clearly describes a politician in general, and to some extent, Hillary Clinton in this primaries campaign (except for no. 9 of course). The article went on to say that
Factor 1 has been correlated with … high scores on scales of achievement and well-being.
I don’t want to suggest that Hillary Clinton is a dangerous psychopath and needs hospitalization. Psychopathy is not a yes/no disorder, there is a variety of intermediate states, one could probably even say in its mildest forms, it’s just personality. But for sure, people like that tend to prey on unhappiness of others (political adversaries in this case?…) – it gives them strength and motivation. And the worst (and I know it from my friends’ personal experience), they sincerely believe they are helping the unfortunate target of their negativity… What a strange new perspective for me on this campaign.
