We are not going to get anywhere as a nation until we understand that George W. Bush just doesn’t care about making this world a better place. If you didn’t see Bill Clinton’s appearance in CNN tonight, I encourage you to see a repeat. Christiane Amanpour hosted a kind of roundtable of experienced foreign policy and peace negotiation hands. There was Shimon Peres and the Queen of Jordan and George Mitchell and others. They took things seriously. They talked about how to solve problems. The most glaring thing about the whole spectacle was just how rare it is to see serious debate on television. Yesterday, Larry King interviewed Oprah’s Winfrey’s husband. Today they actually made good use of their airwaves.
But it all seemed like wasted breath because the foreign policy debate in this country is not being held by polite and civilized debaters. Bush just doesn’t care whether there is peace in Israel or whether the killing stops in Darfur, or whether the murder rate in Philly is spiking. He doesn’t care. Cheney doesn’t care. The sooner we realize this the sooner we will agree on what steps we need to take.
You just figure this out!
Sheeesh……….
No matter how many mistakes the Decider has made in life he has never felt any pain. From cocaine bust to business failure to insane presidential policies his daddy or Rove has been there to bail him out. He is a sociopath who feels nothing, life has never bitten him so he has felt no pain and is incapable of empathizing with anyone in pain.
Bush is empty and is being manipulated by empty men. Men who do not feel and can only grasp the basic concepts of wealth and power. How to acquire them and keep them. Let the country and innocents abroad suffer the pain to this group its all a movie and they are the movie stars. In some way they are a product of the worsts aspects of our culture. I hope we can survive the men who don’t care about us or their world.
Beautifully said, Salunga. Regarding Bush personally, I’d take your opinion a baby-step further & say that he’s simply incapable of empathy altogether — which is one earmark of the certified sociopath.
Even further, I’d say that this pathology is precisely what’s made him so valuable to others in his position.
I’ve no doubt that these people do, in fact, care — in the way insects care. It’s all rather basic, concerning their most immediate needs.
These people are straight outta Burroughs.
Huh, I think he’s a sadist and a narcissist.
Can you be a sadist and a narcissist AND a sociopath?
Apparently.
Checking “sociopath” on Wikipedia, there was a mnemonic for the “anti-social pathology” characteristics which I thought most appropriate:
C – cannot follow law
O – obligations ignored
R – remorselessness
R – recklessness
U – underhandedness
P – planning deficit
T – temper
I don’t like to go to far into the psychology of the guy, but we know he’s never been held responsible for anything or had to pass a test he couldn’t cheat on. (You think the ANG was about to let H.W.’s kid wash out of flight school? H.W.’s kid was going to flunk out of Harvard or Yale? Guess again.)
There are three or four traits of Bush that stand out:
1.He knows he is a zero,intellectually and morally.
2.So, he gets a charge out of humiliating those he thinks are intellectually and morally superior to him.See how he dealt with Professor Tsurumi of Harvard Business School.
3.He is contemptuous of those who are not born to wealth or have wealth.
4.He believes in might makes right, even though he lacks physical courage himself.
Almost everything about him is not authentic, including his phony Potemkin ranch,his Texas accent,his born again persona and so on.
I am also sure he is a cruel and vindictive man;his cruelty is reserved for helpless people like Karla Faye Tucker whom he mocked for pleading for mercy.I would not be the least bit surprised if he ordered the torture of prisoners and is now scrambling to escape the consequences by retroactively giving himself immunity.
Your observations strike at the heart of the debate being held about the use of torture by the government to keep us safe.
If you think about it, one theory of theo-political structure constructs god-kings who do get to perform all of those acts which society generally denies itself but which cause the god-king to be punished for his crimes. Dubya wants to perform the acts, but he doesn’t want to accept the punishment. If the need to torture was so great to protect the nation, then any self-sacrificing individual – as soldier or politician – should be willing to accept the consequences of the actions they have performed. Those who have no concern for their oath of office want to dump off responsibility on someone else or society in general.
That is what the torture debate is all about. Dubya and his posse want to order torture. They also want the rest of us to accept the responsibility for it, even though few can judge whether it makes any rational sense at all to apply it. Their urgent need to shed responsibility displays their cowardice, as if their actions earlier in their lives hadn’t already done so. Hollow men indeed.