{"id":377878,"date":"2018-09-20T01:33:23","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T00:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=377878"},"modified":"2018-09-20T19:47:56","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T18:47:56","slug":"is-psychopathy-needed-to-reach-the-top-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/is-psychopathy-needed-to-reach-the-top-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Is psychopathy needed to reach the top in America?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court is just another tip being displayed of America\u2019s top-level-psychopathy iceberg.<\/span><\/p>\n

On September 16th, the Washington Post<\/i> headlined \u201cCalifornia professor, writer of confidential Brett Kavanaugh letter, speaks out about her allegation of sexual assault\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and the news-story opened:<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all but certain to succeed.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the one to tell it.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking publicly for the first time, Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend \u2014 both \u201cstumbling drunk,\u201d Ford alleges \u2014 corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought he might inadvertently kill me,\u201d said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. \u201cHe was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the headline\u2019s usage of the lesser phrase \u201csexual assault\u201d to refer to the alleged incident, the article itself makes clear that Mrs. Ford says that she had viewed it at the time as an attempted \u201crape,\u201d and the article reports that there is extensive record in the files on the case, indicating that it traumatized her, and that for many years afterwards, it harmed her ability to trust any man, and adversely affected her career.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example:<\/span><\/p>\n

Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband. The therapist\u2019s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh\u2019s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students \u201cfrom an elitist boys\u2019 school\u201d who went on to become \u201chighly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.\u201d \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Notes from an individual therapy session the following year, when she was being treated for what she says have been long-term effects of the incident, show Ford described a \u201crape attempt\u201d in her late teens. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In an interview, her husband, Russell Ford, said that in the 2012 sessions, she recounted being trapped in a room with two drunken boys, one of whom pinned her to a bed, molested her and prevented her from screaming. He said he recalled that his wife used Kavanaugh\u2019s last name and voiced concern that Kavanaugh \u2014 then a federal judge \u2014 might one day be nominated to the Supreme Court.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

So: two boys at \u201can elitist boys\u2019 school\u201d (Georgetown Prep) had traumatized this girl; and, when she escaped, she told no one:<\/span><\/p>\n

She said she recalled thinking: \u201cI\u2019m not ever telling anyone this. This is nothing, it didn\u2019t happen, and he didn\u2019t rape me.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Years later, after going through psychotherapy, Ford said, she came to understand the incident as a trauma with lasting impact on her life. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think it derailed me substantially for four or five years,\u201d she said. She said she struggled academically and socially and was unable to have healthy relationships with men. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

She married her husband in 2002. Early in their relationship, she told him she had been a victim of physical abuse, he said. A decade later, he learned the details of that alleged abuse when the therapist asked her to tell the story, he said. <\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n

The superbly written article in the Washington Post<\/i>, by Emma Brown, portrays a prep-school culture that has been widely reported elsewhere, in which a lifetime of high society produces privileged people who treat the poor or the weak as objects to be used and thrown away, as waste, not regarded as being centers of importance equal to themselves, but instead their mere property, to use in any way they please. It encourages the growing wealth-disparity in this country, because it devalues the poor as the property of the rich. It devalues women as property of men. As the dominant culture, it encourages oppression and victimization. Victims are viewed as if they were victimizers\u2019 property. This news-story exemplifies that culture \u2014 the culture that reigns in America. Supremacist culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the records from 2012 and from 2002, the other boy, the one who had helped Kavanaugh in the attempted rape, Mark Judge, has also had a nationally prominent career:<\/span><\/p>\n

Judge is a filmmaker and author who has written for the Daily Caller, The Weekly Standard and The Washington Post. He chronicled his recovery from alcoholism in \u201cWasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk,\u201d which described his own blackout drinking and a culture of partying among students at his high school, renamed in the book \u201cLoyola Prep.\u201d Kavanaugh is not mentioned in the book, but a passage about partying at the beach one summer makes glancing reference to a \u201cBart O\u2019Kavanaugh,\u201d who \u201cpuked in someone\u2019s car the other night\u201d and \u201cpassed out on his way back from a party.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

There have been so many men who have been nationally prominent in America who have later been outed as attempted rapists, if not as rapists, if not as serial rapists, but who were, like Kavanaugh and like Judge, publicly endorsed by others of their class, and only extremely few of them become incarcerated in our prisons, which are instead overflowing with the lower classes, who get imprisoned for lesser crimes. Anyone who would say of the United States, that it\u2019s a country of \u201cEqual Justice Under Law\u201d \u2014 a real democracy \u2014 is either a liar, an ignoramus, or a fool, because it\u2019s so clearly false.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not to say that other countries are better. This problem, of top-class psychopathy, seems to be the norm everywhere. However, not every nation calls itself a \u2018democracy\u2019, but America does; and so America\u2019s example of pervasive rot at the top, is especially important. As regards the social-sciences evidence concerning whether the U.S. actually is a democracy, that evidence is now extensive, and it is consistent: America is a dictatorship<\/span><\/a>. The Washington Post<\/i> would never report that fact, however, because it\u2019s at the top and it is owned by and serves the purposes of America\u2019s richest person, Jeff Bezos; it\u2019s one of America\u2019s leading news-media; but the scientific evidence is clear and consistent on this: America is a dictatorship, by the richest<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding the other social-sciences evidence on psychopathy, that also is rather clear and consistent, and it shows that in American society, the more psychopathic one is, the more successful one is likely to be, and psychopathy is more normal at the top of American society than it is at the bottom<\/span><\/a>. Furthermore, the luckier a person is, the worse he or she becomes<\/span><\/a>. So: contrary to the social-science theoreticians who have hypothesized that the causal relationship between psychopathy and success is uni-directional, it\u2019s actually bi-directional and therefore actually a vicious circle, self-reinforcing, which leaves at the top of society a class of extremely rich extremely evil individuals.<\/span><\/a> I call them \u201cthe aristocracy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Competency is almost a pre-requisite to extreme success, but so too is psychopathy. One without the other won\u2019t get a person to anywhere near the top, except as freak occurrences, which might exist. <\/span><\/p>\n

Though this WP<\/i> news-report contains more than mere hints of that broader social-science reality, that broader reality itself is prohibited from being published in America\u2019s major news-media (including the aristocracy\u2019s think-tanks and foundations), because it implicates themselves. So you read about it here instead (in the last three links above). It\u2019s the news behind the news. Unfortunately, not many people are interested in that. The public\u2019s unconcern, with what causes the phenomena they learn of in the news, assists that vicious circle to continue. Perhaps nothing can change it. Anyway, it\u2019s the reality. And this news-report in WP<\/i> well reports a typical example of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 <\/span>They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of <\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court is just another tip being displayed of America\u2019s top-level-psychopathy iceberg. On September 16th, the Washington Post headlined \u201cCalifornia professor, writer of confidential Brett Kavanaugh letter, speaks out about her allegation of sexual assault\u201d, and the news-story opened: Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":377879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[905,30,941,551,96,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-377878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-aristocracy","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-billionaires","12":"tag-corruption","13":"tag-cover-up","14":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377878"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377960,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377878\/revisions\/377960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}