Can you name a Democratic Party member who exhibits the following characteristics?

• Glibness/superficial charm
• Grandiose sense of self-worth
• Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
• Pathological lying
• Cunning/manipulative
• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Shallow affect [i.e., superficial experience and expression of emotions]
• Callous/lack of empathy
• Skillful use of teleprompter

OK, that last item doesn't belong on this list, but you can probably name at least one such person, and maybe several, who fit this description.  According to Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest aides, "[Obama has] been bored to death his whole life. He's just too talented to do what ordinary people do. He would never be satisfied with what other people do."  (Item 3 above.)

The take-away from this little exercise is that these eight items are the first eight (of twenty) on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R).  The items above are classified as Aggressive Narcissism, sometimes known as malignant narcissism.  The last twelve items on the list are classified as Socially Deviant Lifestyle.  Narcissistic psychopaths tend to be smooth, soulless operators pursuing power, position, and money, and deviant psychopaths tend more toward violent criminal psychopathy, with Hannibal Lecter as an extreme example.  Most psychopaths exhibit some combination of both narcissistic and deviant traits. 

Not all psychopaths exhibit all behaviors on the checklist, and the checklist is a professional tool for professional psychological use, but it is useful in revealing an increasingly aggressive and destructive political movement within our Republic.  It has been difficult to get an accurate diagnosis, or reading, of psychopathy because different psychopaths exhibit radically different behaviors, but the constant among different psychopaths is an absence of human feeling (and boredom).  It is only in the last few years that the Corporate Psychopath has been identified.

Psychopathy is a pathological condition appearing to have genetic roots, possibly caused by electrochemical malfunctions in the nerve systems of the brain.  The psychopath is marked by a lack of feeling (no empathy, no conscience, no remorse, no guilt) that leads him (less frequently her) into dishonest, deceptive, and criminal behaviors.  Other than that, a psychopath may be well-educated and may have sterling job qualifications.  A psychopath is quite capable of reflecting on how better to deceive people while being totally oblivious to why he should not do so.  More intelligent psychopaths tend to be the smooth operators, concealing their worst impulses and worming their way into positions of power, wealth, and influence.  There is a difference between Ted Bundy and a "Corporate Psychopath," but both display the same lack of feeling typical of the worst criminal psychopaths.

Clive Boddy has a short summary of the problems that Corporate Psychopaths can create in his article, "The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis."  Boddy asserts that Corporate Psychopaths are ambitious; lack empathy, conscience, and remorse; and feel no guilt in taking what they want.  According to Boddy, Corporate Psychopaths played a major role in the 2008 financial meltdown -- $40 trillion worldwide -- and these same psychopaths are now in charge of solving the problems they created.  Psychopaths are capable of concerted action to achieve their nefarious goals, and we find politicians, regulators, lobbyists, and corporate executives cooperating and rotating in and out of their powerful positions and increasing their wealth and influence while -- so sad! -- the wealth of the Republic and of the citizens that created that wealth are destroyed.  It is as if the world went from dictatorships to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to the Dictatorship of the Psychopaths, but these may all be manifestations of the same parasitic phenomenon.

For example, Rahm Emanuel was an unprincipled principal in the failed HillaryCare program, from which he went, or was pushed, to the board of directors of Freddie Mac, where he failed to note and did not try to correct the campaign donation scandal (chief recipients: Chris Dodd, Obama, and Barney Frank) and the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac $10-billion accounting fraud.  Emanuel subsequently became chief of staff in the Obama White House, where he was in charge of all the failed programs in the early years of the Obama administration: the billion-dollar stimulus package that did not stimulate anything but the national debt, Government Motors, Cap-and-Trade, Solyndra, etc., etc.  In less than two years, the Obama programs were falling apart and unpopular, and Emanuel fled to Chicago to run for mayor -- to become the big fish in a little pond instead of a big fish in the world's biggest ocean.  Why would Emanuel do that besides from the need to get out of the White House while the getting was good?  And maybe the opportunity to participate in Chicago's famous corruption was an added attraction?

Meanwhile, Dodd and Frank had encouraged government programs that helped citizens to take out mortgages that they could not afford.  Dodd and Frank insisted that there was no problem with the subprime mortgages until the day the housing bubble came crashing down in 2008.  Dodd was a prime recipient of financial favors from Countrywide and its CEO Angelo Mozillo, along with other political luminaries such as Senator Kent Conrad, Nancy Pelosi's son Paul, Representative Barbara Boxer, Representative James Clyburn, and Donna Shalala -- all Democrats, all FOA (Friends of Angelo).  Very few Republicans have been identified as FOA.  The excesses and corruption of Countrywide and of Merrill Lynch created untenable financial positions, and the Obama administration forced Bank of America to take over Countrywide and Merrill Lynch.  Now Bank of America is in trouble and is laying off tens of thousands of people, and it may have to sell part of its locations to avert bankruptcy.  And on and on and on.  Democrats are like the forty thieves in the tale of Ali Baba, only there are millions of them -- not all psychopaths, but they corruptly waste your tax dollars regardless.

British, Canadian, and Australian psychologists are prominent in defining the Corporate Psychopath, and knowledge of what our Anglo cousins are doing is limited in the USA.  Besides the Hare Psychopathy Checklist -- Revised, Professor Robert Hare, a Canadian, is a co-author of the book Snakes in Suits, which has attracted some notice, but the scope of the problem is so big that it deserves much more attention.  Boddy, an Australian, makes a strong case that the 2008 financial meltdown, which has added $5 trillion and counting to the national debt, was created by Corporate Psychopaths, and that is where your money went.

There is nothing the matter with Kansas; the rot and corruption are in national politics.  The poor are poorer than at any time recently, workers are unemployed at the highest rate since the Great Depression, retirees have lost their savings, and the entire nation is substantially impoverished.  Almost the only demographics that have benefited are illegal immigrants and Corporate and Political Psychopaths.

James G. Long has been an army captain, a professional engineer, an author, and a blogger, with a lifelong interest in organizational management problems. http://mandynamerica.com/blog