05-13-2021, 11:10 AM
Sociopaths may get things done (like selling shady merchandise), creating huge paper profits (executives at Enron), generating a huge cash flow (as did Bernie Madoff), satisfying sordid desires (child pornographers, sex traffickers, and drug pushers), cutting unemployment (as did Hitler -- by ensuring that wages were so low that any industrial activity was profitable and prohibiting employees from changing jobs to seek better pay or working conditions), getting surprising victories in warfare (so you do a surprise attack against an ill-prepared enemy and act with the most complete disregard for human life let alone the customs of war), or making possible huge project that impress "useful idiots" (like the Black Sea Canal... with 100%-expendable convict labor). Then we find the cost. Oh, the shady merchandise is toys for young children full of lead (small children tend to play with such toys with their mouths). The paper profits at Enron were pure fantasy, as was the basis of returns from Madoff. Child pornography, sex trafficking, and illicit drugs hurt people badly. Much of the productivity and big projects that impressed people in Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union came from the destruction of all that is human. Aggressive warfare often culminates in having too many enemies at once and being unable to win the peace although the other side can. The Allies won the Second World War because as their lines went deeper into occupied and then Axis territory, people behind the front were left with no cause to strike back at the Allies. Americans and Brits did not need to take anti-partisan measure. To the contrary -- they were often catching up with the partisans in what proved to be combined operations.
To be sure, some sociopaths recognize that they have a problem, and that if they want to avoid getting personal ruin that they had better act as if not sociopaths. So0 one has the competence to do things honorably and have fewer bad consequences for oneself. Sometimes the best morality that one can hope for is enlightened self-interest. It is better to be a naturally-good person than one who must pretend it enough to make a good habit out of it, but sometimes one must work with what one has.
Trump didn't do much that was necessary for constraining COVID-19. He didn't advocate mask use, and he still held mass rallies that have pro0ved to be super-spreader events. Major-league sports, the film industry, and the largest Christian church in America (the Roman Catholic Church) did more and better to stop the spread of COVID-19. Democrats did not hold mass rallies or even canvas for votes, and that may have come close to losing the election for them. But what is a few hundred thousand lives?
Well, 600,000 lives is just larger (based on 2019 Census estimates) of Baltimore or Milwaukee or close to the sum of two of three cities (Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis) that have major-league baseball teams. New York City reached a population of 600,000 only in the 1840's (probably due to the Irish potato famine).. That is greater than the military death tolls of US armed forces in America's three deadliest wars (WWII, the Civil War, and WWI) in raw deaths, although it is still short of the deaths on both sides of the Civil War. . That's about twenty years of deaths from motor-vehicle collisions in America (including car-pedestrian). That's 20 times the death toll of 9/11. It is more than the Soviet military death toll (including missing in action) at Stalingrad. That's one tenth of the conventional estimate of the deaths of the Holocaust. Trump did not take it seriously fast enough -- he was one of the last people in a responsible position to do so.
Donald Trump may not be culpable in all the death, but he is clearly one of the worst killers in human history... if one refers to negligent homicide and not outright murder.
To be sure, some sociopaths recognize that they have a problem, and that if they want to avoid getting personal ruin that they had better act as if not sociopaths. So0 one has the competence to do things honorably and have fewer bad consequences for oneself. Sometimes the best morality that one can hope for is enlightened self-interest. It is better to be a naturally-good person than one who must pretend it enough to make a good habit out of it, but sometimes one must work with what one has.
Trump didn't do much that was necessary for constraining COVID-19. He didn't advocate mask use, and he still held mass rallies that have pro0ved to be super-spreader events. Major-league sports, the film industry, and the largest Christian church in America (the Roman Catholic Church) did more and better to stop the spread of COVID-19. Democrats did not hold mass rallies or even canvas for votes, and that may have come close to losing the election for them. But what is a few hundred thousand lives?
Well, 600,000 lives is just larger (based on 2019 Census estimates) of Baltimore or Milwaukee or close to the sum of two of three cities (Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis) that have major-league baseball teams. New York City reached a population of 600,000 only in the 1840's (probably due to the Irish potato famine).. That is greater than the military death tolls of US armed forces in America's three deadliest wars (WWII, the Civil War, and WWI) in raw deaths, although it is still short of the deaths on both sides of the Civil War. . That's about twenty years of deaths from motor-vehicle collisions in America (including car-pedestrian). That's 20 times the death toll of 9/11. It is more than the Soviet military death toll (including missing in action) at Stalingrad. That's one tenth of the conventional estimate of the deaths of the Holocaust. Trump did not take it seriously fast enough -- he was one of the last people in a responsible position to do so.
Donald Trump may not be culpable in all the death, but he is clearly one of the worst killers in human history... if one refers to negligent homicide and not outright murder.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
