(09-05-2020, 08:54 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 03-Sep-2020 World View: Mental illness
John, you said,
Quote:> This man is certifiably crazy, and I really mean
> that. He's like a man who gets pleasure in beating the crap out of
> his own wife. The more destructive he is, the more satisfied he
> is. This isn't an "ideology." This is a severe mental
> illness.
Cool Breeze Wrote:> You should know from the Orthodox faith that what they suffer from
> is spiritual delusion and sickness of the highest magnitude. You
> need only see Mr. de Blasio (Warren Wilhelm Jr - his real name)
> family and his children to see just how sick his internal life is
> even ... and how that shows on the outside of his destructive and
> chaotic fascinations (demonic).
> He is not crazy. That absolves him. It is not the material that is
> his problem. It is the path he chose and the rejection of God that
> makes him and anything around him go even crazier.
The point I'm trying to make is that this has nothing to do with
ideology or religion.
Religion is about whether you go to church on Sunday. Ideology is
about whether you support a 22 or 28 percent tax rate. So when you
blame something on a man's ideology or religion, you're absolving him.
Everyone's entitled to their own ideology, so you can't blame him for
his ideology. Same with religion. Or, if the person's religion is
some "enemy" religion, whether Christianity or Islam, then you can
blame the actual religion, rather then the person. So the man is
absolved either way.
There is no ideology or religion that supports a man beating up his
wife, or lynching a black, or destroying a city, or destroying a
country, or committing genocide (unless you're at war). So these
crimes have nothing to do with either ideology or religion.
In the last twenty years two former clergy have been executed in the United States due to crimes associated with their beliefs. Paul Jennings Hill, a former Presbyterian minister, murdered an abortion provider in the alleged defense of unborn children was executed in Florida. Another, Jeffrey Lundgren, a self-proclaimed Mormon pastor (the well-recognized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints does not recognize splinter group and especially not him, was executed in Ohio for killing some dissidents in his weird cult
Action in accordance with an interpretation of one's religious beliefs is not excusable in American law, especially if it results in murder.Anyone who kills in the name of his religion violates the tenets of his religion. Before someone brings up the Israeli government executing Adolf Eichmann, Eichmann was executed for homicidal crimes against Humanity, and that is no different from the Soviet Union killing Nazi perpetrators of mass murder during World War II.
Quote:Every day I see the worst of human behavior. I don't write about it
every day, but I see it every day. A politician destroying a city,
country or population, or torturing someone for saying the wrong
thing, or killing someone for no reason, and then defending it with
the usual crap that comes out of the mouths of politicians. I've
developed very strong negative feelings about the mental sickness of
humans, to the extent that I sometimes question my own sanity. This
is in the DNA, and is irrespective of religion or ideology.
Normal politicians -- or tyrants? I am well aware of the absurd things that people say in defense of a sick cause. It is not enough to believe that one serves a noble end, like winning heretics to Jesus, 'building (Marxist-Leninist) socialism', or 'freeing' the world from the Jewish 'plague'. I am fully satisfied that the Nazis generally thought (at times after going through mental contortions to convince themselves) that by exterminating the Jews they were doing a great service to Humanity. I remember reading an article in a history magazine that made clear that slave-owning planters saw themselves as benefactors to "their people" (in a literally-possessive sense, as if the slaves were property in the sense that a wagon is).
Quote:I do not agree that mental illness absolves someone of a crime. It's
true that "insanity" is a defense for some crimes, but that just means
that he's locked up in a mental institution instead of prison.
In practice, insanity defenses rarely work. Mental insufficiency might work as a mitigating factor with someone certifiably below the standard suited for a determination of mental inadequacy. This said, political leaders rarely have IQ's below 80. Insanity as a defense typically implies that one has no ability to discern reality because one cannot conform to rational norms. Even though being drunk or on psycho-active drugs may create some form of psychosis... well, one chose to get drunk or stoned, so that takes away any exculpation. Irresistible urge? One must then get oneself away from the possibility of doing something horrible, as in getting away from the person against whom one has an irresistible urge to do great bodily harm.
This said, the world has had horrible leaders who showed serious signs of mental illness. Perhaps some of them become crazy while rulers. Maintaining sanity when being in charge of a political apparatus that includes law enforcement, the military, and foreign policy... and the dominant or exclusive Party as well might cause someone who might be kept from doing monstrous things if not wielding absolute power. It is arguable that democracy ordinarily does far better by weeding out abnormal people following any failure at any level of politics, including the failure to maintain a solid grip on reality. Erratic behavior in public office or while running for public office is one way to prove that one is unfit not only for the role that one has (let us say Senator Joseph R. McCarthy or Sarah Palin).
History has shown plenty of examples of people who did not rise through the ranks as a leader who subsequently showed themselves unfit for high office once they got there. Ideally one gets to be President or Prime Minister after starting as a city councilman or county commissioner, then perhaps small-town mayor or some elected official (let us say alderman) in a larger city, followed by State Representative, State Senator, US Representative, US Senator/big-city mayor/State governor before going for the Big One. Occasionally we get someone who short-circuits that career path and gets elected after being a superb general (Dwight Eisenhower) who shows little sign of a desire to shake things up, and we get away with it. Donald Trump won people over on his alleged expertise in running a business. Still he had no voting record and no record of public statements. We know him all too well, but perhaps too late.
Getting into high power by being born a price and being elevated King, Caesar, Tsar, or Sultan is no guarantee of competence or sanity. Thus Nero, Caligula, Commodus, Ivan the Terrible, Henry VIII, and Wilhelm II. (Almost as bad is being weak-willed enough to fall under the influence of others due to poor judgment, as with Henry Pu-Yi). We have seen plenty of cases in which one Royal waged war against another for some slight that mattered only to the Royal offended. See also the two emperors-in-all-but-name of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a self-description of a monstrous regime misnamed terribly except for locating itself in at least a part of Korea. But Kim il-Sung fits in a different category.
Achieving power, even if nominally dictatorial, through connivance with a foreign power (most infamously the arch-traitor Vidkun Quisling) almost invariably ends badly.
I would be suspicious of any leader who created his reputation first as a sports hero, actor, physician, writer, or businessman without having ever showed himself as suitable for public office. That makes a huge difference between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. See also Silvio Berlusconi.
Then come those who seize power in a coup (they owe nothing to anyone and give only to the rich-and-powerful). Josip Broz Tito, Agosto Pinochet and Idi Amurderin' seized power much the same way if with very different results but having murderous secret police to enforce their will. The worst are often Party Bosses who are heads of a party that stages a coup or makes a sordid deal to get power: Lenin, Mussolini, Stalin, Rakosi, Bierut, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and of course Kim il-Sung.
Quote:So when the Nazis kill the Jews or when Maduro destroys Venezuela or
when Lori Lightfoot destroys Chicago or Ted Wheeler destroys Portland,
I'm not willing to attach a religion or ideology in any way, because
every religion and ideology is the same. To me, it's a mental
illness.
I do not deny that Maduro is a nasty dictator, and I would welcome his departure from office in Venezuela so that the country could rediscover democracy.. As for Mayors Wheeler and Lightfoot, mayors in America are not subordinates of the President. There is no prerogative for the President of the United States to take over a city whose leadership runs afoul of him or his Party. We have a federal system, and that ensures that there will be safe havens for dissidents. That's federalism and it allows some local responsibility. If things go really bad for the local authorities, then they can turn to State and in turn Federal authorities to solve some problems that overwhelm the resources of the local pols, as after a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, or volcanic eruption. Oddly, we have not had a former big-city mayor become President for a very long time. They Mayor of Los Angeles is responsible to far more people than the Governor of a small State (Bill Clinton, Arkansas).
I need say little more about Donald Trump. You well know what I think of him.
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.
