THE PSYCHOPATH(S) IN THE WHITE HOUSE

"For what is he they follow? truly, gentlemen,
A bloody tyrant and a homicide;
One raised in blood, and one in blood establish'd;
One that made means to come by what he hath,
And slaughter'd those that were the means to help him;
A baleful stone, made precious by the foil
Of England's chair, where he is falsely set..."

Richard III
Act V Scene 5
by William Shakespeare

They comprise approximately one percent of the American Population. population. As a children they may well have wet the bed for no apparent physical reason or reasons;or started fires (pyromania) for the sheer enjoyment of lighting fires, or tortured small animals for the sheer enjoyment of torture; or engaged in dangerous activities which posed a threat to both others and themselves.

When they grow up they might give all the outward appearances of normalcy. They may laugh or cry at the appropriate moments; they may even offer something that resembles genuine love, compassion, or sympathy when the situation requires them to do so.

But if you were to look beyond their conniving behavior, you would discover a calculating monster which is incapable of feeling anything for anyone except him or herself. People like this are manipulative. They will do or say anything to further their own goals and objectives, but they don't care who they hurt in the process. They may appear charming and inviting, but they may lie, cheat, and steal on a regular basis. They may appear supportive and compassionate, but they may actually be cruel, violent, and sadistic. They may drink or use illegal drugs on a regular basis; may experience repeated failures with both, permanent employment and long term relationships. They may malinger, may do anything, either legal or illegal to get out of obligations and duties. They may plan a given scheme for months or even years on end, only to fail their own objectives, through their abnormally impulsive behavior. At the very worst they may kill for the sheer sexual pleasure of killing. Questions of guilt and conscience are irrelevant; they know the difference between right and wrong but consider themselves superior to the basic laws of civilization. In other words, they don't care about right or wrong. And to make the situation even worse they do not learn from their mistakes and they cannot be cured.

You might have grown up with one; been a friend or a sibling to one. You might have worked for one or even employed one. You might have gone to school with one or possibly married one.

We call them sociopaths, sometimes psychopaths, and they suffer from an incurable disorder called Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

And it now appears as if 51 percent of eligible American voters actually voted for one in the year 2004. His name is George W. Bush, and it's time to stop dancing around the issue. Our country is being led by a dangerous, unfeeling sociopath who has surrounded himself with disturbed individuals of a similar, maladjusted vent.

The antics of George W. Bush, the boy and the adult (I won't use the word man, since maturation is another quality this individual lacks) go a little beyond short changing the sheets and putting salt in the sugar bowl on April Fools Day. This after all was a boy who was raised by a virtually absentee mother and a cold-hearted, closet-drinking mother. How bad were they? When George's little sister passed away George Senior and Barbara not only wouldn't talk about their daughter's illness and death from leukemia. They didn't even have a funeral and went so far as to go golfing the next day; leaving young George to handle the situation on his own. In this regard there is a certain degree of confusion. If indeed, there was a time when young George had normal feelings for anyone or anything, they were driven from him when he was left to handle his feelings of guilt, sadness and confusion on his own with a minimum of parental care. In this scenario, George essentially learned that expressions of emotion and vulnerability were signs of weakness, eventually creating an individual who refused to show associated emotions such as compassion or sympathy. In the sociopath scenario, young George never had those feelings to begin with. But when you think about it the end result is the same. This is an individual who has a great deal of difficulty when it comes to expressing genuine sympyathy.

1). As a child, Baby Bush not only enjoyed shooting frogs. He also enjoyed stuffing them with fire crackers and watching them explode. How's that for a fun-packed activity on a boring afternoon? It kind of makes me thankful that he never figured out how to run the microwave. God only knows what he would have done to the family cat.

2). In college he branded the buttocks of his fellow pledges with hot wire coat hangers and to this day he does not understand why people consider this inappropriate.

3). As a young man he became a chronic alcoholic, going on a drunken, sex-crazed, cocainen-powdered binge which lasted from the time he graduated from high school until he turned forty in the year 1986. And yet, for some bizarre reason, the Christian Right idolizeds this demented abomination as a paragon of virtue, completely oblivious to the fact that their Dry Drunk Select has physically given up the mind-altering substances while maintaining all the psychological characteristics of a sociopathic alcoholic: the lying, the manipulation, the utter disregard for law, for right and wrong, ad nauseam.

4). Early on on his marriage he responded to criticism of a speech by his wife Laura, by driving the car through the front doors of the garage, continuing until he had ploughed through the back wall.

5). Throughout his business and early political career, he used his family's wealth, power, and influence (some might say that he manipulated his enabling family members) to get him out of numerous difficulties. Whether it's avoiding combat in Vietnam, or avoiding the consequences of his alcoholism, or denying his involvement in either failed businesses or financial scandals, George W. Bush not only has a problem when it comes to accepting personal responsibility for his actions, he also blames others for his many mistakes and, by the same token, expects others to pull his chestnuts out of the fire.

6). In September 1976, he was convicted on drunk driving and spent the next twenty years lying to keep the fact concealed. *In that same year, 1976, he went on a drunken joyride with his little brother Marvin, knocking down mailboxes with baseball bats as they sped along the countryside. When Papa Bush took him to task for his irresponsible behavior, Little George threatened to beat up his father.

7). As governor of Texas, he not only refused to commute the death sentence of Karla Fay Tucker; he also ridiculed her pleas for mercy.

8). This president routinely presents himself as a tongue-tied "good-old-boy" from Texas to curry favor with the American people, when in fact he is an accomplished and manipulative speaker, who could charm the skin off a rattlesnake. Indeed, Bush can be both, forceful and eloquent, when he is angry and verbally abusive, but when he talks about democracy, compassion, family, and the average American, his contempt for lower and middle class America, becomes obvious as he mangles sentences andstutterss all over himself, struggling to find the proper words. This is why we hear such outrageous comments about how he "wants to put food on our family," and how poor people don't necessarily want to kill people. He simply does not understand, nor care about anyone except himself. Contrary to popular belief, the Decider's goon squads are not on hand to shield the public from his occasional bouts of lunacy. Instead, they serve as a buffer between Bush and the American people, essentially concealing the fact that the Demander and Thief is a bully and a con man who has no speech impairment at all when he is firing off the cuff obscenities and insults. This, of course, is the real why this president is so shielded from the press and why his events are staged before friendly, preselected crowds.

9). This is the same individual who planned an invasion of an oil rich country for years and then botched the invasion proper through his own arrogant and impulsive behavior patterns. The end result? More than 2,100 American soldiers killed, more than 15,000 American soldiers disabled, and (according to the Lance), more than 100,000 Iraqis civilians killed. You just have to wonder if the Demander and Thief is satisfied to look at pictures in the paper or if he would actually like to collect trophies like other serial killers.

10). This is also the same president who lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction and then had the audacity to perform a bizarre comedy routine in the White House, even as American Soldiers were dying because of his delusional miscalculations

11). Apparently Bush hasn't matured much since the good old days when he was blowing up frogs, because he embraces the use of torture and torture obtained evidence.* His contempt for the law is so intense that he has now referred to the United States Constitution as a "goddamn piece of paper." Now about that problem with following the law that "W" supposedly doesn't have?

In addition, it seems as if the self-declared "Decider" is trapped in a state of perpetual immaturity--or is it a state of sexual sadism? Why is so much of this indvidual's behavior so disturbingly anal? Inserting fire crackers in frogs anal orifices; branding the buttocks of college pledges; underwear placed on the heads of prisoners at various detention centers. Are those of us on the left the only people who see a disturbingly erotic aspect to all of this?

And why, you should ask yourself, throughout his entire life he has George W. Bush never taken responsibility for a single, solitary mistake--which, if he take him at his own word, he has never made in the first place? On the other hand he has surrounded himself with like-minded individuals who are equally opposed to accepting their share of the blame, and who routinely pass the buck down to lower level inferiors in the chain of command.

It's time to admit that George W. Bush does not possess the normal range of human emotions that most of us do. It's time to face the fact that George W. Bush is not a Compassionate Conservative. He is not an honest individual, he is not a legitimate Christian, and he is not a law abiding citizen. Everything this president does is for a calculated effect, and if, on occasion, he seems to express a normal, human emotion, it is only because he has learned to emulate that behavior by observing and mimicking normal people. .

Beneath the facade, George W. Bush is an empty, power-hungry vessel; a scheming, conniving sociopath who will do anything, both legal and illegal, to obtain whatever warped objective he has yet to share with us.