” Pathocracy is a system of government wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people.”
– Andrew M. Lobaczewski in Political Ponerology
“Psychopaths do well in politics. They are ideally suited to the ruthless, competitive, self-promoting and manipulative power games that dominate party politics.”
– Stuart Hertzog
“Has the government of the United States of America become a criminal enterprise? Is the nation ruled by psychopaths? How can the impoverishment of the people, the promotion of the military-industrial complex and endless wars and their genocidal killing, the degradation of the environment, the neglect of the collapsing infrastructure, and the support of corrupt and authoritarian governments abroad be explained? Worse, why are corporations allowed to profiteer during wars while the people are called upon to sacrifice? Why hasn’t the government ever tried to prohibit such profiteering?”
– John Kozy
“The State of the Union address is one of the largest collections of psychopaths ever organized under one roof. Every one of them is regularly engaged in the backstabbing political arena of bribes, usurpation of powers, slimy deals, Constitution shredding laws, pork-barrel appropriations for cronies, and contributors and the sanctioners of murder and mayhem around the world.
Then comes the president. With a well-practiced, straight face, he tells lie after lie as if he actually believed what he was saying were true; his cadence interrupted only by the applause from the gallery of psychopaths when he tells a really big one. They all know that none of the president’s promises will come true – that it’s all political subterfuge – but they give repeated standing ovations for his convoluted proclamations.”
– Hari Heath
“Sociopaths love power. They love winning. If you take loving kindness out of the human brain, there’s not much left except the will to win.”
– Martha Stout
“[When we view] the true nature of psychopathic influence – that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards – then everything suddenly begins to makes sense. Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless – they literally have no conscience.”
– Andrzej Lobaczewski in Political Ponerology
“Many politicians share the traits of psychopaths who are not sensitive to altruistic appeals, such as sympathy for their victims or remorse or guilt over their crimes. They possess the personality traits of lying, narcissism, selfishness, and vanity. These are the people to whom we have entrusted our fate. Is it any wonder that America is failing at home and world-wide?”
– John Kozy
“Psychopaths are naturally attracted to positions of power, and they will overwhelm anyone with a conscience, who plays by the rules and has good intentions. So you will have people with very dark interior lives, who are controlling channels of communication, controlling finance, controlling industry. And, they will promote their psychopathic “family” values. Psychopathic “values” now permeate all facets of our culture.”
– Stefan Verstappen
“Most psychopathic serial killers and many professional politicians must mimic what they believe are appropriate responses to situations they face such as sadness, empathy, sympathy, and other human responses to outside stimuli. … These traits exist in men and women who are drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political officeholders.”
– Jim Kouri
“Psychopaths seek positions of power and influence, and politics offers publicity, prestige, and other perks. It also provides positions of ultimate authority over military, industry, and entire populations. In a world where psychopaths are understandably viewed as morally repulsive, often finding themselves at home in the criminal world, politics offers an opportunity to create a new world, to be free from the moral and legal rules of society.”
– Harrison Koehli
“Power is an addiction its abusers can neither comprehend nor arrest. They are programmed towards ruthless, hegemonic domination of the ‘other’… The ‘free market’ really means freedom for the few to steal everything from the many. The game is rigged so that the people lose either way.”
– Niall Bradley
“Anyone who wants to rule men first tries to humiliate them, to trick them out of their rights and their capacity for resistance, until they are as powerless before him as animals. He uses them like animals and, even if he does not tell them so, in himself he always knows quite clearly that they mean just as little to him; when he speaks to his intimates he will call them sheep or cattle. His ultimate aim is to incorporate them into himself and to suck the substance out of them. What remains of them afterwards does not matter to him. The worse he has treated them, the more he despises them. When they are no more use at all, he disposes of them as he does excrement, simply seeing to it that they do not poison the air of his house.”
– Elias Canetti
“Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, injure, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse.”
– Kevin Barnett
“American leaders are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It’s not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It’s that they just don’t care. The same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren’t happening to them or people close to them, then they just don’t care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home – the ones who make it back alive – with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things.”
– William Blum
“Since the late 1940s, the United States has been deliberately engaged in an imperial project, and anyone who would hold the office of the presidency has to be willing to serve that end. All presidents have to promote the national security state, both domestically and in American foreign policy, if they wish to attain and hold on to power.”
– Morris Berman
“If the Nuremberg laws were applied today, then every Post-War American president would have to be hanged.”
– Noam Chomsky
“Our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser.”
– William Blum
“American policymakers, setting themselves up as guardians of the world system, are more inclined than ever to simply disregard international laws and conventions if they get in the way of unrivaled military supremacy. Every instance of U.S. armed intervention during the 1980s and 1990s represents a flagrant violation of regional treaties and laws, not to mention the UN Charter itself, which explicitly prohibits military attacks against sovereign nations – for example, Grenada, Nicaragua, Haiti, Panama, Serbia, and Iraq. In any event, the U.S. has consistently shown its contempt for international bodies, agreements, and procedures that might conflict with its hegemonic aspirations.”
– Carl Boggs
“So many Americans find it almost impossible to believe that their government officials would wantonly sacrifice the lives of its citizens [9/11-WTC massacre] to further their personal agendas. More importantly, consider the fact that your government knows how you think only too well.”
– Laura Knight-Jadczyk
“A nuclear war could alleviate some of the factors leading to today’s ecological disturbances that are due to current high-population concentrations and heavy industrial production.”
– Official of the U.S. Office of Civil Defense, quoted in The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell, 1982
“From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair.”
– William Blum
“In politics the professional psychopath’s ruthlessness and cunning gives them a distinct advantage over any nonpsychopath rival. They make charismatic leaders, manipulating and brainwashing the naive, vulnerable, uneducated, or mentally weak. Mastery of lying allows them to make whatever outrageous campaign promises straight faced with, of course, no intention of keeping any of them. A life spent faking being human give them the ability to assume the roles of virtuous public servant, the perfect father, husband, advisor, mentor, and everyman. In addition when things get rough they have no inhibitions in playing dirty and readily resort to murder, assassination, persecution, war and genocide.”
– Stefan H. Verstappen
“Why do we continue to allow leaders who are motivated by self-interest, or by their own psychological issues from the past, to fan bitterness and political crisis into armed confrontation and war?”
– Martha Stout