Are Tories sociopaths?

When you look at any group of people of similar mind, you will find that they take on a common or group characteristics, and traits. Dare I say it a group personality even?

Examining the ruling parties here in the UK, the ConDems we find that they do conform to a common or group personality.

Further examination of this group personality leads us to ask, “Are the Tories sociopaths”? I think they are and if you look at this interesting page on the subject, you can see that most of this ConDem government conforms to type.

This definition of the malignant personality is particularly true,

(3) They scapegoat; they are incapable of either having the insight or willingness to accept responsibility for anything they do. Whatever the problem, it is always someone else’s fault.

This government has scapegoated public sector workers and, rather than look to themselves for answers to the riots, they decided that all rioters were “criminals” or were involved in gangs. They also sought to claim that all of the rioters were under the age of 25 and Black. It wasn’t true.

This also makes interesting reading,

Other Related Qualities:

1. Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them
2. Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them
3. Authoritarian
4. Secretive
5. Paranoid
6. Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired
7. Conventional appearance
8. Goal of enslavement of their victim(s)
9. Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim’s life
10. Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim’s affirmation (respect, gratitude and love)
11. Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim
12. Incapable of real human attachment to another
13. Unable to feel remorse or guilt
14. Extreme narcissism and grandiose
15. May state readily that their goal is to rule the world

My eyes were drawn to point 3. Tories claim to be in favour of freedom but their actions say something different: they are authoritarian and tend to admire other authoritarians (Thatcher’s admiration for Pinochet, for example).

In opposition, the Tories positioned themselves as champions of civil liberties but once in power they quickly reverted to their default position. I, for one, was not taken in by their faux Damascene conversion to civil libertarianism.

Same old Tories. Same old sociopaths.

The real road to serfdom

So the credit rating agency, Standard & Poor (great name) has downgraded the US’s credit rating from AAA to AA+. Do you know what this means? No? Because I don’t either. Does it mean that the US will have its credit card taken away and sent to the naughty step?

Is it me or is this whole process of credit rating  nations a little simplistic? I remember when Thatcher compared Britain’s economy to to a domestic budget. It was silly and reductive then and it’s silly and reductive now. It provides an instant rationalization and a justification for spending cuts and job losses.

Viewing the world in such simplified terms can only lead in one direction: disaster. The global economic meltdown is partly a product of lazy thinking as well as inveterate greed.

The world and its economies are much more complicated than the world’s politicians are prepared to admit. Credit rating agencies are merely an arm of enforcement that works on behalf of the banks and other financial institutions.

The US can thank the sociopaths in the Tea Party for its downgrade. It can also thank them for nearly bringing the world to its knees. I get the feeling that they won’t be happy until we’ve all returned to a feudal formation.

When Hayek wrote The Road To Serfdom, the serfdom that he envisaged was associated with what he saw as the two ‘socialisms’: Nazism and socialism (or communism). But there are fundamental flaws in his understanding of what constitutes serfdom. His knowledge of socialism was also limited to his own narrow ideological understanding of the word. In Hayek’s world, only the free market could protect liberty but, as we have seen in the last thirty years, people are less free because our politicians put the interests of corporations and banks first. The Hayekian praxis of Thatcher and Reagan and those who have followed them has put us all on a path to serfdom. The trouble is, those who support this form of economic libertarianism have little , if nothing, to lose. They won’t become  serfs. But the rest of us will end up as their slaves if we don’t put a stop to this nonsense.

Meanwhile in Israel, people have been on the streets to demand homes and jobs.

We need more of that here in Britain.

Guns or butter?

Here’s a song from a The Gang of Four.