Highly Functioning Sociopaths

At the center of sociopathy is a lack of empathy for others. Or rather an inability to experience, to feel, for others.
It is a necessary but not sufficient condition of sociopathy.
Add in a lack of conscience,a large dose of narcism, and a grand and glorious "master plan" to finally obtain the power, control, and glory owed - not earned - owed - and you have all the conditions necessary for a highly functioning sociopath.
Dick Chaney, Carl Rove as examples.
But this idea that one has to be a smart or as good at it as they are to be sociopathic is wrong.
I know lots of less successful sociopaths - academic medicine in my experience - full of small minded, less intelligent, highly functioning sociopaths.
I can only imagine Wall Street, and big business.
Here's the thing.
They are not to be admired as cunning, focused, and skilled at what they do.
Take away empathy and conscience and almost any fool can do the same.

Verizon and a weapon of mass financial destruction

As you travel internationally data roaming on your smart phone can be expensive - very expensive.
So you do what I do - turn it off.
Here's a little secret - Verizon has now turned your phone into a financial bomb.
Ticking away in your pocket.
If that roaming gets turned on, even for just a minute, while you're still roaming you can be billed $500, $1000, $2000 in data roaming usage.
What they do is stack all the undelivered data waiting for that moment when that data gets turned on - then they dump it all -  make a one minute mistake - get a $500 bill.
Tick tick tick......

Win-Win

Dear NSA

Lets take your supercomputers, now used to surveil pretty much everyone on the planet - guilty or not - as if straight out of some Orwellian nightmare - and instead use them to find the root causes of terrorism and fix them.
There's a brand new supercomputer, some 100,000 square feet large, in your facility in Utah.
Now that's a lot of computer.
So lets just switch it over and ask it how best to end this perpetual nightmare. Solve for the root causes of terrorism, best ways to fix them, and watch the threat melt away over the next generations - current terrorists probably lost causes.
Over the long run we'd be a whole safer than anything you might accomplish with your current strategies, and just think - you'd actually welcome the press leaks. 
Win-Win

P.S. Oh and when you're done how about applying your billions and your computers in finding a cure for cancer.

One Thing Right

I said I thought he was a sociopath.
They said, no, no - he's not smart enough.
But must you be smart to be sociopathic?
imagine what you could accomplish unencumbered with a conscience.

He would indeed be surprised at how transparent he really is
Only another narcissist would buy into his persona - making him a fine early warning system
Only problem is - he goes where his type thrives - the alarms then - deafening

Well at least he loves his family.
Or at least he makes very sure you think he does.
Claims credit for others labors and ideas.
Has never had, never will have, an original thought.

In his mind perhaps he'll be president someday.
Or at least chief of some power structure.
More likely he'll live out his pathetic fantasies only in his mind.
One thing is sure - deep down he will forever loath himself.
At least he's got one thing right.

Bodies in the Backwater

You're poor, dirt poor. 
You have no car.
You have no credit card.
You have no way to pay for a hotel even if you could find a way out. 
Payday is tomorrow, you don't even have the cash.
You're poor, you're black, in the deep south...
And a hurricane is coming to town.

'They should have left' says the accumulated wisdom of two doctors sitting in a restaurant in Brussels sipping on wine. This after witnessing the deaths of hundreds - horrible, avoidable, neglected deaths in the most disgraceful response to a natural disaster in our history.

Bloated bodies floating in the brackish backwater, lying in the streets, for days. 
6 days of suffering, of hunger, of thirst, of constant reminders they are unimportant, don't matter, even if that means they die - unnecessarily.

'They should have left' - as if. Racist, ignorant, spoiled, superior, inhumane, and sadly - typical.
It took all my will not to spit in their smug, arrogant, dispassionate faces. 

For sure - never forget - how far we have yet to go.

Jimi Hendrix

Looking down from my 3rd floor apartment window open onto winter night’s 

A streetlight below, its shadows - cold, stark

Wisps of snow dancing lightly on the pavement

pushed along by the bitter cold in what was otherwise perfect stillness

Clouds of icy breath, eyes transfixed, staring into the night 

Just a boy, thirteen 

A quiet sadness, a burning angst - alone in this far away country 

Alone in myself

The record on the cheap portable phonograph by the bed had just begun - Jimi Hendrix 
Purple Haze and the Wind Cries Mary
the first I’d ever heard him

3 am

my god 

nothing was ever the same again

Snowden, Cheney and 'Intelligence'

Lots of anger, conversation, and condemnation focused on Edward Snowden these days.
Precious little on the NSA or our government.
Snowden has revealed that many in our government exhibit an utter disregard for civil liberty, domestic and international law, or even common sense  - and yet the conversation, the anger, remains focused on the messenger.

Where was this sort of outrage when Cheney publicly revealed the identity of a covert CIA operative and her entire network who were actively involved in investigating terrorists? He did this in an unbelievably petty act of political revenge against the operatives husband, damaging important anti-terrorist efforts and endangering lives. In doing so he committed treason in time of war - he just did - argue as you may - he just did.

Snowden has taught terrorists not to talk too much on cell phones or digital networks and otherwise has just deeply embarrassed Washington - clearly much worse.

I'll say it again. If our government doesn't want to be this embarrassed again it has two courses of action.
1. Stop doing illegal or questionable things.
2. Or get better at keeping secrets.

Snowdens reveal problems with the governemnt - they are not THE problem. In this digital age Snowdens are going to happen again and again and again. Maybe business as usual ought to be rethought - hey?