Take Me To Your Sociopath
Willard "Mitt" Romney scares me more than any of the other Republican candidates, not only in this year's crop but, to be frank, from every crop in my memory stretching back to 1972. The reason is simple. I have long believed he is a sociopath. And apparently I'm not alone in this.
I've had some personal experience with sociopaths, as well as some professional experience with them from my teaching days, and at some point during the 2008 campaign when reading about Romney's life experiences I just got the sense that he fits the bill snug as a bug. It was an instinct thing at the time. Now, however, Gary Weiss, the author of at least one book about a sociopath, Born To Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street, and an upcoming book Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle For America's Soul, has brought the subject of Romney's characteristics that fit the profile of a sociopath and even a psychopath in an article on Salon.com. (Published yesterday, January 13, 2012: http://www.salon.com/writer/gary_weiss/, called "Romney and the Pathology of Bain.")
He's careful not to push it too far or go so far as to think he can diagnose the man, but he lays out a convincing argument, even without bringing up incidents such as Romney putting the family dog on his roof in a dog cage to go to their family vacation home or bringing up any of the other stories from his personal life. His conjecture is based entirely on Romney's career at Bain Capital.
Romney scares me. I would prefer any of the other Republican candidates to him, and that's saying a great deal. I believe he is absolutely the worst thing that could happen to the U.S. at this (or any other) time. There's a great deal of reporting on him during this past week. Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal offered an analysis of 77 deals Bain Capital committed under Romney's leadership, and other journalists have jumped in as well. Ignore the Gingrich SuperPAC's film about him, it's riddled with inaccuracies, but the Wall Street Journal and many of these other sources are on it, so we can do without that campaign film.
Basically they would dive in, buy a productive company that had a purpose (like medical research, for example) and a product or a service, gut the funding for whatever productive task they were about, force it to take huge loans, have the company buy the owners' shares (their shares) back with those loans, thus giving themselves an enormous (GINORMOUS) profit, and then leave the company to go bankrupt. 22% of these 77 deals wound up in bankruptcy for restructuring or ending the company, with the obvious loss of jobs left in their wake. Equally important, for a financial profit, the productivity of many of these companies were lost.
And yes, some of those businesses would have gone under without Bain. But the Wall Street analysis found that compared to that 22% bankruptcy rate under Bain, the overall rate during this same period (1985-1999) of target companies of this type that went bankrupt after a buyout firm bought them was between 5-8%.
It's all quite complicated, but in the end Romney simply made $150-250 million dollars doing this. And as Weiss' article and Romney's many public statements point out, he feels there's nothing wrong with this, and feels nothing about the destruction left in his wake. Instead, he's offering himself up now as an expert on how to avoid the very disasters that he and his fellow corporate raider Gordon Gekkos wrought upon us all.
Before I move on to the other candidates, I must point out that of course there is a positive role for private equity firms of this type, so called buyout firms. And yes, it's theoretically possible that Romney's group actually helped some companies. But I love Weiss' response to Bain and Romney's defense, bringing in Staples as an example: "There were other Bain companies that did nicely - Romney likes to point to Staples - but it’s ludicrous to give Bain credit for Staples prospering after it recovered from its assault on the company. That’s like thanking a virus for not turning into pneumonia."
Gingrich I believe to be bipolar (yes, I know, I'm just tossing about diagnosis like confetti at a wedding today, but this possibility has also been raised far and wide in the man's wake), which could bring problems to a presidency, but it seems to be the key to Abraham Lincoln's success. I think Gingrich is pompous, egotistical, has a bloated self-worth, is temperamental and vindictive, and having his finger on the nuclear button and his will commanding the mightiest military in the history of Earth certainly is a frightening thing; but he still doesn't frighten me as much as the cold, heartless, calculating Romney.
Gingrich, like the Grinch, has a heart that gets smaller and larger and courses with human blood and human regrets, as does, obviously, his penis. Romney appears to be a machine designed in two business schools, that of his ambitious father, George, former CEO of American Motors, Governor of Michigan, and HUD Secretary under Nixon (also less frightening by leagues than Mitt Romney), and the Harvard Business School, and all Mitt knows how to to do is dismantle things so as to deliver profits to his pals. I believe Gingrich cares about America. I believe he is wrong about how to fix America and is a big money-grubbing crony capitalist pig, too, but I believe he cares about it.
I don't believe Romney is capable of understanding what we humans call `caring.'
I believe Rick Santorum cares about America, too. It's a deluded, faux-nostalgic, exclusive, fictional version of America that doesn't include room for me and probably not you either, but it's something that involves a "we" beyond his family and other small subgroups he has been conditioned or programmed to feel some sort of allegiance to, as seems to be the case with Romney (Harvard, subgroup MBAs; rich people, subgroup private equity investors; San Diego residents, subgroup whatever the gated community he bought a $12 million dollar house in with the intention of tearing it to the ground to build a bigger house there happens to be called).
Ron Paul is a wackadoodle doo, too, whistling to Dixie while calling it macaroni, but he's the only candidate in either major party in the last 30 years or more bringing up the destructiveness of the immense, unquestioned power of the Fed with or without its secrecy, the excesses of the Federal government in general, and the absolute wrongness of all our foreign military compulsions. Unfortunately those good criticisms are contained within a libertarian hatchet job mentality, the proverbial toss the baby out with the bathwater derangement syndrome that afflicts the whole libertarian breed. Still, I would rather have a Dr. Ron Paul presidency than a Romney one. By a long shot.
Not that it was ever possible, but a Bachman presidency would have been preferable to a Romney one. Ditto Herman Cain. Only Pat Robertson over the past 40 years of Republican candidates comes close to testing this belief of mine, but that's only because I think he's a sociopath, too.
The evangelicals and so called values voter conservative crowd have been casting about far and wide searching for an "anyone but Romney candidate" and I think that's because they're on to him. They recognize in Romney the same thing we all saw in Glenn Close's character when she boiled that poor family's rabbit, something inhuman, a lack of conscience.
From Weiss' article:
"[British academic Clive R.] Boddy defines psychopaths as “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry,” lack a “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.” One does not have to probe Romney’s life too deeply to find evidence of that. His lack of consistent political principles, his storied flip-flopping, are other indications of a man who doesn’t really believe anything, who has no real scruples, no aim in life other than to succeed, first to acquire wealth and now to acquire power."
This group of voters have smelled the boiled rabbit on him. They've put their fingers on the pulse of a danger that lies deep inside him. Or rather, they've put their finger on him looking for a pulse, and they haven't found one. They found an algorithm instead, on how to make money, how to get people on your side, how to attain power, how to emulate human emotions. And they're rightfully scared.
And on this particular front, I'm right there with him. Anyone but Romney. Anyone but Romney, please.
I've had some personal experience with sociopaths, as well as some professional experience with them from my teaching days, and at some point during the 2008 campaign when reading about Romney's life experiences I just got the sense that he fits the bill snug as a bug. It was an instinct thing at the time. Now, however, Gary Weiss, the author of at least one book about a sociopath, Born To Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street, and an upcoming book Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle For America's Soul, has brought the subject of Romney's characteristics that fit the profile of a sociopath and even a psychopath in an article on Salon.com. (Published yesterday, January 13, 2012: http://www.salon.com/writer/gary_weiss/, called "Romney and the Pathology of Bain.")
He's careful not to push it too far or go so far as to think he can diagnose the man, but he lays out a convincing argument, even without bringing up incidents such as Romney putting the family dog on his roof in a dog cage to go to their family vacation home or bringing up any of the other stories from his personal life. His conjecture is based entirely on Romney's career at Bain Capital.
Romney scares me. I would prefer any of the other Republican candidates to him, and that's saying a great deal. I believe he is absolutely the worst thing that could happen to the U.S. at this (or any other) time. There's a great deal of reporting on him during this past week. Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal offered an analysis of 77 deals Bain Capital committed under Romney's leadership, and other journalists have jumped in as well. Ignore the Gingrich SuperPAC's film about him, it's riddled with inaccuracies, but the Wall Street Journal and many of these other sources are on it, so we can do without that campaign film.
Basically they would dive in, buy a productive company that had a purpose (like medical research, for example) and a product or a service, gut the funding for whatever productive task they were about, force it to take huge loans, have the company buy the owners' shares (their shares) back with those loans, thus giving themselves an enormous (GINORMOUS) profit, and then leave the company to go bankrupt. 22% of these 77 deals wound up in bankruptcy for restructuring or ending the company, with the obvious loss of jobs left in their wake. Equally important, for a financial profit, the productivity of many of these companies were lost.
And yes, some of those businesses would have gone under without Bain. But the Wall Street analysis found that compared to that 22% bankruptcy rate under Bain, the overall rate during this same period (1985-1999) of target companies of this type that went bankrupt after a buyout firm bought them was between 5-8%.
It's all quite complicated, but in the end Romney simply made $150-250 million dollars doing this. And as Weiss' article and Romney's many public statements point out, he feels there's nothing wrong with this, and feels nothing about the destruction left in his wake. Instead, he's offering himself up now as an expert on how to avoid the very disasters that he and his fellow corporate raider Gordon Gekkos wrought upon us all.
Before I move on to the other candidates, I must point out that of course there is a positive role for private equity firms of this type, so called buyout firms. And yes, it's theoretically possible that Romney's group actually helped some companies. But I love Weiss' response to Bain and Romney's defense, bringing in Staples as an example: "There were other Bain companies that did nicely - Romney likes to point to Staples - but it’s ludicrous to give Bain credit for Staples prospering after it recovered from its assault on the company. That’s like thanking a virus for not turning into pneumonia."
Gingrich I believe to be bipolar (yes, I know, I'm just tossing about diagnosis like confetti at a wedding today, but this possibility has also been raised far and wide in the man's wake), which could bring problems to a presidency, but it seems to be the key to Abraham Lincoln's success. I think Gingrich is pompous, egotistical, has a bloated self-worth, is temperamental and vindictive, and having his finger on the nuclear button and his will commanding the mightiest military in the history of Earth certainly is a frightening thing; but he still doesn't frighten me as much as the cold, heartless, calculating Romney.
Gingrich, like the Grinch, has a heart that gets smaller and larger and courses with human blood and human regrets, as does, obviously, his penis. Romney appears to be a machine designed in two business schools, that of his ambitious father, George, former CEO of American Motors, Governor of Michigan, and HUD Secretary under Nixon (also less frightening by leagues than Mitt Romney), and the Harvard Business School, and all Mitt knows how to to do is dismantle things so as to deliver profits to his pals. I believe Gingrich cares about America. I believe he is wrong about how to fix America and is a big money-grubbing crony capitalist pig, too, but I believe he cares about it.
I don't believe Romney is capable of understanding what we humans call `caring.'
I believe Rick Santorum cares about America, too. It's a deluded, faux-nostalgic, exclusive, fictional version of America that doesn't include room for me and probably not you either, but it's something that involves a "we" beyond his family and other small subgroups he has been conditioned or programmed to feel some sort of allegiance to, as seems to be the case with Romney (Harvard, subgroup MBAs; rich people, subgroup private equity investors; San Diego residents, subgroup whatever the gated community he bought a $12 million dollar house in with the intention of tearing it to the ground to build a bigger house there happens to be called).
Ron Paul is a wackadoodle doo, too, whistling to Dixie while calling it macaroni, but he's the only candidate in either major party in the last 30 years or more bringing up the destructiveness of the immense, unquestioned power of the Fed with or without its secrecy, the excesses of the Federal government in general, and the absolute wrongness of all our foreign military compulsions. Unfortunately those good criticisms are contained within a libertarian hatchet job mentality, the proverbial toss the baby out with the bathwater derangement syndrome that afflicts the whole libertarian breed. Still, I would rather have a Dr. Ron Paul presidency than a Romney one. By a long shot.
Not that it was ever possible, but a Bachman presidency would have been preferable to a Romney one. Ditto Herman Cain. Only Pat Robertson over the past 40 years of Republican candidates comes close to testing this belief of mine, but that's only because I think he's a sociopath, too.
The evangelicals and so called values voter conservative crowd have been casting about far and wide searching for an "anyone but Romney candidate" and I think that's because they're on to him. They recognize in Romney the same thing we all saw in Glenn Close's character when she boiled that poor family's rabbit, something inhuman, a lack of conscience.
From Weiss' article:
"[British academic Clive R.] Boddy defines psychopaths as “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry,” lack a “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.” One does not have to probe Romney’s life too deeply to find evidence of that. His lack of consistent political principles, his storied flip-flopping, are other indications of a man who doesn’t really believe anything, who has no real scruples, no aim in life other than to succeed, first to acquire wealth and now to acquire power."
This group of voters have smelled the boiled rabbit on him. They've put their fingers on the pulse of a danger that lies deep inside him. Or rather, they've put their finger on him looking for a pulse, and they haven't found one. They found an algorithm instead, on how to make money, how to get people on your side, how to attain power, how to emulate human emotions. And they're rightfully scared.
And on this particular front, I'm right there with him. Anyone but Romney. Anyone but Romney, please.