False accusations and slander as favorite female sociopaths technique
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The utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which damage the victim reputation is one of the favorite female sociopath technique. Often this is a pure projection of their own behaviour on unsuspecting victim.
They also are very adept in using heir sex both as shield protecting them and as the attack spear.
In addition they often (but not always) possess what is called sociopathic charm which includes set of behaviour which make easy to a men to get into the trap (and sometimes this is a pure entrapment), This set of behaviors can be remembered using the mnemonic word PRAISE:
Provocative (or seductive) behavior; early and repeated attempts to breach the personal distance while not being acquainted for a long time. Often on the first meeting.
Relationships are presented as more intimate than they actually are. "We are friends, aren't we" trick. "We are adult people, aren't we?" trick. "Tell me what you expect of a woman in bed?".
Attention-seeking behaviour, especially efficient when it comes along with physical beauty. Physical beauty is the trait that makes female sociopath so dangerous, as it disarm people. Direct and confident body language signals their interest in you.
Influence others and adapts to them seamlessly. They listen attentively, ask simple "ice-breaking" questions. Smile, nod, and occasionally offer commentary like "Uh-huh" or "Yeah." Ask follow up questions as well. Ask for clarification or further details on stories and personal information.
Speech style is somewhat exaggerated, emotionally elevated with the goal to impress; lacks details, especially in their biography.
Emotional lability, mood swings, exaggerated emotions; theatrical behaviors. along with the distinct tendency to engage in light flirt even if it is inappropriate. They are typically dressed up, sexy and try to radiate confidence. Attractive, often well though out make-up, hair style, clothing, perfume, helps to draw attention to them. That's why female sociopaths are typically judged as better looking than average at first sight. This difference in attractiveness instantly disappears when "dressed down" with bland clothing and without make up, but often it is too late ;-)
Sociopaths, and especially female sociopaths, are pre-wired/designed for successful social deception. They can be viewed as a type that evolved biologically to practice the strategy of manipulative and predatory social interactions. In ancient societies this was a dangerous technique to use, as the punishment was the exile, or death. See the movie Dangerous Liaisons. But under neoliberalism they really flourish as they can abuse "identity politics" in really diabolic ways.
Due to the size the introduction to female sociopaths techniques was moved to a separate page: Overview of the techniques of a female sociopaths
Typical set of traits
Absence of consciousness as a guide to techniques and behaviors
Modified Dr. Martha Stout list of the techniques of the sociopath
Lying and deception as immanent features of behaviour
Idealize-seduce-devalue-discard cycle
Blaming the victim
Female sociopath look at human relations, including sexual relations as the war of conquest
For a sociopath the stable personality does not really exist
Ends justify means mentality, complete amorality
Movies that can help study techniques used by female sociopaths
NEWS CONTENTS
20201122* MeToo excesses create a vast playing field for female sociopaths by Elizabeth Bartholet ( Jan 16, 2018 , www.thecrimson.com ) [Recommended]
20200412 : In a fiery speech announcing her decision, Collins ripped unsupported claims by Avenatti's client, Julie Swetnick, that Kavanaugh facilitated a Cosby-esque "gang rape" operation while in high school ( Oct 07, 2018 , www.zerohedge.com )
20200412 : How to Defend Against Charges of Harassment in the Workplace ( Oct 05, 2018 , smallbusiness.chron.com )
20200412 : We Are Living Nineteen Eighty-Four... by Victor Davis Johnson ( Sep 25, 2018 , www.zerohedge.com )
20200412 : False accusations are a very serious thing, and we are accepting them all too glibly ( Oct 05, 2018 , consortiumnews.com )
20200412 : Unintended consequences of #MeToo movement causing 'gender segregation' on Wall Street ( Dec 09, 2018 , www.rt.com )
20190204 : Amorality as the key feature of psychopaths ( Feb 04, 2019 , www.unz.com )
20190106 : With the exception of military tacticians acting in defense against an aggressor, con men are predominantly sociopaths ( Jan 06, 2019 , www.alt-market.com )
20181030 : The women who run large US companies are as shallow and ruthless as the sociopathic men. ( Oct 30, 2018 , features.propublica.org )
20181005 : Here's the truth about false accusations of sexual violence by Lisa Lazard, ( Oct 05, 2018 , www.irishexaminer.com )
20181005* Alcohol, Memory, and the Hippocampus ( Oct 05, 2018 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
20181003 : False accusations of rape are not uncommon. A few gain national attention. Most do not. ( Oct 03, 2018 , www.unz.com )
20181002 : VINDICATION by Chateau Heartiste ( Oct 02, 2018 , www.theburningplatform.com )
20181002 : Mitchell the "veteran prosecutor" also failed to ask Ford who hosted the party where the alleged assault took place ( Oct 02, 2018 , www.zerohedge.com )
20181002 : The danger of false accusations from women who have a grudge or female sociopaths ( Oct 02, 2018 , www.theguardian.com )
20181002 : Female false accusers demonstrate some common patterns, too many smiles, attention seeking, stories that make no sense or too vague ( Oct 02, 2018 , www.zerohedge.com )
20181001 : She even got caught red handed at my friends house by his girlfriend and locked herself in the bathroom. All she did was give it back and say lets go, she didn't care what they thought. ( Oct 01, 2018 , www.youtube.com )
20180930 : Ability to remarkably walked back on allegations after facing with proof that they are bogus is a warning sign that you may deal with a female sociopath ( Sep 28, 2018 , dailycaller.com )
20180929 : Always remember the equally lurid "recovered memories" of UFO abduction survivors ( Sep 29, 2018 , www.unz.com )
20180929 : Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" exemplifies very well how the hysteria of girls can be so dangerous that innocent men can be made to suffer terrible if not fatal consequences. ( Sep 29, 2018 , www.unz.com )
20180929 : False memory syndrome and witch hunts based on it ( Sep 29, 2018 , www.unz.com )
20180929 : Former Employer Sued Third Kavanaugh Accuser For Sexual Harassment Allegations ( Sep 29, 2018 , www.zerohedge.com )
20180926* In several murder cases the perpetrators actually received direct orders from the woman ( Sep 26, 2018 , turcopolier.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
20180925 : Man freed in Maine after false conviction by a conspiracy of women ( Sep 25, 2018 , turcopolier.typepad.com )
20180911 : A Victim's Guide to Surviving a Narcissist-Sociopath by Sereena Nightshade ( Sep 11, 2018 , www.barnesandnoble.com )
20180911 : Narcissists Tend to Become Leaders ( Oct 07, 2008 , www.livescience.com )
20180911 : Have We Become a Nation of Narcissists by Ronald Pies, M.D ( Sep 21, 2009 , www.livescience.com )
20180911 : It's not easy to call out a complete narcissist. They're highly manipulative in turning the tables and making themselves the victim leaving the righteous accuser or critic holding the bag ( Sep 11, 2018 , www.moonofalabama.org )
20180627 : Holmes, Uncle Clunk, and and Epic Con Job, by Fred Reed - The Unz Review ( Jun 27, 2018 , www.unz.com )
20171110 : Coworkers From Hell! by Sherrie Bourg Carter Psy.D. ( Jul 11, 2017 , www.psychologytoday.com )
20171110 : How to Deal With High-Maintenance People by Korin Miller ( Oct 05, 2012 , www.cosmopolitan.com )
20170101 : When Evil Is a Pretty Face Narcissistic Females the Pathological Relationship Agenda - Kindle edition by Zari Ballard. Healt ( Jan 01, 2017 , www.amazon.com )
20161207 : Puzzling People The Labyrinth of the Psychopath by Thomas Sheridan ( Dec 07, 2016 , www.amazon.com )
20160716 : Female Sociopaths - different but just as dangerous! ( www.decision-making-confidence.com )
20160716 : Confessions of a Sociopath A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight ( www.amazon.com )
20160716 : Are you a female sociopath - Telegraph by Helena Kealey ( telegraph.co.uk )
20160716 : Rethinking Female Sociopathy, Part One by Dr Tara J. Palmatier ( January 4, 2012 , shrink4men.com )
20160716 : Female sociopaths display all the symptoms of a sociopath: lying, a parasitic lifestyle, the need for control, and the craving for excitement. ( male%20sociopaths%20display%20all%20the%20symptoms%20of%20a%20sociopath:%20lying,%20a%20parasitic%20lifestyle,%20the%20need%20for%20control,%20and%20the%20craving%20for%20excitement.%20https: )
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20160412 : Mind Games Emotionally Manipulative Tactics Partners Use to Control Relationships and Force the Upper Hand ( www.amazon.com )
20160412 : Surviving Sara: Marrying a narcissistic sociopath ( Amazon.com )
20160407 : Characteristics Associated with Cultic Groups - Revised ( csj.org )
20160407 : The Confidence Game Why We Fall for It... Every Time by Maria Konnikova ( amazon.com )
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20160407 : Beware the bullying female boss ( Independent )
20160407 : Women vs men boss ( Women vs men boss, )
20160407 : My boss, the bitch ( theage.com.au )
20160407 : Sub-Sociopaths and Sub-Psychopath Types ( Sub-Sociopaths and Sub-Psychopath Types, )
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20160407 : Antisocial Personality, Sociopathy and Psychopathy ( Antisocial Personality, Sociopathy and Psychopathy, )
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Old News ;-)
[Nov 22, 2020] MeToo excesses create a vast playing field for female sociopaths by Elizabeth Bartholet
Elizabeth Bartholet correctly point out blatant disregard of law and witch hunt atmosphere on MeToo movement. This aspect is easily exploitable by female sociopaths who want to remove a men who did not reciprocate their "favors" or just represent obstacle on their career path. Teachers are especially vulnerable to such a blackmail.
Notable quotes:
"... However, I am concerned that in the recent rush to judgment, principles of basic fairness, differences between proven and merely alleged instances of misconduct, and important distinctions between different kinds of sexually charged conduct have too often been ignored. Similar problems plagued the imposition of new sexual harassment guidelines for colleges and universities by the administration of former President Barack Obama. I was involved in attempts to push back against those guidelines and to develop at Harvard Law School our own policies, better designed to balance the important values at stake. ..."
"... My fairness concerns with the #MeToo phenomenon include the ready acceptance in many cases of anonymous complaints, and of claims made by women over conflicting claims by men, to terminate careers without any investigation of the facts. ..."
"... Sometimes the alleged conduct is so egregious, or alleged patterns so suspicious, that suspension is warranted while facts are determined. Sometimes allegations are demonstrably credible by virtue of independent evidence. But where facts are in doubt or conduct is subject to different interpretations, efforts must be made to investigate what actually happened and how the different parties understood the events. ..."
"... I am also deeply troubled by over-expansive definitions of wrongful conduct. In the current climate, men are called out for actions ranging from requests for dates and hugs on the one hand to rape and other forced sexual contact on the other, as if all are the same and all warrant termination. ..."
"... The legal definition of sexual harassment in employment and education is a helpful guide to what sexual conduct should be the focus. It is illegal to engage in quid pro quo harassment, namely conditioning an employment or educational benefit on sexual favors. It is illegal also to create a "hostile environment" through unwelcome sexual advances that are severe or pervasive and that limit the victim's ability to enjoy employment or educational opportunity. ..."
"... Finally, I am concerned with the cynical exploitation of sexual harassment cases and related scapegoating of individuals. ..."
"... Corporate and political leaders, who must have been at least generally aware of these problems, did little to address them until this moment of public shaming. Now they dismiss alleged perpetrators overnight, often with no regard for the facts but clearly with significant regard for their corporate reputations and electoral strategies. ..."
"... All this puts real reform at risk. It undermines the legitimacy of action against serious sexual misconduct and abuse of power. It creates the potential for backfire. ..."
Jan 16, 2018 | www.thecrimson.com
Like many others, I am outraged by the egregious incidents of sexual misconduct made public recently through carefully documented journalism. I applaud the removal of many alleged perpetrators who have clearly abused their positions of power, often through force and even violence. I celebrate those who have stepped forward to call out sexual misconduct and demand changes in the degrading culture that has characterized working conditions for women in too many settings for too long.
However, I am concerned that in the recent rush to judgment, principles of basic fairness, differences between proven and merely alleged instances of misconduct, and important distinctions between different kinds of sexually charged conduct have too often been ignored. Similar problems plagued the imposition of new sexual harassment guidelines for colleges and universities by the administration of former President Barack Obama. I was involved in attempts to push back against those guidelines and to develop at Harvard Law School our own policies, better designed to balance the important values at stake.
My fairness concerns with the #MeToo phenomenon include the ready acceptance in many cases of anonymous complaints, and of claims made by women over conflicting claims by men, to terminate careers without any investigation of the facts. Some argue that women who speak out should simply always be believed. Others argue that if some innocent men must be sacrificed to the cause of larger justice, so be it. I find this deeply troubling. I do not contend that mini-trials should always be required before action can be taken. Sometimes the alleged conduct is so egregious, or alleged patterns so suspicious, that suspension is warranted while facts are determined. Sometimes allegations are demonstrably credible by virtue of independent evidence. But where facts are in doubt or conduct is subject to different interpretations, efforts must be made to investigate what actually happened and how the different parties understood the events.
I am also deeply troubled by over-expansive definitions of wrongful conduct. In the current climate, men are called out for actions ranging from requests for dates and hugs on the one hand to rape and other forced sexual contact on the other, as if all are the same and all warrant termination. I do not believe that all touching by a man in power is the same as touching that is clearly unwanted or the deliberate abuse of power to obtain sexual favors. I do not believe that all romantic and sexual overtures should be banned from the workplace, even between people on different hierarchical levels. Some recent cases involve peremptory dismissal for behavior that may involve nothing more than that. Women are not so weak as to need this kind of protection. Banning all such activity from the workplace would reduce the quality of life for everyone, including women.
The legal definition of sexual harassment in employment and education is a helpful guide to what sexual conduct should be the focus. It is illegal to engage in quid pro quo harassment, namely conditioning an employment or educational benefit on sexual favors. It is illegal also to create a "hostile environment" through unwelcome sexual advances that are severe or pervasive and that limit the victim's ability to enjoy employment or educational opportunity.
Objective standards apply, so the question is whether a reasonable person in the position of the alleged perpetrator or alleged victim would have thought the conduct was sexual harassment, not simply what the alleged victim subjectively felt.
Finally, I am concerned with the cynical exploitation of sexual harassment cases and related scapegoating of individuals. The #MeToo movement has helped demonstrate to the world the toxic level of sex discrimination and sexual misconduct that have characterized work life for too many women in business, entertainment, media, and government. Corporate and political leaders, who must have been at least generally aware of these problems, did little to address them until this moment of public shaming. Now they dismiss alleged perpetrators overnight, often with no regard for the facts but clearly with significant regard for their corporate reputations and electoral strategies.
All this puts real reform at risk. It undermines the legitimacy of action against serious sexual misconduct and abuse of power. It creates the potential for backfire.
Elizabeth Bartholet '62 is the Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
[Apr 12, 2020] In a fiery speech announcing her decision, Collins ripped unsupported claims by Avenatti's client, Julie Swetnick, that Kavanaugh facilitated a Cosby-esque "gang rape" operation while in high school
Female sociopath are excel in false accusations, including rape accusations. They are born actresses and have no empathy, so framing their victim is just an easy game for them
See the text of full speech at New York Times
Oct 07, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
In a fiery speech announcing her decision, Collins ripped unsupported claims by Avenatti's client, Julie Swetnick, that Kavanaugh facilitated a Cosby-esque "gang rape" operation while in high school.
Some of the allegations levied against Judge Kavanaugh illustrate why the presumption of innocence is so important . I am thinking in particular not of the allegations raised by Professor Ford, but of the allegation that, when he was a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh drugged multiple girls and used their weakened state to facilitate gang rape .
This outlandish allegation was put forth without any credible supporting evidence and simply parroted public statements of others . That such an allegation can find its way into the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness. -Sen. Susan Collins
Paracelsus , 38 minutes ago link
I didn't really care much about the stuff alleged to have been done by Kavanaugh thirty-five years ago. Arguing with a close family friend I stated that there was nothing I found more tiresome than the old lawyers tactic of springing something on you at the last possible minute, leaving a steaming pile of turds in the middle of your desk, and then expecting to be taken seriously. Decorum? Rules of debate? How about the laws of discovery, sharing info amongst colleagues?
Just because this was not a criminal trial is no reason to throw out the rules for policy making, the nomination process, which both sides have adhered to in the past. People were comparing this to the Anita Hill fiasco during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Delay, interrupt, stall, maximum media exposure. Never any evidence or criminal charges to point to.
In criminal trials there is the process of discovery by which the admission of evidence at the last minute is strongly ill advised, and can result in it being tossed out. Sen. Feinstein would be aware of all the rules and procedures, but she feels above it all.
FBaggins , 1 hour ago link
Hey Avenatti! If you and your client had any idea of what the truth is no one would every have heard of her or of you. Don't give us this ******** that you were just representing your client. If you had a brain you would have known she was FOS from the get go, and if you were honest you never would have represented her. So what is it? Are you just stupid or are you dishonest, or both?
bh2 , 3 hours ago link
People who make salacious claims unconfirmed or outright denied by their own named "witnesses" tend to get sued for defamation. And the lawyers they rode in on.
The Terrible Sweal , 3 hours ago link
Three women advance fabricated allegations and the #resistance, Demonrats, Third Wavers and cucks blame one male lawyer.
They just can't learn.
platyops , 4 hours ago link
Michael Avenatti is not a nice man at all. He was a factor in making the accusations seem like a circus. No one takes him seriously as he slinks around the gutters.
Debt Slave , 4 hours ago link
I sure am glad that Avenatti was stupid enough to represent a lunatic like Swetnick.
trutherator , 5 hours ago link
Avenatti is the scapegoat. The Ford story was already fast breaking down, and the secret polygraph and the secret therapist notes and her ex-boyfriend should have made more noise in the Senate.
RictaviousPorkchop , 6 hours ago link
This filth needs to be disbarred.
KingTut , 6 hours ago link
They embraced this puke and revelled in his garbage accusations. Now they need a scapegoat, and he's it. God forbid Feinstein get raked over the coals for screwing this thing up. The was a political hit, and everyone knew it. But the GOP are so spineless that a high-school-drunken-grope-fest brought them to their knees. Fortunately, the Dems stayed true to form and blew themselves up.
What I do not understand is how could they be so stupid as to endorse the Avenatti slime factory in the first place? TONE DEAF.
inosent , 7 hours ago link
Avenatti needs to be disbarred. To file a complaint for his breach of professional responsibility, suborning perjury, and engaging in acts of moral turpitude:
http://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/documents/forms/2017_ComplaintFormENG_201701.pdf
If enough complaints are filed with the CA state bar, he may get disbarred.
Attorneys ALREADY have a really bad rep. Part of professional responsibility is to uphold the integrity of the legal profession. The ONLY thing Avenatti did was to make every attorney look like a complete shyster sleazeball, which given I just took the bar exam and will probably become an attorney soon, I find immensely offensive.
Here is his license information:
http://members.calbar.ca.gov/fal/Licensee/Detail/206929
Kidbuck , 5 hours ago link
The MSM gave these clowns face time and the morons of America watched and believed...
John_Coltrane , 6 hours ago link
The Demonrats used false sexual allegations against Roy Moore coupled with ballot box cheating (their typical mode) to win a senate seat in conservative Alabama. So, since their main national platform of open borders is so repugnant to any normal taxpaying voter, this is their only strategy. They simply got caught. All the allegations against both Kavanaugh and Moore were fabricated and the proof is the Soros' paid lawyers who represented them all. And Feinstein and Schumer conspired in this farce. And independent voters know it!
They're just pissed they got caught in their fraud and this energized the R. base which will lead to a red wave in a few weeks. And just think of the political commercial possibilities for any Demonrat senator hoping to prevail if they vote against Kavanaugh. I expect the final confirmation vote won't as close as the vote for cloture for this reason.
TemporarySecurity , 5 hours ago link
Be careful, Roy Moore was a different story. There was evidence including him saying he liked to date high school age girls as a 30 year old along with multiple other people who remembered what was alleged. Not just Democrat operatives. Morals were not that different then than now. Was he guilty of a crime no, could reasonable people still dislike his morals sure. I grew up close to that era and thought the college age kids hanging around HS girls was nasty. Moore verified as a 30 year old he liked them young.
Ford 0 corroborating evidence. By lumping in Moore with Kavanaugh you are giving credence to believe the victim because all you are following the "patriarchy" of believing the accused regardless of evidence.
MoreFreedom , 6 hours ago link
The Democrats have a long history of making last minute sexual misconduct allegations against their political opponents, always without any evidence or corroboration. And sexual misconduct allegations that pale in comparison to what a lot of Democrats have been alleged to do (rape allegations against Clinton, Kennedy having an affair that left a woman dead, John Conyers for settling sexual harassment allegations with taxpayer money, Hillary for trashing victims, or consider Weinstein and other famous/rich Democrat donors or newsmen). I'd bet most of these allegations against Republicans were simply made up for political purposes because they were plausible, couldn't be disproven, and couldn't be proven. Ford's allegations fit the pattern.
The charges are always last minute, to deny the accused an opportunity to defend themselves. Kavanaugh provided an excellent defense that would be good court room drama in a movie, when no one in the GOP was willing to defend him, and too afraid of being accused of not believing a victim and attacking them.
What's really going on are the Democrats in charge, are looking to deflect the attention from what they did, to Avanetti because Avanetti did the same, except the charges of his client, weren't believable, even though they couln't be proven or disproven. They don't want to take the blame, for what voters might do in the midterms.
One thing's for sure, you don't see Democrats calling for indicting and prosecuting false accusers. They're teaching people to bear false witness for their personal purposes.
Totally_Disillusioned , 7 hours ago link
" Gang rape mastermind " might have been a bridge too far"
putupjob , 7 hours ago link
was this great or what?
avenatti gave the diversion, the clutter, the political sideshow so that all charges could be swept away and completely fake and uncorroborated. there was no provable basis for the ford charges, but the crazy swetnick stories simplified brooming the whole thing.
we can only hope that avenatti will be back in 2020, to run for president, and to come marching with his parade of **** stars and "wronged" women who spend all their time performing in strip clubs.
[Apr 12, 2020] How to Defend Against Charges of Harassment in the Workplace
Oct 05, 2018 | smallbusiness.chron.com
If you are accused of harassment in the workplace, it is important to carefully consider your next moves. Your initial reaction might be to vehemently defend yourself against the claims; however, try to keep a cool and calm head and approach the situation professionally. The more hotly you protest the charges and the angrier you get, the less inclined people may be to listen to your side of the story. Talk to a Lawyer
Book a consultation with a lawyer. If the matter can't be resolved via simple mediation within the workplace, you have to be sure to protect yourself and your job. A lawyer can advise you of your legal rights and give you an idea of how to best proceed with such allegations presented against you.
Write it Down
Provide a written account of what happened from your point of view. While this may differ from the account of the person claiming the harassment, it is important that you at least get your side of the story out. A written statement doing so gives human resources and/or management something to refer to during the investigation.
Be honest. If you know you did what the accusers say you did, be honest and the ensuing punishment may be less harsh. Talk to your manager about what happened, admit to what you did wrong and provide solutions for how to avoid further incidents. Most important: stop the "harassing" behavior immediately. The situation may worsen if it continues, whether you feel it is actual harassment or not.
Provide Witnesses
Provide an alibi and/or witnesses, if the claims are not true. If someone says you harassed them at a time when you know you were in a meeting or talking to someone in his office, then say so. Supply the name of any witnesses who can provide you an alibi. If there were other people around at the time that the alleged harassment took place, ask them to speak up on your behalf.
Stay Calm
Avoid retaliating in any way. Particularly if you have been falsely accused, you may feel angry, frustrated and more emotional than usual because of what you are going through. Don't take any adverse reaction against the person that made the allegations or do anything that might be perceived as retaliatory.
Draw Attention to Your History
Give an accounting of your track record with the company. If you've been accused of something you know you didn't do and you have a clean personnel file, explain to your manager that you've been with the company "X" amount of years, have never had a problem with another employee and have always treated others with the utmost respect. Your record could work in your favor.
Consult with HR
Consult with your human resources representative to determine how to best proceed according to company policy. Explain your side of the story and focus on what you can do to resolve the matter quickly and focus on your job. A human resources rep might be able to mediate in the matter and get it settled without having to take things further; she may also advise you of the steps you need to take or explain that there is nothing more you can do while the company investigates.
Whatever you do, don't confront the accuser. This may provide additional fodder for the allegations against you and anything you say might be misconstrued and used against you later.
Also, don't discuss the case with other people in the workplace, as the gossip may in turn spur the allegations against you.
[Apr 12, 2020] We Are Living Nineteen Eighty-Four... by Victor Davis Johnson
Sep 25, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Victor Davis Johnson via NationalReview.com,
Truth, due process, evidence, rights of the accused: All are swept aside in pursuit of the progressive agenda.
George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is no longer fiction. We are living it right now.
Google techies planned to massage Internet searches to emphasize correct thinking. A member of the so-called deep state, in an anonymous op-ed, brags that its "resistance" is undermining an elected president. The FBI, CIA, DOJ, and NSC were all weaponized in 2016 to ensure that the proper president would be elected -- the choice adjudicated by properly progressive ideology. Wearing a wire is now redefined as simply flipping on an iPhone and recording your boss, boy- or girlfriend, or co-workers.
But never has the reality that we are living in a surreal age been clearer than during the strange cycles of Christine Blasey Ford's accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
In Orwell's world of 1984 Oceania, there is no longer a sense of due process, free inquiry, rules of evidence and cross examination, much less a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Instead, regimented ideology -- the supremacy of state power to control all aspects of one's life to enforce a fossilized idea of mandated quality -- warps everything from the use of language to private life.
Oceania's Rules
Senator Diane Feinstein and the other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had long sought to destroy the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. Much of their paradoxical furor over his nomination arises from the boomeranging of their own past political blunders, such as when Democrats ended the filibuster on judicial nominations, in 2013. They also canonized the so-called 1992 Biden Rule, which holds that the Senate should not consider confirming the Supreme Court nomination of a lame-duck president (e.g., George H. W. Bush) in an election year.
Rejecting Kavanaugh proved a hard task given that he had a long record of judicial opinions and writings -- and there was nothing much in them that would indicate anything but a sharp mind, much less any ideological, racial, or sexual intolerance. His personal life was impeccable, his family admirable.
Kavanaugh was no combative Robert Bork, but congenial, and he patiently answered all the questions asked of him, despite constant demonstrations and pre-planned street-theater interruptions from the Senate gallery and often obnoxious grandstanding by "I am Spartacus" Democratic senators.
So Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed unless a bombshell revelation derailed the vote. And so we got a bombshell.
Weeks earlier, Senator Diane Feinstein had received a written allegation against Kavanaugh of sexual battery by an accuser who wished to remain anonymous. Feinstein sat on it for nearly two months, probably because she thought the charges were either spurious or unprovable. Until a few days ago, she mysteriously refused to release the full text of the redacted complaint , and she has said she does not know whether the very accusations that she purveyed are believable. Was she reluctant to memorialize the accusations by formally submitting them to the Senate Judiciary Committee, because doing so makes Ford subject to possible criminal liability if the charges prove demonstrably untrue?
The gambit was clearly to use the charges as a last-chance effort to stop the nomination -- but only if Kavanaugh survived the cross examinations during the confirmation hearing. Then, in extremis , Feinstein finally referenced the charge, hoping to keep it anonymous, but, at the same time, to hint of its serious nature and thereby to force a delay in the confirmation. Think something McCarthesque, like "I have here in my hand the name . . ."
Delay would mean that the confirmation vote could be put off until after the midterm election, and a few jeopardized Democratic senators in Trump states would not have to go on record voting no on Kavanaugh. Or the insidious innuendos, rumor, and gossip about Kavanaugh would help to bleed him to death by a thousand leaks and, by association, tank Republican chances at retaining the House. (Republicans may or may not lose the House over the confirmation circus, but they most surely will lose their base and, with it, the Congress if they do not confirm Kavanaugh.)
Feinstein's anonymous trick did not work. So pressure mounted to reveal or leak Ford's identity and thereby force an Anita-Hill–like inquest that might at least show old white men Republican senators as insensitive to a vulnerable and victimized woman.
The problem, of course, was that, under traditional notions of jurisprudence, Ford's allegations simply were not provable. But America soon discovered that civic and government norms no longer follow the Western legal tradition. In Orwellian terms, Kavanaugh was now at the mercy of the state. He was tagged with sexual battery at first by an anonymous accuser, and then upon revelation of her identity, by a left-wing, political activist psychology professor and her more left-wing, more politically active lawyer.
Newspeak and Doublethink
Statue of limitations? It does not exist. An incident 36 years ago apparently is as fresh today as it was when Kavanaugh was 17 and Ford 15.
Presumption of Innocence? Not at all. Kavanaugh is accused and thereby guilty. The accuser faces no doubt. In Orwellian America, the accused must first present his defense, even though he does not quite know what he is being charged with. Then the accuser and her legal team pour over his testimony to prepare her accusation.
Evidence? That too is a fossilized concept. Ford could name neither the location of the alleged assault nor the date or time. She had no idea how she arrived or left the scene of the alleged crime. There is no physical evidence of an attack. And such lacunae in her memory mattered no longer at all.
Details? Again, such notions are counterrevolutionary. Ford said to her therapist 6 years ago (30 years after the alleged incident) that there were four would-be attackers, at least as recorded in the therapist's notes.
But now she has claimed that there were only two assaulters: Kavanaugh and a friend. In truth, all four people -- now including a female -- named in her accusations as either assaulters or witnesses have insisted that they have no knowledge of the event, much less of wrongdoing wherever and whenever Ford claims the act took place. That they deny knowledge is at times used as proof by Ford's lawyers that the event 36 years was traumatic.
An incident at 15 is so seared into her lifelong memory that at 52 Ford has no memory of any of the events or details surrounding that unnamed day, except that she is positive that 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, along with four? three? two? others, was harassing her. She has no idea where or when she was assaulted but still assures that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were drunk, but that she and the others (?) merely had only the proverbial teenage "one beer." Most people are more likely to know where they were at a party than the exact number of alcoholic beverages they consumed -- but not so much about either after 36 years.
Testimony? No longer relevant. It doesn't matter that Kavanaugh and the other alleged suspect both deny the allegations and have no memory of being in the same locale with Ford 36 years ago. In sum, all the supposed partiers, both male and female, now swear, under penalty of felony, that they have no memory of any of the incidents that Ford claims occurred so long ago. That Ford cannot produce a single witness to confirm her narrative or refute theirs is likewise of no concern. So far, she has singularly not submitted a formal affidavit or given a deposition that would be subject to legal exposure if untrue.
Again, the ideological trumps the empirical. "All women must be believed" is the testament, and individuals bow to the collective. Except, as in Orwell's Animal Farm, there are ideological exceptions -- such as Bill Clinton, Keith Ellison, Sherrod Brown, and Joe Biden. The slogan of Ford's psychodrama is "All women must be believed, but some women are more believable than others." That an assertion becomes fact due to the prevailing ideology and gender of the accuser marks the destruction of our entire system of justice.
Rights of the accused? They too do not exist. In the American version of 1984 , the accuser, a.k.a. the more ideologically correct party, dictates to authorities the circumstances under which she will be investigated and cross-examined: She will demand all sorts of special considerations of privacy and exemptions; Kavanaugh will be forced to return and face cameras and the public to prove that he was not then, and has never been since, a sexual assaulter.
In our 1984 world, the accused is considered guilty if merely charged, and the accuser is a victim who can ruin a life but must not under any circumstance be made uncomfortable in proving her charges.
Doublespeak abounds. "Victim" solely refers to the accuser, not the accused, who one day was Brett Kavanaugh, a brilliant jurist and model citizen, and the next morning woke up transformed into some sort of Kafkaesque cockroach. The media and political operatives went in a nanosecond from charging that she was groped and "assaulted" to the claim that she was "raped."
In our 1984, the phrase "must be believed" is doublespeak for "must never face cross-examination."
Ford should be believed or not believed on the basis of evidence , not her position, gender, or politics. I certainly did not believe Joe Biden, simply because he was a U.S. senator, when, as Neal Kinnock's doppelganger, he claimed that he came from a long line of coal miners -- any more than I believed that Senator Corey Booker really had a gang-banger Socratic confidant named "T-Bone," or that would-be senator Richard Blumenthal was an anguished Vietnam combat vet or that Senator Elizabeth Warren was a Native American. (Do we need a 25th Amendment for unhinged senators?) Wanting to believe something from someone who is ideologically correct does not translate into confirmation of truth.
Ford supposedly in her originally anonymous accusation had insisted that she had sought "medical treatment" for her assault. The natural assumption is that such a term would mean that, soon after the attack, the victim sought a doctor's or emergency room's help to address either her physical or mental injuries -- records might therefore be a powerful refutation of Kavanaugh's denials.
But "medical treatment" now means that 30 years after the alleged assault, Ford sought counseling for some sort of "relationship" or "companion" therapy, or what might legitimately be termed "marriage counseling." And in the course of her discussions with her therapist about her marriage, she first spoke of her alleged assault three decades earlier. She did not then name Kavanaugh to her therapist, whose notes are at odds with Ford's current version.
Memory Holes
Then we come to Orwell's idea of "memory holes," or mechanisms to wipe clean inconvenient facts that disrupt official ideological narratives.
Shortly after Ford was named, suddenly her prior well-publicized and self-referential social-media revelations vanished, as if she'd never held her minor-league but confident pro-Sanders, anti-Trump opinions . And much of her media and social-media accounts were erased as well.
Similarly, one moment the New York Times -- just coming off an embarrassing lie in reporting that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had ordered new $50,000 office drapes on the government dime -- reported that Kavanaugh's alleged accomplice, Mark Judge, had confirmed Ford's allegation. Indeed, in a sensational scoop, according to the Times , Judge told the Judiciary Committee that he does remember the episode and has nothing more to say. In fact, Judge told the committee the very opposite: that he does not remember the episode . Forty minutes later, the Times embarrassing narrative vanished down the memory hole.
The online versions of some of the yearbooks of Ford's high school from the early 1980s vanished as well. At times, they had seemed to take a perverse pride in the reputation of the all-girls school for underage drinking, carousing, and, on rarer occasions, "passing out" at parties. Such activities were supposed to be the monopoly and condemnatory landscape of the "frat boy" and spoiled-white-kid Kavanaugh -- and certainly not the environment in which the noble Ford navigated. Seventeen-year-old Kavanaugh was to play the role of a falling-down drunk; Ford, with impressive powers of memory of an event 36 years past, assures us that as a circumspect 15-year-old, she had only "one beer."
A former teenage friend of Ford's sent out a flurry of social-media postings, allegedly confirming that Ford's ordeal was well known to her friends in 1982 and so her assault narrative must therefore be confirmed. Then, when challenged on some of her incoherent details (schools are not in session during summertime, and Ford is on record as not telling anyone of the incident for 30 years), she mysteriously claimed that she no longer could stand by her earlier assertions, which likewise soon vanished from her social-media account. Apparently, she had assumed that in 2018 Oceania ideologically correct citizens merely needed to lodge an accusation and it would be believed, without any obligation on her part to substantiate her charges.
When a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, followed Ford seven days later to allege another sexual incident with the teenage Kavanaugh, at Yale 35 years ago, it was no surprise that she followed the now normal Orwellian boilerplate : None of those whom she named as witnesses could either confirm her charges or even remember the alleged event. She had altered her narrative after consultations with lawyers and handlers. She too confesses to underage drinking during the alleged event. She too is currently a social and progressive political activist. The only difference from Ford's narrative is that Ramirez's accusation was deemed not credible enough to be reported even by the New York Times , which recently retracted false stories about witness Mark Judge in the Ford case, and which falsely reported that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had charged the government for $50,000 office drapes.
As in 1984 , "truths" in these sorts of allegations do not exist unless they align with the larger "Truth" of the progressive project. In our case, the overarching Truth mandates that, in a supposedly misogynist society, women must always be believed in all their accusations and should be exempt from all counter-examinations.
Little "truths" -- such as the right of the accused, the need to produce evidence, insistence on cross-examination, and due process -- are counterrevolutionary constructs and the refuge of reactionary hold-outs who are enemies of the people. Or in the words of Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono:
Guess who's perpetuating all of these kinds of actions? It's the men in this country. And I just want to say to the men in this country, "Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing, for a change."
The View 's Joy Behar was more honest about the larger Truth: "These white men, old by the way, are not protecting women," Behar exclaimed. "They're protecting a man who is probably guilty." We thank Behar for the concession "probably."
According to some polls, about half the country believes that Brett Kavanaugh is now guilty of a crime committed 36 years ago at the age of 17. And that reality reminds us that we are no longer in America . We are already living well into the socialist totalitarian Hell that Orwell warned us about long ago.
All Comments 30
NiggaPleeze , 10 seconds ago
National Review? Really? Does it get more evil than them?
Debt Slave , 16 seconds ago
According to some polls, about half the country believes that Brett Kavanaugh is now guilty of a crime committed 36 years ago at the age of 17.
Well half the country are idiots but the important thing to remember in our democracy is that the idiots have the right to vote. And here we are today.
No wonder the founders believed that democracy was a stupid idea. But we know better than they did, right?
Jkweb007 , 37 seconds ago
It is hard for me to believe 50% when in America you are presumed innocent till proven guilty. Is this the spanish inquizition or salem witch trials. If he floats he was innocent. I am shocked that people in congress would make statements, she must be believed, I believe he is guilty. These are people who represent and stand for the constitution that many died in the defense of life liberty and the persuit of happiness. It may be time for that mlilitia that our founding fathers endorsed. If Kavanaugh is rebuked for these accusation our freedom, free speech may be next.
herbivore , 1 minute ago
Peter Griffin knows what's what:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jiog8hrzigk
GOSPLAN HERO , 4 minutes ago
Just another day in USSA.
THORAX , 6 minutes ago
One more confirmation that the so called "social justice warriors" -like last night's goons' who shamefully interrupted Senator Cruz's night out with his wife at a private restaurant- are Orwell's projected fascists!
opport.knocks , 20 minutes ago
Bush 2 was in the big chair when he and his cabinet started the USA down the full Orwellian path (Patriot Act, post 911). Kavanaugh and his wife were both members of that government team.
If there is any reason to dismiss him, that would be it, not this post-pubescent sex crap.
If I was a cynical person, I would say this whole exercise is to deflect attention away from that part of his "swampy" past.
Aubiekong , 23 minutes ago
We lost the republic when we allowed the liberals to staff the ministry of education...
CheapBastard , 15 minutes ago
My neighbor is a high school teacher. I asked her if she was giving students time off to protest this and she looked at me and said, "Just the opposite. I have given them a 10 page seminar paper to write on the meaning of Due Process."
So there IS hope.
my new username , 23 minutes ago
This is criminal contempt for the due lawful process of the Congress.
These are unlawful attempts and conspiracies to subvert justice.
So we need to start arresting, trying, convicting and punishing the criminals.
BlackChicken , 23 minutes ago
This needs to end, not later, NOW.
Be careful what you wish for leftists, I'll dedicate my remaining years to torture you with it.
Jus7tme , 22 minutes ago
>>the socialist totalitarian Hell that Orwell warned us about long ago.
I think Orwell was in 1949 was warning about a fascist totalitarian hell, not a socialist one, but nice try rewriting history.
Duc888 , 29 minutes ago
WTF ever happened to "innocent until PROVEN guilty"?
Schumer said before the confirmation hearings even began he would not let Kavanaugh become SC justice no matter what.
Dems are so tolerant, open minded and respectful of due process, aren't they.
[Apr 12, 2020] False accusations are a very serious thing, and we are accepting them all too glibly
"... Wow. I'm saddened that so many people carelessly toss aside the best parts of our civilisation such as the presumption of innocence. Accusers have to prove their charges. ..."
"... Imagine Joe Lauria is accused by someone of something heinous. Anyone who doesn't like Joe can now comment on social media about how he looks like the type of guy who would do that. ..."
"... Joe is an honest and good man, but anyone can smear him at any time and ruin his livelihood. Its easy. And Joe just made it easier with this article. ..."
"... For many years, my mother in law sincerely believed that her grandson was not her son's child. This was patently untrue, but I was clueless because no one (we lived surrounded by her immediate family) told me, although the women all gossiped behind my back. ..."
Oct 05, 2018 | consortiumnews.com
Deltaeus , October 2, 2018 at 4:38 pm
Wow. I'm saddened that so many people carelessly toss aside the best parts of our civilisation such as the presumption of innocence. Accusers have to prove their charges.
Imagine Joe Lauria is accused by someone of something heinous. Anyone who doesn't like Joe can now comment on social media about how he looks like the type of guy who would do that. Anyone who disagrees with him might be motivated to do that. They can suggest psychological reasons for his atrocious behaviour. The accuser does not need to prove anything – just some lurid details and a tearful interview are enough, and the rest of us can no longer see his by-line without remembering all of the innocent children he molested.
See? What I just insinuated is completely untrue. Joe is an honest and good man, but anyone can smear him at any time and ruin his livelihood. Its easy. And Joe just made it easier with this article.
Please, think about what it is like to be unfairly accused. Perhaps in the abstract you can shrug, but talk to anyone who has actually been the victim of false allegations, and you will realise how powerless you are in that situation. Your only protection is the civilised idea that you are innocent until proven guilty, and if you destroy that, well, that would be a shame.
irina , October 2, 2018 at 10:53 pm
Have you ever experienced a false accusation ? I have, and I didn't even know it.
For many years, my mother in law sincerely believed that her grandson was not her son's child. This was patently untrue, but I was clueless because no one (we lived surrounded by her immediate family) told me, although the women all gossiped behind my back. You can only imagine how this affected all my familial relationships. She never did come clean about this situation (her thinking was affected by long term steroid use) but did eventually apologize to me (without precisely stating why) the year our son turned thirteen, at which point he started strongly resembling his dad (her son).
False accusations are a very serious thing, and we are accepting them all too glibly.
[Apr 12, 2020] Unintended consequences of #MeToo movement causing 'gender segregation' on Wall Street
Female psychopath are especially dangerous as "reverse sexual predators". Assumption that all women are honest in their accusations is extremely naive. Revenge and other inferior motives are pretty common, especially in academic setting.
"A sense of walking on eggshells" is a sure sign of unhealthy psychopath dominated environment.
"... Two female reporters for Bloomberg interviewed 30 Wall Street executives and found that while it's true that women might be afraid to speak up for fear of losing their careers, men are also so afraid of being falsely accused that they won't even have dinner, or even one-to-one business meetings with a female colleague. They worry that a simple comment or gesture could be misinterpreted. "It's creating a sense of walking on eggshells," one Morgan Stanley executive said. ..."
"... All these extreme strategies being adopted by men to avoid falling victim to an unjust #MeToo scandal are creating a kind of "gender segregation" on Wall Street, the reporters say. ..."
"... "If men avoid working or traveling with women alone, or stop mentoring women for fear of being accused of sexual harassment, those men are going to back out of a sexual harassment complaint and right into a sex discrimination complaint," ..."
Dec 09, 2018 | www.rt.com
The #MeToo movement was supposed to make life easier for women in the workplace. It was all about respect and making real abusers pay a price for their behavior. But is it possible to have too much of a good thing?
One of the aims of the movement was to force a change in the conduct of men who said and did sexually inappropriate things in the workplace -- a concept which few people could quibble with. A year on from its beginnings, however, it seems the movement has morphed into something else entirely -- and ironically, it's hurting both men and women.
The 'Pence Effect' and 'gender segregation'
The #MeToo movement has taken down men across a wide spectrum of industries -- but so far, Wall Street has avoided a huge public scandal -- despite its reputation for being, well, a fairly sexist and male-oriented environment. So why has it escaped the #MeToo spotlight?
Two female reporters for Bloomberg interviewed 30 Wall Street executives and found that while it's true that women might be afraid to speak up for fear of losing their careers, men are also so afraid of being falsely accused that they won't even have dinner, or even one-to-one business meetings with a female colleague. They worry that a simple comment or gesture could be misinterpreted. "It's creating a sense of walking on eggshells," one Morgan Stanley executive said.
Bloomberg dubbed the phenomenon the 'Pence Effect' after the US vice president who previously admitted that he would never dine alone with any woman other than his wife. British actor Taron Egerton recently also said he now avoided being alone with women for fear of finding himself in #MeToo's crosshairs.
I remember when a woman I was friendly/kind with perceived me as someone who wanted "more." She wrote me a message about how she was uncomfortable. I'm gay. https://t.co/7z0X7Dwzkp
-- Andy C. Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) December 4, 2018
All these extreme strategies being adopted by men to avoid falling victim to an unjust #MeToo scandal are creating a kind of "gender segregation" on Wall Street, the reporters say.
Hurting women's progress?
The most ironic outcome of a movement that was supposed to be about women's empowerment is that now, even hiring a woman on Wall Street has become an "unknown risk," according to one wealth advisor, who said there is always a concern that a woman might take something said to her in the wrong way.
With men occupying the most senior positions on Wall Street, women need male mentors who can teach them the ropes and help them advance their careers, but what happens when men are afraid to play that role with their younger female colleagues? The unintended consequence of the #MeToo movement on Wall Street could be the stifling of women's progress and a sanitization of the workplace to the point of not even being able to have a private meeting with the door closed.
Another irony is that while men may think they are avoiding one type of scandal, could find themselves facing another: Discrimination complaints.
"A Wall Street rule for the #MeToo era: Avoid women at all cost." https://t.co/TCGk9UzT4R "Secular sharia" has arrived, as I predicted here: https://t.co/TTrWY6ML34 pic.twitter.com/YpEz78iamJ
-- Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) December 3, 2018
"If men avoid working or traveling with women alone, or stop mentoring women for fear of being accused of sexual harassment, those men are going to back out of a sexual harassment complaint and right into a sex discrimination complaint," Stephen Zweig, an employment attorney with FordHarrison told Bloomberg.
Not all men are responding to the #MeToo movement by fearfully cutting themselves off from women, however. "Just try not to be an asshole," one said, while another added: "It's really not that hard."
It might not be that simple, however. It seems there is no escape from the grip of the #MeToo movement. One of the movements most recent victims of the viral hashtag movement is not a man, but a song -- the time-honored classic 'Baby It's Cold Outside' -- which is being banished from American radio stations because it has a "rapey" vibe.
[Feb 04, 2019] Amorality as the key feature of psychopaths
It is very difficult for normal people to understand that one of distinguishing feature of psychopaths is that they simply do not care about the laws and about moral principles. The only thing they care about is being caught, but even this is often not the case for some of them. There is a category of psychopaths who display wanton disregard for laws ignoring possible consequences, despite the fact that they are not completely stupid. For them they not only doe not exist, or they are just for "deplorables" to borrow Hillary epithet for common people.
If this is the case for a female psychopath this is vey dangerous and not that easy to detect as we intuitively prescribe to female less aggressiveness and better law obedience. Huge disappointments may follow.
"... I think your folly is that you are trying to rationalize greed. Greed is irrational, we inherited it from our irrational aggressively territorial cousins, monkeys. Remember Soros: he looks like he died a couple of weeks ago (I wish he did), but still grabs for more loot and resents those who get in his way, including Trump. When greed is powerless, it is simply ridiculous. When greed has power, it becomes evil. ..."
"... That's the downside of so-called market economy: the driving force is greed (apologists like to call it profit, bit semantics don't change the matter). Unregulated greed, like unregulated power of wind (hurricanes) and water (floods), is destructive, whereas properly regulated it can produce some good. ..."
"... Greedy elites are liars and mass murderers because they have no moral scruples: they would think nothing of lying or murdering people just to get more money. If they can enrich themselves by doing something good, they won't pass up that opportunity, either. ..."
Feb 04, 2019 | www.unz.com
AnonFromTN , says: February 4, 2019 at 8:12 pm GMT
@Harold Smith
I think your folly is that you are trying to rationalize greed. Greed is irrational, we inherited it from our irrational aggressively territorial cousins, monkeys. Remember Soros: he looks like he died a couple of weeks ago (I wish he did), but still grabs for more loot and resents those who get in his way, including Trump. When greed is powerless, it is simply ridiculous. When greed has power, it becomes evil.
That's the downside of so-called market economy: the driving force is greed (apologists like to call it profit, bit semantics don't change the matter). Unregulated greed, like unregulated power of wind (hurricanes) and water (floods), is destructive, whereas properly regulated it can produce some good.
You also ignore the fact that all those MIC profiteers don't really want WWIII. They want to keep stealing huge amounts of taxpayers' money on military contracts. For that they scare the common folk with dangers that do not exist and regale them with "patriotic" BS they don't believe in. Deep down they know that to enjoy their loot they must stay alive: unlike pathetic politicians, the gods do not take bribes.
As to those people throwing rocks from the overpass of I-75, I think "Beavis and Butt-Head" answers your question. Hopeless stupidity of people totally lacking imagination, when it becomes active, is evil. But the people themselves are just unimaginative morons.
So, my point is there is no such thing as evil per se, there is greed and stupidity (often the combination of the two) that leads to evil actions.
AnonFromTN , says: February 4, 2019 at 11:32 pm GMT
Greedy elites are liars and mass murderers because they have no moral scruples: they would think nothing of lying or murdering people just to get more money. If they can enrich themselves by doing something good, they won't pass up that opportunity, either.
You can call them evil, if you wish, but that worldview is the dead end: if there are inherently good and inherently evil people, you simply cannot do anything about that. You can promise rewards or punishments in the afterlife, but that would not prevent any crimes or get murdered people back to life here on Earth.
If you look for causes of evil behavior instead, you have a chance to minimize or eliminate those causes, thereby minimizing evil behavior. That does not negate the spiritual nature of humans, unless by "spiritual" you mean supernatural.
So, from my perspective, the views you propound are essentially defeatist. Personally, I do not think anyone is inherently predisposed to good or evil, you have to look for motives. Then you have a chance to motivate good behavior and demotivate evil one.
However, let me tell you what I tell my students: if you are conventionally religious, you don't want to discuss religion with me.
[Jan 06, 2019] With the exception of military tacticians acting in defense against an aggressor, con men are predominantly sociopaths
Jan 06, 2019 | www.alt-market.com
With the exception of military tacticians acting in defense against an aggressor, con men are predominantly sociopaths. In order to carry out a "grift" against innocent people, an extreme lack of empathy is required. Understanding the mind and motivations of sociopaths and narcissistic sociopaths makes it possible to identify them faster and allows us to see their con games ahead of time.
In terms of social control, elitist con men are highly preoccupied with preventing spontaneous organization of rebellion. But this does not always involve the outright crushing of dissent. Instead, the elites prefer to use co-option and misdirection (con games) to lure rebellious movements to focus on the wrong enemy, or to trust the wrong leadership.
I am often reminded of the infiltration of the Tea Party movement by neo-conservatives in the years after the 2008 election. Neo-con-men exploited the desire among Tea Party activists for mainstream legitimacy and more widespread media coverage. They gave the activists what they wanted, by injecting their own political puppets into the movement. It did not take long for the Tea Party to abandon its initial roots in individual sovereignty and the Ron Paul campaign and adopt a decidedly statist tone. The smart people left the movement early and went on to launch their own efforts, but the goal of the establishment had been accomplished -- the grass roots organized threat of the Tea Party was no more.
That said, the principles of conservative economics, small government and personal liberty remain entrenched in the American psyche and continue to grow. These ideals have a life of their own, and almost seem to act autonomously at times from any particular group or leader.
[Oct 30, 2018] The women who run large US companies are as shallow and ruthless as the sociopathic men.
Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org
Bob Gort , Saturday, March 31, 2018 9:49 PM
Age discrimination has been standard operating procedure in IT for at least 30 years. And there are no significant consequences, if any consequences at all, for doing it in a blatant fashion. The companies just need to make sure the quota of H1B visas is increased when they are doing this on an IBM scale!
900DeadWomen Bob Gort , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
Age discrimination and a myriad other forms of discrimination have been standard operating procedure in the US. Period. Full stop. No need to equivocate.
Anon , Friday, March 30, 2018 12:49 PM
Wait for a few years and we can see the same happening to "millenials".
And the women who run these companies are as shallow and ruthless as the sociopathic men.
[Oct 05, 2018] Here's the truth about false accusations of sexual violence by Lisa Lazard,
Oct 05, 2018 | www.irishexaminer.com
What's clear is that the spectre of false allegation continues to dog the reporting of sexual violence. There remains a public impression that false allegations are common and that innocent people suffer as the result of being wrongfully accused.
The evidence on false allegations fails to support public anxiety that untrue reporting is common. While the statistics on false allegations vary – and refer most often to rape and sexual assault – they are invariably and consistently low. Research for the Home Office suggests that only 4% of cases of sexual violence reported to the UK police are found or suspected to be false.
Studies carried out in Europe and in the US indicate rates of between 2% and 6%.
This article was written by Lisa Lazard , Senior Lecturer in Psychology, The Open University and was originally published on The Conversation .
[Oct 05, 2018] Alcohol, Memory, and the Hippocampus
"... . . . The ability of alcohol to cause short term memory problems and blackouts is due to its effects on an area of the brain called the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a structure that is vital to learning and the formation of memory. ..."
"... Why did no one ask Christine Beasley Ford how much and how often she drank in high school and in college? ..."
Oct 05, 2018 | www.unz.com
anon [107] Disclaimer , says: October 5, 2018 at 1:18 am GMT
Alcohol, Memory, and the Hippocampus
[In adolescents] . . . cognitive processes are exquisitely sensitive to the effects of chemicals such as alcohol. Among the most serious problems is the disruption of memory, or the ability to recall information that was previously learned. When a person drinks alcohol, (s)he can have a "blackout."
A blackout can involve a small memory disruption, like forgetting someone's name, or it can be more serious -- the person might not be able to remember key details of an event that happened while drinking. An inability to remember the entire event is common when a person drinks 5 or more drinks in a single sitting ("binge").
. . . The ability of alcohol to cause short term memory problems and blackouts is due to its effects on an area of the brain called the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a structure that is vital to learning and the formation of memory.
Thus without a properly functioning hippocampus learning and memory become problematic. https://sites.duke.edu/apep/module-3-alcohol-cell-suicide-and-the-adolescent-brain/content-alcohol-memory-and-the-hippocampus/
Christine Ford claims her difficulties in her first years in college were due to "trauma" from the attempted rape. A professor of psychology, Ford used impressive big words, (iirc) stating that endocrine imprints such traumatic memories on the hippocampus.
So does alcohol.
Why did no one ask Christine Beasley Ford how much and how often she drank in high school and in college?
[Oct 03, 2018] False accusations of rape are not uncommon. A few gain national attention. Most do not.
"... The editor of a major paper once told me that he never allowed a woman into his office unless the door was open and a third person present. Why? If a disgruntled reporter says, "He groped me," it will go viral. (Joyful headline headline in competing paper: "Editor of Daily Blatt allegedly .") Months of furor will ensue. He will have large legal bills. The suspicion arising from that "allegedly" will never die. The paper's board may well decide that regardless of guilt he is having too serious an affect on the advertisers. He will be permitted to resign, never to get a similar job. The Daily Blatt will settle as quietly as possible for a quarter million. ..."
False accusations of rape are not uncommon. A few gain national attention. Most do not. A few: Tawana Brawley , a black woman, was gang-raped by four white (of course) men, except that she wasn't. Next there is the Duke Lacrosse case , Then at Rolling Stone a feminist writer and a magazine not greatly given to fact checking published the story of rape at the University of Virginia, also discredited. It cost them a libel settlement. And so on.
Again, if the accused men and boys had been guilty, long prison terms would have been a good idea. But they weren't. The presumption of guilt for men and innocence for women are convenient for those who want to prevent confirmation of a judge but do not reflect reality. People, assuredly to include women, use what power they have to get what they want.
The editor of a major paper once told me that he never allowed a woman into his office unless the door was open and a third person present. Why? If a disgruntled reporter says, "He groped me," it will go viral. (Joyful headline headline in competing paper: "Editor of Daily Blatt allegedly .") Months of furor will ensue. He will have large legal bills. The suspicion arising from that "allegedly" will never die. The paper's board may well decide that regardless of guilt he is having too serious an affect on the advertisers. He will be permitted to resign, never to get a similar job. The Daily Blatt will settle as quietly as possible for a quarter million.
Meanwhile, the Kavanaugh carnival is up and running. Now, Lord save us, we have USAToday trying to nail Kavanaugh for yes pedophilia. The evidence? Ain't none. None needed. Hey, we're talking the American media.
Nuff said. I predict the soon headline: "Berkeley sychotherapist recounts seeing Brett Kavanaugh leading the entire Marine Division in gang-raping thirteen-year-old autistic orphans."
[Oct 02, 2018] VINDICATION by Chateau Heartiste
There is not reports that she is a sociopath but references from her students are highly negative.
Oct 02, 2018 | www.theburningplatform.com
Gateway Pundit and the crack sleuths at /pol/ are both reporting on something veeery interesting about Christine Ballsy-Fraud: that second door on her home she claimed was the trigger for her remembering sexual abuse by Kavanaugh? it's likely all made up and the truth is that she was trying to hide her illegal landlord activity from authorities.
Here's an accomplished woman, Margot Cleveland, who has thoroughly analyzed Ballsy-Fraud's testimony and come to the conclusion that her constant story changes to stay one step ahead of any defense against her accusations that would attempt to falsify her recollections is the best evidence that Ballsy-Fraud was LYING UNDER OATH:
https://twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1046408449918218240
There are sociopaths among us. Most people don't know when they've met one. The sociopath is adept at concealing herself through mimicry of normal people. So when a sociopath like CBF sheds crocodile tears in front of Congress, normies think she's credible. They can't fathom anyone who would blatantly lie about a good man and destroy him before an audience of millions.
But these soul-killers exist, and normies had better wake up real quick to the fact that their inability to fathom anyone so radically and malevolently unlike themselves doesn't mean sociopaths don't swim among them, preying on their gullibility and integrity.
They do.
And they have like-minded kin in Congress who will cover for them.
https://lockerdome.com/lad/11197471582021478?pubid=ld-8519-2561&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theburningplatform.com&rid=&width=600
I will be vindicated in my very early assessment of Ballsy-Ford as a psychopathic liar who made up her accusation out of thin air.
And I will be vindicated in my very early assessment that it was wrong of the GOP and assorted pants-wetters and pedestal polishers on the Right to sacrifice Roy Moore to the jackals and embolden the Leftoid Fuggernaut to even greater slanders against innocent men.
[Oct 02, 2018] Mitchell the "veteran prosecutor" also failed to ask Ford who hosted the party where the alleged assault took place
BGO , 1 day ago
Mitchell the "veteran prosecutor" also failed to ask Ford who hosted the party where the alleged assault took place.
This is an important question. Maybe the most important question.
No one should be expected to remember their high school friends' home addresses, just like no one should be expected to remember every person who attended a specific high school party.
One thing ANYONE who suffered a violent attack would remember is WHO OWNED THE HOUSE where the attack took place.
High school parties generally are hosted by a the same people throughout a students high school years. It's not like everyone in class takes their turn throwing a kegger.
As anyone who drank to get drunk at parties in high school will tell you, it was always the same handful of kids, maybe three or four, who let their friends drink alcohol in their parents' home.
Narrowing down exactly who owned the home where the alleged attack took place should be easy due to the fact that, according to Ford, it was more of a small get together than a full blown party.
All investigators should need to do is ask the known attendees, under oath, whether or not they hosted the party where the alleged attack took place.
The fact that Ford's testimony includes exactly one person whose name she cannot remember is NOT a coincidence.
The phantom attendee was created out of thin air to give Ford an out if the known attendees claimed the attack did not occur at their homes.
There are so many things wrong with this political farce. Liberal mental illness, as with any case, is a given, automatically assumed.
Flip flopping dufuses on the other side, weakness, gross ineptitude.
The entire system needs to be culled via a massive firestorm; no one or thing left standing.
Cassander , 1 day ago
@BGO -- Re your first sentence, Mitchell notes in her memo "She does not remember in what house the assault allegedly took place or where that house was located with any specificity". I think this covers your point implicitly. If she doesn't remember what house it was, how can she remember whose house it was?
Just thought you were going a bit hard on Mitchell, whose memo seems pretty damning to me...
Asking *what* house and *whose* house are two ENTIRELY different things.
Think about the most traumatic experience of your life. You know EXACTLY where the traumatic experience took place, right?
[Oct 02, 2018] The danger of false accusations from women who have a grudge or female sociopaths
This is ridiculous. "Me too" movement actually propagandizing Islam.
Oct 02, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
The #MeToo movement hits a block when it gets reduced to party politics, as we are witnessing...
A young woman marching in support of Kavanaugh put it this way: "This could be our brother, our dad, our boyfriend "
[Oct 02, 2018] Female false accusers demonstrate some common patterns, too many smiles, attention seeking, stories that make no sense or too vague
JLee2027 , 1 day ago
Guys who have been falsely accused, like me, knew quickly that Ford was lying. They all have the same pattern, too many smiles, attention seeking, stories that make no sense or too vague,etc.
VWAndy , 22 hours ago
Mrs Fords stunt works in family courts all the time. Thats why they tried it folks. They have gotten away with it before.
Barney08 , 1 day ago
Ford is a crusader. She thinks she is a Roe v Wade savior but she is an over educated ditz.
Kelley , 1 day ago
One word uttered by Ford proves that not only did Kav. not attack her but no one ever assaulted her . That word is "hippocampus." No woman in recorded history has ever used that word to describe their strongest reaction to a sexual assault.
It's mind blowing that a person would react to what was supposedly one of the most traumatic experiences of her life with a nearly gleeful "Indelibly in my hippocampus " or something to that effect unless of course it didn't happen. Her inappropriate response leads me to believe that Ford was never assaulted in the manner in which she claimed. If her claimed trauma had been a case of mistaken identity regarding a real assault, she still would have felt it and reacted far differently.
Emotional memories get stored in the amygdala. The hippocampus is for matter-of-fact memories. When Senator Feinstein asked Ford about her strongest memories of the event, Ford went all "matter of fact" in her reply, "Indelibly in my hippocampus ." without a trace of emotion in her response. No emotions = no assault by ANYONE let alone by Kavanaugh.
Giant Meteor , 1 day ago
Not only that, her most indelible memory from the experience was the maniacal laughter, not the part where a hand was forcibly placed over her mouth and she thought she may in that moment, have been accidently killed.
As to the hippopotamus, is that a turtle neck she is wearing or just her neck. What the **** happened there, she said nothing about strangulation.
pnchbowlturd , 1 day ago
Another peculiar thing about Ford's testimony was the adolescent voicing she gave it in. It was if she was imitating a 6 year old. I wish MItchell had fleshed out Ford's hobbies (surfing??) more and given more context to her career activities and recreational pursuits in college, alcohol consumption patterns or substance abuse treatments.
Her voicing was a tell that she seemed to be overplaying the victim persona for a person who holds a doctorate and travels the world surfing
Nunny , 1 day ago
If they coached her (while on the loooong drive from CA...lol) to use that voice, they didn't do her any favors. I thought femi-libs were all about being 'strong' and 'tough'. They can't have it both ways.....strike that.....they do have it both ways.....and the useful idiots on the left buy it.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
IMHO, the most peculiar thing was her outright refusal to say aloud the name of the boy that introduced her to Kavanaugh, when repeatedly questioned by Rachel Mitchell. It was wildly obvious that she was being evasive and I see it as an enormous tell. Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi", was IMHO the boy that drove her to and from the party, and if he didn't outright assault her that day, he may have dumped her that day.
MedTechEntrepreneur , 1 day ago
If the FBI is to have ANY credibility, they must insist on Ford's emails, texts and phone records for the last 2 years.
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
Kill shots:
Ranging from "mid 1980s" in a text to the Washington Post to "early 80s"
No name was listed in 2012 and 2013 individual and marriage therapy notes.
she was the victim of "physical abuse," whereas she has now testified that she told her husband about a "sexual assault."
she does not remember who invited her to the party or how she heard about it. She does not remember how she got to the party." Mitchell continued: "She does not remember in what house the assault allegedly took place or where that house was located with any specificity. Perhaps most importantly, she does not remember how she got from the party to her house."
In her letter to Feinstein, she said "me and 4 others" were at the party but in her testimony she said there were four boys in additional to Leland Keyser and herself. She did not list Leland Keyser even though they are good friends. Leland Keyser's presence should have been more memorable than PJ Smyth's,
· She testified that she had exactly one beer at the party
· "All three named eyewitnesses have submitted statements to the Committee denying any memory of the party whatsoever,
· her BFF: Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present with
· the simple and unchangeable truth is that Keyser is unable to corroborate [Dr. Ford's allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.
· Mitchell stated that Ford refused to provide her therapy notes to the Senate Committee.
· Mitchell says that Ford wanted to remain confidential but called a tipline at the Washington Post.
· she also said she did not contact the Senate because she claimed she "did not know how to do that."
· It would also have been inappropriate to administer a polygraph to someone who was grieving.
· the date of the hearing was delayed because the Committee was told that Ford's symptoms prevented her from flying, but she agreed during testimony that she flies "fairly frequently."
· She also flew to Washington D.C. for the hearing.
· "The activities of Congressional Democrats and Dr. Ford's attorneys likely affected Dr. Ford's account.
All Comments 833
NaturalOnly , 10 hours ago
It is not a matter of proving he is guilty to be prosecuted and go to jail. I think he did it. I think we all do stupid stuff when we are young and drunk. By all accounts he was a boozer.
There are a ton of people who would like to be on the Supreme court, why shove this guy down everyone's throat? He was an a$$. He needs to go away.
At first I thought this was all about politics. It might be a little. But women are sick of being victimized by men who get by with it. He should not get by with this.
Mzhen , 10 hours ago
No. Corroborating. Evidence.
Mike in Tokyo Rogers , 9 hours ago
Illogical and emotional "reasoning."
merlinfire , 2 hours ago
"I think he is guilty despite the evidence, so he must be guilty, despite the evidence."
Ms. Mitchell had a line of questioning about the friend who was mutual to Kavanaugh and Ford. It turns out this was the same person who had been named earlier by Ed Whelan. Ford said she had dated Garrett, also knew his younger brother, but flatly refused to refer to him by name in public.
I'll assume Ms. Mitchell was allowed to review all of the investigative material collected by the Committee to date. There has to be a reason she pursued this line of questioning.
Who would most likely drive a girl to a party with older high school boys from a different school and different circle of friends? Who would most likely take a 15 year old girl home from a party in an age without cell phones? His name is Chris Garrett, nickname of "Squi". She claims to not remember the person that drove her home, and she claims to not remember the name of the last boy at the gathering. And she refuses to publicly state the name of the boy that introduced her to Kavanaugh. These are all one and the same person, her boyfriend and soon-to-be-ex-BF Chris Garrett, who may have either assaulted her or broke up with her that day.
fleur de lis , 13 hours ago
What a spoiled brat she must have been whilst growing up.
She must be a really obnoxious snot to her coworkers over the years, too.
And as a teacher she must be a real screwball.
Which explains how she landed an overpaid job at a snowflake factory.
Yes. I was focused on trying to get into an elite college when I was in HS and these people's lives were nothing like mine in my teens. But then like a lot of people I'm lowborn as opposed to these people. I was a caddy at the Country Club, and my parents were certainly not members.
Brazillionaire , 14 hours ago
I haven't read all the comments so I don't know if somebody already brought this up... can this woman (who was 15) explain why she was in an upstairs bedroom with two boys? Did they drag her up the stairs? In front of the others? If she went willingly, for what purpose?
tsog , 14 hours ago
She walked upstairs calmly with her boyfriend Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi".
StarGate , 14 hours ago
So it seems... the Prosecutor determined which 'he said, she said'
gave False testimony under Oath
- Blasey Ford.
Ban KKiller , 13 hours ago
That's what it says. Investigate Ford and her scumbag fuckwad attorneys. Ha ha.
Westcoastliberal , 14 hours ago
What's this? https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christine_Blasey
motoXdude , 14 hours ago
Some things reign eternal... You go (down) girl, Doctor Ford! What a brave 15 year-old drinking at HS and College-Level Parties! Truly a Progressive ahead of the times! Thank you for paving the road to ruin! Don't forget to breathe in-between. You ARE the FACE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, GIRL! Suck it up, Buttercup!
alfbell , 15 hours ago
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RighteousRampage , 15 hours ago
Yes, we all got to see Kavanaugh PMS'ing on national television. No need to shout about it.
I BELIEVE!!
... that America's institutions are being torn down by Leftists. The attempt to create a new totalitarian regime has been upon us for decades and is now perfectly clear.
We will not say goodbye to morality.
We will not say goodbye to science.
We will not say goodbye to democracy.
We will not say goodbye to our Constitution, Bill of Rights, Founding Fathers, Logic, Decency, etc. etc. etc.
MAGA!
AHBL , 15 hours ago
Morality: Your dear Leader cheated on 3 different wives, one of them with a prostitute,...while she was pregnant (or had a 4 month old, I forget); filed for bankruptcy 5 times, cheating many people out of money; settled fraud lawsuits; lied about charity donations; your party nominated an actual PEDOPHILE (Moore) for Senate and now wants to appoint an angry drunk to be SCJ!
Science: You folks are literally disputing the conclusions of the vast, vast majority of scientists (97% by my last count) when it comes to global warming.
Democracy: this is a Democratic Republic...if it was a Democracy Trump wouldn't be President.
The rest of the nonsense you wrote was just filler...obviously.
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
Still better than the rapist and intern cigarer
and Benghazi killer clintons😂😂😂
why do retarded libturds not see that!!
You are clueless. Have all of your priorities and importances upside down. Have zero critical thinking.
Can't see that it isn't about Trump. It's about a Populist/Nationalist movement to put an end to the degradation of Progressive Globalists. Look at the big picture AHBL. C'mon you can do it.
"Wave goodbye to science"
Um, I believe you have your parties confused.
ISIS killee obama turned the democrats into te
aloha_snakbar , 15 hours ago
Why was Ms. Ford wearing glasses that looked like someone rubbed Crisco on the lenses? As a long time wearer of glasses, I can tell you we dont roll that way, kind of defeats the purpose. Answer? Those were not her glasses...they were a prop...
NeigeAmericain , 13 hours ago
Hahaha! She should have just taken out the lens out. No one would have looked that closely or would they ? 🤔
Dormouse , 15 hours ago
She's an Illuminati/NXIVM MKUltra-ed CIA sex-kitten. Her family glows in the dark with CIA connections. She's a CIA recruiter at Stamford, as well as her other job at Palo Alto. Oh, something traumatic has happened to her, multiple times; but at the hands of her family and their close Agency friends. Alyssa Milano in the audience? Come on! This is so ******* sick! What a disgusting display for those in the Know. Does the FBI currently have the balls to call them all out? That's the question, has Trump reformed the DOJ/FBI -- beyond the hobbled and shackled part consummed by these criminals with their coup? He seems confident, almost like he's tormenting his enemies as usual.
I heard she was chapter head of the local Elk's lodge as well.
GotAFriendInBen , 16 hours ago
Bye bye lying Brett
New reports question Kavanaugh's credibility on past drinking behavior, when he knew about allegations
By Mike Murphy
Published: Oct 1, 2018 8:26 p.m. ET
Texts suggest Supreme Court nominee knew of Ramirez accusations months before when he testified he had heard them
Gold Banit , 16 hours ago
Trump is brilliant and very smart!
Trump destroyed 17 high profile and very rich Republicans in the primaries.
Trump destroyed high profile and very rich Hillary Clinton and became the President of the USA.
Trump will now destroy the Democratic Party CNN and the main stream media.
Trump is not only brilliant and very smart he is a genius..
The DemoRats are in panic mode and are scared to death cause they are starting to realize that this could be the end of the Democratic Party.
"Trump is brilliant and very smart!"
Easy there, you're gonna hurt yourself.
Best president in hi
He is brilliant
he knew this pick would get beat so he picked Kavanaugh
it was brilliant because even Bush was forced to fight for kacenau😂😂😂
He will be confirmed this week
just outing the democrats that will be targeted in nov
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
I'll believe a woman after she's happily, on her own, made me breakfast 5 years or more....like mine does 8 years later.
ParaZite , 16 hours ago
Democrats have shown that they are anything but reasonable.
Racheal Doleazle...Blase'- Ford....We should believe these women! - Why?l
Because they have a vagina and can cry when their go fund me page hits 500K.
Cause a fat turd senator from Hawaii ordered us too😂😂😂
after that bitch tried to get the democrat rapist clinton back in my White House???
she hates Brett???
dekocrats are riding a fastvttrain to hell
Funny how Democraps are getting their panties in a wad over BK drinking beer in college, yet were okay with Slappy Sotoro snorting cocaine in college....go figure...
They're terrified of what happens once he's confirmed.
10/10/18 Checkmate
The million babies a year quit being executed
Where WAS the media when ISIS killer obama put those two fat no resume turds on the court???
Be wary of anyone this lunatic wants to plant for a lifetime position
Trump Says He 'Fell In Love' With Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-01/kavanaugh-college-visit-to-bar-erupted-in-fight-classmate-says-jmqwga1s?srnd=premium
" The episode occurred on a September evening in 1985 after Kavanaugh, Ludington and Dudley, attended the UB40 concert ."
UB40? Well, there you have it, if that isn't disqualifying, I don't know what is.
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Block reference ID: f9d6i listen to the ****-11e8-8d59-**** you
Lol... what, seeing UB40?
might be right on that😂😂😂
Mareka , 16 hours ago
I suspect this is as much about discouraging others from stepping forward as it is about destroying Kavenaugh.
I suspect this is about Communists trying to take over our government.
this is warning the good guys
Debt Slave , 16 hours ago
She is a cross eyed boobis and we have to believe her because she says Kavanaugh, a white hetero catholic man without any decent upbringing or engrained scruples raped her like a monkey savage out of the jungle. Oh sorry, TRIED to rape her. As a teenager. Tried to raped a pathetic, stupid cross eyed retarded moron that has since been successfully lobotomized at a 'modern' American university.
When is the last time you saw a 'mentally challenged' person being abused? Oh yes I remember now, it was Chicongo, January 2017. Four negroes shoved a retarded white man's head in a toilet and demanded he swear that he loved Niggers.
Never heard what happened to the savage fuckers, eh? Not surprised.
i know who and what I am voting for white man, do you?
This is all over BRUTAL KISS
Whaaa waa waa waa. Whahhh wa waaaaa. It's good to be retarded! Then you don't even have to try and understand the stupid **** we are FED today!
ThePhantom , 17 hours ago
bitch didn't clean her glasses.... mother ******
rkb100100 , 17 hours ago
I hear Anita Hill is worth a lot of money. I wonder what kind of pay-off this slime ball will end up with.
Pubic hair is worth a lot! It's got electrolytes!
Empire's Frontiers , 17 hours ago
You know, we ain't heard much about Russia for a few days.
Mouldy , 16 hours ago
Yeah ZH... **** this Kavanaugh ****, can we get back to the regularly
scheduled doom **** please.
Quitchabitchen.
benb , 16 hours ago
Time for the un-redacted FISA docs and the text messages. That should send Schumer and the gang into a tailspin.
....disqus spinning thing
God bless brilliant trump
holding those real crimes over democrats
cant wait until he drops the bombs
MrAToZ , 17 hours ago
The Dims don't believe Ford any more than they believe in the constitution. They are building a better world. They are true believers, one in the cause.
If one of them were at the receiving end of this type of Spanish inquisition they would be crying foul right out of the batter's box. But, because this is for the cause they will put the vagina hat on, goose step around and say they believe that mousey Marxist.
It's a made up sink if he's innocent, guilty if he floats game show. They know exactly what they are doing, which makes them even more reprehensible.
Yes a Hoax! But how many out there believe this crap? I'd like to see an accurate poll if that's possible.
I believe it all! Both sides are right!
That's why we call them 'Bolsheviks'. That's what they are.
They killed millions! ...and are poised to try and do it again.
BankSurfyMan , 18 hours ago
Fordy had sexual encounters, she drinks beer and flies all over the globe... One day she had a beer and cannot remember getting home on time to watch, MOAR DOOM NEWS! Fucktard Fordy! Doom 2019! Next!
inosent , 18 hours ago
Well, at least Rachel doesn't come off as one of those psycho SJW bitches
I am a black woman that identifies as a pre-pubescent Taiwanese man.
SocratesSolutions , 18 hours ago
Hmm. I think here, now which is it really? Does Ford make a better looking man, or does Kavanaugh make a better looking woman?
Giant Meteor , 17 hours ago
I dunno. But so far no one has been able to answer this question. Why, in the picture above, does Ford look like she swalowed a hula hoop ?
Because.
Kafir Goyim , 18 hours ago
Just had lunch with a democrat. He's generally tolerable, so his level of anger at Kavanaugh and his acceptance of "anything goes" to derail Kavanaugh was surprising to me.
Democrats believe that Roe V Wade is instantly overturned if Kavanaugh gets in. They also think that if Roe V Wade is overturned, no woman will ever be able to abort another baby in the US.
I explained to him that destruction of Roe V Wade will only make it a state issue, so girls in California, Oregon, Washington, New York, etc will be able to kill as many babies as they want to. It will only be girls in Wyoming or Utah or some other very red state that might have to schlep their *** to another state to kill their kid.
Democrats see this as a battle for abortion, and if Kav gets confirmed, abortion is completely gone in the USA. That's why you have these women freaking out. They think the stakes are much higher than they actually are. Almost all of the women that are so worried about this live in states where it won't have any effect on them at all.
I am Groot , 18 hours ago
I hope you took a bath and a flea dip after lunch.
I think I kind of calmed him down. We need to let them know that their world doesn't end if Roe V Wade is overturned. I am also not at all sure it would be overturned, even with Kav on the court, but they insist it will be, so not worth arguing. Reminding them that it doesn't effect them, if they live in a blue state should calm their fears a little.
The right to abort is their 2nd amendment, God help us. If you explain to them they are not really in danger, it may calm them down. They'll still make noise about those poor girls who can't get an abortion after school and still make it home for dinner, and instead, have to take a bus to another state to kill their kid, but they won't be as personally threatened and lashing out as they mistakenly are now.
when the saxon began , 17 hours ago
And therein lies the fatal flaw of an elected representative government. The votes of the ignorant and stupid are counted the same as yours or mine. And there are far more of them.
VisionQuest , 18 hours ago
Democrats stand for atheism, abortion & sodomy. Ask yourself this question: Who stands with Democrats? If your answer is "I do." then you'd best rethink your precious notions of morality, truth, common decency, common sense and justice.
It is undoubtedly true that, in our entirely imperfect world, the American Way of life is also far from perfect. But it is also true that, compared to every other system of government on the planet, there is no comparison with the level of achievement accomplished by the American Way of life.
Democrats hate and will destroy the American Way of life. Have you been a Democrat? Walk away.
Automatic Choke , 19 hours ago
EXCUSE ME, Y'ALL.....
but where the hell are the texts, FISA memo, & other docs?
look, another ******* squirrel !!!!!
J Jason Djfmam , 19 hours ago
They should also recommend an investigation of the woman with two front holes...errr front doors.
snatchpounder , 18 hours ago
Yes Flake should be investigated I concur.
Anunnaki , 17 hours ago
Zing!
freedommusic , 19 hours ago
At this point the FBI should recommend a criminal investigation to the DOJ for treasonous actors who are subverting the constitutional process of SC nomination. The crimes of perjury, sedition, and treason, need to be clearly articulated to the public and vigorous prosecution ensue.
We are STILL a Constitutional Republic - RIGHT?
Well, I am betting 27 trillion dollars that the answer to your question is a resounding , no ...
didthatreallyhappen , 19 hours ago
there is not "case"
ZeroPorridge , 19 hours ago
STOP SHOWING THIS LAME ****, TYLER! I HAD ENOUGH OF THIS WAFFLECRAP!!
DingleBarryObummer , 19 hours ago
It's the nothing burger flavor of the week. Tylers gotta put bread on the table u know. Be grateful for the good stuff they host, ZH is still the best news site on the internet. And don't worry, this nothing burger will get stale and we will have a new one in a week or 2, and everyone can get hysterical from that and forget about this one.
dchang0 , 19 hours ago
A body language analysis video on BitChute goes through the Ford testimony and points out all the markers for lying and rehearsed lines:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/5uv6SHt1Z5Gm/
I saw a video on youtube where a man threw chicken bones and saw Kavanaugh is guilty. I mean, what other proof does one need.
Red herrIng much?
Excellent. Thanks
loved the part on pretty pose. Her helium voice was an act
Shillinlikeavillan , 19 hours ago
This **** won't mean anything to the leftards, they will pretend that this report never happened and will carry on acting like a bunch of dumbasses...
Meanwhile, there was indeed a party with ford in it that night...
... and its hard to stop a train...
...of old angry entitled white men from gang banging our constitutional rights.
Mr. Universe , 19 hours ago
How come all of a sudden 8 year old accounts whom I've never seen before start trolling? At least 4 so far I've seen, strange co inky dink ehh?
I gave up posting here years ago when the site went from sharp-eyed financial analysis to Russia-humping conspiro-nazism. That said, this Kavanaughty thing is just too much of a meatball to pass up.
Now, respect your elders, and go back to playing in your sandbox, little boy.
Sinophile , 19 hours ago
If the bitch 'struggled academically in college' then how the hell did she get awarded a freaking P(ost)H(ole)D(igger)?
She probably blew the right man or men.
That's why GRE and other standardized tests should be prioritized. Thinking on one's feet is a good thing!
eitheror , 19 hours ago
Thank you Rachel Mitchell for having the courage to tell the truth about the testimony of Ms. Blasey Ford, P.h.D.
Ford is not a medical Doctor but is a P.h.D.
The Democrats seem to have abandoned Ms. Ford like a bad haircut, instead focusing on other smoke and mirrors.
onewayticket2 , 19 hours ago
Again, So What??
The democrats have already soiled this Judge's career and family name. Now it's about delay.
Exoneration note from the Republicans' lawyer carries precisely zero weight with them.....they are too busy sourcing everyone who ever drank beer with Kav....in an effort to get another Week Long extension/argue that Trump already greenlighted such an extension to investigate how much Kav likes beer. or who's milk money he stole in 3rd grade....
i guess Kavanuaghty wasn't worried about soiling the family name all those times he stumbled home slurring his words and yelling at random passersby.
He is not the first college student to get drunk.
Equating getting drunk to charges in every newspaper and TV news station for weeks stating he is a gang rapist ring leader etc is laughably idiotic. Nice job. Thx for the laugh.
HowdyDoody , 19 hours ago
Reports that Chinese naval vessel has chased a US vessel USS Decatur out of disputed waters. The Chinese vessel came within ~40 meters of the USS vessel (which is pretty darn close).
French president Macron, visiting the West Indows was interviewed about the confrontation. He responded, saying "don't bug me, bro. I got important things on my mind".
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoXSUqBX0AEuwfO.jpg
Babble_On2001 , 20 hours ago
About 35 years ago, at a party in San Francisco where everyone was very drunk, now Senator Feinstein sexually molested me. Don't remember the date or location or anything else, but it happened, I swear! Naturally, want to remain anonymous to protect my integrity, but it did happen! She shoved me down onto my knees and ground her crotch in my face. It was terrible, I can still recall the horrible smell to this day! The stench was a combination of rotting flesh and urine. Makes me nauseous just thinking of that sexual assault. INVESTIGATE this serial molester!
nope-1004 , 20 hours ago
Anyone see what that fat, big mouthed, undisciplined pig Rosie O'Donnell tweeted today? I didn't. But I'm sure that fat piggy just had to weigh-in (no pun intended) on how she's been crossed by this.
Any other lefties lurking here who have kids that can't stand you / your insane views, and have disowned you like Rosie's did?
Piggy ? More like a rabid albino silverback beating her hairy chest.
Opulence I Has It , 20 hours ago
The only things she does remember, are the things that directly support her allegations. That fact, by itself, is reason enough to disbelieve everything she says. The idea that she would have concrete memories of only those specific events, is not believable.
It's totally believable, though, that she's been counseled thus, to make her story easier to remember and avoid those inconvenient secondary details. You know, those secondary details that every police detective knows are how you trip up a liar. They are so focused on their bogus story, the little details of the time surrounding the fabrication don't hold up.
Would you expect less from the company?
Can't remember when it happened, how she got there, who was there, how she got home
but she does remember she only had one beer
yeah. Right.
StychoKiller , 16 hours ago
Perhaps it was one REALLY BIG Beer!
Last of the Middle Class , 16 hours ago
She remembers clearly she only had one beer and was taking no medication yet cannot remember for sure how she accessed her counselors records on her whether by internet or copying them less than 3 months ago?
Not possible.
She's a lying shill and in time it will come out.
She doesn't remember her rescuer that drove her home and away from such a terrible situation. Is this plausible? I say absolutely not. IMHO, she knows his name but refuses to say it while pretending to not remember. Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi", who introduced her to Kavanaugh and who was her boyfriend once. Some have speculated that he assaulted her that day and/or ended her relationship that day after she didn't want to take things to the next level with him.
quasi_verbatim , 20 hours ago
What a load of 'Murican crap.
Squawkkkkkk, it's what we do !
American Dissident , 20 hours ago
McConnell on the Senate Floor 50 minutes ago: "The time for endless delay and obstruction has come to a close.... Mr. President, we'll be voting this week."
xear , 21 hours ago
Brett is obviously innocent. Groping her, holding her down, grinding into her... it's not like it was rape. And as far as covering her mouth so she couldn't scream... after a heavy night of drinking who wants to hear screaming? Almost anyone would do the same.
I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 20 hours ago
it's always interesting to see where and why people claim to know things about which they have literally no 'knowledge.'
Also interesting to see how the same people who would protest assuming the guilt of an alleged Muslim terrorist or Black liquor store robber now argue it is 'whiteness' and 'patriarchy' to not assume the guilt of a white male regarding decades old uncorroborated charges... which 4 named witnesses deny having knowledge of, by a woman who lied about a fear of flying to try to delay the process.
We can all be hypocrites.
But watching the Left embrace hypocrisy as social justice has been, in the pure sense of the word, awesome to behold.
Almost, but not quite, as awesome to behold as the right's embrace of complete immorality by the supposed party of faith and religion.
ZD1 , 20 hours ago
The demonic Democrat socialist party are all about immorality.
The real neo-Marxist fascists on the Supreme Court are:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Marxist *** from ACLU)
Elena Kagan (Marxist ***)
Sonia Sotomayer (Marxist brown supremacist from La Raza/MEHcA)
Stephen Breyer (Marxist ***)
They are no different than the left-wing billionaire neo-Marxist fascists that own and control the demonic Democrat socialist party.
Showing your Nazi stripes again?
The religious right will never again be able to claim any moral high-ground, never. Not after Trump and this Kavanaugh fiasco.
The immoral lying neo-Marxist fascists in the demonic Democrat socialist party never had any high ground, EVER!
Now run along Antifa fascist.
Whatever you say, Boris.
Dancing Disraeli , 20 hours ago
Boris is a Russian name. If you wanted to run the Nazi narrative, you should've called him Fritz.
I love the new ignore feature on the Hedge. Buh bye Snowflake
Right, that's why the fraud Ford kept repeating, "I don't remember" or "I can't recall." Yes, a very believable story. Now let me tell you about another female figure that has been treated poorly, she's called the Tooth Fairy.
deja , 19 hours ago
Tawana Brawley, substitute republican conservative for white state trooper.
Not only are these claims of not remembering completely implausible, but the transcript shows that she explicitly refuses to say the name of the boy that introduced her to BK. It strikes me as wildly disrespectful to Rachel Mitchell and just screams for further exploration.
FBaggins , 21 hours ago
To fix things if after all of this crap from the feminazis and Kavenaugh simply withdraws his name, Trump should put forward Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the next candidate. It would really ensure support for Trump candidates in the midterms from women in general and from social-conservative family-values people in the US and it would perhaps teach the feminazis a lesson at the same time.
istt , 20 hours ago
No, Kavanaugh deserves better. He has earned his place on the USSC.
My prediction was, and still is Kavanaugh goes forward. Even the revered CNN is starting to walk the drinking issue back.
By the way , the Trump presser today was a ******* hoot!
cheech_wizard , 20 hours ago
Aren't they all...
Standard Disclaimer: Keep calm and MAGA on!
ToddTheBabyWhale , 21 hours ago
Nine page memo, Tyler. Your starting to write like a pro journalist now.
jomama , 21 hours ago
Checked in for a minute to have a peek at countless fat, white, middle aged, anonymous assholes spewing hatred and misogyny.
Wasn't disappointed. Keeping it classy, ZH.
that's big talk coming from a pedophile.
prove you aren't, dickhead.
Lore , 21 hours ago
That isn't helpful. The reason why jomama's post is wrong is because it's merely spewing vitriol, when the priority should be to dis-indoctrinate and self-educate.
Reading this made is like seeing a fire truck on fireeeeeee
tmosley , 20 hours ago
I started blocking low effort trolls after one warning.
Slowly cleaning the place up.
Jein , 20 hours ago
Tmosley: "it hurts my feelings to read things I dont like and I need a safe space to cry in"
Another 9 year member troll I've never seen before. Do you think the mockingbirds want to disrupt any discourse and devolve it into "them vs. us"? You bet they do. Buzz off, jomama back to whatever basement they dug you up out of. Tell Georgie that we will resist this treachery with our last breaths.
You misunderstand, because your perspective is handicapped by progressivist indoctrination. A conscientious ZHer will read a note like that and dismiss it as intellectual laziness: mindless regurgitation of programming.
Strive to deprogram, and you'll quickly develop better perspective about the distinction between political correctness and pursuit of truth. God knows there is name-calling on both sides, but I think it's safe to say that the biggest concern on sites like ZH is the way mainstream American discourse has been hijacked by amoral pathocracy. What matters is not doing The Right Thing: what matters is ******* over the other guy to get Your Way. That is the evil that is on the verge of destroying this nation.
It's either that, or drugs.
robertocarlos , 21 hours ago
I'm not that fat.
Harvey_Manfrengensen , 21 hours ago
I am at 16% bodyfat. Nor am I white. Try again.
Jomama raped me when I was in the 6th grade. Just came out after a therapy session. Can anyone corroborate my story, you ask? No, but I am 100% sure he is the guy. You are a guy, right? Now if we can just expose who he is I will press charges and have him put away for a very long time, ruin his family and his career.
rwmomad , 20 hours ago
He pulled my pants down in first grade on the play ground and touched my pee pee. I am seeking counsel.
How's that going?
IridiumRebel , 20 hours ago
Still can't refute anything so ad hominem attacks....got it.
Stay generalized!
let freedom ring , 21 hours ago
Trump has given up on K. The calculus is that it will be bad for the democrats if he doesn't make it on the court. Don't expect Trumps help from here on in. K was a flawed candidate from the start and Trump knew it, and is playing his base like a violin.
Total BS. You've lost your senses. People are expendable but not that much. Trump has to be thought of as a guy who backs his appointees, that he will go to the wall for them.
sunkeye , 21 hours ago
T/y Prosecutor Mitchell for conducting yourself w/ professionalism, decency, & honor - personal traits none of the Democratic senators seem to possess, or would even recognize if shown to them directly as you did. Again. t/y & bravo.
She allowed Ford to refuse to speak the name of the boy that introduced her to BK. Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi", who was Ford's one-time boyfriend. Some speculate that he was the unnamed final boy at the party and that he may have assaulted Ford and/or dumped her after she refused to go to the next level with him. Hence the trauma.
All this vitriol breaks my heart. Why can't we all just love eachother? I heard human centipeding is a great way to team build. Who's in?
chrbur , 21 hours ago
Jein...because first we must remove evil....
right, and by labeling the opposing side, "evil" that pretty much means anything goes.
first step is to dehumanize, then all possibilities are on the table, amirite?
Yeah, that's following the Alinsky playbook. Something you have been spewing all over these threads. Guilty until proven innocent. No, better, yet, guilty because he was accused.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a socialist."
Funny how all of the "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" crowd here was so quick to send Hillary to the gulag, or believe in that Obama was a Muslim, or that a pizza parlor was ground-zero for a child trafficking ring, or....
I like it. lets sew a string of Trumptards together *** to mouth, south park style.
Love it. I'm willing to make the sacrifice be the head.
Negative_Prime , 20 hours ago
Why? You're so good at being the rear.
Don't deny your nature.
I told you to stop that ****.
You are now on ignore. Suggest everyone do the same. This guy never said anything interesting.
Paracelsus , 21 hours ago
I am having trouble keeping these personalities separate as I want to give everyone the benefit of the
doubt. When I see Justice Kavanaugh, I think of the confirmation hearing as a political attack on the
Trump administration . Also as an attempt to score points, or make the other side screw up, before the
upcoming elections.When I see Dr. Ford, I see Hillary Clinton and all the bitterness from a failed
politician.
The funny thing is I thought all the Trump "fake news" statements were a load of crap. Turns out he hit the
mark quite often. The lefties are so damn mad because Trump is succeeding and they haven't been able to
score points against him. So they feel that it is justified to use other methods,regardless of the fallout.
There is a whiff of panic and desperation present.
I have stated this before, as have others: The loss of the White House by the Democrats provided a
unique opportunity to clean out the deadwood. This may have seemed cruel and heartless but the
Obama era is over and the Dem's urgently need to return to their roots before it is too late. Did they
use this moment of change or did they revert to business as usual? To ask the question is to
answer it.... This is commonly described as bureaucratic inertia. The Dem's only needed to get the
ball rolling and they would be moving towards the objective of regaining power. New, younger
and more diplomatic and law abiding types need to be encouraged to apply. Put out the help wanted
sign. Do what Donald does,"You're fired!".
Well, if others have stated it before, it MUST be true. Republiconarists and Demcraps are playing the same stupid games. Dems got punked w Garland, and now Reps are getting their comeuppance w Kavanaugh (who really made it worse for himself by holding up such an obviously false pious portrait of himself).
I believe Judge Brett Kavanaugh. I believe Rachel Mitchell, Esq. I believe Leland Keyser. I believe Mark Judge. I believe P.J. Smyth.
I believe the evidence. That's why I don't believe Ms. Christine Blasey Ford.
But she only had one beer!
What do you think of the Chris Garrett hypothesis?
Drop-Hammer , 22 hours ago
IOW, she is a lying leftist loon and fraud. I am only surprised that she is not a treacherous jewess.
1970SSNova396 , 22 hours ago
The bitch was a fraud and anybody with a working brain understands that. Of course that exempts the democrat voting base.
The two ugly women senators from Maine and Alaska just might sink Kav. Lord knows they want to so bad.
arby63 , 22 hours ago
And you are about duplicitous as one paid troll could be. Go punch yourself and apologize to those that actually have a job.
G F Y sport
Don't you wish. Bitch.
Zerohedge is basically Breitbart now, with even more doomporn and more Putin puffery.
******* yourself might be the only sex you're getting... Just saying...
Maybe he's a proud beer drinking virgin, just like your man Kavanaugh.
STONEHILLADY , 22 hours ago
also for someone going up before Congress for any reason, this Ford girl had NOT one family member or husband by her side....that is a real telling sign.
Also check out the secret courts going on in E. Warren's state Mass. same kind of Justice, guilty to prove innocent, they have adopted the court system of the Inquisition, get ready folks if the Dems. take back the Congress. these type of courts coming to blue state near you.
If your father was CIA would you want him there? Of course she is a carpet eater so two lesbians is enough.
I guess then, by your logic, the Clinton's should be considered innocent?
She kept looking at her prepared statement like a security blanket under cross examination
It was an attempt to make her look alone and vulnerable. Along with the girly voice and the glasses to make her eyes look huge and neotenous.
YourAverageJoe , 22 hours ago
Writing the memo was easy for her. She could have cut and pasted large parts of Comey's July 2016 exoneration of Hillary speech.
Ms Ford, the newly minted millionaire, is probably lying poolside in Mexico, indulging in her favorite psychotropics and getting pounded by the local brown talent. Wow...having a vagina is like having a meat 3D printer that spews out money...
That so reminds me of this line in "He Never Died"...
I, uh, don't have money, so...
Then how did you end up inebriated?
Vaginas are like coupon books for alcohol.
Aubiekong , 23 hours ago
Never was about justice, this is simply a liberal/globalist plan to stop Trump.
peippe , 22 hours ago
why can't they lay back & take the pounding?
might even start to enjoy it. MAGA!
Trump Train will place at least one more justice on the bench beyond Brettster. : )
Trump is surrounded by Jews.. Zionists and bankers.
We are watching the Ultra-Zionist Jews in a power struggle with the Globalist Jews.
And 100 years ago Churchill notes the same - Jews divided between destroying nations (Bolsheviks) and building their own to rule the world and possess its wealth (Zionism).
Bad cop, bad cop.
Well stated. Churchill famously and openly wrote about this in the early 1920s.
If you haven't punched a Democrat today, try harder.
Cuck alert
Let us all know when you're ready to jump.
LadyAtZero , 22 hours ago
Prosecutor Rachel did a great job and given that Christine's testimony was under oath, Christine is set up to be held to what she said.
Friends, Christine is C_A and so is her dad. These C_A facts are all over the internet.
Christine during her testimony had a fake "little girl, looking over her glasses, am I not cute?" demeanor.
She is a psych. PhD for heavens sake -- she is 52 years old. No need to act like a hurt little girl, unless one is facing the big white male meanies who dare to question her and she can emit "I'm a victim" all day long.
Go Kavanaugh!
(and I don't care if Brett Kavanaugh likes to drink beer and I don't care that he drank in college and got rip-roaring drunk. Most of us did... as we all know).
........sigh.....
Prince Eugene of Savoy , 20 hours ago
Squeaky Ford only testified to what she had written down. She never used the part of the brain dealing with actual memory. https://youtu.be/uGxr1VQ2dPI
And she outright refused to speak the name of the boy that had introduced her to BK. It was wildly evasive and inappropriate and is a huge red flag for this case. Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi". Her one-time boyfriend and I am convinced that he both drove her to and away from the party. After she refused his effort to take their relationship to the next level.
There are no more "Democrats" or "liberals". There are only Marxists and communists.
Worth thinking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGBIMU__nmM
ExcelMonkey , 22 hours ago
Stop spamming.
Stop breathing. We will all be better off. Even you.
headless blogger , 22 hours ago
We don't need a cultist that talks at the camera with only his head showing (weird) to tell us what to believe.
We can figure it out without that phony racist cultist's lecture.
Attack the message not the messenger. Every discerning person here is hip to that trick.
We don't need cultists speaking out in our name. It only discredits the truth movement. The Messenger DOES matter.
Golden Phoenix , 23 hours ago
Ever notice #MeToo
reads 'Pound Me Too!'
should be #boxwineresistance
Grandad Grumps , 23 hours ago
Sp, Rachel is "deep state"?
ToSoft4Truth , 23 hours ago
Parrty on, Garth.
blindfaith , 23 hours ago
Was there in 1965, and I can recall what my classmates wore, who could dance, who kissed great, who had the best music, who got laid and how often...and it was NOT the head of the football or basketball team.
Her memory is selectively scripted, and I am 20 years older and my memory is just fine.
charlewar , 23 hours ago
In other words, Ford is a liar
JohnG , 23 hours ago
She's a goddamned sociopathic lying bitch.
A highly paid one. Gofundme alone is over $900,000.
Her two *** lawyers doing well for their time and attention. McCabe's lawyer comes to the rescue for Ford.
LA_Goldbug , 22 hours ago
This nose nearly took my eye out,
https://www.gofundme.com/to-cover-dr-fords-security-costs
My German Sheppard's nose is smaller than hers. Holy schnozes Batman ! That's Toucan Sam in glasses.
Amazing. Now I see what a wonderful mechanism they created with this. Payoff camouflage !!!
Moving and Grooving , 21 hours ago
Gofundme is a dead man walking. It cannot be allowed to expedite money laundering on the donor side, and anonymous donations to the receiver in these ridiculous amounts on the other. If this isn't already illegal, I'll be shocked.
PantherCityPooPoo , 21 hours ago
Dead how? We already know that these corporation are die hard neo-liberal but name me 2 republicans or ANY federal entity that would EVER go after a corporation like that.
You are not aware of the score if you think anything will be done to them.
HerrDoktor , 23 hours ago
My hippocampus is turgid and throbbing after seeing Chris Ford in those Adrian (Talia Shire) spectacles.
blind_understanding , 23 hours ago
I had to look it up ..
TURGID - from Latin turgidus , from turgēre to be swollen
nothing better than a confused lady who forgets stuff...........
I'm all over that if she was thirty-six years younger. oops.
So why is Ford dressed like a WWII school Liberian? Halloween?
How does she do all the water sports (easy boys, keep it clean) that she brags about? How does she keep a case of beer down and then go surfing in Costa Rica? What is all this 'Air sickness" stuff? How come she works for a company that has a very controversial Abortion pill and didn't say this? That $750,000 in GoFundMe bucks will sure help heal those cat scratches she gave herself. Does she pay taxes on that? So many questions and so little answers. Did she perjer herself?
Sort of convenient that the statute of limitations has run out for her to make an OFFICIAL complaint in Maryland.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2018/09/29/montgomery-co-police-maryland-state-attorney-respond-to-state-lawmakers-reques-n2523791
phillyla , 23 hours ago
Ford looks like she is channeling the character of Satan's therapist on the TV show Lucifer
http://lucifer.wikia.com/wiki/Linda_Martin
San Pedro , 23 hours ago
Ford is a practiced liar. She was coached to cry all the way thru her polygraph test thus skewing the results.
Brett's tears were real
But my calendars!!! I graduated Yale!!!! My mommy was a judge!!! SCOTUS is my destineeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, it's mine all mine!!!!!
Kavanaugh would/could literally beat the **** out of you. I believe that 1000000000%.
C'mon, his performance was disgraceful for a wannabe SCOTUS judge. He whinges like a little a girl who had her lolly stolen.
Can you imagine Gorsuch or Scalia behaving that way?
Disgraceful? Seriously? Because he spoke like a MAN and wasn't willing to "take it" from the ****** fascists? **** you.
Arby (you're probably a fat **** right?), he spoke like a whiny cuck bitch. Just like you do. That ain't being a man. Try sucking a my **** for a taste of masculinity.
NEOCON1 , 23 hours ago
Still jerking off to photoshopped nudes of Hillary Clinton?
Nah chelsea. She has nice nips
they were beer tears.
it's said he cries Bud Light.
He's awesome.
Being Free , 23 hours ago
Stunning accusation that Sen. Feinstein covered up 1990 sexual assault by a wealthy foreign donor against another supporters daughter ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A_Zg2phhLI
Mimir , 23 hours ago
Rachel Mitchell Memo
Follow the money !!
whatthehay , 23 hours ago
I was the victim of an abuse event when I was 4. I'm 47 now. I know exactly where the house is, we were in the backyard and I can tell anyone what happened and who was there. It happened a few days back to back maybe three days, it was during the winter in the midafternoon. I guess my hippocampus is in better shape than hers.
When I brought this up wth Liberal friends at coffee this AM, they said it was so traumatic that forgetting details was her coping mechanism
Iberal pretzel logic
Jein , 1 day ago
I would let trump **** my girl. How bout yall?
Is that code? The nickname you gave your penis? Girl? God damn you are a sick ****. Look the gay thread is down the hall, second door on the left, therapy third door on the right ..
Good luck ...
Yeah I would top for trump. Normally love getting my ******* pounded though. U verse bro?
Goldennutz , 23 hours ago
We all be gettin' our asses pounded for years by our goobermint!
Everyone else is having your girl, so why not?
sgt_doom , 1 day ago
" Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was poised, articulate, clear and convincing. More than that, she radiated self-assured power ."
----- So says Robert Reich
Saaaaay, Bobby, have you ever met Wesley Allen Dodd or Ted Bundy? I once came into contact with Dodd, the epitome of calm, cool and collected --- and he was later executed for torturing to death small children!
A (female) law professor from Seattle University said:
" Dr. Christine Blasey Ford (why do they keep referring to a professor of psychology as doctor --- s_d) was credible and believable. " (Evidently, we don't need no stinking proof or evidence where a law professor is concerned!?)
Sgt_Doom says: Prof. Christine Blasey Ford sounded credible, believable and completely unsubstantiated.
Credible Allegations
Over this past weekend I learned three startling facts:
(1) All American women have been raped;
(2) All American males are rapists and liars; and,
(3) "Credible allegations" are accusations not requiring any shred of evidence.
Fake news facts , that is . . . . .
All this was conveyed by high-middle class (or higher) females who worship globalization and American exceptionalism --- from the same news conduits who once reported on weapons-of-mass-destruction in Iraq and other similar mythologies!
Not a single so-called reporter --- not a single self-described journalist in American --- thought to ask that most obvious of obvious questions:
Where in bloody perdition is Christine Blasey Ford's Holton Arms yearbooks?
After all, they introduced Kavanaugh's yearbook, so why not Christine Blasey's yearbook?
Second most obvious question:
When one searches online for Holton Arms yearbooks, the searcher can find the yearbooks for the years preceding Ford's last several years at Holton Arms, and the years following --- why have the last several years when Christine Blasey attended missing? Why have they been removed --- even cached versions --- from the Web?
Takes some serious tech resources to accomplish this in such a short period of time?!
How very odd . . . .
I do not want Kavanaugh, nor anyone like him, on the Supreme Court bench, but that does not mean I automatically believe any and all unsubstantiated accusations and am sane enough to comprehend that credible allegations require proof --- also referred to as evidence.
It is not enough to state that this person drinks and is therefore guilty or that person is a male and is therefore guilty.
I fully support an expanded investigation into both Kavanaugh AND Christine Blasey Ford, including Ms. Ford's Holton Arms yearbooks and any and all police blotter activity/records for her ages of 13, 14, 15 and 16.
And I wish some of those useless reporters would being asking the obvious questions . . . . and finally start doing their jobs!
Sidebar : Sen. Chris Coons claimed that Prof. Ford was courageous to have come forward as she had nothing to gain , yet within several days after her testimony, Christine Blasey Ford is almost one-half million dollars wealthier --- nothing to gain?
Hardly . . . .
[Next rant: MY elevator encounter with a 14-year-old psychotic blonde student, and her buddy, many years ago in Bethesda, Md.]
Radiated self assured power? Are you shitting me?
The courageous woman with nothing to gain is well on the way to a mil in go fund me contributions. Plus there will be a book and movie deal.
DjangoCat , 23 hours ago
"And I wish some of those useless reporters would being asking the obvious questions . . . . and finally start doing their jobs!.."
Those useless reporters would be fired if they did. The problem is much further up the line than the reporter on the beat.
Yep, BCC was VERY loose...So was Northwestern in G.Town and Holton-Arms High. They were way ahead in drugs, booze and Freon baloons too. Heck at Blair, we thought drugs were like aspirin and stuff. Now if Ms.Ford had gone to Blair, I might believe her....helm lines above the knee was a no no.
Is lindsey Graham a closet homosexual?
robertocarlos , 1 day ago
There are men who are not gay but have never been with a woman.
It's a bot.
Possibly but this site is not your own personal dating service.
GM let me get them digits homie. Haven't seen u on grindr lately
Look if we are going to converse you're going to have to speak in English or some other language I might understand, what is this verse and grindrr you speak of "bro?'
Hablas espanol? Quiero tu tongueo en my cacahole
Now that was just ******* funny as all hell. You are improving....
He might be, but that is his business. The left, which is supposedly supporters of gay rights,throw that out the window if you are on the other team.
I just dont like trannys
I love The Hedge's new block feature. Buh bye, Hillary
I'm going to let this one go awhile . A fascinating case study.
You just don't have anything to say that is intersting.
Just bile.
Goodbye forever.
So Mitchell faked her love for Ford. You sure can't trust women.
She (Mitchell) was there to handle her like the delicate flower. To the pubes defense, someone was smart enough to realize that a bunch of GOP white guys questioning her was not going to play well. Enter the female prosecutor and her report.
On the other hand the dem guys and dolls could not genuflect enough , so their questioning was fine. I mean they had her painted as the courageous hero of the modern era. So brave, so noble , so, so, utterly awesome!
Puke ....
scraping_by , 23 hours ago
She had an emotional meltdown for a big finish. Note who gave her the run-in for it. (Not Mitchell).
nicholforest , 1 day ago
Seems pretty obvious that Mitchell could not see a case for prosecution - what we heard was mostly 'He said ... She said". So an unsurprising conclusion.
And there is no moral high ground for Republicans to criticize the process pursued by the Democrats. They would have (and in the past have) done the same. A curse on both their houses.
But what struck me was the behavior and style of Kavanaugh. He came across as belligerent, petty, evasive, aggressive and impulsive. Those are not the characteristics that we want in a candidate for the Supreme Court.
Little Lindsey G would say that Kavanaugh has a right to be angry, which may be so - but the way that such anger is manifested is critical. In the military we look for leaders to be cool under fire. The same should be true for a judge in the highest court in the land.
Instead he came across like a fearful, reactive, spiteful, spoilt frat boy. That will not do.
scraping_by , 1 day ago
Ah, the double bind. Either he's robotic and reciting a script, or he's wild and howling brat. Nice how that works.
FAQMD1 , 23 hours ago
nicholforest - And there is no moral high ground for Republicans to criticize the process pursued by the Democrats. They would have (and in the past have) done the same. A curse on both their houses.
Please enlighten us on specifically which Dem. SC nomination the Republicans did a full on character assassination .... were waiting!
It is mindless comments and a lack of rigorous thinking and moral equivocation like yours that has led the country into the abyss of nonsense and division.
Mineshaft Gap , 23 hours ago
We're all left to imagine the calm, lucid, rational yet caring manner in which you would have defended yourself against a pack of vultures and their vague career-ending accusations.
I'm picturing a cross between Cicero, Chris Cuomo and Caitlin Jenner.
Counting on that spiteful aspect to offset his RINO squish proclivities.
Why has their never been a sex scandal on a dem appointment, but their always is now on a repub appointment? Just a coinky dinky or a part of their playbook?
Bastiat , 1 day ago
I like that last pic of Mitchel: defines "looking askance."
I Write Code , 1 day ago
"Weaknesses", forsooth.
Dickweed Wang , 1 day ago
Look at the time line provided and then tell me the Democrats aren't a pack of lying weasles. The truth means absolutely NOTHING to them. Their agenda (to **** over Trump in any way possible) is all that matters. Could anyone imagine what would have happened if the Republicans would have pulled just 1/10th of that kind of ******** with the Homo *****?? There would have been continuous MSM inspired riots in the streets.
They play by Alinsky Rules
rksplash , 1 day ago
I guess the only way this nonsense is going to go away is if the GOP start using the same tactics. Hire some wannabe spin doctors to go through some old high school yearbooks in a church basement somewhere in Alabama. An old black and white of some poor pimple faced senator grabbing his crotch at the prom in 72.
Well, the Arkansas Project was political and partisan. Indeed, the right-wing world were praising Mellon for using money effectively. And it wasn't until Flint evened the score that decorum was restored.
truthalwayswinsout , 1 day ago
How dare another women even think of questioning a rape and assault allegation and demand facts, and consistent detailed explanations that do not change.
Zus , 1 day ago
She's obviously an "old white guy" in disguise.
Wile-E-Coyote , 1 day ago
If this woman can try and attempt to destroy a man's life then the least she should be made to do is a take a lie detector test. You can't prosecute anyone on hear say.
She did take a polygraph - and passed.
That's the story. Little or no evidence of what that story means.
Yeah that's what the lying sacks of **** say, but of course there's absolutely no proof it happened. She passed? O.k., let's assume they are at least not lying about that . . . what questions were asked?
A polygraph with 2 questions apparently. In other words a complete joke. A real poly has scores if not hundreds of questions.
Two questions were asked. "Are you a woman"? and "Are you a liar"?
It's amazing what a false memory can do.
Is there a verbatim transcript of the questions asked?
Mitchell said it was irresponsible to give a polygraph to someone grieving the loss of a loved one. Grandmother in this case.
rumor has it the exam included two questions.
Two Questions.
you decide what that means.
nsurf9 , 1 day ago
Not one shred of corroboration evidence of Ford's testimony, not even from her friend, who flatly denied she ever went to such party, NONE, NADA, UNBELIEVABLE!
Don't these Congressional a-holes vet these people to safeguard against crazy loons' bald-faced lies, and even worst, one's with democrat financed malicious intent to defame?
And further, Montgomery County Police has formally stated that, as a misdemeanor, the statute of limitations ran out on this allegedly crime - 35 frigging years ago.
And lastly, with regard to drinking in college, not one democrat mentions he finished top of his Yale undergrad class and top of his Yale Law School class.
nsurf9 - Don't these Congressional a-holes vet these people to safeguard against crazy loons' bald-faced lies, and even worst, one's with malicious intent to defame?
Please tell me how you or I could possible "safeguard" ourselves from "crazy loon" and "bald-face lies" ....?
That is why we're supposed to be a nation of laws and innocent until proven guilty.
It is one thing to disagree over a person political position and or ideas but that is not what is happening here. The Dems are in full assault mode to destroy BK and his family as a warning to any future Conservative judge who may dare accepts a nomination to the SC.
What the Dems are doing will lead to some type of civil war if they do not stop this. It will not be pretty if that happens.
nsurf9 , 23 hours ago
Requiring even a modicum of corroborated facts or evidence, outside of mere "words," would be a good start!
dogmete , 1 day ago
Yeah what an incredible story. She was at a party with some drunken creepy guys and got sexually assaulted. Everyone knows that never happens!
^Tool
austinmilbarge , 23 hours ago
All she has to to is prove it.
samolly , 1 day ago
None of this matters. What matters is that the democrats think Kavanaugh will overturn Roe v. Wade so they will be against him regardless of any outcome in this matter.
It's all and only about abortion.
The current sleaze isn't overturning the legal right to abortion, it's making it impossible to get one. It's a legal right that a woman has to sit through lectures, travel to specific places, make certain declarations, and get a physician who's usually under attack at the state level. It's not illegal, it's impossible.
It's not about restricting women, it's about making life harder for middle and lower class people. Women of the Senator's economic class have always had and always will have access to safe abortions. It's wage earners who have to depend on local providers.
Whether Catholic K will go along with the sabotage of a privacy right isn't clear. But he's probably going to be sympathetic to making those working class wenches show some responsibility.
To quote famed feminist and Democrat Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, women can always "Keep their pants zipped". But then Granholm only extended her authoritarian control freakery to the male half of the human race when she said that a few years ago. If women lose some "reproductive rights" then some of them might start to have some empathy for men and our lack of rights. But I won't hold my breath waiting for them to empathize with us.
. . . but according to Dr. Fair, white men are murderous.
Right Barney, not an undereducated and-proud-of-it slob like you.
MrAToZ , 1 day ago
You Dims are so willing to just swallow the hook. You idiots have been trained to react, leave common sense at the door, slap on the vagina hats and start marching in circles.
What a cluster f*ck. Evidently there are suckers born every minute.
Not only that, her most indelible memory from the experience was the maniacal laughter , not the part where a hand was forcibly placed over her mouth and she thought she may in that moment, have been accidently killed.
Another peculiar thing about Ford's testimony was the adolescent voicing she gave it in. It was if she was imitating a 6 year old. I wish MItchell had fleshed out Ford's hobbies (surfing??) more and given more context to her career activities and recreational pursuits in college, alcohol consumption patterns or substance abuse treatments. Her voicing was a tell that she seemed to be overplaying the victim persona for a person who holds a doctorate and travels the world surfing
Wasn't there an old SNL skit about the "amygdala"?
YouTube doesn't seem to have an index on the term, LOL.
seryanhoj , 1 day ago
One more example of US governance and party politics on its way down the tubes. There is no topic, no forum nowhere where the truth is even something to be considered. Media, law makers, everyone looks at a story and says " Let's make this work for our agenda even if we have to reinvent it from scratch". Then it is more than easy to find people to testify any which way you want. Vomits copiously.
mabuhay1 , 1 day ago
The standard for females should be "They are lying if their lips are moving." Any claims of sexual abuse should require proof, and witnesses that can back up said claims. Many studies have found that years before the MeToo# lies began, about 60% of all claimed rapes were false. Now, with the "Must believe all women" and the "MeToo#" scam, I would suspect the rate of false claims to be very close to 100%
The standard for any criminal investigation is ABC. Assume nothing, Believe no one, and Check everything. The current feminist howl is sweep that aside and obey a women when she points at a man.
Jack McGriff , 1 day ago
And yet every single MSM outlet is claiming she is credible! WTF!!!
Collectivism Killz , 1 day ago
Brett's real blight is that he barely dignifies the fourth amendment, which has arguably been the most compromised as of late. Funny how the dims never bring this up. His record and statements are RVW are centrist, so what makes the dims scared? Maybe Q is on to something with the whole military tribunals.
GoingBig , 1 day ago
If he just said that he drank too much in college and that was that I would be okay with him. But he made himself out to be a freak up there saying all this conspiracy crap about the Clintons. What kind of SCOTUS Justice is this guy? I say no!
Ron_Mexico , 1 day ago
you fight fire with fire
rockstone , 1 day ago
Well if the question even makes sense to you then you're too ******* stupid to have an opinion that anyone should take seriously. In other words, what you think doesn't count.
kbohip , 1 day ago
I think you got confused today honey. This is not the Salon comments section.
That age group drink and grope every chance they get. Its what we all did given the chance. No one made fuss because up till now no one was told to get upset about it or try to get political leverage out of it.
The only way to fight back against passive aggressions is with full on aggression. It shocked the Dems b/c they thought they could just dole out a bunch of virtue signalling holier than thou testimony and Kavanaugh would have to sit and eat ****
"It shocked the Dems"
Spot on. They had their safe space taken away from them and called out for what it was -- an auto-da-fe.
Heather Mac Donald made the astute point that this is hideous campus culture emerging into the mainstream.
Do you watch Game of Thrones? Remember the season when Cersei was being attacked by the religious nuts.
The woman kept asking her "Do you confess?" under torture
Same here. Kavanaugh was asked to bend the knee and beg forgiveness for his "crime".
He said **** YOU
Goingbig, don't try to talk sense to knuckle draggers. They huddle together or die.
One has to think that half of them are on working overtime at the troll farm trying to stir up partisan hatred. Hard to believe real people could be this obtuse.
Zero-Hegemon , 1 day ago
Major Hegelian dialectic **** going on with the Ford/Kav reality show.
Women everywhere side with Ford because she's a women, claims she was abused, and "has to be believed", in order to settle some personal score that they all claim empathy for, even though she has given every tell in the book that she is lying.
Men everywhere empathize with a man being falsely accused, regardless of his politics and judicial history, even though he made his bones in the Bush administration, and can probably be relied on to further the authoritarian state via the Supreme court. Guilty of this myself, because it could be anyone of us next.
Pick a side, doesn't matter, because we've already lost.
I "Believe the Women" -- the 3 women Ford named as witnesses who denied it ever happened, the 65 women who signed the letter in support of Ford, and all the women who have worked with him and had no issues. I don't believe this one, though.
I'm with you 200%
phillyla , 1 day ago
I am a woman, a wife and the mother of an adult male and I don't believe this mewling quim for one second and I haven't met one woman who believes her.
Most of the women of my acquaintance know that anyone with a repressed memory is a loon looking for attention.
A lot of women have seen their sons and brothers falsely accused. Ford was completely unconvincing in her "I don't remember the details of a traumatic "sexual assault"
Whoa Dammit , 1 day ago
In her letter to Feinstein, she said "me and 4 others" were at the party
This does not sound like something a PHD would write. I would hope that someone who is well educated would know that the proper English is "four others and I." It makes one wonder if Dr. Ford wrote the letter, or if was written by a Feinstein aide.
No, it should be "myself and four others"
But you make a good point
[Oct 01, 2018] She even got caught red handed at my friends house by his girlfriend and locked herself in the bathroom. All she did was give it back and say lets go, she didn't care what they thought.
Oct 01, 2018 | www.youtube.com
x per·i·ment , 4 days ago
I dated this girl for three years. She truely acted like she loved me and was very sweet to me when we were together. I was on a few medications that she liked to take. I remember when I quit taking medication, she left me right away without saying a word, and moved to a town an hour away to be with some guy. I later found out she was cheating all the time from her friends. I even found out she was dating a guy and just left him without a word and blocked his number when she got with me. I was stupid for being with her. She liked to steal from people all the time, it was embarrassing when I'd find out I took her to a friends house and they tell me things are missing. She even got caught red handed at my friends house by his girlfriend and locked herself in the bathroom. All she did was give it back and say lets go, she didn't care what they thought. Not sure what her diagnosis would be but she definitely had some issues!
[Sep 30, 2018] Ability to remarkably walked back on allegations after facing with proof that they are bogus is a warning sign that you may deal with a female sociopath
Kavanauch confirmation brought a very interesting set of female charaters (as his accusers). One of them is Julie Swetnick.
In her resume out of 12 former employers that are listed there are only few places where whe worked for more then a year. Julie Swetnick_IDC.docx - Google Drive . Despite more then two decades in Web business she does not list any scripting skills in her resume but lists "server tuning, hardening," which are impossible with shell scripting knowledge.
"... After a WebTrends human resources director informed Swetnick that the company was unable to corroborate the sexual harassment allegations she had made, she "remarkably" walked back the allegations, according to the complaint. ..."
Sep 28, 2018 | dailycaller.com
Swetnick's alleged conduct took place in June 2000, just three weeks after she started working at WebTrends, the complaint shows. WebTrends conducted an investigation that found both male employees gave similar accounts of Swetnick engaging in "unwelcome sexual innuendo and inappropriate conduct" toward them during a business lunch in front of customers, the complaint said.
Swetnick denied the allegations and, WebTrends alleged, "in a transparent effort to divert attention from her own inappropriate behavior [made] false and retaliatory allegations" of sexual harassment against two other male co-workers.
"Based on its investigations, WebTrends determined that Swetnick had engaged in inappropriate conduct, but that no corroborating evidence existed to support Swetnick's allegations against her coworkers," the complaint said.
After a WebTrends human resources director informed Swetnick that the company was unable to corroborate the sexual harassment allegations she had made, she "remarkably" walked back the allegations, according to the complaint.
In July, one month after the alleged incident, Swetnick took a leave of absence from the company for sinus issues, according to the complaint. WebTrends said it made short-term disability payments to her until mid-August that year. One week after the payments stopped, WebTrends received a note from Swetnick's doctor claiming she needed a leave of absence for a "nervous breakdown."
The company said it continued to provide health insurance coverage for Swetnick, despite her refusal provide any additional information about her alleged medical condition.
In November, the company's human resources director received a notice from the Washington, D.C. Department of Unemployment that Swetnick had applied for unemployment benefits after claiming she left WebTrends voluntarily in late September.
"In short, Swetnick continued to claim the benefits of a full-time employee of WebTrends, sought disability payments from WebTrends' insurance carrier and falsely claimed unemployment insurance payments from the District of Columbia," the complaint states.
Swetnick allegedly hung up the phone on WebTrends managers calling to discuss why she applied for unemployment benefits, according to the complaint. She then sent letters to WebTrends' upper management, detailing new allegations that two male co-workers sexually harassed her and said that the company's human resources director had "illegally tired [sic] for months to get privileged medical information" from her, her doctor and her insurance company.
WebTrends also alleged that Swetnick began her fraud against the company before she was hired by stating on her job application that she graduated from John Hopkins University. But according to the complaint, the school had no record of her attendance.
An online resume posted by Swetnick makes no reference to John Hopkins University. It does show that she worked for WebTrends from December 1999 to August 2000.
It's unclear what transpired after the complaint was filed against Swetnick. One month after WebTrends filed the action, the company voluntarily dismissed the action with prejudice.
[Sep 29, 2018] Always remember the equally lurid "recovered memories" of UFO abduction survivors
Sep 29, 2018 | www.unz.com
El Dato says: September 29, 2018 at 4:41 pm GMT
@Nicephorus
Great writing.
Always remember the equally lurid "recovered memories" of UFO abduction survivors. It's the same mush pulled out and reinjected into the hippocampus only in a form that is even harder to swallow.
One would think Psychologist Ford, who apparently needs one herself (a shrink, that is) would have some self-awareness about. Apparently not.
Unless it's really all about renting out her bedroom illegally.
[Sep 29, 2018] Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" exemplifies very well how the hysteria of girls can be so dangerous that innocent men can be made to suffer terrible if not fatal consequences.
"... Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" exemplifies very well how the hysteria of girls can be so dangerous that innocent men can be made to suffer terrible if not fatal consequences. ..."
"... In fact, the only allegation we hear is of "witch" "he sexually abused me". ..."
Dorian says: September 29, 2018 at 1:44 pm GMT 400 Words History Repeats Itself: The Salem Witch Trials alla 2018
Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" exemplifies very well how the hysteria of girls can be so dangerous that innocent men can be made to suffer terrible if not fatal consequences.
Three hundred years later, the modern version of Abigail Williams, Christine Ford, with no facts, no evidence, no corroborative support other than other hysterical girls, with one finger pointing to John Proctor's modern portrayal played by a hapless Brett Kavanaugh, is found at the whim of a delusional embittered girl.
Like Abigail Williams, Christine Ford, with self loathing and hatred for any man, has found cold support from self-serving political leaders whom have nothing other than their own personal grandiose agendas for public glorification and self apotheosis. Like Reverend Samuel Paris, the wicked Feinstein and hypocritical sycophants like Booker, with their sanctimonious disregard for the rule of law and procedure of fact finding and procedural evidence, just as during Salem's hysteria cast supreme judgement on hollow words of a clearly embittered, delusional rantings of a wobabies (i.e. woman babies) whom can't even remember where, when, and what actually was done to them and to herself, Christine Ford. But like Abigail Williams, she is sure it was John Proctor, excuse me I mean Brett Kavanaugh.
In fact, the only allegation we hear is of "witch" "he sexually abused me". Ah if Abigail was so fortunate, as no doubt Abigail would find Ford to have been, maybe there would have been no Salem Witch Trials, and John Proctor would have lived. Like wise, maybe the truth here is that Ford whom admits to not being raped, is really embittered just for that!
But how can we know? Especially when, after 35 or more years of Ford's meteoritic incapacity to remember even where the house this occurred in, when this "sexual thing" happened. Abigail Williams would have done so much better today!
It has been over three hundred years since those unfaithful days of Salem, and here we find ourselves again, having to face the same vacuous allegations of embittered girls whom don't remember anything but that evil that was done by John Proctor and Brett Kavanaugh.
I think it is time for a new and updated version of The Crucible. With Christine Ford now playing Abigail Williams, and a devastated Kavanaugh the new Proctor. As for Reverend Paris, Senator Feinstein will do that role with great aplomb.
Three hundred years, and the United States of America is once again en-ravaged by the rantings of embittered girls that have been unable to grow up and deal with their own emotional short-comings. No wonder Ford is a psychologist, she's certifiably nuts!
[Sep 29, 2018] False memory syndrome and witch hunts based on it
I liked Christine Ford hearing as a textbook example of what is called "identity wedge" (by the way she comes from a family of lawyers). Lying is a troublesome endeavor for the liar. I looked at some commentary on YouTube abd some people's take on her behavior is the she was lying and was uncomfortable doing this even with so much couching. For me it was pretty convincing delivery, althouth timing is hugely suspect. Looks like Dr. Christine Ford is very psychologically troubled female personality indeed. Such people can be very dangerous. Some questions
-- Do you think we will see in our lifetime a good physical fight and punches in the floor or the Senate and/or House of representatives ? Or the Senate members are way too old for a good physical fight?
-- The country club is approximately 7 miles from any village. How she can leave by herself at night, as she has no car ?
-- Why neither she not her female companion reported the incident to police (which was "aggravated assault" type as her parent could explain to her) ?
-- As a Stanford psychologist was she involved in the Bush era program to torture prisoners?
-- Does Dr Ford tone remind you a corporate Human Resources Director who is scolding people for not showing up at the Diversity and Inclusion seminar?
t timing and the personality of the second assures really fascinating part of the story ? She probably might shed some light on the first. She was accused by two man of sexual harassment and as her counter-allegation were proved baseless was forced to leave the company, which she managed to defraud pretending illness ;-) Is no
"... On balance, although Judge Kavanaugh and his family were the ones who had to pay the price for this bitter learning experience ..."
"... What this sordid affair was all about was the zombie-like return-from-the-dead of a phenomenon exposed and pretty much completely invalidated more than thirty years ago, which never should have been permitted to raise its ugly head before an assembly of rational, educated Americans: the "Recovered Memory" (aka "False Memory") Syndrome movement of the 1980s, in which numerous troubled, frequently mentally off-balance, women (and a few men) came forward to declare that they had been the victims of incestual sexual abuse – most often actual sexual intercourse – at the hands of mature male family members; usually fathers but sometimes uncles, grandfathers, or others. ..."
"... Their testimony was usually highly emotional and impassioned, leaving an impression very similar to that conveyed last night by Dr. Ford. ..."
"... The "Recovered" (or "False") Memory Syndrome movement emerged in the midst of the steadily radicalizing Feminist Movement in the United States, probably at the very apogee of its extreme evolution, and was a movement in which Freudian therapy was central and Freudian therapists came to play the leading role. ..."
"... It was only after they had been subjected to extensive pseudo-scientific Freudian "therapy," in which sex always lay prominently at the center, that virtually all of these women came forward with these stories. ..."
"... nd, in this dispute the American ultra-Feminists chose to believe and preach the worst, most salacious, and most vicious possible interpretation of Dr. Freud's highly speculative, evidence-less, and – as subsequent study has overwhelmingly shown – completely contrived diagnoses. ..."
"... Beginning with a conviction that cocaine could provide a substantial therapeutic base for solving psychological problems, Freud seems himself to have become for a period a regular consumer of that drug, but subsequently altered the focus of his therapy to hypnosis. After realizing certain limitations to this approach, he shifted again, turning to the so-called "Talking Cure" rooted in provoking word associations, which provided the basis for the classic Freudian method of popular imagination – with the patient reclining on a couch and the good Dr. seated behind with his notebook and pen in hand. This is the method he retained for the rest of his life. ..."
"... Analysis thus follows a circular course, the analyst's theoretical surmise being first subtly communicated to the patient, then confirmed by the patient's casting of his (or, more often her) own ideas within the framework which had been suggested by the analyst. In the end, nothing new is actually discovered. The patient merely replicates the expressed Freudian doctrine. ..."
"... Those women patients, and a few men, became their victims, but in turn became the perpetrators in the savaging of numerous men's lives, as these men were subjected to the most vicious accusations imaginable. Most of these accusations were, in retrospect, clearly fantasies in a ruthless mid-20th century male-witch hunt. ..."
"... Into this popular intellectual desert walks Dr. Ford, both whose personal history and her strange physical mannerisms in testimony before the Senate clearly indicate she has unfortunately suffered some form of serious psychological disturbance. ..."
"... Seemingly alienated from her own parents and most immediate family members, she has made her home as far away from the Washington, DC area ..."
"... In 2012 she underwent some sort of psychological counseling with her husband, though the details as far as I know have not emerged. But, it hardly seems likely coincidental that her first documentable expressions of antipathy to Judge Kavanaugh occurred in that year, when it was announced that Judge Kavanaugh was considered the likely Supreme Court appointee should Mit Romney win the Presidential election. Her expressions of antipathy to him have only grown from there. ..."
Nicephorus , says: September 29, 2018 at 7:58 am GMT
We still have to wait to see whether Judge Kavanaugh's appointment will go through, so the most important practical consequence of this shameful exercise in character assassination is as yet unknown. I'm pretty sure he'll eventually be appointed.
But, I think some critical theoretical aspects of the context in which this battle was waged were definitively clarified in the course of this shameful and hugely destructive effort by the Democrat leadership to destroy Judge Kavanaugh's reputation in pursuit of narrow political advantage. On balance, although Judge Kavanaugh and his family were the ones who had to pay the price for this bitter learning experience, all of us should be the long-term beneficiaries of this contest's central but often hidden issues being brought to light and subjected to rational analysis. I want to show what I think these hidden issues are.
What this sordid affair was all about was the zombie-like return-from-the-dead of a phenomenon exposed and pretty much completely invalidated more than thirty years ago, which never should have been permitted to raise its ugly head before an assembly of rational, educated Americans: the "Recovered Memory" (aka "False Memory") Syndrome movement of the 1980s, in which numerous troubled, frequently mentally off-balance, women (and a few men) came forward to declare that they had been the victims of incestual sexual abuse – most often actual sexual intercourse – at the hands of mature male family members; usually fathers but sometimes uncles, grandfathers, or others.
Their testimony was usually highly emotional and impassioned, leaving an impression very similar to that conveyed last night by Dr. Ford. Many hearers were completely convinced that these events had occurred. I recall having a discussion in the 1990s with two American women who swore up and down that they believed fully 25% of American women had been forced into sexual intercourse with their fathers. I was dumbfounded that they could believe such a thing. But, vast numbers of American women did believe this at that time, and many – perhaps most – may never have looked sufficiently into the follow-up to these testimonials to realize that the vast majority of such bizarre claims had subsequently been definitively proven invalid.
The "Recovered" (or "False") Memory Syndrome movement emerged in the midst of the steadily radicalizing Feminist Movement in the United States, probably at the very apogee of its extreme evolution, and was a movement in which Freudian therapy was central and Freudian therapists came to play the leading role.
It was only after they had been subjected to extensive pseudo-scientific Freudian "therapy," in which sex always lay prominently at the center, that virtually all of these women came forward with these stories. A major controversy, which arose within the ranks of the Freudians themselves over what was the correct understanding of the Master's teachings, lay at the core of the whole affair. A nd, in this dispute the American ultra-Feminists chose to believe and preach the worst, most salacious, and most vicious possible interpretation of Dr. Freud's highly speculative, evidence-less, and – as subsequent study has overwhelmingly shown – completely contrived diagnoses.
It's now known that Dr. Freud's journey to the theoretical positions which had become orthodoxy among his followers by the mid-20th century had followed a strange, little known, possibly deliberately self-obscured, and clearly unorthodox course. Beginning with a conviction that cocaine could provide a substantial therapeutic base for solving psychological problems, Freud seems himself to have become for a period a regular consumer of that drug, but subsequently altered the focus of his therapy to hypnosis. After realizing certain limitations to this approach, he shifted again, turning to the so-called "Talking Cure" rooted in provoking word associations, which provided the basis for the classic Freudian method of popular imagination – with the patient reclining on a couch and the good Dr. seated behind with his notebook and pen in hand. This is the method he retained for the rest of his life.
The primary fault which has been cited for Freud's methods generally, but which has been particularly critiqued in both hypnosis and the "Talking Cure" as a reason for their invalidation, is the claim that both – at least inadvertently – incorporate the high probability of suggestion from the therapist. In this view, patient testimony moves subtly, and probably without the patient's awareness, from whatever his or her own understanding might originally have been to the interpretation implicitly propounded by the analyst. Analysis thus follows a circular course, the analyst's theoretical surmise being first subtly communicated to the patient, then confirmed by the patient's casting of his (or, more often her) own ideas within the framework which had been suggested by the analyst. In the end, nothing new is actually discovered. The patient merely replicates the expressed Freudian doctrine.
The particular doctrine at hand was undergoing a critical reworking at this very time, and this important reconsideration of the Master's meaning almost certainly constituted a major, likely the predominating, factor which facilitated the emergence of the Recovered Memory Syndrome movement. Freudian orthodoxy at that time included as an important – seemingly its key – component the conviction of a child's (even an infant's) sexuality, as expressed through the hypothesized Oedipus Complex for males, and the corresponding Electra Complex for females. In these complexes, Freud speculated that sexually-based neuroses derived from the child's (or infant's) fear of imagined enmity and possible physical threat from the same-sex parent, because of the younger individual's sexual longing for the opposite-sex parent.
This Freudian idea, entirely new to European, American, and probably most other cultures, that children, even infants, were the possessors of an already well-developed sexuality had been severely challenged by Christian and some other traditional authorities, and had been met with repugnance from many individuals in Western society. But, the doctrine, as it then stood, was subject to a further major questioning in the mid-1980s from Freudian historical researcher Jeffrey Masson, who postulated, after examining a collection of Freud's personal writings long kept from popular examination, that the Child Sexual Imagination thesis itself was a pusillanimous and ethically-unjustified retreat from an even more sinister thesis the Master had originally held, but which he had subsequently abandoned because of the controversy and damage to his own career its expression would likely cause. This was the belief, based on many of his earlier interviews of mostly women patients, that it wasn't their imaginations which lay behind their neuroses. They had told him that they had actually been either raped or molested as infants or young girls by their fathers. This was the secret horror hidden away in those long-suppressed writings, now brought into the light of day by Prof. Masson.
Masson's research conclusions were initially widely welcomed within the psychoanalytical fraternity/sorority and shortly melded with the already raging desire of many ultra-Feminist extremists to place the blame for whatever problems and dissatisfactions women in America were encountering in their lives upon the patriarchal society by which they claimed to be oppressed. The problem was men. Countless fathers were raping their daughters. Wow! What an incentive to revolutionary Feminist insurrection! You couldn't find a much better justification for their man-hate than that. Bring on the Feminist Revolution! Men are not only a menace, they are no longer even necessary for procreation, so let's get rid of them entirely. This is the sort of extreme plan some radical Feminists advocated. Many psychoanalysts became their professional facilitators, providing the illusion of medical validation to the stories the analysts themselves had largely engendered. Those women patients, and a few men, became their victims, but in turn became the perpetrators in the savaging of numerous men's lives, as these men were subjected to the most vicious accusations imaginable. Most of these accusations were, in retrospect, clearly fantasies in a ruthless mid-20th century male-witch hunt.
This radical ideology is built upon the conviction that Dr. Freud, in at least this one of his several historical phases of interpretative psychological analysis, was really on to something. But, subsequent evaluation has largely shown that not to be the case. The same critique which had been delivered against the Child Sexual Imagination version of Freud's "Talking Cure" analytical method was equally relevant to this newly discovered Father Molestation thesis: all such notions had been subtly communicated to the patient by the analyst in the course of the interview. Had thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of European and American women really been raped or molested by their fathers? Freud offered no corroborating evidence of any kind, and I think it's the consensus of most competent contemporary psychoanalysts to reject this idea. Those few who retain a belief in it betray, I think, an ideological commitment to Radical Feminism, for whose proponents such a view offers an ever tempting platform to justify their monstrous plans for the future of a human race in which males are subjected to the status of slaves or are entirely eliminated.
But, the judicious conclusions of science often – perhaps usually – fail to promptly percolate down to the comprehension of common humanity on the street, and within the consequent vacuum of understanding scheming politicians can frequently find opportunity to manipulate, obfuscate, and distort facts in order to facilitate their own devious and often highly destructive schemes. Such, I fear, is the situation which has surrounded Dr. Ford. The average American of either sex has absolutely no familiarity with the history, character, or ultimate fate of the Recovered Memory Syndrome movement, and may well fail to realize that the phenomenon has been nearly entirely disproved.
Into this popular intellectual desert walks Dr. Ford, both whose personal history and her strange physical mannerisms in testimony before the Senate clearly indicate she has unfortunately suffered some form of serious psychological disturbance.
Seemingly alienated from her own parents and most immediate family members, she has made her home as far away from the Washington, DC area where she was born as possible within the territorial limits of the continental United States. The focus of her professional research and practice in the field of psychology has lain in therapeutic treatment to overcome mental and emotional trauma, a problem she has acknowledged has been her own disturbing preoccupation for many decades. In 2012 she underwent some sort of psychological counseling with her husband, though the details as far as I know have not emerged. But, it hardly seems likely coincidental that her first documentable expressions of antipathy to Judge Kavanaugh occurred in that year, when it was announced that Judge Kavanaugh was considered the likely Supreme Court appointee should Mit Romney win the Presidential election. Her expressions of antipathy to him have only grown from there.
Dr. Ford is clearly an unfortunate victim of something or someone, but I don't believe it was Judge Kavanaugh. Almost certainly she has been influenced in her denunciations against him by both that long-term preoccupation with her own sense of psychological injury, whatever may have been its cause, and her professional familiarization with contemporary currents of psychological theory, however fallacious, likely mediated by the ministrations of that unnamed counselor in 2012. Subsequently, she has clearly been exploited mercilessly by the scheming Democratic Party officials who have viciously plotted to turn her plight to their own cynical advantage. As in so many cases during the 1980s Recovered Memory movement, she has almost certainly been transformed by both the scientifically unproven doctrines and the conscienceless practitioners of Freudian mysticism from being merely an innocent victim into an active victimizer – doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the pain inherent in her own tragic situation and aggressively projecting it upon helpless others, in this case Judge Kavanaugh and his entire family. She is not a heroine.
PiltdownMan , says: September 29, 2018 at 9:01 am GMT
A recovered memory from more than five decades ago.
Violet Elizabeth, a irritating younger child who tended to tag along, often wore expensive Kate Greenaway dresses. Her family was new money.
William was no misogynist, though. He liked and respected Joan, who was his friend.
The second William book is online.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17125/17125-h/17125-h.htm
Coemgen , says: September 29, 2018 at 10:35 am GMT
Rules-of-thumb
-- -- -- -- -- -- -
1. A good offense is the best defense.
2. An ambush backed up by overwhelming force is a good offense.
3. Use of weapons and tactics, of which the defender is unprepared for, is a good offense.
Are Republicans et al. unable to understand basic military strategy? Do we lack the ability to conceive of new tactics and weapons to use against Democrats and Globalists?
MarkinLA , says: September 29, 2018 at 12:49 pm GMT
I realize that it is unacceptable to attack this poor helpless victim so the "it can't be corroborated" card has to be played. However, who else notices how carefully manicured these charges are such that they can never be falsified? This is the actual proof she is a liar and this whole thing is staged.
She always takes everybody on some emotional ride right up to the point where she could be exposed but never with enough information so somebody could come out of the woodwork and prove she is a liar. We also have the infamous letter where we are repeately reminded she mailed it BEFORE Kavanaugh was picked. Of course, we only have Feinstein's word for that since nonody saw it until after this crap started. The delay was used to puch up the story with new revelation about Mike Judge in a grocery store that shied away from her – again with no specific date so Judge could prove she is a liar. This all reeks of testimony gone over and coached by a team of lawyers.
We also have all of our own recollections of high school insecurities and male-female interactions. What freshman or sophomore girl didn't get all giddy at the thought of the older guys hitting on her so she could tell all her friends about her older boyfreind and possibility of going to the prom as a lower classman? All he had to do (assuming he wasn't replusive physically and he was a bit of a jock) was make the usual play of pretending to be interested and he likely would have been at least getting to first base at the party. From her pictures she was no Pamela Anderson and would likely have been flattered. The idea that you rape someone without trying to get the milk handed to you on a silver platter is ridiculous.
This is another female driven hysteria based on lies like the child molestation and satanic cult hysterias of years past. Those were all driven by crazy or politically motivated women who whipped up the rest of the ignorant females.
Clyde , says: September 29, 2018 at 12:58 pm GMT
@Anon
Outside doors enter public areas kitchen sunroom living rooms not bedrooms. An outside door into a master bedroom with attached bathroom is a red flag that it's intended for an illegal what's called in law apartment
Your post is very perceptive and just might be how it all went down. With the complications of couples' counseling over her demand for the bizarre double main entry doors. (lulz) Though I would think any family that built an illegal in-law apartment into their Palo Alto house and deployed it, would be ratted out by their neighbors.
El Dato , says: September 29, 2018 at 4:19 pm GMT
@Wally She reminded me of Samantha Power, the one suffering for us on TV as she uses her Responsibility To Protect subscription to lay waste on whatever is currently the Death Star.
[Sep 29, 2018] Former Employer Sued Third Kavanaugh Accuser For Sexual Harassment Allegations
Looks like she has mental issues. also some of her behaviour falls in female sociopath category, although it is difficult to tell without knowing a person.
Fake allegation of sexual harassment are favorite weapon of female sociopath. They also are poweful revenge weapon of some rejected woman.
The woman who charges she was gang-raped at a party where Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was present, Julie Swetnick, had a lawsuit filed against her by a former employer that alleged she engaged in "unwelcome, sexually offensive conduct" towards two male co-workers, according to court documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
WebTrends, a web analytics company headquartered in Portland, filed the defamation and fraud lawsuit against Swetnick in Oregon in November 2000 and also alleged that she lied about graduating from Johns Hopkins University.
Swetnick alleged Wednesday that she was gang raped at a party where Kavanaugh was present in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh has vehemently denied the allegation.
Swetnick is represented by Michael Avenatti , the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with President Donald Trump.
WebTrends voluntarily dismissed its suit after one month. Avenatti told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the case was ended because it was "completely bogus."
The complaint against his client was "[c]ompletely bogus which is why it was dismissed almost immediately," Avenatti told TheDCNF in an email. "The lawsuit was filed in retaliation against my client after she pursued claims against the company."
WebTrends did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
In March 2001, three months after WebTrends dismissed its action, Swetnick's ex-boyfriend, Richard Vinneccy, filed a restraining order against Swetnick, claiming that she threatened him after he ended their four-year relationship.
vulcanraven , 1 hour ago
Looks like Avenatti has his work cut out for him, he sure knows how to pick the winners. By the way, this is not the first time we have seen a woman claim "sexual harassment" after being turned down.
maxblockm , 25 minutes ago
Potiphar's wife.
Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, 7 and after a while his master's wife took notice of Joseph and said, "Come to bed with me!"
8 But he refused. "With me in charge," he told her, "my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. 9 No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?" 10 And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.
11 One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. 12 She caught him by his cloak and said, "Come to bed with me!" But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.
13 When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, 14 she called her household servants."Look," she said to them, "this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us!He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. 15 When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house."
16 She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. 17 Then she told him this story: "That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. 18 But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house."
19 When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, "This is how your slave treated me," he burned with anger. 20 Joseph's master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined.
But while Joseph was there in the prison, 21 the Lord was with him
Buck Shot , 1 hour ago
I think all three of the accusers are lying psychopaths. I get tired of all this pining for women. Plenty of women have done a lot of horrible things including these three liars. There are millions of lying skeezers out there, especially in the USA.
Seal Team 6 , 1 hour ago
Yeah...whatever. No one is talking about Swatnick including the Dems. While Ford is just unbelievable, Zwetnik's story requires major hits of psychedelics that haven't been invented yet.
TeraByte , 1 hour ago
"A courageous survivor", yet an untrustworthy lunatic.
Dickweed Wang , 2 hours ago
Text book Fatal Attraction bitch.
Piss her off enough and she'll sneak in at night and cut off your ****. Then she'll file attempted rape charges against you, claiming the **** chopping was in self defense. And she'll get away with it because, well . . . she's a woman.
HowardBeale , 1 hour ago
"Fatal attraction..."
That's my hypothesis on this clearly mentally unstable "Professor" Ford: She is exacting revenge because she was enamored over Kavanaugh in high school; she attended several parties where he was present; and she was so insignificant in his mind -- being hideous to look at and listen to -- that he never even saw her...
Dickweed Wang , 1 hour ago
Pretty good hypothesis. It's hard not to think that looking at her, either back then or now.
eurotrash96 , 1 hour ago
Please! Most women are not like her. Most women, the muted female majority, are perfectly aware that men are men and we love it! Please do not think the majority of women are like those who currently prevail in MSM.
legalize , 2 hours ago
This woman has a 14-page resume with her contact information blasted across the top of every page. In every hiring situation I've been in, such a resume would be a red flag in and of itself.
LoveTruth , 2 hours ago
She definitely needs to either be fined for defamation, or be put in jail even if it is for a month or two.
RiotActing , 2 hours ago
She sounds completely credible.... whats the problem?
I am surprised that nobody has picked up on/mentioned in the media the issues with her memory or inability to understand common English words; for example, her memory of "the event" changed live before our eyes, as at one point in the questioning she said "someone pushed me from behind into a bedroom...," and a short time later she said "Kavanaugh pushed me into a bedroom."
Watch her testimony and see for yourself.
aloha_snakbar , 2 hours ago
She should write resumes for a living...LOL..."Drupal / Wordpress Architect"....if you can use a word processor, you can be an 'architect' on either one of those platforms...
Mzhen , 2 hours ago
This is the guy hired in D.C. to represent Deborah Ramirez -- William Pittard. They are out to force Kavanaugh to withdraw over perjury in testimony, since he said he had never harassed anyone past the age of 18. The civil attorney in Boulder will be trying to cash in from another angle.
https://www.kaiserdillon.com/attorneys/william-pittard/
Prior to joining KaiserDillon, Bill served in the Office of General Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives for more than five years, including most recently as the Acting General Counsel. In that role, he acted as legal counsel to Members, committees, officers, and employees of the House on matters related to their official duties. He also represented the House itself in litigation and other matters in which it had an institutional interest. The Congressional Record summarizes, in part: "Mr. Pittard provided frequent and invaluable legal advice and representation to Members of the House . . . , the officers of the House, the committees of the House, and the leadership of the House -- most often in connection with their interactions with the other branches of the Federal Government. He did so professionally and without regard to partisan identity and, as a result, we came to rely on his expertise and guidance."
MauiJeff , 2 hours ago
These women live in a world were sexual harassment is ubiquitous. They see sexual harassment everywhere because sexual harassment is anything they think it is, it is purely based on their perception. If you subtract a conscience and personal integrity from your psyche you can interpret anything as sexual harassment you get a post Frankfurt School of psychology masterpiece like Swetnick. She can only destroy and cannot create.
SDShack , 3 hours ago
"Unwelcome sexual conduct", and later "a nervous breakdown". LOL! Yesterday I said on another thread that I bet she was a hedonist.
TBT or not TBT , 3 hours ago
Swetnick says she went to a dozen high school parties, as an adult, where gang rapes were organized by high school boys, including one time on her.
Banana Republican , 3 hours ago
I wonder why she stopped going?
divingengineer , 2 hours ago
she sounds like a sport
MoreFreedom , 2 hours ago
I'll bet she didn't even bother to think that people might wonder:
Why was a college girl going to high school parties?
Why would a women who witnessed a gang rape not call the police?
Why would a women who witnessed multiple gang rapes not call the police?
Why would a women who witnessed gang rapes at these parties, continue going to more of them?
Does she have the names of any of the attendees or victims at these parties, and if not why not?
When and where were these parties?
Instead, she seems to think people would just believe her lies. Truth is a wonderful thing. and the actions of people say a lot about them. Her actions show she doesn't care about real victims of sexual abuse, she's willing to lie for her benefit, and she has no problem bearing false witness against others.
It's so easy to make up false plausible accusations. Ford is obviously a more intelligent liar.
[Sep 26, 2018] In several murder cases the perpetrators actually received direct orders from the woman
"... In several of these cases the perpetrators actually received direct orders from the woman. Something must be done. Do it. In some cases the pressure lasted for months. ..."
"... Recently I was reminded of something I read in 'The Devil's Dictionary' (by Ambrose Bierce). I just found it: ..."
"... A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil. ..."
"... But as to Ambrose Bierce's second definition, yes, to me the wickedness was astounding in one case. It is an accurate definition. But there was a BPD in the case also-- a Borderline Personality Disorder. In my view, psychopathy overrides everything--I mean by that, everything moral, ethical, lawful, decent, even common sense, even the most basic prudence about deadly dangerous things. ..."
"... Recently I looked back into M. Scott Peck's 'People of the Lie'. There are some good lines in it. "Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs." ..."
Sep 26, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Tidewater , 15 hours ago
Of eight murder cases in Virginia in the eighties and nineties that I know something about, seven were capital murder. The men involved--they were all men, the actual perpetrators.
These were: Clagett, Elliott, Thomas, Lester, Tate, Soering, Shambaugh (and Hyman uncharged.) Hulbert was first degree, life without parole. The cases all had something in common.
The crimes happened because of a man's obsessive love or empathy for a girl or a woman. Hulbert told me that himself. "I am an empath." It has been adjudicated that Clagett, Thomas, Hulbert, Tate and Soering committed the murders after having been asked and agreeing, or after having been pressured into it. ("If at first you don't succeed, cry, cry again.")
In several of these cases the perpetrators actually received direct orders from the woman. Something must be done. Do it. In some cases the pressure lasted for months.
In Lester's case his accomplice stood trial but was acquitted of the most serious charges. She is free and has gone on to better things. In two of these cases, Elliott's and Hyman/Shambaugh's, the women for whom it was done would never have wanted it to happen. There were children involved and it is fair to say they have paid a price. The men were military types in the Shambaugh case, and Hyman seems to have gone ballistic at the challenge from a son-in-law. So it was not exactly about empathy. It was also Jew versus Pole.
He hired Shambaugh to do a contract killing for $20,000. When he saw he had made some fatal mistakes, and was going to be charged, he committed suicide, killing his wife moments before he turned the shotgun on himself. Shambaugh was convicted as an accessory and could very well have been paroled last year. Hulbert, Lester, Tate, and Soering are serving very long prison terms. Perhaps some of them will never get out of prison alive. Clagett, Elliott, Thomas were executed. Clagett had terrible remorse. I knew him fairly well.
Recently I was reminded of something I read in 'The Devil's Dictionary' (by Ambrose Bierce). I just found it:
"Witch, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil.
(2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil."
There is always the question in these cases, of course, of psychopathy. It runs all through the eight cases. And I , for one, do not forget that it has been speculated that the selective murder of independent women who wanted to live alone outside the mainstream of life in Medieval Germany with their gardens, herbals, birds and cats somehow weakened the character of the population, clamping on a kind of leaden conformism.
Johannes Kepler's mother was accused of witchcraft in Freiburg, and for six years this brilliant astronomer was obsessed with keeping his mother from being burned alive. Finally, they worked out a deal, because it was becoming an embarrassment to the authorities. Kepler's mother was told that she was free to go and that the charges were being dropped. But she must go into exile, away from Freiburg. She flatly refused to leave her home. I forget how it ended.
But as to Ambrose Bierce's second definition, yes, to me the wickedness was astounding in one case. It is an accurate definition. But there was a BPD in the case also-- a Borderline Personality Disorder. In my view, psychopathy overrides everything--I mean by that, everything moral, ethical, lawful, decent, even common sense, even the most basic prudence about deadly dangerous things.
So there were ways that I understood one of these women, one who accepted me as a visitor. Needless to say, a number of them are in the DOC. But that's not quite what I am talking about.
Recently I looked back into M. Scott Peck's 'People of the Lie'. There are some good lines in it. "Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs."
He considers the possibility of making evil a subcategory or special variant of the DSM manual!
Just one little thing. In one case I felt something spooky --just as they tell you in the story books. Where? Well, say in Henry James, for example, as in 'The Turn of the Screw'. What I mean is: I felt real evil. I had a couple of long conversations. Very attractive. Whatever it was, I just dropped the whole thing.
[Sep 25, 2018] Man freed in Maine after false conviction by a conspiracy of women
This looks like a modern reincarnation of inquisition.
"... this fellow, in the back in this picture, has so far received $375,000 in damages from various parties in Maine for having been railroaded by his ex-wife and her friends, who included the woman prosecutor, in his rape trial in 2009. ..."
"... the prosecutor who has now been sanctioned for prosecutorial misconduct withheld exculpatory evidence to obtain a conviction ..."
"... [Some] Women if you reject, or even if they perceive you as a threat will do anything to crush you. Probably evolutionary. ..."
"... A bunch of SJW warriors have created a system of traps for even the good guy who tries to do the right thing. ..."
"... I have had several discussions with friends outside the reach of the current inquisition. We reckon that 90% of the women are lying. Where do you think this derives from? If emotions rule you then by definition you are not rational. Young women for the most part are ruled by extreme emotions probably dictated by estrogen. ..."
"... Right now there is a twitter #tag called #whyididntreport and within 2 days an article I read claimed there are over 700,000 women who claimed they were sexually assaulted or raped and didn't report it. This is mass hysteria. ..."
"... When I lived in South America the first thing I noticed were the women behaved differently. Much less aggressive and actually a lot of pleasure to be around. ..."
"... I have twice found myself on the receiving end of lying women as a teenager. Once by a girl trying to score points on another girl at my expense and another time by a butt ugly who boasted to her sisters that she had had to fend me off. ..."
"... Most men, I think, have similar tales. We (both sexes) are still unreformable primates and we follow natural instincts. ..."
Man freed in Maine after false conviction by a conspiracy of women
"Besides filing a federal civil lawsuit against police officers, prosecutors and other witnesses in his case, Filler filed a complaint about former prosecutor Mary Kellett with the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar, which resulted in Kellett becoming the first prosecutor in recent memory to be publicly sanctioned by the state over prosecutorial misconduct. Kellett, who now works as a defense attorney, prosecuted Filler at his first trial in 2009.
Filler, who now lives in suburban Atlanta, was contacted via email but declined to say how much money he is getting in the settlement.
"I am grateful to all my attorneys but most of all I am grateful for my strong family and my two amazing children who I have been blessed to see grow up," Filler wrote in a statement Monday night." Bangor Daily News
Ok folks, this fellow, in the back in this picture, has so far received $375,000 in damages from various parties in Maine for having been railroaded by his ex-wife and her friends, who included the woman prosecutor, in his rape trial in 2009.
The review process decided that his wife lied about him to gain revenge in a custody case over their two children and that the prosecutor who has now been sanctioned for prosecutorial misconduct withheld exculpatory evidence to obtain a conviction . A friend of the wife, a female RN, coached the wife to cry in court so as to make "it seem more real." The RN has been sued by the now vindicated ex-husband. I hope she loses every cent she might ever have.
Several here on SST have maintained that women seldom falsely accuse men. What a joke!
"... the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male." Kipling
https://bangordailynews.com/2018/09/25/news/hancock/man-reaches-settlement-with-maine-officials-after-suing-over-rape-allegations/
Posted at 06:58 PM in Justice | Permalink | 2 Comments
Harlan Easley , 2 hours ago
Every guy worth his salt knows this to be true. Even most women know this to be true. There was a reason for the line "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
Most not ALL women are extremely emotional and not rational. The average IQ is 100. So 50% of the women are below that but I am supposed to believe that any accusation is 100% to be believed.
It's such a joke as to bring contempt upon the part of society who is pushing this. [Some] Women if you reject, or even if they perceive you as a threat will do anything to crush you. Probably evolutionary.
Men murder women at an obscene rate and it is probably hardwired into them for protection. That part I can understand and emphasis with strongly.
However, these stories such as this poor guy endured are nauseating. A bunch of SJW warriors have created a system of traps for even the good guy who tries to do the right thing.
I have had several discussions with friends outside the reach of the current inquisition. We reckon that 90% of the women are lying. Where do you think this derives from? If emotions rule you then by definition you are not rational. Young women for the most part are ruled by extreme emotions probably dictated by estrogen.
How about the UVA rape case rolled out by the Rolling Stones? Just another delusional female that the press demanded we believe. How about the Duke Lacrosse team? Another false accusation pushed by the female dominated press who dominate their SJW warrior co-workers and secretly have contempt for them being so feminine. Right now there is a twitter #tag called #whyididntreport and within 2 days an article I read claimed there are over 700,000 women who claimed they were sexually assaulted or raped and didn't report it. This is mass hysteria.
The number I am sure is in the millions now so there are millions of women in America mostly who have been raped and not reported it. I call bullshit.
Why do women hate other women? Why can't we discuss the truth anymore?
When I lived in South America the first thing I noticed were the women behaved differently. Much less aggressive and actually a lot of pleasure to be around. I should have never left regardless how bad the air was.
Years ago I attended Medical School and 50% of the students were female. And normal, fun, and I miss them. Maybe it is intelligence and not the gender. They were certainly as smart or smarter in many cases than us guys. Top 2 students were female. So I am not an ogre. But stories like this piss me off.
Walrus , 2 hours ago
Not surprised. I have twice found myself on the receiving end of lying women as a teenager. Once by a girl trying to score points on another girl at my expense and another time by a butt ugly who boasted to her sisters that she had had to fend me off.
Most men, I think, have similar tales. We (both sexes) are still unreformable primates and we follow natural instincts.
[Sep 11, 2018] A Victim's Guide to Surviving a Narcissist-Sociopath by Sereena Nightshade
This is rather weak, but still useful (eBook)
Narcissists built a wall between himself and truth and decency. One way to understand them is to look at mafia bosses
"... While the common wisdom dictates that the sociopath/sociopath type predator goes after only those who are of little or no worth, the stupid, the uneducated and perhaps the hopelessly poor/ignorant the reality is oftentimes the polar opposite. The average in-home/family man/family woman sociopath predator goes after someone who is not a predator while that someone does have a lot to offer the sociopath/sociopath type. ..."
"... The predator wants a partner or spouse that offers a great deal of value to strip-mine away ..."
Sep 11, 2018 | www.barnesandnoble.com
"Pretty is as pretty does, and while it's true that money makes the world go round, nice is what makes it habitable." The Victim's Guide to Surviving the Narcissist/Sociopath is a quick guide book describing what a typical narcissist/sociopath is and what his/her typical victim is.
While the common wisdom dictates that the sociopath/sociopath type predator goes after only those who are of little or no worth, the stupid, the uneducated and perhaps the hopelessly poor/ignorant the reality is oftentimes the polar opposite. The average in-home/family man/family woman sociopath predator goes after someone who is not a predator while that someone does have a lot to offer the sociopath/sociopath type.
The predator wants a partner or spouse that offers a great deal of value to strip-mine away . An uneducated moron frequently does not appeal to a sociopath predator that is looking at more than an extremely short-term quick gain.
This book provides readers with a fast get-down-to-it look at what a narcissist/sociopath is, what one of these predators does and it gives readers some basic nutshell advice that is surprisingly hard to come by. A must read for victims and prospective victims alike whether not yet captured by a narcissist/sociopath or already captured and beginning to figure out, perhaps, that as a victim or prospective victim you may be in trouble.
This book tells all, for its brevity, starting with the warning signs to the final war plan with all most of the ugly details included. Photos herein are taken from more than one city location.
[Sep 11, 2018] Narcissists Tend to Become Leaders
Narcissism, destroys the ability of a person to form healthy, long term relationship. While initially seen as chanrming, narsissists can't stop from using person to his/her advantage and hurt the relationship, often destroying it in a long run.
"... Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin ..."
"... Another dimension of narcissism -- the desire for attention -- was not as strongly linked with leadership roles in the groups. ..."
Oct 07, 2008 | www.livescience.com
Narcissists like to be in charge, so it stands to reason that a new study shows individuals who are overconfident about their abilities are most likely to step in as leaders, be they politicians or power brokers. However, their initiative doesn't mean they are the best leaders. The study also found narcissists don't outperform others in leadership roles.
Narcissists tend to be egotistical types who exaggerate their talents and abilities, and lack empathy for others. The researchers stress that narcissism is not the same as high self-esteem.
"A person with high self-esteem is confident and charming, but they also have a caring component and they want to develop intimacy with others," said lead researcher Amy Brunell, a psychologist at Ohio State University at Newark. "Narcissists have an inflated view of their talents and abilities and are all about themselves. They don't care as much about others."
She added, "It's not surprising that narcissists become leaders . They like power, they are egotistical, and they are usually charming and extraverted. But the problem is, they don't necessarily make better leaders."
Born leaders?
The results, which will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , come from three studies, two with students and the other with business managers.
In one study, 432 undergraduate students completed surveys that measured various personality traits, including aspects of narcissism. Then, the students were put in groups of four and told to assume they were a committee of senior officers of the student union. Their task was to elect next year's director.
Results showed that students who scored higher on one dimension of narcissism -- the desire for power -- were more likely to say they wanted to lead the group. The narcissists were also more likely to say they did lead the group discussion and more likely to be viewed as leaders by the other group members.
Another dimension of narcissism -- the desire for attention -- was not as strongly linked with leadership roles in the groups.
"Many people have observed that it takes a narcissistic person to run for president of the United States," Brunell said. "I would be surprised if any of the candidates who have run weren't higher than average in narcissism."
Wall Street traders could also have a high dose of narcissism, she suggested. "There have been a lot of studies that have found narcissistic leaders tend to have volatile and risky decision-making performance and can be ineffective and potentially destructive leaders."
Brunell does hedge though, saying that not all troubles in Washington and Wall Street can be blamed on narcissists, and of course, you can't boil everything down to personalities.
[Sep 11, 2018] Have We Become a Nation of Narcissists by Ronald Pies, M.D
"... Rudeness and Civility ..."
"... The Culture of Narcissism ..."
"... The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement ..."
"... Journal of Personality ..."
"... Everything Has Two Handles: The Stoic's Guide to the Art of Living ..."
"... Ronald Pies MD is Professor of Psychiatry and Lecturer on Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse NY; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston; and Editor-in-Chief, Psychiatric Times. He is the author of Everything Has Two Handles: The Stoic's Guide to the Art of Living . This article was provided by PsychCentral.com . ..."
Sep 21, 2009 | www.livescience.com
What do rapper Kanye West, tennis star Serena Williams, and Congressman Joe Wilson have in common, besides lots of publicity over their recent public outbursts?
It doesn't take a psychiatrist to conclude that all three individuals placed their momentary emotional needs over the feelings and wishes of others -- and that they failed to play by the proverbial rules of the game. Though their intrusive behavior may be rationalized as "off the cuff" or "from the heart," the fact remains that each of these individuals performed a calculation over a period of seconds, minutes, or perhaps hours: they calculated that their anger or resentment was more important than the decorum others expected of them.
Sure, we all "lose it" from time to time, and impolite outbursts have probably been with us since our Neanderthal forebears first learned to growl. Furthermore, the impression that manners have gotten worse and worse over the years may not be supported by historical data. John F. Kasson, in his book, Rudeness and Civility , points out that people in medieval times behaved far more boorishly than our modern-day, "It's all about me!" crowd. Citing the work of sociologist Norbert Elias, Kasson writes that, compared to more recent times, " people in the late Middle Ages expressed their emotions -- joy, rage, piety, fear, even the pleasure of torturing and killing enemies -- with astonishing directness and intensity."
Maybe so -- but the recent tripleheader of West, Williams and Wilson made many of us wonder if we are turning into a nation of self-absorbed boors. (A Boston Globe editorial on 9/15/09 proclaimed, "Shouting is the New Opining.") This thesis is hardly new. Thirty years ago, Christopher Lasch put forward essentially the same argument, in his book The Culture of Narcissism . But Lasch's claims were mainly impressionistic. Now, however, a number of researchers and mental health professionals point to studies showing that, indeed, excessive self-absorption is on the increase.
For example, in their book, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement , Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D and W. Keith Campbell, Ph.D. provide ample evidence for what they term "the relentless rise of narcissism in our culture." Twenge and Campbell identify several social trends that have contributed to this problem, including what they term "the movement toward self-esteem " that began in the late 1960s; and the movement away from "community-oriented thinking" that began in the 1970s. But the root causes go far deeper. For example, in a chapter entitled "Raising Royalty," Twenge and Campbell point to " the new parenting culture that has fueled the narcissism epidemic." In effect, the authors argue, there has been a shift away from limit-setting toward letting the child get whatever he or she wants.
Twenge and her colleagues have empirical data to back up their claims. For example, in a paper published in the August 2008 Journal of Personality , the authors report on 85 samples of American college students, studied between 1979 and 2006. The subjects were evaluated using an instrument called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). Compared with their peers in the 1979-85 period, college students in 2006 showed a 30 percent increase in their NPI score. That's "the bad news.". If there is some good news, it might be this: Twenge and her colleagues Sara Konrath, Joshua D. Foster, W. Keith Campbell, and Brad J. Bushman point to a rise in several "positive traits" correlated with narcissism, such as self-esteem, extraversion, and assertiveness. Of course, a cynic might reply that these traits are "positive" only up to a point: When someone's idea of "assertiveness" involves jumping up on stage and grabbing the microphone from an award-winning singer, assertiveness has arguably crossed the line into loutishness.
Twenge and Campbell take pains to knock down the myth that all narcissists are basically insecure folks with very low self-esteem. Their research suggests otherwise -- most narcissists seem to have a heaping helping of self-esteem! But Twenge and Campbell focus mainly on individuals they call the "socially savvy narcissists who have the most influence on the culture." These high-fliers may be the sort one of my colleagues had in mind when he defined a narcissist as "somebody who, at the moment of peak sexual bliss, cries out his own name!"
These celebrity narcissists are not, for the most part, the kind of individuals I have treated in my own psychiatric practice. My patients tended to fall into the group Twenge and Campbell call "vulnerable narcissists." These unfortunate souls seem to cloak themselves in a mantle of gold, while feeling that, on the inside, they are nothing but rags. They suffer, to be sure -- but they also induce suffering in others, by acting out their insecurities in a thousand provocative ways. And, like some of their celebrity counterparts, these vulnerable narcissists are prone to outbursts of anger, verbal abuse, or just plain rudeness -- usually when they feel rejected, thwarted, or frustrated. They remind one of philosopher Eric Hoffer's observation that "rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."
If we are indeed producing increasingly self-obsessed individuals in our society, what can we do about it? There is clearly no simple prescription for what are evidently deep-seated cultural and familial ills. There is almost certainly no "Prozac for Narcissists" anywhere on the pharmacy shelves. As Twenge and Campbell argue, there is much in the way that we raise our children that may need to change. In my view, it is not simply a matter of refusing to spoil or over-indulge our children. Rather, we must also instill positive values that will help inoculate our children against narcissism.
In my book, Everything Has Two Handles: The Stoic's Guide to the Art of Living , I argue that the values of the ancient Stoics can help us achieve personal happiness. I believe that these same values can help our children grow into strong, responsible, and resilient citizens. And what are Stoic values? It's not just a matter of keeping a stiff upper lip, nor does Stoicism hold that you should tamp down all your feelings. Rather, Stoics believed that the good life is one characterized by virtuous beliefs and actions -- in brief, a life based on duty, discipline, and moderation. The Stoics also believed in the importance of taking life on its own terms–what they would have described as "living in harmony with nature."
Stoics did not whine when they were passed over for an award, nor did they throw a hissy fit when they didn't get their way. As the Stoic philosopher, Seneca (106-43 BCE) put it, "All ferocity is born of weakness." Perhaps most important, Stoics understood the tremendous value of gratitude -- not only for the gifts we have received, but also for the grief we have been spared. Maybe if more children were inculcated with these teachings, we would find our celebrities showing more gratitude and less "attitude."
Narcissists Tend to Become Leaders
7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You
Facebook Profiles Out Narcissists
Ronald Pies MD is Professor of Psychiatry and Lecturer on Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse NY; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston; and Editor-in-Chief, Psychiatric Times. He is the author of Everything Has Two Handles: The Stoic's Guide to the Art of Living . This article was provided by PsychCentral.com .
[Sep 11, 2018] It's not easy to call out a complete narcissist. They're highly manipulative in turning the tables and making themselves the victim leaving the righteous accuser or critic holding the bag
Sep 11, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Circe , Sep 11, 2018 12:06:20 PM | link
@156
It's not easy to call out a complete narcissist. They're highly manipulative in turning the tables and making themselves the victim leaving the righteous accuser or critic holding the bag. It takes skill and gravitas not to fall into their trap but they should especially not be allowed to slither behind legitimate causes to excuse their nasty behaviour and then be glorified as a brave champion of the oppressed. Mostly it's how they twist the truth and get away with it that's scary. They'll inflate the minutest legitimacy to make their accuser appear like the ogre and so emerge vindicated by society. Imo that's a form of bullying. Again, it takes skill to expose them.
Circe , Sep 11, 2018 10:57:00 AM | link
Times have changed not just in tennis. Increasingly devious bad behavior is excused and I would even say even glorified in sports and everywhere else. Look how long it took for Americans to admit Armstrong, cancer survivor cycling hero, was cheating. There too the ego-worship and American public's denial of the truth was nauseating. What about the American student who probably got away with murder in Italy and was so portrayed as the victim of European justice? Even when kissing her boyfriend while the coroner took the real victim out in a body bag they were making excuses with her psychological state. Awh,poor thing...it was her way of cleansing/releasing the stress of the whole tragedy! There's also the basketball players who got away with a spree of theft and vandalism in Asia and hardly suffered any accountability.
Devious bad behavior is tolerated everywhere now and narcissism viewed as strength when it's only making society more and more ignorant, insensitive and intolerable. Humility and honor have become weaknesses and the truth a necessary casualty.
I would say Americans are the worst offenders, but the trend they're setting is becoming rampant and it's degrading society everywhere. Kids are emulating it. That's why it needs to be called out for what it really is, depraved; wherever, whenever, so it doesn't become the acceptable normal and the excusable new hip normal for kids.
[Jun 27, 2018] Holmes, Uncle Clunk, and and Epic Con Job, by Fred Reed - The Unz Review
"... Wall Street Journal. ..."
Jun 27, 2018 | www.unz.com
OK, book report time. I have just finished reading Bad Blood , by John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal. Good read, fascinating story. It is the saga of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, the miraculous blood-testing company of Silicon Valley. Holmes, formerly said to be worth $4.5 billion, ended up under criminal indictment for fraud as of 2015. I suppose many have heard vaguely of Theranos, as I had, but the actual story is astonishing.
Holmes, 19, drops out of Stanford to start a medical-instrumentation company. She is very smart, very driven, very self-confident, very glib, very cold-blooded, very manipulative, very willing to take risks, very pretty, and very ruthless. Everything about her is very. If the foregoing resembles the clinical description of a psychopath, there is a reason.
She also knows almost nothing of the sciences, and nothing at all of electronic or mechanical engineering, or of medical instrumentation. That is, she has no qualifications in the field. She is just very–that word again–smart and pretty and talks a swell show. And yet ye gods and little catfishes, what she managed to do.
Her goal was to invent a medical blood-analyzer that could do a large number of tests on a single drop of blood from a pricked finger. It was a bright idea. If it had worked, it would have been a (very) big deal. This of course is also true of anti-gravity space shps and perpetual motion machines. Making it work required nothing beyond difficult mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, programming, microfluidics, and a few things that were impossible. She knew none of these fields.
But holy smack-and-kerpow, Batman, could she talk. Soon she had investment money pouring in. On her board she got–yes–Henry everlovin' Kissinger and James Mattis (uh-huh, that one,) and former Secretaries of State and Defense and just about every heavy hitter except Pope Francis. More money rained down. I mean with people like that vouching for her, Hank the Kiss and Mad Dog Mattis, it had to be legit–right? She even managed to cozy up to the Clintons and Obama.
Meanwhile the wretched blood gizmo wouldn't, didn't, and couldn't as it turned out, work. It was a metal box with inside it a glue-gun robot arm out of Jersey–I am not inventing this–that made grinding noises and could do only a few tests with wildly unreliable results. You might think of it as Uncle Clunk. Just the thing you want your life to depend on. And lives do depend on good lab results.("OK, lady, Uncle Clunk says you got brain cancer. We have to remove your brain.") Heh. Oops.
So Holmes, who could talk the bark off a tree, faked it. To be fair, she probably thought it would work or hoped it might and turned to chicanery only when it didn't. Anyway, many of her deceptions were clearly fraudulent–well, clearly if you knew about them. For example, most of her results were obtained using commercial analyzers from outfits like Siemens instead of Uncle Clunk. Financial projections were wildly dishonest. Many employees quit over ethhical concerns–but they were bound by sharp-fanged nondisclosure agreements they had to sign to be hired. It was nonsense. Nothing worked. But nobody knew.
Thing was, across America there was a terrific will to believe. Her story was just too good to pass up. People wanted a female Steve Jobs, a girl to join the boys in a startup world of wunderkind guys like Gates and Jobs and Wozniak and Zuckerberg and all. There just weren't any girls. Sure, a few, sort of, a little bit, like Marissa Mayer at Google, but Page and Bryn were the real starters-up. Holmes was beautiful, smart, so very appealing and just a dynamite entrepreneur. She had this astonishingly successful company.
Which didn't have a product.
Note that most of the dazzling university dropouts who became billionaires are in software, not biological sciences. The few in hardware brilliantly put together readily comprehended pieces, like CPUs and memory chips. There is a reason for this. Programming takes a lot of brains and little knowledge. Medicine takes reasonable intelligence and lots of knowledge. Molecular biology takes a lot of brains and a lot of knowledge. A (very) bright kid can learn Python or C-plus-plus in a couple of months in mommy's basement and actually be a programmer. It doesn't work with complicated multidisciplinary computerized micro-fluidized gadgets involving robotic glue-arms. At least, it didn't work.
I wonder why nobody thought of this. When asked for evidence, she ducked, dodged, lied, said the check was in the mail, and any day now.
The non-disclosure agreements saved her, for a while. All employees had to sign them. Her lawyer, who was also on her board, was the scary super lawyer David Boies. If you were a midlevel lab worker, and knew that reagents were out of date, that bad results were being hidden, that Uncle Clunk didn't work–and said so, a savage law firm with unlimited funds and, as events proved, not a lot of ethics, would litigate you into sleeping in alleys. Consequently much was known, but little was said.
Meanwhile–this is crazier than Aunt Sadie, that we kept in the attic–she got freaking Safeway and Walgreens to bite on putting Theranos booths in their stores so customers could get quick finger-prick analyses for very little money. Both companies bought into this, and actually built the booths at considerable expense, without insisting on seeing proof of her claims. I wonder what she was thinking. The scam obviously was going to collapse at some point. And did.
A better question might be what her board members and the chain-store executives were thinking. They were bosses of huge corporations and presumably astute. How did she get away with it? I will guess. Most of those gulled were old men, or nearly so. Note that old men, powerful men, rich men, and famous men, are nevertheless men. Holmes was a honey, slender, very pretty, well-groomed, appealing, smart, and maybe the daughter or girlfriend or mistress that her prey would have liked.
Andrea Dworkin. Finally, a cure for self-abuse. Would the old guys on Elizabeth's board have been as smitten by Andrea?
As the Wall Street Journal closed in, and Theranos got wind of it, things became ethically interesting. Holmes of course knew that Theranos was endangering lives, and had already established a lack of morality. Some of the board came to suspect and quietly bailed. The employees were intimidated, though several talked to the Journal anonymously.
But superlawyer David Boies and his associate Heather King among others at the firm knew. They tried every legal means, or maybe I mean lawyerly means, to block publication of the story. When federal regulatory agencies issued a long, detailed investigative report making it absolutely clear that Theranos did not even come close to legality, and was therefore endangering lives–Boies and King tried to suppress that too. Their success was not great as the Journal put the whole gorgeous taco online, but they tried. It is a curious fact, but a fact, that lawyers are often accessories to crime.
[Nov 10, 2017] Coworkers From Hell! by Sherrie Bourg Carter Psy.D.
Jul 11, 2017 | www.psychologytoday.com
Although there isn't one "right" way to handle CFHs, there are some ways that are likely to make the situation worse rather than better. Here are a few tips to avoid escalation:
Avoid "you" statements ("You're not making any sense." "You are the one with the problem." "You need to suck it up and stop complaining about everything."). Instead, use "I" or "we" statements ("I don't understand what you're trying to say." "It seems like we have a problem." "How can we work this out?").
Avoid emotion. Keep your voice soft and your tone even. It's hard to maintain a high level of emotion when the person you're interacting with consistently maintains a calm, unemotional tone (although some of the best can do it - see discussion on page 2 about UCFHs).
Avoid sarcasm.
Avoid defensiveness.
Avoid engagement. If the anger, drama, or whatever craziness is going on doesn't subside, politely disengage. It's hard enough going against your instinct to not defend yourself when the attack first starts. The longer the attack lasts (especially when you're trying your best to diffuse it), the harder it will be to stay calm and unemotional. So if your best efforts don't diffuse the situation, say something like, "I'm having a hard time listening to [or understanding ] what you're saying when you're [yelling, sobbing, glaring, etc.]. Maybe we can try to resolve this later when the emotions aren't so high." Then, walk away.
[Nov 10, 2017] How to Deal With High-Maintenance People by Korin Miller
The high maintenance man or woman is the layman's term for someone with a Cluster B (antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, or borderline) personality disorder or a subclinical version with those traits.
Manipulation (which is implied in the term "high maintenance" ) comes in many forms: There are whiners, bullies, the borderliners, and our main object of interest -- the sociopaths. Korin Miller gives s ome potentially useful advice of dealing with high maintenance drama queens at work... T hrowing a fit should get her nowhere .
You need also to understand the strengths and weaknesses or your own behavior (and analyze it via diary) so that you can adapt your communication style when necessary. Anticipate and be prepared. That greatly helps not to react too emotionally. Don't take anything personally. Consider such behaviour as a you view a bad weather. Drama queen behavior is pretty stereotypical and can be studied via sample of Netflix movies. Practice your responses.
Such people are not always low performers. More often they are high performers at the workplace.
Much depends of the "social order," that is, to what extent the society order social relations to a benefit narrow interests of the elite and how individuals are socialized into the ongoing social structure. Neoliberalism with its "greed is good" mantra is unhealthy society. That's for sure. It actually discourages bonds to society which prevent anti-social or openly delinquent behavior in humans. George Vincent, writing in the first volume of the American Journal of Sociology, defined social control as ". . . the art of combining social
forces so as to give society at least a trend toward an ideal" (1896:490). if the ideal is "homo homily lupus est" like it is under neoliberalism the society, or organization/firm gradually self-destruct.
There is a strong correlation between dysfunctional social institutions, decreased relationships to society and the level of delinquency, especially adolescent delinquency. If adolescence is viewed as part of a maturation process with the end goal being the integration of the youth into adult social roles, then in a dysfunctional society likelihood that a youth will become involved with the criminal justice system dramatically increase.
Oct 05, 2012 | www.cosmopolitan.com
Your Coworker
She always asks you to grab her coffee (and doesn't pay you back), and loves to monopolize your time.
How to Deal: Next time she asks you to get something for her (coffee, lunch, whatever), just "forget" to do it or tell her you unfortunately don't have the time. If she keeps swinging by your desk for hour-long "chats," start telling her you really have to get back to an assignment and add, "if we could finish this later, that would be great." Eventually, she'll get the point.
She's obsessed with being the center of attentionand freaks when she isn't.
How to Deal: Sure, it's annoying especially when she can't even deal when your guy's parents ask you about how work is going but it's in your best interests to be nice to her. So throw her a bone. The easiest way: Like her attention-seeking Facebook posts. That way, you can roll your eyes while you do it, and she'll never know.
She's demanding of your time and has a meltdown if you can't accommodate her.
How to Deal: Sit down with her and tell her that, while you love her, you can't be available to her 24/7, 365. Ask your mom how often she thinks is reasonable for you two to hang out or catch up, and then work with that. Maybe all she wants is a regular "date" with you. Once you decide on something, make her stick to it. So, if she starts harassing you about not being able to hang out on a Monday, tell her you're busy, but you'll see her at your regular Thursday night dinner.
She texts and calls you like crazy, and says you're a bad friend if you don't drop everything when she needs you (which is pretty much every day).
How to Deal: It's time to slowly get rid of her which, we know can be tricky when she's in your circle of friends. Whatever you do, don't respond when she gets crazy over text. If she calls you a bad friend, tell her that her behavior is pushing you away or just ignore her altogether. You don't need someone like that in your life.
She needs constant hand-holding (especially after work hours) and can't cope when she doesn't get it.
How to Deal: Our advice: Start looking for a new job. She won't change the way she treats you, and unfortunately, she's calling the shots right now. In the meantime, tell her you don't get work email on your phone. She'll have to think twice about actually calling you at 10 p.m. vs. firing off a demanding email.
[Jan 01, 2017] When Evil Is a Pretty Face Narcissistic Females the Pathological Relationship Agenda - Kindle edition by Zari Ballard. Healt
"... After reading Zari's book just once, i gradually felt that much needed shift - the chapter 'Tactics Of Emotional Warfare' details a list of characteristics of the Narcissistic personality ..."
Jan 01, 2017 | www.amazon.com
Todd L. Andrews on March 14, 2015
This book is a desperately needed wake up call to NS men needing fluorescent illumination in the middle of "gaslight" and other
" I really identified with the "role reversal" and truth that there are men that suffer under a female N's tactics. The severity and persistence of the female N is exposed brilliantly in this book.
Having Zari identify the male as a victim of the narcissist is crucial to helping men break free of the craziness, while also helping men identify why they feel so stuck loving the woman they have committed their souls to.
Also crucial, is the chapter that breaks out the difficulty of "no contact" when children are involved. While many N relationships share much in common, the male NS suffers under societies prescribed male strengths, and serves to undermine the ability of men to overcome being trapped.
Society typically has the female's back, especially narcissistic women, as they are often the victims of stereotypical males (in real life and fictional portrayals).
Kudos to the Author for helping unlock the chains of this forbidden subject. There are, not undeservedly, many explicatives used in this book. I believe the strong words are appropo representations of the years of suffering and pain inflicted by the narcissist on their supply.
The author's insights will likely help release many NS men from their prison within.
Jack on December 11, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Need to get off the crazy train? This is your first stop!
" Guys, if your life is one gigantic roller coaster ride of being seduced, destroyed emotionally, and then kicked to the curb when you say anything, then this is the place to start. If you're looking at this review, then you know something in your relationship is slowly poisoning you to death. It is NOT you! Wanna know why? Get the book!!!
Neal on December 2, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Worth The Read
" If you have any questions about the patterns in your relationship this will help. More research on narcissism and manipulation will be needed, but it offers some good advice about seeing more clearly the issues that might lie hidden in the shade.
Man_under_female_attack on April 15, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Men under pain by narc women deserved to get a book like this.
" I was married to a narc women for several years, and we share a daughter. I thank Zari Ballard for this excellent account of how narc females move around in society, mostly unknown to other people, friends and relatives who judge them just as "weird" or "arrogant".
In my case, I felt like a man who was for years playing on a stage and with a choreography designed by my ex wife.
Now, thanks to books like this one, I can stand aside and *understand* what went on, and what is currently going on. As a victim, narcissism makes you crazy, the more you delve into it to understand it, the more you get tangled in the lies, distorted views of reality, crazy nonsense "dialogues", etc.
I spent years married with a woman with whom I had no real dialogue, without noticing it.
If you are a man in distress, and you feel some woman makes you feel miserable, please read this book to go deep into the causes of your pain. Thanks Zari for your book, thanks from the many men that suffer the pain inflicted by narcissistic women.
PF on December 5, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
One of the best reads on Female Narcs out there
" This was an amazing read and helped me far more than even therapy. Zari has helped males understand the Female Narc better than any of the myriad of books I have read on the subject.
Maxie on May 17, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
This is a must read if you've been on "Mr Toad's Wild Ride" with one of these psychopaths at the helm!
" After being systematically brainwashed then discarded, I educated myself by reading everything I could get my hands on regarding Narcissism and Narcissist abuse, specifically male victims of these pathological parasites.
I found the content of this book very insightful, helpful, and matter-of-fact.
Zari does not claim to be a doctor, teacher, or therapist. However, she provides a great insight for surviving this painful ordeal with proven methods of healing from a former victim's prospective.
Edward on June 22, 2015 Format: Paperback
An exceptional survival book.
" An extraordinary, concise, at times darkly humorous and sobering road map to help you on your way out of the long dark tunnel designed by the female Narcissist. I had suffered for over a year in this kind of 'relationship', and after the discard was left tortured by self doubt, depression, and confusion.
After reading Zari's book just once, i gradually felt that much needed shift - the chapter 'Tactics Of Emotional Warfare' details a list of characteristics of the Narcissistic personality, which left me feeling as though i had been exorcised by a friendly priest, leaving me without a shadow of doubt that this was not something i had imagined, nor could have done anything about.
By the second reading, (the very next day) that brick wall of denial slowly began to crumble, allowing the undeniable facts to speak for themselves, and sink in. It's easy to feel alone in times like these, perhaps your friends or family may not completely understand your pain, but Zari does - and I believe this book is the only friend you will need to guide you on your way back to sanity.
JMT on March 3, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
" Amazing read. I've lived with a female narc for years and reading this made me fees as if the writer was right there with me for MY story!
It's amazing how traumatic these people are.
Well written. I also really enjoyed another similar book "Surviving Sara" by Brian Morgan. Very similar story and I can't help but few the pain these men went through.
[Dec 07, 2016] Puzzling People The Labyrinth of the Psychopath by Thomas Sheridan
"... this book is the first I have seen that really, truly provides answers and healing for victims. ..."
"... I believed I had brought this misfortune upon myself. What is worse, unless someone has been through what some of us have, they can't understand, and so one is left feeling adrift, lonely, confused and misunderstood. It is also very easy to turn to non-constructive ways to block, drown or diffuse the anguish one suffers after a relationship with a psychopath ends. ..."
"... I now understand what happened to me, and I now realize, through the power of the words and insights in Thomas Sheridan's book, that it was NOT my fault. I was targeted. I was intentionally used in the most despicable ways. And I am not alone. ..."
"... The term for these people who have no empathy, conscious and who prey on vulnerable, decent caring people is PSYCHOPATH. If any of you out there are having trouble recovering from such an ordeal you are not alone. ..."
"... I was a strong, intelligent and happy person until I was targeted by a female vampire..idealized, devalued and thrown in the garbage like a used napkin. It nearly brought me to suicide. But guess what....didnt happen...to bad for the psychopath...thats what they want ..."
"... I found them to be very useful despite the fact I had already encountered psychopathic people before, my first (to my knowledge) being in a relationship in 1997. When it collapsed, so did I. Why had someone been so cruel, dishonest and manipulative toward me? I didn't deserve to be treated this way. I then went on to learn a lot about psychopaths. ..."
"... There is a section on the psychopaths that are at the highest levels of government and corporations, and the methods they employ to keep people in their grip. ..."
"... In addition, he explains the psychopathic organizations. He discusses individuals in politics, in religious organizations and possibly the person sleeping right next to you. ..."
"... The title of the Introduction summarizes the way we cannot stop being used: Know thyself - Know thy predator. ..."
"... They were good books, but this was the first that acknowledged and accurately articulated the emotional devastation from the victim's point of view. ..."
"... It was the book that convinced me that my tormenter is a psychopath. It also helped me free myself from the shame and self-blame, the feeling that I was weak or stupid for getting drawn into the crazy-making web of a parasite. Also, I was accepting of the fact that I needed to go completely no contact. ..."
"... Finally, it put to rest any impulses I had to try to get even with or expose this person. I've realized that it's pointless and probably dangerous to do so. I know I've already been trashed to our mutual acquaintances. I can only hope the people who've seen through this monster won't believe what they've been told. But if they do, I suppose it's their loss. ..."
"... A Good Place to Start. If you have only just cottoned on to the existence of psychopaths and the trouble they bring into your life this book is a good place to start. If you've been the target of a psychopath it will help you understand why. It will also help you plan your escape, survival and recovery. If you want to learn more after reading this book look at books by Jon Ronson, Martha Stout and Robert D. Hare. ..."
Dec 07, 2016 | www.amazon.com
Catherine Lewis on June 14, 2011 Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Finally - a book that truly helps victims of psychopaths
This is an amazing, life-changing book for anyone who has been a victim of a psychopath. I was in a relationship with a psychopath for over five years, and while I had read other books that were very helpful (including check lists that made my blood run cold) this book is the first I have seen that really, truly provides answers and healing for victims.
I had spent the last seven years feeling that I was only partly healed from my experience. I still felt a big part of myself was missing and I was deeply depressed. I had come to accept that I would never be the same - that I would always bear a large amount of damage to my psyche, my self esteem and my sense of who I was. I felt that a big part of me had been taken, but more importantly, I believed that I had ALLOWED it to happen, and that it was ALL MY FAULT.
I believed I had brought this misfortune upon myself. What is worse, unless someone has been through what some of us have, they can't understand, and so one is left feeling adrift, lonely, confused and misunderstood. It is also very easy to turn to non-constructive ways to block, drown or diffuse the anguish one suffers after a relationship with a psychopath ends. This book saved my life. I read it within about 3-4 short evenings, and it has completely changed the way I perceive what happened in a way that is highly empowering. I am re-claiming my fundamental spirit and joy.
I now understand what happened to me, and I now realize, through the power of the words and insights in Thomas Sheridan's book, that it was NOT my fault. I was targeted. I was intentionally used in the most despicable ways. And I am not alone. There is help, there is hope, and you can regain what you lost of yourself. They say there are no magic bullets for curing deep trauma, but I am here to tell you, this book is that magic bullet for survivors of psychopaths to not only recover, but emerge stronger, more whole and more joyful than ever before. Read it. Learn it. Get your life back.
9 Comments 70 people found this helpful.
tim on September 11, 2012
the very best work out there..author under attack from cult leader
Let me start out by saying that Thomas Sheridan's brilliant work about the world of psychopaths in both personal relationships and in society at large...is currently being subjected to a smear campaign by a disgruntled cult leader....hense as you can see after sometime in mid August there appears on Amazon numerous one star reviews denigrating his book. Prior to mid August you will see that the book is universally raved.
Enough of that. Let me tell you my opinion having had the mis fortune to be in a romantic relationship for six months with one of these soul rapers.
First off only people who had been involved with these entities will truly understand how helpful and extraordinary Seridens work is in helping them make sense of what happened to them. Personally, I spent the last six months studying narcissist personally disorder, borderlines etc...its all nonsense. The term for these people who have no empathy, conscious and who prey on vulnerable, decent caring people is PSYCHOPATH. If any of you out there are having trouble recovering from such an ordeal you are not alone.
I was a strong, intelligent and happy person until I was targeted by a female vampire..idealized, devalued and thrown in the garbage like a used napkin. It nearly brought me to suicide. But guess what....didnt happen...to bad for the psychopath...thats what they want. To murder you and get away with it.
Sheridans work is brilliant and I've read everything in the world that is out there. If you've been targeted by one of these creeps read Sheridan's books.. you'll feel 100% better and you will come to understand the dark , empty, lying subhuman demon that passed trough you life.
There's nowhere to go but UP from there and on to becoming the loving, caring beautiful and now knowledgeable empathetic human you are. Do not pass go. Get both books you won't regret it. Pay no attention to the negative reviews by the psychopaths online trying to smear his timely, brilliant and important work. 2 Comments
Lucas Biddle on March 25, 2011
Upon recently breaking up with what turned out to be a psychopath, I found the YouTube channel of Thomas Sheridan. There, he posts videos pertaining to the subject of psychopaths in our society.
I found them to be very useful despite the fact I had already encountered psychopathic people before, my first (to my knowledge) being in a relationship in 1997. When it collapsed, so did I. Why had someone been so cruel, dishonest and manipulative toward me? I didn't deserve to be treated this way. I then went on to learn a lot about psychopaths.
This is the third book I've read on the subject. It is written in a very easily understood language, rather than using too many clinical terms that are encountered in books written by authors who are admittedly in possession of a PhD. I don't believe the lack of a piece of paper makes Puzzling People any less valid. After all, anyone is capable of making a study of people and documenting their findings, and perhaps go on to publish those findings.
I finished the book off in two days. The various key traits of the psychopath are outlined. Often I would laugh upon reading some of the paragraphs. That's because they resonated so strongly with my own experiences. Admittedly I did not learn anything startlingly new from this book, since I have previous experience with psychopaths and have read other books, but this book is useful to read nonetheless. In fact it might be useful to remind oneself now and then of this unfortunate type of person. The psychopath is a shell that houses an entity unlike most of us. It has no conscience. It is devoid of the wide range of emotions the rest of us have. It can do what it wants to you and me and it can sleep at night. It is sub-human.
There is a section on the psychopaths that are at the highest levels of government and corporations, and the methods they employ to keep people in their grip.
The book concludes with ways to regain your life and energy after an encounter with a psychopath, and reminds us to close the door on them and never ever open it again.
The only complaint I have with the book (and you can call me pedantic if you like) is that it really ought to have been proof-read before publishing because it is, unfortunately, littered with typographical errors. At times I found that a little distracting. However, it doesn't take away from the fact that it's a good read on a subject more people really need to be aware of.
Steven Haackon December 8, 2015
Know thyself - Know thy predator
This book is a must read for every adult. Sheridan opens up the inner world of the psychopath. The psychopath has no conscience; they are experts at manipulation. They cannot be changed. In addition, he explains the psychopathic organizations. He discusses individuals in politics, in religious organizations and possibly the person sleeping right next to you.
The title of the Introduction summarizes the way we cannot stop being used: Know thyself - Know thy predator.
Michael Harrison October 18, 2015
Must read for anyone in the corporate world
Absolute required reading, to survive and thrive in our world...Sheridan will help you understand the world, and help you to understand how to relax,. and thrive.
Artist on March 10, 2014
Good and bad, but mostly good
This book is tremendously comforting for anyone who's emerged from a relationship with a psychopath. I've read Robert Hare's and George Simon's books on, respectively, sociopaths and manipulators. They were good books, but this was the first that acknowledged and accurately articulated the emotional devastation from the victim's point of view.
It was the book that convinced me that my tormenter is a psychopath. It also helped me free myself from the shame and self-blame, the feeling that I was weak or stupid for getting drawn into the crazy-making web of a parasite. Also, I was accepting of the fact that I needed to go completely no contact.
Finally, it put to rest any impulses I had to try to get even with or expose this person. I've realized that it's pointless and probably dangerous to do so. I know I've already been trashed to our mutual acquaintances. I can only hope the people who've seen through this monster won't believe what they've been told. But if they do, I suppose it's their loss.
The only problem I had with the book was that it went off the rails about three-quarters of the way through, turning into a screed against "institutional psychopaths" in popular culture, government, etc. I understand the author's passion, but his points could have been made more succinctly and with more restraint. As they stand now, it sounds like ranting.
William Heagueon January 31, 2014
A Good Place to Start. If you have only just cottoned on to the existence of psychopaths and the trouble they bring into your life this book is a good place to start. If you've been the target of a psychopath it will help you understand why. It will also help you plan your escape, survival and recovery. If you want to learn more after reading this book look at books by Jon Ronson, Martha Stout and Robert D. Hare.
Hoosier Hayseed January 21, 2014
Extremely helpful advice
Following an episode with a family member which absolutely left me dumbfounded that anybody could be so cold and indifferent to the needs of another human being - even a relative - I looked for any books I could find about psychotic behavior.
I found one, "The Sociopath Next Door," which was excellent, and then, later on, I began to see other books on the subject, and bought several of them.
But Thomas Sheridan's book has been, hands down, the best of the lot, and probably has satisfied my need to search for any more information on the subject.
He really covers all the bases about psychopaths, and explains many things - some of which I already knew, and others that I had surmised on my own, but there were many other things which were completely new to me, which I found invaluable to learn about.
His humanity, and his love for the other members of humanity simply shines through, and he makes a couple of very profound comments, which offer much encouragement for anybody who has ever been subjected to one of these freaks.
One is the observation that once you learn what a psychopath is all about, you are probably, from that moment, safeguarded from ever being fooled by one again, which is extremely comforting to know.
The other thing is his conviction that, as bad as they are, they are always doomed to failure, and that we will ultimately win, is very encouraging.
But one thing that still confounds me is just trying to understand exactly what they are. They appear for all the world to be human, and you may know for a fact that they came from human parents - maybe even your own family - but they act like aliens, or anything but someone of this world.
I had thought that the only answer was that they were simply evil, and that may be the ultimate verdict.
But if the problem is that their brain is actually defective - missing the genes that account for empathy and compassion - then it stands to reason that they simply are not "playing with a full deck," as it were, almost literally.
But whatever they are, they are a living nightmare for anybody to encounter, and even worse than that, if you happen to be so unfortunate as to find yourself married to one.
[Jul 16, 2016] Female Sociopaths - different but just as dangerous!
www.decision-making-confidence.com
Particular Characteristics of Female Sociopaths Vs Males
How many female sociopaths are there? Robert Hare believes that about 1% of the population fits the profile of psychopath, and male psychopaths are 7 times more common than female psychopaths.
But there are some things to keep in mind here. When most people think of 'sociopath' they typically think 'male' and 'serial killer'. They do not generally think of women psychopaths. This can lead to a situation where they are dealing with a psychopath in their life but do not realize who they are dealing with.
Add to this the fact that sociopaths have been called chameleons for their ability to blend into society and it adds to the difficulty in counting them.
Plus, whether you consider it sexist or not, the female aspect needs to be considered when talking about manipulation. Women have been known to 'bat their eyelids' and show their cleavage or 'show a bit of leg', for example, to good effect.
How female sociopaths show up in society
The most obvious group are the serial killers. And yes, there have been lots of female serial killers as well as males!
Unlike the males however, there is usually not a sexual element to their crimes. It's much more usual to be money or power related. And the female sociopaths typically know their victims; it's rare for them to kill strangers. An interesting group are the female sociopaths who become nurses or doctors. These cold-blooded killers hide themselves where nobody would suspect them, in a caring profession!
And then they set to work. For example, Beverley Allitt, a 23-year-old nurse in the UK killed 4 and attacked 9 other children within a couple of months before she was caught. A Texas nurse Genene Jones is believed to have killed between 11 and 46. It's of this group that people usually say "But they seemed like such nice people!"
Another subset are those who kill one or several husbands for the inheritance and life assurance.
Obvious Delinquents
Some female sociopaths demonstrate antisocial behavior as children and as adolescents. Lying, stealing, truancy, cruelty to animals and siblings, drug abuse, early sexual activity. Of course, there may be frequent run-ins with the law. Their parents are very often distraught because there is so little they can do. As adults, these female sociopaths may end up abusing alcohol and drugs and end up in and out of prison.
Some therapists believe that there is such a disregard for society among them that a sociopath that has not broken the law just hasn't been found out yet!
Cult leaders
Many of the women who lead destructive cults are sociopaths.
There seems to be two themes among female sociopaths that are not so prevalent in male led groups, one being the avoidance of sex and the other being food.
The women psychopaths may target women who want to get away from sex for whatever reason. Instead they offer female nurturing and support.
As well as offering meals when potential 'clients' have none, there are cults based on eating healthily or losing weight. This is typical of cults, they offer something people want but behind the outer facade is a second set of ideas or principles. People enter for one thing and end up having the leader control their lives.
Socialized sociopaths
These are the ones that are so difficult to count! Despite their sociopath symptoms, they manage to integrate themselves into society to varying degrees. Everything from solitary lives where they live on the money they make from crimes for which they are not caught, to getting married, settling down and having children.
It's interesting to read or listen to the stories of some of these female sociopaths. Typically, they realize as children that they are different in some way. They think differently and make different decisions. Then they begin to understand that they are not so 'affected' by emotions. It's seems that it's common for them to think that this is because they are smarter than those around them.
They begin from an early age to look for clues to recognize the emotions that others are actually having. They learn to mimic the emotions so as not to stand out, or to please others. They learn to create relationships that are beneficial for them.
Female sociopaths have all the symptoms of sociopaths. The lying, the parasitic lifestyle, the need for excitement and the desire to control. It's possible that there are many female sociopaths who live, for all intents and purposes, what looks like a normal life from the outside. They are content to just blend in and do what "normal" people do.
Others however, want more. More money, more power, more control, more excitement. And they get themselves into trouble because of the impulsivity or the failure to control their emotions, or the irresponsibility.
One of the ways this shows up is in problems in their marriage. In true sociopath style, they attract a man, create an intimate relationship, influence his decision making and get married. It's common for them to isolate the man from his friends and family to varying degrees. They can be very domineering and controlling, using sex as a means to manipulate. The man may suffer verbal abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse and even physical abuse.
Had a bad experience?
Have you had a run-in with a sociopath? The more people know about these demons the better! Tell your story here
When there are children involved it gets infinitely more complicated. Especially in separations and divorces. The female sociopaths have no difficulty (remember no remorse, guilt or pity for anybody) in using the children as pawns or objects to try to continue to manipulate the man.
They will extract information from the children about the father to use against him, they will influence how and what the children think about the father, and they may prevent the father from having any contact with the children. The welfare of the children is not considered. What's important is that they continue to maintain control and power.
In family matters where the police or the courts involved, they have no difficulty in lying, inventing stories and doing whatever is necessary to get what they want. They can play the victim role very well, as most sociopaths do, and will use society's preferences towards women and mothers to their advantage.
Some female sociopaths simply go from one relationship to another. They use their sociopathic charm, good looks and female wiles to create a relationship, take what they want and then disappear, leaving a trail of brokenhearted and confused men behind them. Men who are somewhat poorer after the experience!
This piece was originally written about a male but I think it works equally well like this!
She will choose you, charm you with her words, and control you with this presence. She will delight you with her wit and her plans. She will show you a good time, but you will always get the bill. She will smile and deceive you, and she will scare you with her eyes. And when she is through with you, and she will be through with you, she will desert you and take with her your innocence and your pride. You will be left much sadder but not a lot wiser, and for a long time you will wonder what you did wrong.
From an essay signed, "A psychopath in prison".
Apparently both male and female psychopaths have high levels of testosterone. It has been found that in normal populations, higher levels of testosterone are associated with higher sex drive, more sexual activity and more attractiveness to the opposite sex.
This will make female sociopaths more appealing to males. Add to this the lack of inhibition, and the grandiose sense of self and you have a lethal combination! Think femme fatale!
It may also explain the lack of desire to have children and the failure to look after them if they do. It's not uncommon for female sociopaths to leave young children unattended, for example, because they have other more important things to do.
How we perceive women
We normally think women are empathic and nurturing and don't expect to see cold-hearted, uncaring, callous behaviors in women.
We don't consider that they could be more devious, manipulative, destructive, vindictive and downright nasty than their male counterparts.
But just ask any man who has been a victim of female sociopaths...!
Learn what to do if you think you might be in a relationship with a sociopath and how to stop mind control...
[Jul 16, 2016] Confessions of a Sociopath A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
Just a reminder: like in any fashionable themes that are authors who try to did gold out of it. This is one of the genre:. From comments: "As a training psychologist, I was very disappointed with this memoir. I'm very interested in sociopathy and from how this is written, it seems that Thomas is more likely to be a narcissist than a sociopath. I don't think this book is an accurate account of sociopathy and I'm questioning the formal diagnosis. Additionally, It seemed that Thomas kept repeating the same points over and over, which made it very difficult to read at times. It also was difficult due to my growing distaste for Thomas as an individual (mostly due to her conceitedness - another reason I believe she's a narcissist). However, I will give the book a few stars for being written well and keeping my attention enough to at least finish the book."
"... I think everyone learns to lie about his or her emotions to a certain extent; I just take it a step farther. People ask, "How are you?" and you respond, "fine," even though you had a fight with your spouse that morning, have a sick child, or any multitude of things that make it hard for you to feel fine about almost anything in your life. You could honestly answer the question, but you don't because overt displays of strong emotion in ordinary social interactions are not accepted. Most of the time I don't need to show any emotion at all, and I try to limit the times that I do by begging off attending funerals, weddings, etc. When I do show up to these functions, I try to mimic the other attendees. If I'm dealing with a person one-on-one, I just try to reflect their emotions; usually they're distracted enough by their own overflowing emotions not to notice my lack of them. ..."
"... The author goes into some detail in trying to distinguish psychopaths, sociopaths, and person with anti-social personality disorder; but for the majority of the world these distinctions are exercises in semantics only. ..."
"... I've dealt with sociopathic and psychopathic individuals, and they aren't these brilliant, charming, care free people that this book would like you to believe. I'm sorry, but she is not a sociopath. So she is full of herself and likes to toy with the lives of others, apparently she has never met a high school aged girl. If she had, she would see that she is stuck in her own adolescence. She truly wants to believe that she is a sociopath because then she is not like the majority of people. ..."
"... As she says, 1 in 25 people are statistically sociopaths. I'm guessing she hasn't even verified those statistics. What sample size is it derived from? Is the sample really indicative of the entire earth's population? ..."
"... I didn't learn anything from this book; it contains the usual suspects in terms of how she defines herself, the kinds of things she does, etc. This book was written for those who are not familiar with sociopathy, and since it's a pop psych deal all over social media, the author is capitalizing; there are statements in that book that seriously cast doubt on her claims, and others that pinpoint, so it seems to be she did a lot of research to write this, rather than glean her own experience. Considering her penchant to drone about her intelligence, her special abilities, and her success, sociopaths lie, manipulate, and cheat to the nth degree; this is what I'm getting from this; sociopaths are easily detectable, at least to me; I think my discernment skills are far superior to those of the author. One star for the subject, it is familial, and one star for the brazen ability to recognize she cannot fool all, but can fool many. ..."
"... The females are less inclined to criminal behavior and better able to pretend to empathy they don't possess, but they do not have the loyalty or empathy the rest of us have, which means they cannot learn from their behavior the way the rest of us can. ..."
"... I'm sorry to say, this book was a disappointment. It was a long, painful, boring read. First of all, Ms. Thomas isn't a very good writer. Full of run-on sentences and endless, dull descriptions of how great she thinks she is because she lacks empathy and a conscience (she seems to think of these as traits only weak or stupid people have, reminding me of Ayn Rand without an iota of the latter's intelligence), Thomas comes off more as an obnoxious, self-centered, common narcissist than a true sociopath. ..."
"... Thomas (who owns the website Sociopath World) is not a criminal. She may well be sociopathic in that she seems to take pleasure in cheating, manipulating, hurting, and discarding others, once gleefully watched a possum drown, and admits she enjoys ruining the reputations of people she has worked with. She clearly has no empathy and seems to have no emotions. ..."
"... M. E. Thomas is clearly a malignant narcissist, but by calling herself a "sociopath" you feel like you've been the victim of a bait-and-switch (which is in itself sociopathic, I suppose). ..."
"... The only reason I didn't feel completely ripped off was because the yard sale copy of this book set me back only $1; if I'd purchased it at full price, I'd be pretty annoyed right now. It was all I could do to even finish this book. It was that boring. Don't waste your time. If you want to read a good book about sociopathy, read Marsha Stout's The Sociopath Next Door instead. If you really need to read something that comes "out of the horse's mouth," you'd do better with Sam Vaknin ..."
"... I so wish i hadn't wasted my money on this book. The writing was weak and she often contradicts herself and i was utterly bored half way through. Her examples of her sociopathic behaviour aren't very radical - provoking her father to anger in teen years, taking a neighbors bike without permission and returning it (so naughty!), following a man who angered her with murderous intent for a block or so until she lost him. 300 pages of self-aggrandizing that comes across as juvenile and insecure. Perhaps she is malicious and conniving and maybe even a sociopath whatever that actually is (I am not a fan of the DSM), but ultimately its not that interesting, definitely not enlightening. ..."
Amazon.com Books
As M.E. Thomas says of her fellow sociopaths, "We are your neighbors, your coworkers, and quite possibly the people closest to you: lovers, family, friends. Our risk-seeking behavior and general fearlessness are thrilling, our glibness and charm alluring. Our often quick wit and outside-the-box thinking make us appear intelligent-even brilliant. We climb the corporate ladder faster than the rest, and appear to have limitless self-confidence. Who are we? We are highly successful, noncriminal sociopaths and we comprise 4 percent of the American population."
Confessions of a Sociopath -part confessional memoir, part primer for the curious-takes readers on a journey into the mind of a sociopath, revealing what makes them tick while debunking myths about sociopathy and offering a road map for dealing with the sociopaths in your life. M. E. Thomas draws from her own experiences as a diagnosed sociopath; her popular blog, Sociopathworld.com; and scientific literature to unveil for the very first time these men and women who are "hiding in plain sight."
Q&A with M. E. Thomas
Q. Were you always aware that you were different?
A. Yes, though when I was young, I thought maybe it was just because I was smarter than everyone else. I saw things that other children did not see, was aware of the adult world in a way that even my smart siblings were not-awkward interactions from the end of an affair, why my grandpa treated my dad differently from his other children (he was adopted), and so on. I knew other people did not see these things because I would reference them and get blank stares in return. I learned to keep things to myself, even to pretend I didn't see them. Those were probably some of my first attempts to wear a mask of normalcy.
Q. What are the common characteristics/behaviors shared by most sociopaths? Do they describe you, too?
A. Lack of remorse or concern for hurting or stealing; being deceitful, manipulative, impulsive, irritable, aggressive, and consistently irresponsible; failure to conform to social norms; and being unconcerned about people's safety, including their own. You need to have at least three of these to be a sociopath. I have them all, to varying degrees.
Q. You believe that sociopaths have a natural competitive advantage. Why?
A. Sociopaths have several skills that lend themselves to success in areas such as politics and business: charm, an ability to see and exploit weaknesses/flaws (which in politics is called "power-broking" and in business, "arbitrage"), confidence, unflagging optimism, an ability to think outside the box and come up with original ideas, and a lack of squeamishness about doing what it takes to get ahead.
Q. If you don't have a sense of morality, or feel the emotions that most people do, how are you able to operate in the world without being detected?
A. I think everyone learns to lie about his or her emotions to a certain extent; I just take it a step farther. People ask, "How are you?" and you respond, "fine," even though you had a fight with your spouse that morning, have a sick child, or any multitude of things that make it hard for you to feel fine about almost anything in your life. You could honestly answer the question, but you don't because overt displays of strong emotion in ordinary social interactions are not accepted. Most of the time I don't need to show any emotion at all, and I try to limit the times that I do by begging off attending funerals, weddings, etc. When I do show up to these functions, I try to mimic the other attendees. If I'm dealing with a person one-on-one, I just try to reflect their emotions; usually they're distracted enough by their own overflowing emotions not to notice my lack of them.
Q. Research shows that one in twenty-five people is a sociopath, yet most of us believe we've never met one. Are we just kidding ourselves? Are you able to spot them?
A. Statistically, everyone has met at least one sociopath; in fact, most people will have a close encounter with a sociopath at some point in their lives, either as a friend, family member, or lover. Sometimes I can tell who they are. I find that many successful sociopaths will leave deliberate clues as to what they are, the thought being that only other sociopaths would recognize them. I think sociopaths, like serial killers, often have a yearning to be acknowledged for who they are. They want people to admire their exploits, and that is hard to get when they are completely hidden, so they make small compromises.
By Sara on December 15, 2015 Format: Paperback
2.0 out of 5 stars Questioning the legitimacy of "sociopath" diagnosis
As a training psychologist, I was very disappointed with this memoir. I'm very interested in sociopathy and from how this is written, it seems that Thomas is more likely to be a narcissist than a sociopath. I don't think this book is an accurate account of sociopathy and I'm questioning the formal diagnosis. Additionally, It seemed that Thomas kept repeating the same points over and over, which made it very difficult to read at times. It also was difficult due to my growing distaste for Thomas as an individual (mostly due to her conceitedness - another reason I believe she's a narcissist). However, I will give the book a few stars for being written well and keeping my attention enough to at least finish the book.
3.0 out of 5 stars D_shrink VINE VOICE on March 31, 2013
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
At least she is coming out to all but her family. This is written as a confessional/memoir of its author Monica E. Thomas,a pseudonym, necessitated by the subject matter and to protect her present socioeconomic life.
Having just read the reviews written before mine, it would seem I am the first to have actually read the entire book, well, at least, so far.
I would agree with the other reviewers that the book is technically well written, but does get long in the tooth by the half way mark, with many points being repeated several times which lengthened the book with no apparent advantage that I could ascertain; otherwise I would have given 4 stars.
I would agree that the author as self described is unlikeable, but whom I found very interesting simply because I am a retired psychologist and spent the last ten years working with female murderers. The author goes into some detail in trying to distinguish psychopaths, sociopaths, and person with anti-social personality disorder; but for the majority of the world these distinctions are exercises in semantics only.
To help clarify this point, as the author takes some time discussing her rational for the distinction. A psychiatrist, Hervey Clecky wrote the magnum opus on psychopathology in 1941 in a book called MASK OF SANITY; he might be better known to you for his book on multiple personality disorder which was turned into a movie in 1957 called THE THREE FACES OF EVE.
A Dr. Robert Hare building upon Clecky's work devised a 20 question scale to judge antisocial personality disorder. He only used convicts to base his results on, so it is not representative of the general population and certainly doesn't have the background of the MMPI. Hare felt that there were differences between people who committed violent and aggressive act and those who did not. He felt that the aggressive ones should be considered to have ASPD and the others would simply be called sociopaths. The term psychopaths had fallen out of favor.
However, much of the world still considered all three terms to be interchangeable, and if you look up psycho/sociopath in the APA Dictionary it will refer you to Antisocial Personality Disorder. The author particularly chose to make this distinction to differentiate her disorder from those with the more severe form. Basically the author feels that being diagnosed as a sociopath doesn't mean you are bad, but simply that you don't act in socially approved manner unless it benefits the actor.
At one point the author describes her entire dysfunctional family and wonders if she might have turned out differently if raised in a different environment. You know, the argument of nature versus nurture.
1.0 out of 5 stars By [email protected]@ni on September 12, 2013 Format: Hardcover
Yawn M. E. is a self serving, arrogant and shallow author... her memoir does not show any insights by carefully and thoughtfully analyzing one's life and behavior. Her memoir is simply a regurgitation of already published data, and boring stories to relate to such data and to rationalize poor behavior. She has to hit us over the head about how brilliant she is, and how successful she is, and how much better she is because she is a sociopath, when one wonders if she is just an arrogant and unlikable person. If she demonstrates a typical non-dangerous sociopath, we don't really need to read a book about it, we see it every day and just avoid such people. She talks about power struggles in the most inane and trite situations possible, reeking of low self esteem. She makes gross generalizations about "empaths", which are generally overstated and wrong. This memoir at best, reads like a narcissist's journal entry/book report and at worst, just a terribly boring book.
1.0 out of 5 stars By Dr. Charles Finley on September 26, 2013 Format: Hardcover
Pointless Endeavor I was going to give this book two stars simply because it was written better than some of the garbage available today such as 50 shades of anything, yet cannot because the content is monotonous trash. I would never recommend this book to anyone. It is certainly a work of fiction and the author is even more boring than she is self absorbed. The author doesn't display the true traits of a sociopath. She sounds more narcissistic than anything else. She contradicts herself numerous times throughout the book alluding to why she isn't really a sociopath. It's amusing that sociopaths and psychopaths are being glamorized these days as if they don't have a disorder and they are instead instilled with super human powers.
I've dealt with sociopathic and psychopathic individuals, and they aren't these brilliant, charming, care free people that this book would like you to believe. I'm sorry, but she is not a sociopath. So she is full of herself and likes to toy with the lives of others, apparently she has never met a high school aged girl. If she had, she would see that she is stuck in her own adolescence. She truly wants to believe that she is a sociopath because then she is not like the majority of people.
As she says, 1 in 25 people are statistically sociopaths. I'm guessing she hasn't even verified those statistics. What sample size is it derived from? Is the sample really indicative of the entire earth's population? I only ask these questions because I am sure that she hasn't despite her self-proclaimed brilliance. Getting fired from a law firm and teaching at a 4th tier law school doesn't make you a model of success. Even Dr. Phil could see through miss JRL's ploy for fame. Sorry M.E. Thomas but you aren't special, unique, or different than everyone else. We all have these same feelings. Your actions are driven by the very insecurities that you claim you don't have. Welcome to the real world.
1.0 out of 5 stars By BookReader on June 10, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition
I'm an empath and proud to be one!
I thought this book is interesting. I purchased it because recently I had a bad experience befriending someone who I believe is a sociopath. This friend eerily has every trait of one. I trusted this person. He was charming, witty and a sponge. He is a fifty year old man who hasn't worked since his early twenties. He lies a lot and quite a master at it. But I didn't realize this until later after I was allowing him to use my internet/ WiFi for free for well over a year. I found myself paying for his bills and feeding him and even giving him the use of my new car. This guy didn't have anything and had an excuse for everything. I began to open my eyes and see that his friendships were solely based on merits of what they offered him. They were merely vehicles to get what he needed. After he started making comments to me that when I die, he was going to grab up all my possessions before my daughter had chance, red flags started going off in my head. He claimed he was teasing, but a tease is the truth behind a smile. He liked talking a lot about my death and harped on my material things. He became possessive of my things as if it was his. He even tried to control my spending. I might add, we were never more than friends and we never shared the same dwelling. Finally after catching him in several lies, I dropped our friendship. That's when he underhandedly took my personal information and gave it out over social media to hurt my business.
His grandiose arrogance I think is his weakness, though, he doesn't see it that way. His arrogance blinded him into to believing that I couldn't connect the dots. That's when I started looking further into personality disorders. I honestly believe he is a sociopath.
All his friendships are superficial. He only becomes friends with those who can benefit his needs. He's a pathological liar. He will steal from you and take whatever he wants and is very aggressive and feels he is entitled. He is charming and smart and loves to brag about his intelligence. He snarls his nose at his friends, thinking he is far superior. Even though he doesn't have a job and is dependent of others' financial support. I sit in my house everyday feeling like a prisoner. He knows when I'm home and when I leave. He watches me like a hawk. He's a collector of information of his neighbors. He studies people and pits out his next victim.
This book helped me to understand the mind of the sociopath. However, I don't agree entirely with the writer's view on empaths. She boast that empaths bring havoc to the business world because they allow their emotions to get in the way of decision making.
First, I'd like to say that most sociopaths do not function well in this world. They are cunning, underachievers, narcissist, unable to hold down any kind of job, yet they have this since of value that their opinion and intelligence far exceeds anyone else even though they have never kept even the most mundane jobs for more than a few short mouths. Instead of focusing on a career, they use all their energy into manipulating their victims.
They can be violent but they are all a predator and can't be trusted. I believe a sociopath's spurious confidence blinds them, keeping them from seeing the true reality. The reality is that a person or empath, has great leader ability. They are able to understand the heart of this country and will take in consideration that their decision making is not based on selfish motivation but based on heart and endeavor to help others rise above the occasion. Empaths are the ones who make this country. And yes, I am an empath and I am proud to be one!
I gave the writer a three star. I feel that's a fair mark. It's sort of hard to reward someone who's character is questionable.
2.0 out of 5 stars By TK on April 23, 2016 Format: Paperback
Cookie cutter information
I didn't learn anything from this book; it contains the usual suspects in terms of how she defines herself, the kinds of things she does, etc. This book was written for those who are not familiar with sociopathy, and since it's a pop psych deal all over social media, the author is capitalizing; there are statements in that book that seriously cast doubt on her claims, and others that pinpoint, so it seems to be she did a lot of research to write this, rather than glean her own experience. Considering her penchant to drone about her intelligence, her special abilities, and her success, sociopaths lie, manipulate, and cheat to the nth degree; this is what I'm getting from this; sociopaths are easily detectable, at least to me; I think my discernment skills are far superior to those of the author. One star for the subject, it is familial, and one star for the brazen ability to recognize she cannot fool all, but can fool many.
4.0 out of 5 stars By M'ette on March 21, 2016 Format: Paperback
Narcissism is the most prominent indicator of a sociopath, especially at an older age!
A reviewer describes this person as a malignant narcissist which would be an apt description for a layperson to make, but having been married to a very intelligent sociopath for nearly ten years, and currently having one as a mother-in-law, I can claim that without doubt that the lack of conscious marks a sociopath as a sociopath.
The females are less inclined to criminal behavior and better able to pretend to empathy they don't possess, but they do not have the loyalty or empathy the rest of us have, which means they cannot learn from their behavior the way the rest of us can.
My mother-in-law knows something is missing but she doesn't know what that is, not having the education to tell her. She can pretend to be a kind old lady, but she very quickly loses patience with this effort and has alienated everyone who has has dealt with her for any length of time at all. She is, at heart, mean, nasty and cold. I do not think she has the capacity to be different or be kind.
She is nearly a century of age and cannot learn differently. People are agast to see her coming because they have never been around someone so narrowly selfish, self-serving and manipulative. They try to be kind and professional in dealing with her, and being a sociopath, she is unaware of genuine feelings, and believes they actually like her.
These people are out there, in droves, and dealing with one is like nothing else one would ever experience. When I saw this side of my ex-husband I was shocked to the core and felt like I'd been unknowingly married to an insect for years!
His mother was glad I divorced him, and while she loves him, has no illusions about what her son is. That takes courage and keen insight.
Lauren Bennett on February 20, 2016 Format: Paperback
A couple of weeks ago I went to a yard sale and a book caught my eye, because of its subject matter–a copy of M. E. Thomas' autobiography, Confessions of a Sociopath: a Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight.
Ever-fascinated with all things Cluster B, including first-person accounts by narcissists, psychopaths and other antisocial types, I got busy reading that same evening. It took me two weeks to finish the book, when normally I'd devour a book of this length and subject matter in just a few days.
I'm sorry to say, this book was a disappointment. It was a long, painful, boring read. First of all, Ms. Thomas isn't a very good writer. Full of run-on sentences and endless, dull descriptions of how great she thinks she is because she lacks empathy and a conscience (she seems to think of these as traits only weak or stupid people have, reminding me of Ayn Rand without an iota of the latter's intelligence), Thomas comes off more as an obnoxious, self-centered, common narcissist than a true sociopath.
Thomas (who owns the website Sociopath World) is not a criminal. She may well be sociopathic in that she seems to take pleasure in cheating, manipulating, hurting, and discarding others, once gleefully watched a possum drown, and admits she enjoys ruining the reputations of people she has worked with. She clearly has no empathy and seems to have no emotions.
She crows on endlessly about how her lack of a conscience or any empathy has freed her from having to worry about what others think and therefore indicates what she thinks of as her superior intellect. But like the narcissist she really is, she overvalues her achievements and intelligence. She works as an attorney but doesn't seem to be able to stay employed for long, and really doesn't have any other impressive achievements under her belt. Her "theories" about sociopathy are nothing more than rehashes of what other people have already described in psychology texts, and less readable than theirs. Overall, Thomas comes off as self-congratulating, obnoxious, unlikeable, and very shallow. She also comes off as rather dumb.
M. E. Thomas is clearly a malignant narcissist, but by calling herself a "sociopath" you feel like you've been the victim of a bait-and-switch (which is in itself sociopathic, I suppose). The cover of the book is a picture of a sinister female mask on a white background, and you open the book expecting something more than you actually get, at least some sort of depth or insight into her own behavior. But Thomas has no real insight and the book reads more like a resume of her fake "achievements" than a psychological memoir. She talks about her family, who she describes as neglectful, but she doesn't seem to think they were particularly abusive. She takes arrogant pride in her "sociopathy," repeating the word again and again throughout the text, as if to drive home the fact that she really is one, when it seems that she "protesteth too much" and underneath all that bluster, suspects she may not be one. That kind of insecurity over the possibility of not really being what one says they are is a lot more typical of NPD than psychopathy or sociopathy, who don't care what others think of them. Thomas also talks about wanting to have a family and her religion (Mormonism) a lot. Maybe her religion keeps her from acting out against others in more heinous ways and gives her a sort of "cold" conscience, but I sure hope God doesn't let her have children. She doesn't seem capable of maintaining a relationship, so that doesn't exactly work in her favor.
Although narcissists are thought of as having no emotions, it isn't really true that they don't, and there are narcissists and sociopaths who have been able to write about themselves in an emotionally engaging, albeit dark and depressing, way. There is rage and hurt seething behind the surface of their words. But Thomas writes in a cold, emotionless way, probably because she's such a bad writer. As a result, you feel about as excited reading her "memoir" as you'd feel reading the most boring high school textbook–and learn a whole lot less.
The only reason I didn't feel completely ripped off was because the yard sale copy of this book set me back only $1; if I'd purchased it at full price, I'd be pretty annoyed right now. It was all I could do to even finish this book. It was that boring. Don't waste your time. If you want to read a good book about sociopathy, read Marsha Stout's The Sociopath Next Door instead. If you really need to read something that comes "out of the horse's mouth," you'd do better with Sam Vaknin. [...]
0 out of 5 stars By H. Swanby on January 22, 2016 Format: Paperback
300 pages of dull narcissism
I so wish i hadn't wasted my money on this book. The writing was weak and she often contradicts herself and i was utterly bored half way through. Her examples of her sociopathic behaviour aren't very radical - provoking her father to anger in teen years, taking a neighbors bike without permission and returning it (so naughty!), following a man who angered her with murderous intent for a block or so until she lost him. 300 pages of self-aggrandizing that comes across as juvenile and insecure. Perhaps she is malicious and conniving and maybe even a sociopath whatever that actually is (I am not a fan of the DSM), but ultimately its not that interesting, definitely not enlightening.
4.0 out of 5 stars By White Rabbit on January 8, 2016 Format: Paperback
Entertaining Self-Aggrandizement Thinly Veiled as Pseudo-Analysis
This was a super-fast, easy, entertaining read, but it reminded me of the glib answer to the interview question "what's your weakness?" : "I'm a perfectionist." The author is undoubtedly bright, although probably not nearly as "brilliant" as she avows on every page. By structuring her personal & professional life to avoid any long-term serious human interaction or competition, she intentionally insulates herself from any real challenges to her thinking or persona. For instance, by bragging that her starting salary as a new lawyer was 170k, she dates herself precisely to the "fattest" 7 years the legal profession has ever had. She did not land that job because she was so brilliant, but because law firms during that period were hiring any carbon-based life form. Also, her assessment that sociopaths are "too rational" (i.e., not guided by emotion or constrained by herd mentality/morality) gets it diametrically wrong. Those sociopaths who either turn criminal (& are found out) or carve out less "successful" lives actually suffer from too LITTLE rational thinking, analysis, and sober calculation, not too much. This is likely correlated to their own inflated ego/self-assessment (as this author exemplifies), or imperviousness/reduced sensitivity to pain/negative consequences, and it leads to failure to accurately assess/predict the negative consequences of their actions, from underestimating the likelihood of getting "caught" to not being able to sustain any romantic relationship longer than the author's case of 8 months. Thus I think it is not "too much logic" that is the root of the problem (but merely its outside manifestation), but bad math, which is rather ironic for someone who envisions/imagines herself to be a brilliant differential engine unhampered by bloody wet emotion. What perpetuates both the sociopathological & narcissistic self-perspective (which, incidentally, is far more common and far more adaptive than the author thinks) is the carefully constructed bubble of invincibility these people construct around themselves, often choosing to rise no higher than the pond in which they assure themselves they are the biggest or flashiest fish. It is easy to imagine yourself King of the Jungle when you surround yourself with declawed kittens. Nonetheless, interesting breezy read, although the book would have better without the utterly banal and transparently false hand-wringing/crocodile tears of the Epilogue.
[Jul 16, 2016] Are you a female sociopath - Telegraph By Helena Kealey
By Helena Kealey
5:24PM BST 06 Oct 2014
Witness the rise of the female sociopath. Cruel, calculating and calm under pressure; these emotionally detached women are in our lives, on our television screens and with the release of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl this weekend, making waves in our cinemas. Sociopaths can be charming, funny and even practised at appearing sympathetic. In fact, one per cent of all women are sociopaths. To put that in context, one to two per cent of the population has red hair. It's likely that you know one, and it's even possible that you are one. Take this test to find out if you are in the emotionally detached one per cent. To take the quiz on your phone: click here.
[Jul 16, 2016] Rethinking Female Sociopathy, Part One by Dr Tara J. Palmatier
"... Rethinking Female Sociopathy ..."
January 4, 2012 | shrink4men.com
Shrink4Men: Helping men break free from abusive relationships since 2009
What are the characteristics of a sociopath?
Psychologists Hervey Cleckley and Robert Hare both developed sociopathy checklists. The following characteristics are culled from their work.
Sociopaths have Jekyll and Hyde personalities and can be superficially charming. Their outward appearance is often very conventional or they disguise themselves as helpless victims. Alternately, sociopaths may come across as grandiose and narcissistic. Sociopaths come in all shapes, sizes, sexes, ethnicities and walks of life.
Sociopaths seem to have contempt for their victim's feelings and believe their victims deserve to be hurt, taken advantage of and exploited. They have no empathy or very selective empathy (e.g., your wife shows empathy toward someone who hurts or bullies you). They lie, cheat, manipulate, and/or verbally and/or physically intimidate others to get their way or to "win." To a sociopath, the ends justify the means.
Sociopaths may refuse to recognize that others have rights and believe they're entitled to violate the rights of others. In fact, they often try to control and humiliate their victims. They see people as objects and value others based upon their utility and ease of exploitation rather than fellow human beings. People are either targets and opportunities for exploitation. They don't have friends, but rather victims and accomplices who later become victims.
Sociopaths often have a gross and exaggerated sense of entitlement. They seem incapable of true love relationships and often confuse love with ability to control and exploit someone. They are unable to form healthy attachments with others.
Sociopaths seem to be able to lie very easily. You can have a video or audio recording of them perpetrating a crime or some abusive act and they will still pee on your leg and tell you it's raining. They often believe their own lies and may even be able to pass a polygraph. They seem to lack the capacity for remorse or guilt. For example, many of my clients are more likely to squeeze blood from a stone than to receive a sincere apology from their wives, girlfriends or exes.
When sociopaths seem to be expressing positive feelings it is typically because they are mimicking others to appear socially and psychologically normal. For example, a man on the Shrink4Men forum found a note his wife wrote to herself reminding herself to act nice and to pretend to be interested in her husband's day in order to get something she wanted from him. Warm and loving behavior may be a manipulation in order to be better able to exploit their victims. For example, they pull you close to be able to get a better swing at you – emotionally or physically.
Sociopaths have a need for extreme stimulation in order to feel emotion and are prone to feeling chronically bored. Some may resort to physical violence, gambling, drugs and alcohol, and/or promiscuity; while others create unnecessary conflict and drama for stimulation.
Sociopaths blame others for their bad behaviors and do not take personal responsibility for their actions. At their core, they are filled with rage, which is often split off and projected onto their victims. Sociopaths have poor behavioral and emotional controls and can be impulsive. They often alternate rage and abuse with small expressions of love and approval to keep their victims under their control.
Sociopaths lack boundaries and do not care how their behavior affects others. They may become enraged and/or desperate when their victims try to enforce boundaries on their abusive behaviors. They have difficulty maintaining friendships, and, is it any wonder given how they treat others?
They typically end relationships and/or try destroying former friends who have seen behind their masks. Some may have long-term friendships, but they either seem to be long-distance or friendships with incredibly damaged individuals with low self-esteem who admire the sociopath, i.e., sycophants.
Some may have a history of childhood emotional and behavioral disturbances while others do not. Some sociopathic individuals come from otherwise healthy and loving families.
Sociopaths are often irresponsible and unreliable. They have a history of breaking promises yet become enraged and vengeful if they believe someone has broken a promise to them. They have unrealistic life plans and often live beyond their means. Many live what can be described as a parasitic life in that they get through life by exploiting others.
Sociopaths may have diffuse identities. Many dramatically change their appearance or outward persona in order to exploit new victims or to avoid punishment. For example, when many of my clients met their wives and girlfriends, they feigned similar interests, beliefs, etc., and pretended to be someone they weren't in order to secure the relationship.
Sociopaths are ungrateful and contemptuous of people who try to help and understand them. Oftentimes, they do not believe anything is wrong with them, which is why therapy rarely works. If they acknowledge a problem, they usually blame others for it. Or, if they are formally diagnosed with a mental illness or other personality disorder, they may use their diagnosis to absolve them of their abusive behaviors.
Sociopaths typically do not trust others. They can be authoritarian, paranoid and secretive. They seek relationships with others who will accept, tolerate, condone or admire their bad behavior. They like nothing better than to have a willing victim.
Sociopaths often try to control every aspect of their victims' lives. They can be pretty territorial about their victims, which their victims often confuse with love and jealousy. It's not about love. You're their half-dead mouse and they don't want any other predators messing with "their property." A good example of this is when a woman becomes unhinged when her ex begins dating or gets remarried - especially if she's already moved onto to another victim, er, I mean, relationship .
Lastly, and I think this characteristic will resonate with many of you, sociopaths have an emotional need to justify their crimes and demand that their victims show them gratitude, love and respect. In other words:
Sociopaths expect that their victims show gratitude for being victimized by them.
In a few days, I will post the second part of Rethinking Female Sociopathy , so please check back.
[Jul 16, 2016] Female sociopaths display all the symptoms of a sociopath: lying, a parasitic lifestyle, the need for control, and the craving for excitement.
"... "She will choose you, charm you with her words, and control you with her presence. She will delight you with her wit and her plans. She will show you a good time, but you will always get the bill. She will smile and deceive you, and she will scare you with her eyes. And when she is through with you, and she will be through with you, she will desert you and take with her your innocence and your pride. You will be left much sadder but not a lot wiser, and for a long time you will wonder what you did wrong." ..."
"... Most of us think of women as sensitive and nurturing. We don't expect to see uncaring, cold-hearted, callous behaviors in women. It's hard to imagine them being more conniving, controlling, destructive, malicious and downright mean than the male sociopath. ..."
male%20sociopaths%20display%20all%20the%20symptoms%20of%20a%20sociopath:%20lying,%20a%20parasitic%20lifestyle,%20the%20need%20for%20control,%20and%20the%20craving%20for%20excitement.%20https:
Female sociopaths display all the symptoms of a sociopath: lying, a parasitic lifestyle, the need for control, and the craving for excitement. Many live what looks like a typical life from the outside, content with blending in and doing what "normal" people do.
Others need more... more money, more control, more power, more excitement. They often get into trouble as they become impulsive, unable to control their emotions and behaving irresponsibly.
These behaviors often bring problems witin their marriage. Showing true sociopath style, they entice a man, create an intimate relationship, manipulate his decisions, and get married. They may try to isolate the man from his family and friends. They become bossy and controlling and will use sex as a tool to manipulate. The man is often subjected to emotional, verbal, psychological, and physical abuse.
If there are children of the marriage, it becomes ever more difficult. If there is a separation or divorce, the sociopath will easily use the children as pawns or objects as a way to continue to control the man.
They will not hesitate to obtain information from the children to use against their father, will lie to brainwash them into thinking Daddy is "bad" and will keep the father from having contact with them. They do this to keep their power and control and the wellbeing of the children is never a concern.
Female sociopaths have no problem lying, making up stories and doing whatever is necessary to get what they want. This works well in family matters where police or courts are involved. They are very convincing when playing the victim, and use society's favoritism towards women and mothers to their full advantage.
Many female sociopaths go from one relationship to another. They use their sociopathic charm, good looks and female allures to build a relationship, take what they want, and disappear. Men are disposable! They leave behind a trail of broken hearts and baffled men, many who are poorer after the experience!
The writing below was cited from "Decision Making Confidence"
"She will choose you, charm you with her words, and control you with her presence. She will delight you with her wit and her plans. She will show you a good time, but you will always get the bill. She will smile and deceive you, and she will scare you with her eyes. And when she is through with you, and she will be through with you, she will desert you and take with her your innocence and your pride. You will be left much sadder but not a lot wiser, and for a long time you will wonder what you did wrong."
Most of us think of women as sensitive and nurturing. We don't expect to see uncaring, cold-hearted, callous behaviors in women. It's hard to imagine them being more conniving, controlling, destructive, malicious and downright mean than the male sociopath.
However, just ask any man who has been a victim of a female sociopath...
If you're a man in an abusive relationship, it's important to know that you're not alone. It happens to men from all cultures and all walks of life. Figures suggest that as many as one in three victims of domestic violence are male. However, men are often reluctant to report abuse by women because they feel embarrassed, or they fear they won't be believed, or worse, that police will assume that since they're male they are the perpetrator of the violence and not the victim.
An abusive wife or partner may hit, kick, bite, punch, spit, throw things, or destroy your possessions. To make up for any difference in strength, she may attack you while you're asleep or otherwise catch you by surprise. She may also use a weapon, such as a gun or knife, or strike you with an object, abuse or threaten your children, or harm your pets. Of course, domestic abuse is not limited to violence.
Domestic violence and abuse can have a serious physical and psychological impact on both you and your children. The first step to stopping the abuse is to reach out. Talk to a friend, family member, or someone else you trust, or call a domestic violence helpline.
Admitting the problem and seeking help doesn't mean you have failed as a man or as a husband. You are not to blame, and you are not weak. As well as offering a sense of relief and providing some much needed support, sharing details of your abuse can also be the first step in building a case against your abuser and protecting your kids.
When dealing with your abusive partner:
Leave if possible. Be aware of any signs that may trigger a violent response from your spouse or partner and be ready to leave quickly. If you need to stay to protect your children, call the emergency services. The police have an obligation to protect you and your children, just as they do a female victim.
Never retaliate. An abusive woman or partner will often try to provoke you into retaliating or using force to escape the situation. If you do retaliate, you'll almost certainly be the one who is arrested and/or removed from your home.
Get evidence of the abuse. Report all incidents to the police and get a copy of each police report. Keep a journal of all abuse with a clear record of dates, times, and any witnesses. Include a photographic record of your injuries and make sure your doctor or hospital also documents your injuries. Remember, medical personnel are unlikely to ask if a man has been a victim of domestic violence, so it's up to you to ensure the cause of your injuries are documented.
Keep a mobile phone, evidence of the abuse, and other important documents close at hand. If you and your children have to leave instantly in order to escape the abuse, you'll need to take with you evidence of the abuse and important documents, such as passport and driver's license. It may be safer to keep these items outside of the home.
Obtain advice from a domestic violence program or legal aid resource about getting a restraining order or order of protection against your spouse and, if necessary, seeking temporary custody of your children.
Help for abused men: Moving on from an abusive relationship
Support from family and friends as well as counseling, therapy, and support groups for domestic abuse survivors can help you move on from an abusive relationship. You or your children may struggle with upsetting emotions or feel numb, disconnected, and unable to trust other people. After the trauma of an abusive relationship, it can take a while to get over the pain and bad memories but you can heal and move on.
Even if you're eager to jump into a new relationship and finally get the intimacy and support you've been missing, it's wise take things slowly. Make sure you're aware of any red flag behaviors in a potential new partner and what it takes to build healthy, new relationships.
In the U.S. and Canada: Call The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-888-799-7233
[Jul 15, 2016] The female sociopath
"... Unlike these women, the functional sociopath isn't "dismissible" as a slave to her emotions. She is not outwardly violent. Patently remorseless, clear-eyed and calculating, she is chameleonic in the extreme, donning one feigned feeling after another (interest, concern, sympathy, simpering insecurity, confidence, arrogance, lust, even love) to get what she wants. ..."
"... "You might call it seduction," she suggests, but really "it's called arbitrage and it happens on Wall Street (and a lot of other places) every day." Whatever you choose to call it, its appeal is undeniable when linked to the professional and personal advancement of women. "In general, the women in my life seemed like they were never acting, always being acted upon," Thomas laments. ..."
"... With it, researchers over the last decade have estimated that sociopaths comprise three to four percent of the U.S. population, or roughly 10 million people who regularly demonstrate a lack of empathy, a conniving and ruthless attitude towards interpersonal relationships, and immunity to experiencing negative emotions. A mere 1.5 million of them are women. ..."
...Gone Girl, one of the most popular and addictive novels of the past decade, as Amy Dunne - the beguiling and cerebral housewife who stages her own murder and frames her philandering husband. Amy's creator, the novelist Gillian Flynn, has proudly described her character as a "functioning sociopath," which she is quick to distinguish from "the iconic psycho bitch." The iconic psycho bitch, Flynn explains, is crazy because "her lady parts have gone crazy." Think of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, so consumed with desire for Michael Douglas that she boils his daughter's pet rabbit to death; think of Sharon Stone and Jennifer Jason Leigh (and Kathy Bates and Rebecca De Mornay) chasing men through dim rooms with sharp objects.
Unlike these women, the functional sociopath isn't "dismissible" as a slave to her emotions. She is not outwardly violent. Patently remorseless, clear-eyed and calculating, she is chameleonic in the extreme, donning one feigned feeling after another (interest, concern, sympathy, simpering insecurity, confidence, arrogance, lust, even love) to get what she wants.
And why should she feel bad about it?
For M.E. Thomas, author of Confessions of A Sociopath, such affective maneuvers are tantamount to "fulfilling an exchange." "You might call it seduction," she suggests, but really "it's called arbitrage and it happens on Wall Street (and a lot of other places) every day." Whatever you choose to call it, its appeal is undeniable when linked to the professional and personal advancement of women. "In general, the women in my life seemed like they were never acting, always being acted upon," Thomas laments.
Sociopathy's silver lining was that it gave her a way to combat that injustice, in the boardroom of the corporate law firm she worked for in Los Angeles, but also in the bedroom, where she marveled at how her emotional detachment let her commandeer her lovers' hearts and minds. Somewhere along the way, pathology became recoded as practice - a set of rules for how to manage the self and others.
She is the apotheosis of the cool girl power that go-getter "feminists" have peddled to frustrated women over the last half-decade.
No wonder the female sociopath cuts such an admirable figure. Intensely romantic, professionally desirable, she is the stuff of fiction, fantasy, and aspirational reading. And while actual female sociopaths like Thomas are rare, and sociopathy isn't even recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the female sociopath looms large in our cultural imagination. Amy Dunne may stand as the perfect example - a "Cool Girl" on the outside, ice cold within - but she is not alone. Of late, she has faced stiff competition from fictional females like Lisbeth Salander, the ferocious tech genius in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, or Laura, the shape-shifting alien who preys on unwitting men in Under the Skin. Network television has been even kinder to the female sociopath, placing her at the center of workplace dramas like Damages, Revenge, Bones, The Fall, Rizzoli and Isles, Person of Interest, Luther, and 24. Here, she has mesmerized audiences with how nimbly she scales the professional ladder, her competence and sex appeal whetted by her dark, aggressive, risk-taking behavior, and lack of empathy.
And so we lean in to the cultural logic of the female sociopath, for she is the apotheosis of the cool girl power that go-getter "feminists" have peddled to frustrated women over the last half-decade. The female sociopath doesn't want to upend systems of gender inequality, that vast and irreducible constellation of institutions and beliefs that lead successful women like Gillian Flynn to decree that certain women, who feel or behave in certain ways, are "dismissible." The female sociopath wants to dominate these systems from within, as the most streamlined product of a world in which well-intentioned people blithely invoke words like arbitrage, leverage, capital, and currency to appraise how successfully we inhabit our bodies, our selves. One could easily imagine the female sociopath devouring books with titles like Bo$$ Bitch, Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office, The Confidence Gap, and Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman to hone her craft - to learn how to have it all. From atop the corporate ladder, she can applaud her liberation from the whole messy business of feeling as a step forward for women, when it's really a step back.
The result is a self-defeating spectacle of feminism that finds a kindred spirit in Rosamund Pike on the cover of W, erasing her own perfect face to reveal that what lies beneath might be nothing. Like Gone Girl's Amy Dunne, who confesses that she "has never really felt like a person, but a product" - plastic, fungible, ready to be consumed by anyone, at any time - the female sociopath is a product of a broken promise made to women, by women. She is a product poised to disappear into the immense darkness from which she came.
If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them
Female sociopaths are rare, making up only 15% of all those diagnosed.
Ask any psychiatrist, and he will tell you that the female sociopath is a rare, almost mythological, creature. Ask Dr. Robert Hare, perhaps the most prolific researcher in criminal psychology and creator of the Hare Psychopath Checklist (PCL-R), and he will place the ratio of male to female sociopaths at seven to one - practically unworthy of discussion, let alone veneration. The PCL-R, which Hare developed during his work with inmate populations in Canada, is widely considered the gold standard for identifying and discussing anti-social behavior - and by the same token, for identifying and discussing what constitutes "normal" social behavior. With it, researchers over the last decade have estimated that sociopaths comprise three to four percent of the U.S. population, or roughly 10 million people who regularly demonstrate a lack of empathy, a conniving and ruthless attitude towards interpersonal relationships, and immunity to experiencing negative emotions. A mere 1.5 million of them are women.
"... Some female sociopaths demonstrate antisocial behavior as children and as adolescents. Lying, stealing, truancy, cruelty to animals and siblings, drug abuse, early sexual activity. Of course, there may be frequent run-ins with the law. Their parents are very often distraught because there is so little they can do. As adults, these female sociopaths may end up abusing alcohol and drugs and end up in and out of prison. ..."
"... Female sociopaths have all the symptoms of sociopaths. The lying, the parasitic lifestyle, the need for excitement and the desire to control. It's possible that there are many female sociopaths who live, for all intents and purposes, what looks like a normal life from the outside. They are content to just blend in and do what "normal" people do. ..."
"... One of the ways this shows up is in problems in their marriage. In true sociopath style, they attract a man, create an intimate relationship , influence his decision making and get married. It's common for them to isolate the man from his friends and family to varying degrees. They can be very domineering and controlling, using sex as a means to manipulate. The man may suffer verbal abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse and even physical abuse. ..."
"... When there are children involved it gets infinitely more complicated. Especially in separations and divorces. The female sociopaths have no difficulty (remember no remorse, guilt or pity for anybody) in using the children as pawns or objects to try to continue to manipulate the man. ..."
"... In family matters where the police or the courts involved, they have no difficulty in lying, inventing stories and doing whatever is necessary to get what they want. They can play the victim role very well, as most sociopaths do, and will use society's preferences towards women and mothers to their advantage. ..."
"... Apparently both male and female psychopaths have high levels of testosterone. It has been found that in normal populations, higher levels of testosterone are associated with higher sex drive, more sexual activity and more attractiveness to the opposite sex. This will make female sociopaths more appealing to males. Add to this the lack of inhibition, and the grandiose sense of self and you have a lethal combination! Think femme fatale! It may also explain the lack of desire to have children and the failure to look after them if they do. It's not uncommon for female sociopaths to leave young children unattended, for example, because they have other more important things to do. ..."
"... We normally think women are empathic and nurturing and don't expect to see cold-hearted, uncaring, callous behaviors in women. We don't consider that they could be more devious, manipulative, destructive, vindictive and downright nasty than their male counterparts. But just ask any man who has been a victim of female sociopaths...! ..."
Apparently both male and female psychopaths have high levels of testosterone. It has been found that in normal populations, higher levels of testosterone are associated with higher sex drive, more sexual activity and more attractiveness to the opposite sex. This will make female sociopaths more appealing to males. Add to this the lack of inhibition, and the grandiose sense of self and you have a lethal combination! Think femme fatale! It may also explain the lack of desire to have children and the failure to look after them if they do. It's not uncommon for female sociopaths to leave young children unattended, for example, because they have other more important things to do.
We normally think women are empathic and nurturing and don't expect to see cold-hearted, uncaring, callous behaviors in women. We don't consider that they could be more devious, manipulative, destructive, vindictive and downright nasty than their male counterparts. But just ask any man who has been a victim of female sociopaths...!
[Apr 12, 2016] Mind Games Emotionally Manipulative Tactics Partners Use to Control Relationships and Force the Upper Hand
"... They view relationships as power struggles and always want to be on the winning side of it. They have impaired consciences and don't mind fighting dirty. They can lie with a straight face and have a professional-level poker face. ..."
To an abuser, emotional manipulation serves one goal and one goal only. It's the determination to win and possess the most power in a relationship. They believe that when they have such power, they will be happy... and it's all at your expense. It's an amazingly unhealthy approach to a relationship, and anything for that matter. If you approach something solely to win, that means you put winning as a higher priority than someone's feelings and ultimately wellbeing.
If you approach an argument solely to win, then you ignore the underlying issues and are not resolution-focused. And if you approach a relationship solely to win, then you are spitting on the underlying concept of a relationship.
You are mistaking it for a battle of vulnerability and control, while relationships should be the polar opposite. Relationships are a give-and-take and require compromise. Relationships are not a zero-sum game, and they do not function like a dom-sub relationship from the BDSM world. Abusers forget this, or worse... they realize it and know exactly what they are doing when they manipulate you.
Abusers embody a frightening combination of traits that make them dangerous.
They are focused and intentional about what they want from you. They have a penchant for deception and backhanded tactics of questionable morality. They view relationships as power struggles and always want to be on the winning side of it. They have impaired consciences and don't mind fighting dirty. They can lie with a straight face and have a professional-level poker face.
They live in a zone of danger where they are smart enough to be able to fool you yet dumb enough to not see the damage they are doing.
But let's get one thing straight. Your abuser wants power over you, and this means one simple truth. They don't love you. They just don't, or else they would treat you better and respect you. They may think they love you, but that's a testament to their skewed understanding of love and how relationships work. At best, the} believe they know what's best for you and seek to control every aspect of your life.
If they don't love you, what do they love? What motivates them?
They love controlling someone. That's what gives them pleasure, and they will go to any lengths to maintain that pleasure. That's why they make you feel downtrodden on a daily basis and constantly tell you that you aren't good enough or smart enough. You hear it so much, you begin believing it instead of trusting yourself and your self-esteem... and that's exactly where your abuser wants you. It makes them feel better about themselves and happy to be adored.
.... ... ...
Emotional manipulation is rarely as direct and obvious as you might think. Perhaps it might be obvious to the casual bystander, but when you're emotionally invested, everything simply appears incredibly complex and layered.
[Apr 12, 2016] Surviving Sara: Marrying a narcissistic sociopath
"... Some of the chapters were next to impossible to write because of the nature of the situations I found myself in, and how personal the memories were, and I hesitated including them in this book, however I felt it was needed to show the lengths Sara would go to to manipulate, degrade and brainwash me, ultimately leading to the destruction of our marriage. It took me a very long time to recognize and admit I was a victim of abuse, especially from a woman. ..."
"... Being a man's man, that wasn't easy. After my admission, I had to take a look back at the big picture and realize my intentions were always good, but I was just manipulated, brainwashed and beaten down to the point of alienating virtually everyone away from me. ..."
"... This was the life I lived for 12 years.... ..."
"... As time went on, and we spent virtually every waking moment together, I began to feel the suffocation of a poisonous relationship creeping in, but by the time I realized this, I was too deep into it and didn't know what to do; the brainwashing had begun. ..."
"... Admittedly, there was a fairly significant amount of fear I developed towards Sara. Along the way, I had friends I turned to here and there, but eventually, telling people some of the things that were going on was far too embarrassing to share. ..."
Author's Note The events that happened throughout this book are all true, recalled from the best of my memory and/or old journals I had kept. Those who read it, may not like everything they read, but unfortunately sometimes the truth is the hardest thing to hear. All of the dialogue has been reconstructed from memory; it may not be word for word, but the nature of what was said is accurate. It was suggested by some of my closest friends and family that I take my unbelievable story and life lessons learned with Sara and not only write them down, but publish a book for others to read and try to grasp the hell I lived. I know I'm not alone in what I had gone through and there are other people out there who are living a similar life that I lived. I thought that if I wrote this book, sharing the struggles I faced being married to someone who was mentally, emotionally and sometimes physically abusive (not to mention controlling, completely unpredictable and manipulative), there may be some small chance that one of these people living in a similar hell may read it and find that there is a way out. There is hope for a better life.
I will say, wiiting these memories, (or in most cases nightmares) down was very therapeutic but not often easy. I do not regret anything I wrote in this book. I wanted everything to be honest, factual, uncensored and descriptive, and I believe in order to do it right, it couldn't have been done any other way. Some of the chapters were next to impossible to write because of the nature of the situations I found myself in, and how personal the memories were, and I hesitated including them in this book, however I felt it was needed to show the lengths Sara would go to to manipulate, degrade and brainwash me, ultimately leading to the destruction of our marriage. It took me a very long time to recognize and admit I was a victim of abuse, especially from a woman.
Being a man's man, that wasn't easy. After my admission, I had to take a look back at the big picture and realize my intentions were always good, but I was just manipulated, brainwashed and beaten down to the point of alienating virtually everyone away from me. I was lost and spiraling quickly down a very dark, destructive path. I am still working on standing tall and holding my head up after many years of abuse. I am not ashamed of myself any longer, and have become comfortable speaking out on this subject. I am a much different man today than I was back then. This is my story. This was the life I lived for 12 years....
My point? We were like any other teenage romance. It was not uncommon for us to do sweet gestures for each other like writing little notes in our lockers at school to each other, or meeting each other for lunch. I'm sure we made some people sick. Then things began to slowly change. As time went on, and we spent virtually every waking moment together, I began to feel the suffocation of a poisonous relationship creeping in, but by the time I realized this, I was too deep into it and didn't know what to do; the brainwashing had begun.
Admittedly, there was a fairly significant amount of fear I developed towards Sara. Along the way, I had friends I turned to here and there, but eventually, telling people some of the things that were going on was far too embarrassing to share. I kept things to myself and tried to work through them alone, or just simply ignore them...
[Apr 07, 2016] Characteristics Associated with Cultic Groups - Revised
csj.org
Janja Lalich, Ph.D. & Michael D. Langone, Ph.D.
Concerted efforts at influence and control lie at the core of cultic groups, programs, and relationships. Many members, former members, and supporters of cults are not fully aware of the extent to which members may have been manipulated, exploited, even abused. The following list of social-structural, social-psychological, and interpersonal behavioral patterns commonly found in cultic environments may be helpful in assessing a particular group or relationship.
Compare these patterns to the situation you were in (or in which you, a family member, or friend is currently involved). This list may help you determine if there is cause for concern. Bear in mind that this list is not meant to be a "cult scale" or a definitive checklist to determine if a specific group is a cult. This is not so much a diagnostic instrument as it is an analytical tool.
The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry-or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar-or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).
The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).
The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).
The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt iin order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
The group is preoccupied with making money.
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
The most loyal members (the "true believers") feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.
This checklist will be published in the new book, Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias (Berkeley: Bay Tree Publishing, 2006). It was adapted from a checklist originally developed by Michael Langone.
[Apr 07, 2016] The Confidence Game Why We Fall for It... Every Time by Maria Konnikova
Hardcover: 352 pages, Viking (January 12, 2016)
"... I went back and saw ways I got conned in matters of the heart while dating; in buying things; in following certain leaders in church. ..."
"... As a former prosecutor of elder abuse crimes (both physical and financial), I have a lot of experience with people who "fall for it." But that certainly doesn't mean everyone does. Nor does it mean that the ones who don't "fall for it" are more cynical, less humane, less open to true friendship, etc. In fact, Konnikova's description of victims of con artists as being more open and in touch with their humanity sounds like the manipulation of a con artist. ..."
"... As a scientist, used to sorting through ambiguous evidence and well-meaning but underdetermined interpretations, I find this book excellent. The author no doubt has to cast speculations of her own, and overplay some connections and implications, but the connections between gullibility, optimism, cults, and scams strike me as well articulated. ..."
"... But you are not at all privileged to launch unsolicited attacks on the personal attributes of the author. (Your line "until she matures as a thinker and researcher....." was completely uncalled-for, and hints more at your feelings of insecurity and inadequacy than anything else.) ..."
"... Three-card monte gets some attention - but that's not that interesting to me...I know why they succeed, because people want to see if THEY can beat the game - it's not a con as much as a battle of wits, which the rube always loses (I was cheated on a rigged carny game years ago - they suck you in with a few easy wins, then it gets progressively harder to win the stuffed animal). ..."
"... as long as there's an advantage to fooling somebody, people will try to fool other people. ..."
"... A confidence game starts with basic human psychology. The con identifies what the victim wants and how to play on that desire to achieve what the con-artist wants. Size someone up well, and you can sell them anything; it helps to have someone in the throes of some sort of life turmoil - the conman preys on what people wish were true, reaffirming their views of themselves and giving their lives meaning. Doing so requires the creation of empathy and rapport - laying an emotional foundation before any scheme is proposed. ..."
"... The con is an exercise in soft skills - trust, sympathy, persuasion. He doesn't steal - we give. We believe because we want to, and we offer whatever they want - money, reputation, trust, fame, support, and don't realize what is happening until it is too late. No one is immune to the art of the con - it is not who you are, but where you happen to be at the moment in your life (eg. undergoing misfortune). ..."
"... The con is the oldest game there is, and it's likely to be entering a new age - thanks to new opportunities brought by increasing technology that make it far easier to establish convincing false identities (eg. LinkedIn), as well as identify those who might be more likely conned (dating sites that identify widows and divorcees). ..."
"... Con artists aren't just master manipulators - they are expert storytellers (eg. 'I'm supporting my mother, who now has AIDS,' 'I had PTSD from Iraq,' etc. Once we've accepted a story as true we will probably unconsciously bend any contradictory information to conform to the conclusion we've already drawn - it's known as 'confirmation bias.' Ultimately, what a confidence artist sells is hope. Many cases go unreported - most cases, by some estimates. AARP found that only 37% of victims over 55 will admit to having fallen for a con, and just over half those under 55 do so. Most con artists don't ever come to trial because they aren't brought to the authorities to begin with. ..."
"... The first commandment of the con man - 'Be a patient listener.' (Victor Lustig, con artist) Emotion is the primary hook used, much more powerful than logic. Cons tend to thrive in the wake of economic or natural disaster illness, personal travail. Sadness makes us more prone to risk taking and impulsivity - perfect for certain types of cons. Con artists love funerals and obituaries, divorces, layoffs, and general loneliness. He does everything in his power to bring our self-perceived better-than-averageness perceptions to the fore - eg. 'How intelligent you are, Professor Frampton.' And we believe it, because we want it to be. ..."
"... They recognize common traits, like our tendency to see others as similar to ourselves, our illusion of control, and our unwillingness to think badly about ourselves. These traits aren't weaknesses; without them, we'd be functionally paralyzed. Effective swindlers work by turning our best characteristics and human capabilities against us. ..."
"... Fraudsters prey on traits that open us to community, family, and fiscal reward. As Konnikova writes: "The same thing that can underlie success can also make you all the more vulnerable to the grifter's wares. We are predisposed to trust." With swindles, as with propaganda, those who think themselves most immune are, actually, most vulnerable. ..."
"... "It's not that the confidence artist is inherently psychopathic, caring nothing about the fates of others. It's that, to him, we aren't worthy of consideration as human beings; we are targets, not unique people." ..."
"... Konnikova suggests it's difficult to prevent con-games without isolating ourselves and descending into cynicism. In the later chapters, though, she reverses the trend, showing how skilled, self-aware people can resist flim-flam artists' techniques. Not hypothetically, either: she shows how real people, cult busters and cultural anthropologists and police, have maintained their sanity when confronted by seemingly insurmountable double-dealing. Resistance is possible. ..."
"... Even if we never vote for crooks, invest with Bernie Madoff, or buy salvation sellers' wares, the potential for confidence games still surrounds us. Konnikova provides needed tools for self-awareness, clear boundaries, and bold self-defense. Swindles are inevitable; victimhood isn't. ..."
Dan E. Nicholas, February 4, 2016
And some are not even bad people. She says it's when folks who lack ...
I'm reading and loving this book. I'll expand my review when I'm completely done in a couple days but just have to say: get it. Read it. Learn about yourself; if you dare. (I gave it four stars rather than five to protect myself!)
I was shocked how well she documents that it is we the conned that want the con to be real. The Grifter doesn't even have to always be that skilled. I went back and saw ways I got conned in matters of the heart while dating; in buying things; in following certain leaders in church.
Stunned to learned that 1% of the population is psychopathological in the way their brains are wired, some folks just can't feel or give meaning to your pain or the pain of others. And some are not even bad people. She says it's when folks who lack this "proper" wiring aim to use it for financial gain or to win and break hearts? Awful.
I fell in love with a Man Eater once. Looking back I see how it was my fault in setting up my own fall. I want things to look like they would work. The bad rests on me now. She's still a Man Eater. But the wounds I earned with my stupidity. I went on to find success with love but I've some scars for sure due to female cons running scams unwittingly online with dating sights.
She shows we can be wise without being cynical. I like that.
Wild'n'Free
Disappointing but with some qualities, November 28, 2015
Konnikova promises a lot in the titles to her books. I read Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes and was disappointed. I did not learn to think like Sherlock Holmes; not by a long shot. In this book, Konnikova has come closer to delivering the "Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time" but I disagree with her observations and conclusions.
As a former prosecutor of elder abuse crimes (both physical and financial), I have a lot of experience with people who "fall for it." But that certainly doesn't mean everyone does. Nor does it mean that the ones who don't "fall for it" are more cynical, less humane, less open to true friendship, etc. In fact, Konnikova's description of victims of con artists as being more open and in touch with their humanity sounds like the manipulation of a con artist.
Not that I think Konnikova is a con artist. She is just a very ambitious young woman and a self-promoter. I have read a lot of her magazine articles and have enjoyed many of them. Unfortunately, her organizational and analytical skills as a writer do not make her a good writer of books. Viewed as a series of magazine articles with the inevitable repetitions this book holds up fairly well.
But as a book, it lacks a great deal. It certainly deserves 3 stars, but its failure to respond to bigger questions with bigger answers makes it fall short. For me, it was an uneven, often repetitious, fairly shallow approach to a fascinating subject. Until she matures as a thinker and researcher, Konnikova does better when she sticks to the magazine articles that she handles so well.
SundayAtDusk says:
"In fact, Konnikova's description of victims of con artists as being more open and in touch with their humanity sounds like the manipulation of a con artist."
Excellent observation and excellent review.
JohnVidale says:
As a scientist, used to sorting through ambiguous evidence and well-meaning but underdetermined interpretations, I find this book excellent. The author no doubt has to cast speculations of her own, and overplay some connections and implications, but the connections between gullibility, optimism, cults, and scams strike me as well articulated. The field of psychology is messy, but this book was very interesting and enlightening, clear as is possible (aside from chapters organized like magazine articles), and the connection between empathetic people and people who get scammed seems completely reasonable, albeit with a less than perfect correlation.
Joe Madison says:
I have the same question as Ellis Reppo: If this book is only average, can you recommend a good one? I have not read The Confidence Game, but I have a psych degree and a longstanding interest in persuasion. I often find popular psych books to be like you describe The Confidence Game (repetitive, without great breadth of understanding), and so your own book recommendations would be of real value. Thanks!
pat black says:
There's one called Eyeing the Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist. A case study, if you will, of a 17-year-old middle class math whiz who became a midway con man in 1960s midwest
JLMK
I'd stick to making an unbiased appraisal of the merits of the book if I were you, and cut out the ad hominem nonsense. As a reviewer you are privileged to make an opinion on the book's attributes, how it answers the questions raised by the author, etc.
But you are not at all privileged to launch unsolicited attacks on the personal attributes of the author. (Your line "until she matures as a thinker and researcher....." was completely uncalled-for, and hints more at your feelings of insecurity and inadequacy than anything else.)
Kirk McElhearn says:
Read David Maurer's The Big Con. It explains how the cons work, rather than focusing on lots of psychological studies that Konnikova looks at, trying to suss out why we respond the way we do.
Nathan Webster TOP 1000 REVIEWER VINE VOICE on November 27, 2015
Entertaining and interesting look at conmen and the rubes who buy what they sell
This is a fun book that covers a lot of ground about 'cons,' from the personalities of those who can commit them, to the marks and rubes who get taken advantage of.
You would think in our informed culture, we couldn't be fooled, but we know that's not the case. Author Maria Konnikova does a good job presenting all sides of these stories and it's often entertaining reading about the pure brazeness of it all. I had not heard of many of the conmen (and women) that she describes and I always like reading new stories.
I do wish there had been more recent accounts - there are so many cheaters like Lance Armstrong that aren't exactly doing it for profit, and more attention to them would have been interesting. Three-card monte gets some attention - but that's not that interesting to me...I know why they succeed, because people want to see if THEY can beat the game - it's not a con as much as a battle of wits, which the rube always loses (I was cheated on a rigged carny game years ago - they suck you in with a few easy wins, then it gets progressively harder to win the stuffed animal).
I think the book is not disorganized, but it does cover a lot of ground, and the different names and situations can be difficult to follow at times. Interesting and entertaining, yes, but just be ready to pay attention.
Ultimately, it's an interesting sociological study - as long as there's an advantage to fooling somebody, people will try to fool other people. I would not use this book as the primary source - I think a reader should have interest in this specific topic first, and not use this book to try to get interested. It's a little too specific to get a reader invested who comes to the topic totally new.
Loyd Eskildson HALL OF FAMEon January 12, 2016
Rogues Regularly Triumph Over The Meek
Author Maria Konnikova has a Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia, along with considerable experience researching topics in and writing about psychology. This, her second book, is about conmen - elegant, outsized personalities, artists of persuasion and exploiters of trust, not just your dime a dozen cheats and swindlers. Their 'bible' is Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."
A confidence game starts with basic human psychology. The con identifies what the victim wants and how to play on that desire to achieve what the con-artist wants. Size someone up well, and you can sell them anything; it helps to have someone in the throes of some sort of life turmoil - the conman preys on what people wish were true, reaffirming their views of themselves and giving their lives meaning. Doing so requires the creation of empathy and rapport - laying an emotional foundation before any scheme is proposed.
The con is an exercise in soft skills - trust, sympathy, persuasion. He doesn't steal - we give. We believe because we want to, and we offer whatever they want - money, reputation, trust, fame, support, and don't realize what is happening until it is too late. No one is immune to the art of the con - it is not who you are, but where you happen to be at the moment in your life (eg. undergoing misfortune).
By the time things begin to look dicey, the victims tend to be so invested, emotionally and often physically, that they do most of the persuasion themselves. The con-artist may not even need to convince his victims to stay quite - they usually are more likely than not to do so themselves. When we hear others talking about their unbelievable deal or good fortune, we realize at once they've been taken for a sucker, but when it happens to us, it's simply because "I'm lucky and deserving of a good turn."
The best of cons are never discovered - we simply write our loss off as a matter of bad luck.
Psychopaths make up an estimated 1% of male population; among women, they are almost nonexistent. Grifters also are highly likely to be narcissist and Machiavellian. Narcissism entails a sense of grandiosity, entitlement, an overly inflated sense of worth, and manipulativeness. Machiavellian has come to mean a specific set of traits that allows one to manipulate others - employs aggressive, manipulative, exploiting, and devious moves. They are also more likely to attempt to bluff, cheat, bargain, and ingratiate themselves with others, and more successful at doing so.
Leadership and high-profile roles, salesmen/marketers, and the legal profession are all more likely to be populated by confidence men.
Researcher James Fallon believes that certain critical periods in childhood can nudge one more or less towards full-blown psychopathy - luck out, you become a high-functioning psychopath, get the bad draw and you become a violent psychopath. Fallon believes the first three years of life are crucial in determining one's psychopathic future.
The con is the oldest game there is, and it's likely to be entering a new age - thanks to new opportunities brought by increasing technology that make it far easier to establish convincing false identities (eg. LinkedIn), as well as identify those who might be more likely conned (dating sites that identify widows and divorcees). Since 2008, consumer fraud in the U.S. has risen more than 60%, with online scams more than doubling. In 2012 alone, the Internet Crime Complaint Center reported almost 300,000 complaints of online fraud, with over $500 million lost. Between 2011 and 2012, the Federal Trade Commission found that a little over 10% of American adults (25.6 million) had fallen victim to fraud. The majority of the cases involved fake weight-loss products, second place went to false prize promotions, and in third place was buyers' clubs in which what seemed like a free deal actually involves membership charges you didn't even know you'd signed up for. Fourth was unauthorized Internet billing, and finally work-at-home programs.
Con artists aren't just master manipulators - they are expert storytellers (eg. 'I'm supporting my mother, who now has AIDS,' 'I had PTSD from Iraq,' etc. Once we've accepted a story as true we will probably unconsciously bend any contradictory information to conform to the conclusion we've already drawn - it's known as 'confirmation bias.' Ultimately, what a confidence artist sells is hope. Many cases go unreported - most cases, by some estimates. AARP found that only 37% of victims over 55 will admit to having fallen for a con, and just over half those under 55 do so. Most con artists don't ever come to trial because they aren't brought to the authorities to begin with.
Most people require three things to align before going from legitimacy to con-artistry - motivation (underlying predisposition created by psychopathy), narcissism, and Machiavellianism - along with opportunity and a plausible rationale. In corporate fraud, for example, few choose to con in a vacuum - they also perceive an aggressive sales environment (opportunity) and a feeling they must do something to stand out. For a significant percentage of the conning population, surroundings matter. About half those who commit fraud cite intolerable competitive conditions as justification. They can rationalize away just about any behavior as necessary.
In one study of 15,000, only 50 could consistently detect liars - they relied on detecting incredibly fast facial movements as their clues. One of those 50 is now employed in law enforcement, and she told the author that smart psychopaths are super liars and have no conscience, and are very hard for her to identify.
The first commandment of the con man - 'Be a patient listener.' (Victor Lustig, con artist) Emotion is the primary hook used, much more powerful than logic. Cons tend to thrive in the wake of economic or natural disaster illness, personal travail. Sadness makes us more prone to risk taking and impulsivity - perfect for certain types of cons. Con artists love funerals and obituaries, divorces, layoffs, and general loneliness. He does everything in his power to bring our self-perceived better-than-averageness perceptions to the fore - eg. 'How intelligent you are, Professor Frampton.' And we believe it, because we want it to be.
Consistency plays a crucial role in our ongoing evaluations of a person we're helping - 'If I've helped you before, you must be worth it.'
Overall - some good points about con-men - but far too reliant on anecdotes.
Kevin L. Nenstiel TOP 1000 REVIEWER VINE VOICE. November 2, 2015
Know How Crooks Think, So They Can't Outthink You
Our world positively teems with swindlers, ripoff artists, and con-men. From ordinary curbside Three-Card Monte to charming, narcissistic domestic abusers, to Ponzi schemers and Wall Street market riggers, the confidence game exudes from society's very pores. Psychologist turned journalist Maria Konnikova wants to unpack what makes us susceptible to con artists, a journey that leads through all human psychology, sometimes vulnerable to diversions and cow paths.
Konnikova's first book, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, dealt with how crime fighters organize thoughts, observe reality, and undermine criminal mentality. This book essentially addresses the same issues from the opposite angle: how criminals create situations that need busting. Konnikova's conclusions may seem surprising, until we consider them further. Vulnerability to confidence artists and other professional chiselers actually means our psyches are healthy.
Confidence artists work with an encyclopedic understanding of human psychology with which research scientists are only now catching up. They recognize common traits, like our tendency to see others as similar to ourselves, our illusion of control, and our unwillingness to think badly about ourselves. These traits aren't weaknesses; without them, we'd be functionally paralyzed. Effective swindlers work by turning our best characteristics and human capabilities against us.
We must recognize, therefore, that making ourselves insusceptible to cons isn't actually desirable. Fraudsters prey on traits that open us to community, family, and fiscal reward. As Konnikova writes: "The same thing that can underlie success can also make you all the more vulnerable to the grifter's wares. We are predisposed to trust." With swindles, as with propaganda, those who think themselves most immune are, actually, most vulnerable.
The answer lies in understanding ourselves and the swindlers better. They don't see us like we see ourselves. They don't want to. We must cultivate complex understanding of different human thought patterns, and a stronger sense of ourselves. Konnikova again: "It's not that the confidence artist is inherently psychopathic, caring nothing about the fates of others. It's that, to him, we aren't worthy of consideration as human beings; we are targets, not unique people."
All isn't bleak. Throughout most of this book, Konnikova suggests it's difficult to prevent con-games without isolating ourselves and descending into cynicism. In the later chapters, though, she reverses the trend, showing how skilled, self-aware people can resist flim-flam artists' techniques. Not hypothetically, either: she shows how real people, cult busters and cultural anthropologists and police, have maintained their sanity when confronted by seemingly insurmountable double-dealing. Resistance is possible.
As Konnikova explains confidence artists' psychological techniques, her focus expands to include much about recent discoveries in psychology and behavioral economics. She wants readers to emerge with as thorough an understanding of human minds as the fraud merchants enjoy. This sometimes makes her technique sprawling (this book runs over 300 pages plus back matter, unusually long for its genre.)
Reading Konnikova sometimes requires especial concentration and focus.
She richly rewards those who stick with her narrative, though. I've recently seen one friend lose rafts to shady investments and two others get burned by charming, narcissistic romantic partners. Even if we never vote for crooks, invest with Bernie Madoff, or buy salvation sellers' wares, the potential for confidence games still surrounds us. Konnikova provides needed tools for self-awareness, clear boundaries, and bold self-defense. Swindles are inevitable; victimhood isn't.
[Apr 07, 2016] How Cults Manipulate People
www.aibi.ph
Many people now agree that cults frequently psychologically manipulate their membership to ensure conformity and control. Steve Hassan's excellent book "Combating Cult Mind-Control" is a great starting point. The following points come from numerous sources. Not all of these are found in every cult but enough of them are found in most cults to make them very frightening places that inflict deep psychological damage on their membership.
1. Submission to Leadership - Leaders tend to be absolute, prophets of God, God Himself, specially anointed apostle, or just a strong, controlling, manipulative person who demands submission even if changes or conflicts occur in ideology or behavior.
2. Polarized World View - The group is all that is good; everything outside is bad.
3. Feeling Over Thought - Emotions, intuitions, mystical insights are promoted as more important than rational conclusions.
4. Manipulation of Feelings - Techniques designed to stimulate emotions, usually employing group dynamics to influence responses.
5. Denigration of Critical Thinking - Can go so far as to characterize any independent thought as selfish, and rational use of intellect as evil.
6. Salvation or Fulfillment can only be realized in the group.
7. End Justifies the Means - Any action or behavior is justifiable as long as it furthers the group's goals. The group (leader) becomes absolute truth and is above all man-made laws.
8. Group Over Individual - The group's concerns supersede an individual's goals, needs, aspirations, and concerns. Conformity is the key.
9. Warnings of severe or supernatural sanctions for defection or even criticism of the cult - This can go so far as to apply to negative or critical thought about the group or its leaders.
10. Severing of Ties with Past, Family, Friends, Goals, and Interests - Especially if they are negative towards or impede the goals of the group.
11. Barratrous Abuse - Some cults use "cult lawyers' to sue ex-cult members and critics often using fabricated evidence and causing financial stress by repeated trivial law suits. The cult's aim is not so much to win the lawsuit (though they often do) as to harass and intimidate their critics into silence.
Cult Conversion Techniques
Conversion into a cult is usually the result of two interacting dynamics. The first is the personal vulnerability of the potential recruit. This vulnerability may be enhanced by, but not limited to, transitional situations such as divorce, abuse, job or career change, moving away from home or leaving college, an illness, or death of a loved one.
The second dynamic are the tactics used to convert, indoctrinate (brainwash) and hold the members. Some groups attempt a radical and rapid conversion over an intensive week-end or week, such as The Forum or Scientology. Others have a more subtle approach which may take weeks or months, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses. The following are techniques of unethical thought reform and mind control:
The importance of cognitive dissonance
Any person will act so as to reduce conflict between their thoughts, their emotions and their behavior. When these things are at odds with each other a person experiences 'dissonance" (the opposite of harmony). Cognitive dissonance is when what a person knows is right is at odds with either what they feel is right or what they are doing. Cults quickly move to control four key areas of a person's life during the conversion process -
Behavior - by intense involvement in activity and isolation from others. Behavior is closely prescribed and carefully supervised.
Emotions - a new recruit is often "love bombed" and greeted enthusiastically and told they are very special. They are made to feel that everyone in the cult loves them and that "nothing could be wrong with such a loving group of people". However this does not last. Emotions are sent on a roller coaster and the only hope of emotional stability is total conformity and pleasing the cult leadership.
Thought - indoctrination, extended "teaching sessions", memorization of cult dogma, "auditing sessions" where inner secrets are revealed and thought processes exposed - all are a part of attempts at thought control so that the thought life of the convert is taken up entirely with the group.
Information - isolation from peers, TV, radio, newspapers, (often labeled as "Satanic") and careful control of associations ensures that little or no material critical of the cult reaches the new recruit during the conversion process.
The combination of all these factors make it very likely that if the new recruit stays in the cult for any length of time they will come to believe in it utterly. We are not as objective as we like to think and when all these powerful forces combine then very intelligent people will be "converted" but not by God.
A Quick List of Nasty Practices
1. A Focus on felt needs, defects, with exaggerated promises of fulfillment.
2. Rigid Control of Time and Activities - Often physically and emotionally draining activities leaving little time for reflection, questioning and privacy.
3. Information Control - Cutting off or denigrating outside sources of information especially if it is critical of the group. This can also include misrepresentation and information overload.
4. Language Manipulation - Ascribing new "inside" meanings in ordinary words or the use of an exclusive vocabulary subtly moving a person to want to become an insider.
5. Discouraging Critical, Rational Thought and Questions - For instance, comments like, "Satan is the cause of all doubt; he wants to keep you from the Truth", or, "one must move beyond the cognitive left-brain and get in touch with one's higher self, his right-brain, intuitive self for true knowledge".
6. Instruction and Repetition in Trance Induction Techniques - These include progressive relaxation, chanting, hypnosis, meditation, trance states, guided imagery or visualization, deep breathing exercises, all of which make a person highly suggestible, often unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and can cause psychopathology such as relaxation induced anxiety.
7. Confession Sessions - Promoting full disclosure of all secret sins, thoughts, temptations which can become a powerful tool to manipulate, blackmail, and emotionally bond people to the leader or group. It is actually a depersonalization or stripping of the inner self , a forced submission to the group.
8. Guilt, Fear - Weapons used to maintain group loyalty, suppress questions and defections.
9. Control of Sexuality and Intimacy within the Cult - This may extend to marriage decisions (Moonies), sexual relations, promiscuity (Children of God), group sex (New Age Therapy groups), child sex, adultery, and polygamy (Branch-Davidians).
10. Excessive Financial Obligations - More and more money is needed to attain higher degrees of spirituality (Scientology), or complete submission to God requires one to give up everything to the group or leader (pp. 26-29).
The more points of ideology and conversion methodology that are in place, and the degree of intensity of their application is proportionate to the effect and damage of mind control.
These factors tend to make normal evangelism, or even dialogue, much more difficult. Therefore, some people have looked to deprogrammers or exit-counselors to help break the mental head-locks of their loved ones in an attempt to rescue them from the cult.
Can an Orthodox Christian Group Get Like This ?
Yes they can!!! Just because the theology is straight down the line does not mean the behavior will be. I was in a mission society that in a particular place under the influence of a leader with a great deal of charisma and authority became "cultic" for a year or so. That has been corrected but much damage was done.
Some Christian groups start off great -like the "children of God' and end up utterly wrong and evil. The church needs strong leaders, but they must always be accountable to Scripture and to other wise Christians.
We must allow people to be critical, to think for themselves and to understand scripture freely apart from the dictates of any leader. we must allow a great deal of emotional and intellectual freedom and renounce our desires to control others if we are to have healthy churches where people rejoice in the Truth.
This article may be freely reproduced for non-profit ministry purposes but may not be sold in any way. For permission to use articles in your ministry, e-mail the editor, John Edmiston at [email protected].
Beware the bullying female boss
More than half of the bullies reported to a new national helpline are women - and most of the victims are other women.
The data from the line also reveal that white-collar bullying among professional and office workers is far more common than among shopfloor workers. Nine out of 10 calls involved office-based workers. The public sector accounts for more than half the calls, with one in five complainants working in the caring agencies, the NHS or social services. "Workplace bullying among women is increasing, partly because they are occupying more senior positions," said Tim Field, an Oxford counsellor who runs anti-bullying workshops. "Women when they are bullies tend to be more manipulative and divisive, whereas men in the same situation are more overtly hostile. Women also tend to leave less evidence about their bullying activities. "In around 10 per cent of the cases dealt with by the advice line, suicide had been contemplated. Eight cases involved actual suicide." Elaine Bennett, a director of the Andrea Adams charity which was set up to tackle bullying, believes that the increase is probably in areas where women have not been in positions of power before. "Where women have been at the top for a long time, as in health and education, you do get the tyrant matrons and headmistresses." She says that in some cases women moving into management jobs are copying the male managers who held the job before them. "Women who are finding themselves in roles which hitherto have not been held by a woman - maybe they are the first one on to the board or to be a senior manager - may well take on some of the traits of male managers with much more of a macho aggressive culture," she said. National Workplace Bullying Advice Line: 01235-834548
Women vs men boss
Posted by: straightshooter
Date: 12/9/2005 8:28:24 AM
I would like to hear some comments on female vs male bossology.I personally am a female and I find male bosses to be better in many ways - they are fairer, do not cultivate "pets", do not gossip much, are more performance oriented and do not tend to micromanage unless they are control freaks (which I have not had). On the contrary, female bosses have overblown egos, are extremely sensitive to gossip and negative comments about their personae, are pathologically jealous and create an atmosphere of "girliness" - I had one colleague send our female boss Valentine cards and gifts. They are also more vindictive and even cruel (some cases relate to personal health issues and family matters).
My boss, the bitch
theage.com.au
It's a little-known fact that a woman can be as severe a bully in the workplace as a man, and according to experts, such behaviour among women is increasing.
Melbourne psychologist Evelyn Field says women bully just as much as men do, "but because more bullies are managers and more managers are male, more bullying is done by men. But you certainly get a lot of bullying from women and sometimes they behave more aggressively than males."
"Women will copy the patterns and behaviours of males, so that they become really quite aggressive," Field says.
Prominent British anti-bullying campaigner Tim Field said that at least half of 3000 bullying reports made to the UK National Workplace Bullying Advice Line involved a female serial bully (who had bullied several co-workers). No such figures exist on the gender of Australian workplace bullies, but local experts estimate Australian figures would reflect Britain's.
In 2001-02, 1148 claims of workplace bullying were reported to the Victorian WorkCover Authority, compared with 1107 in the previous year.
In her recently released book, Catfight, which explores female competitiveness, US author Leora Tanenbaum found that "working women are expected to be aggressive and masculine. Worried about being perceived as a mediocre or incompetent worker, many women go out of their way to prove they are not too emotional or passive, and can be more aggressive and demanding than any man."
She points to groundbreaking research undertaken in the '70s, which she says is still relevant today. The researchers - psychologists Graham Staines, Carol Tavrid and Toby Epstein Jayaratne - coined the term "Queen Bee" to describe a token woman at a high level in a corporate environment.
Based on questionnaire responses from 20,000 women, they found that "the Queen Bee who is successful in a male-dominated field identifies with the male colleagues who are her reference group, rather than with the diffuse concept of women as a class . . . (she) thereby disassociates herself from the fundamental issues of equality for women, while reassuring her male colleagues that she is not of that militant ilk."
Tanenbaum also found that professional women were often hardest on their own sex.
"Many professional women confess they prefer male rather than female supervisors. They complain that women at work refuse to share power, or withhold information, or are too concerned about receiving credit for every little thing they accomplish, or are cold toward underlings (male and female alike). In such complaints they use the word 'bitch' a lot," she says.
Tim Field believes the stereotypical view of men as aggressive and women as nurturing often prevents the female serial bully from being seen for what she is: "A sociopath in a skirt."
... ... .,.
Evelyn Field said female bullies were often more subtle in their behaviour than their male counterparts. "Women are usually less physical, they would use techniques such as excluding others, over-supervising and controlling and verbal abuse."
Ricky Nowak, a workplace communications training specialist and head of the company, Confident Communications, says women's bullying is "often quieter, behind closed doors, over the phone, via curt emails, or through giving their staff a sense of . . . (being overwhelmed), for example: asking women with families to stay behind when they don't really have to do so."
Nowak runs leadership groups for professional women and says she has had many disclosures from women admitting they had bullied their colleagues.
"It was behaviour such as intimidating others, standing over them, giving colleagues the silent treatment and so on."
Evelyn Field describes bullying as a problem for everyone. "The micro level is the individual target who can be affected emotionally, physically, socially, career-wise, financially, family-wise over a long-term basis and many of them have severe health problems," she says.
"The onlookers also get affected - 20 per cent of onlookers will leave the job, others will have sick days and suffer poor morale. And the cost to industry is enormous - bullying is everyone's problem."
Sub-Sociopaths and Sub-Psychopath Types
The Female Sociopath (Female): Using her false mask, this charming individual plays the helpless or needy, pitiful, inept or emotionally unable to cope. Even total strangers give her things she gratefully accepts. Falsely claiming to be the victim, this passive parasite lures and abuses the normal protector/provider instincts in her male target. When her mask comes off she is cunning, ruthless, predatory, and loveless.
Treatment of such case: This 'damsel in distress' will try to hook and reel you in. Take the hook out of your lip. Don't make her emotional neediness your problem. This black hole of need can never be filled. Understand the mask of helplessness is not the "real her". If she won't give reasonable answers to reasonable questions turn and leave. Beware and remember the Female sociopath is deadlier than the male as she uses sexuality as a lure. Avoid financial or emotional involvement.
The Deceptive Sociopath (Male or Female): They will lie for no reason. They will skilfully twist your words, evade questions, and omit important facts in their ever-changing, self-serving goals. This hypocrite claims high morals then proceeds to exploit, manipulate and abuse others. He will accuse you of being crazy and emotionally cruel.
Treatment of such case: Quietly verify what they say. Do not try to negotiate or bargain. If they have been caught out on their lies too many times, leave them.
Frictional Sociopath (Male or Female): puts people against each other. Victims may be used as their proxy interacting with others as they set victims up to take the fall while they enjoy watching the performance they orchestrates. They keep their allies and targets separate to avoid exposure. Verbally skilled at twisting people's words, this charmer usually gets their way. Applying 'fear' selling tactics, faking expertise, this scam artist crafts situations to appear indispensable, ready to solve our problems. Money and conning others are their objective. They will agree to anything then turn around and do the opposite. They will accuse you of breaking the contract. Legal, custody agreements and normal social or personal protocol mean nothing to them. They enjoy playing the role of the victim.
Treatment of such case: Expect them to disregard the agreement. Avoid involvement. Be self-sufficient. Avoid any "Trust-Me" get-rich-quick sales pitches. Learn how swindlers and scam artists operate.
Sociopaths-psychopaths and violence
If he's not physically violent, he may be a bully. And, keep in mind that aggression is not limited to men-female sociopaths can also be violent.
Antisocial Personality, Sociopathy and Psychopathy
The main characteristic of it is a complete and utter disregard for the rights of others and the rules of society. They seldom show anxiety and don't feel guilt. Although many people would hope that there's an effective treatment, there's really no effective treatment for them other than locking them up in a secure facility with such rigid rules that they cannot talk their way out. A full list of APD traits would include:
List of Antisocial Personality Disorder Traits Sense of entitlement; Unremorseful; Apathetic to others; Unconscionable behavior; Blameful of others; Manipulative and conning; Affectively cold; Disparate understanding; Socially irresponsible; Disregardful of obligations; Nonconforming to norms; Irresponsible
whereas the DSM-IV "clinical" features of Antisocial Personality Disorder (with a person having at least three of these characteristics) are:
Clinical Symptoms for an Antisocial Personality Disorder Diagnosis
1. Failure to conform to social norms; 2. Deceitfulness, manipulativeness; 3. Impulsivity, failure to plan ahead; 4. Irritability, aggressiveness; 5. Reckless disregard for the safety of self or others; 6. Consistent irresponsibility; 7. Lack of remorse after having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another person
Sociopathy is chiefly characterized by something wrong with the person's conscience. They either don't have one, it's full of holes like Swiss cheese, or they are somehow able to completely neutralize or negate any sense of conscience or future time perspective. Sociopaths only care about fulfilling their own needs and desires - selfishness and egocentricity to the extreme. Everything and everybody else is mentally twisted around in their minds as objects to be used in fulfilling their own needs and desires. They often believe they are doing something good for society, or at least nothing that bad. The term "sociopath" is frequently used by psychologists and sociologists alike in referring to persons whose unsocialized character is due primarily to parental failures (usually fatherlessness) rather than an inherent feature of temperament. Lykken (1995), for example, clearly distinguishes between the sociopath (who is socialized into becoming a psychopath) and a "true" psychopath (who is born that way). However, this may only describe the "common sociopath", as there are at least four (4) different subtypes -- common, alienated, aggressive, and dyssocial. Commons are characterized mostly by their lack of conscience; the alienated by their inability to love or be loved; aggressives by a consistent sadistic streak; and dyssocials by an ability to abide by gang rules, as long as those rules are the wrong rules. As Stout (2005) indicates, it only takes three of the following to be defined as a sociopath, and some common sociopathic traits include:
List of Common Sociopathic Traits
Egocentricity; Callousness; Impulsivity; Conscience defect; Exaggerated sexuality; Excessive boasting; Risk taking; Inability to resist temptation; Antagonistic, deprecating attitude toward the opposite sex; Lack of interest in bonding with a mate
Debates98 Mealey Sociopathy Article (Quote-Comment-Ready)
From: HARNAD Stevan ([email protected])
Date: Wed May 13 1998 - 20:25:44 BST
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THE SOCIOBIOLOGY OF SOCIOPATHY: AN INTEGRATED EVOLUTIONARY MODEL
Linda Mealey
Review of some sociobiological concepts:
(1) Today's Environment vs. the "Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness" (EEA) IN which, and FOR which we evolved
(2) Distal (EEA/evolutionary) causes and Proximal (current, psychological) causes
(3) Evolutionarily Stable Strategies (ESSs) and Dynamic Equilibria: Some genetically coded strategies are "stable," in that they cannot be bettered by other strategies; unstable ones can be. e.g. green gene for relatedness "Help me, I'm kin!"
most of us cannot fathom the cold, detached way sociopaths repeatedly harm and manipulate others.
behavior genetics, child development, personality theory, learning theory, and social psychology describe a complex interaction of genetic and physiological risk factors with demographic and micro-environmental variables that predispose a portion of the population to chronic antisocial behavior.
Recent evolutionary and game theoretic models explain sociopathy as a frequency-dependent life history strategy selected in response to certain varying environmental circumstances.
Two developmentally different kinds of sociopathy emerge from two different evolutionary mechanisms.
Social policies should consider the two different kinds of sociopathy and the factors which contribute to them.
Sociopaths, 3-4% of the male population and less than 1% of the female
population and 33% - 80% of chronic criminal offenders
commit over 50% of all crimes in the U.S.
also irresponsible and unreliable behavior:
egocentrism,
inability to form lasting personal commitments
impulsivity.
superficial veneer of sociability and charm
lack of social emotions (love, shame, guilt, empathy, and remorse)
not intellectually handicapped: "Con-men," able to deceive and manipulate others through elaborate scams and ruses including fraud, bigamy, embezzlement, and other crimes which rely on the trust and cooperation
"aware of the discrepancy between his behavior and societal expectations, but he seems to be neither guided by the possibility of such a discrepancy, nor disturbed by its occurrence"
cold- hearted and selfish "moral insanity"
also sometimes known as psychopaths or antisocial personalities
"antisocial personality" disorder traits found in a continuous, normal
distribution in the population at large
defined by high scores on all three Eysenck Personality scales: extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism
distinction between "simple" and "hostile" or "primary" and "secondary"
psychopaths or sociopaths
"simple" or "primary" sociopaths complete lack of the social emotions
"hostile" or "secondary" ones exhibit antisocial behavior without this
emotional deficit are
distinction is an important one because there are two different paths to sociopathy, with different implications for prevention and treatment.
sociopaths are designed for successful social deception and are a type
that evolved biologically to practice a strategy of manipulative and predatory social interactions.
this strategy is to be expected in the low frequencies we see It is also expected to appear preferentially under certain social, environmental, and developmental circumstances which I hope to delineate.
(1) ta genetic predisposition underlies sociopathy, normally distributed in the population
(2) because of selection to fill a small niche, a small, fixed percentage of those at the extreme of this continuum will be deemed "morally insane" in any culture
(3) a variable percentage of individuals who are less extreme on the continuum will sometimes, in response to environmental conditions during their early development, pursue a life-history strategy that is similar to that of their "morally insane"
(4) this underlying genetic continuum is evident in many of us when immediate environmental circumstances make an antisocial strategy more profitable than a prosocial one.
1. The Model:
1.1 The evolutionary role of emotion
almost defining characteristic of sociopaths is their apparent lack of
sincere social emotions
Plutchik (1980) posits eight "primary" emotions (such as fear, anger and disgust) related to survival that everyone (including sociopaths) experiences
the "secondary" or social emotions (such as shame, guilt, sympathy, and
love) depend partly on learning and socializationm and can vary across individuals and cultures
outward expression of emotion will serve as a reliable indicator to others as to how a person is likely to behave in the future.
Nesse: Prisoner's Dilemma: when both players cooperate, they experience
friendship, love, obligation, or pride; when both cheat or defect, they feel rejection and hatred; when one player cooperates and the other defects, the cooperator feels anger while the defector feels anxiety and guilt.
if, as in the Prisoner's Dilemma, the most rational strategy is to be selfish and defect, why should positive (reinforcing) emotions follow mutual cooperation rather than defection? "reputation"
no rational player will play with a known defector; to avoid this social "shunning" based on reputation players must build a reputation for cooperation, despite the fact that cooperation is not the "rational" choice for the short-term.
social emotions evolved as "commitment devices" (Frank) or "guarantors
of threats and promises" (Hirshleifer)causing positive or negative feelings that act as reinforces or punishers
not economically rational for the short-term but profitable and adaptive in situations where encounters are frequent and reputation is important.
Once such communicative mechanisms have evolved... become vulnerable to
deception... and can lead to a coevolutionary "arms race": finely tuned sensitivities for deception plus equally fine-tuned abilities to hide them.
some sort of statistical equilibrium will be approached. Cheating maintained as a low-level frequency-dependent strategy, in dynamic equilibrium; modelled extensively by evolutionary biologists
1.2 Game theory and evolutionarily stable strategies
Richard Lewontin (1961) John Maynard Smith 1973
maintenance of mixed ESSs
(1) one genotype always uses the same strategy in every situation
(2) every individual uses the same statistical mix of strategies, but randomly
(3) every individual uses every strategy, but predictably according to
circumstances)
(4) each individual can at birth use any strategy, but "imprints" early
on only a few
(5) different genotypes respond differently to same stimuli during development
sociopaths are a type of cheater- defector in our society of mixed-strategy interactionists.
sociopathy appears in two forms: "primary sociopath" results from frequency-dependent genetic differences in using one (antisocial) strategy
"secondary sociopathy" differences in developmental response to the environment produce differences in using cooperative or deceptive social strategies 2. The Evidence:
2.1 Behavior genetics
criminals and sociopaths, share a variety of characteristics
both criminality and sociopathy have a substantial, overlapping heritable component
2.1.1 Studies of criminal behavior
twin and adp[tion studies suggest heritability of .60 for repeated commission of crimes of property.
significant interactive effects: adoptive children with both a genetic
risk (criminal biological parent) and an environmental risk (criminality, psychiatric illness, or other severe behavioral disturbance in an adoptive parent), have a far greater risk than with no such risk or only one risk factor, and that increased risk is more than simply an additive effect of both risk factors.
females are more likely to transmit a genetic risk to their offspring than are males.
2.1.2 Studies of sociopathy
substantial heritability to sociopathy; gene-environment interaction similar to the one found for criminal behavior
male adoptees sensitive to influence of environmental risk factors than
female adoptees.
suggests a multifactorial, probably polygenic, basis for sociopathy
2.1.3 Sex differences and the "two-threshold" model
Cloninger "two threshold" polygenic model; sociopaths are on the extreme end of a normal distribution whose genetic component is (1) polygenic and (2) to a large degree, sex-limited.
[Sex-limited genes, not to be confused with sex-linked genes, are triggered only within the chemical/hormonal microenvironment of one sex or the other e.g., beard and mustache growth in men, and breast and hip development in women.]
If many genes underlying sociopathy are triggered by testosterone, many
more men than women will pass the threshold
females who do express the trait are further out in the extreme of the
normal distribution of genotypes than most of the males who express the trait.
greater overall risk for males as opposed to females
greater risk for the offspring (and other relatives) of female sociopaths
males will express sociopathy at a lower "genetic dose" than females, but heritability is greater for females, hence the environmental component of the variance is greater for males
males are more susceptible to the environmental conditions of their early years; greater variance in male reproductive capacity makes their "choice" of life strategy more risky and so more subject to selective pressures
males should be more sensitive to environmental cues that (1) trigger environmental or developmental life history strategies or (2) are stimuli for which genetic differences in response thresholds have evolved.
when would sociopathy be the best available strategy? what would be the
environmental cues which, especially for boys, would trigger its development?
2.2 Child psychology
2.2.1 Life history strategies
those least likely to outcompete other males in a status hierarchy, or
to find mates through female choice are most likely to adopt a cheating strategy; competitive disadvantage could be related to age, health, physical attractiveness, intelligence, socioeconomic status, and social skills.
overlaps between rape, battering, and criminality in terms of life history circumstances, genetics, and apparent inability to empathize with victim, suggest sociopathy spectrum.
genetically influenced, developmentally- and environmentally-contingent
cheating strategies used when a male finds himself at a competitive disadvantage
sexual opportunism and manipulation are key features of sociopath and guided the evolution of sociopathy.
Briquet's Hysteria in women -- syndrome of promiscuity, fatalistic dependency, and attention- getting-- may be female homologue of male sociopathy.
2.2.2 Delinquency
two subtypes of conduct disorder in children: "solitary aggressive type" and "group type"; "versatiles" and "property offenders"; "unsocialized" and "socialized" lead to primary vs secondary sociopathy
two different evolutionary mechanisms for maintaining ESSs in a population
juvenile antisocial behavior is the best predictor of adult antisocial
behavior, the earlier, the stronger
mean age at which adult sociopaths exhibited first significant symptom:
8-10; 80% by age 11; 2/3 distinuishable from other children by kindergarten
several relevant environmental factors: inconsistent discipline, punishment as opposed to rewards, disrupted family life (especially father absence, family violence, alcoholic parent, or mentally ill parent), and low socioeconomic status
factors more when one or the other parent is sociopathic; antisocial behaviors can be reinforced under such living conditions.
correlates of delinquency in girls same as for boys: (1) history of antisocial behavior throughout childhood and a tendency to seek out delinquent peers; leads to persisten antisocial behavior in adulthood. (2) few behavior problems in childhood but more and more antisocial behaviors from menarche.
2.2.3 Moral development
very young children are biologically prepared to learn moral behavior,
selectively attentive to emotions, especially distress, in others; learn to exhibit prosocial behavior long before they are able to conceptualize its effect on others.
motivation behind early prosocial behavior is the (egocentric) need to
reduce one's own aversive feelings of arousal and distress.
high arousal levels associated with low cheating levels
the child must pass from empathic responses to sympathetic responses --
some time during the second year when beginning to develop "theory of mind"
evolved in humans for predicting the behavior of others.
can one be successful using only the cognitive tool of a theory of mind, without access to emotional, empathic information which, presumably, sociopaths lack?
2.3 Personality theory
What is it that makes "high risk" environmental features particularly salient for those who have the predisposing genotype?
2.3.1 The role of gene-environment interactions
most important environmental factors that influence personal development are not those that are shared by siblings within a family (such as parenting style, socioeconomic status, and schooling), but idiosyncratic events and relationships difficult to study systematically with traditional methods.
Despite a shared home, children will encounter different microenvironments: relationships with parents will differ, and their day to day experiences will not overlap significantly.
any two children will experience an (objectively) identical environment
A primary sociopaths are unresponsive to the environmental cues of normal socialization and moral development and seek the more deviant and arousing stimuli within the environment.
Secondary sociopaths, not as genetically predisposed, are more responsive to environmental cues and risk factors.
What constitutional factors place some individuals at high risk?
2.3.2 The role of temperament
substantial heritability of self-reported measures of altruism, nurturance, aggressiveness, and empathy. Sex differences.
Aespecially for males, the inherited factors correlated with genetic risk of delinquency are the same as those that lead to the temperamental attributes of anger, impulsivity, and deceitfulness ("self-serving dishonesty with people with whom a person ordinarily has affectional bonds")
two possible routes to sociopathy or criminality, one primarily heritable and one less so that sets stage for developmentally- and environmentally-contingent individual differences in antisocial behavior.
sociopathy and antisocial behavior correlated with high scores on all three of the major personality dimensions of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire: 'extraversion' (contra introversion), 'neuroticism' (contra emotional stability), and 'psychoticism' (contra fluid and efficient superego functioning- not synonymous with psychotic mental illness; this scale would be better called 'psychopathy'). All three high heritability, psychoticism typically much higher in males
"General Arousal Theory of Criminality": inheritance of a nervous system relatively insensitive to low levels of stimulation. extraverted, impulsive, and sensation-seeking, because under low stimulation they feel a suboptimal level of arousal; to increase their arousal, many will participate in high-risk activities such as crime
criminality and sociopathy associated indicators of suboptimal arousal,
including childhood hyperactivity, recreational drug use, risk-taking, failure to persist on tasks, and preference for wide-ranging sexual activity.
In addition to seeking thrill and novelty, sensation-seekers describe "hedonistic pursuit of pleasure through extraverted activities including social drinking, parties, sex, and gambling", "aversion to routine activities or work and to dull and boring people", and "restlessness in an unchanging environment"
In college students, sensation-seeking is correlated with the Pd (Psychopathic Deviate) scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and among prisoners it can be used to distinguish primary psychopaths from secondary psychopaths and non-psychopathic criminals
appears early (3-4 years), high heritability, correlates negatively with age in adults, higher in males.
Gray renamed Eysenck factors: the approach, or, behavioral activation system, the behavioral inhibition system, and the fight/flight system;
Cloninger: "novelty-seeking", "harm- avoidance", and "reward-dependence":
2.3.3 The role of physiology
hign dopamine for behavioral activation (or novelty-seeking),
low serotonin for behavioral inhibition (or harm avoidance),
low norepinephrine for fight/flight (or reward dependence)
extraverts and sociopaths show less physiological arousal than introverts and normals in response to threats of pain or punishment and more tolerance of actual pain or punishment; delinquents have lower baseline heart rate than nondelinquents.
causes, not just correlates; predict later levels of antisocial behavior
Testosterone is likely trigger of the sex-limited activation of genes in the two-threshold model
steroid hormones enter the nucleus and interact with the chromosomes,
regulating gene expression. This leads to some of the individual, age, and sex differences in temperament: psychoticism, aggression, impulsivity, sensation-seeking, nurturance, and empathy
Variation in testosterone levels also parallels age variation in sociopathic behavior and is correlated with such behavior in adolescent and adult males
Testosterone is likely to play dual role in the development of sociopathy, as it does in the development of other sex differences: one as an organizer (affecting traits) and one as an activator (affecting states).
boys with high T mature faster, get bigger, more likely to get in fights: creates positive feedback loop: those who start out with high T and sensation seeking (and low adrenaline, serotonin, and MAO) more likely to initiate aggression and to succeed in dominance interactions, leading to increases in T, further increases in aggressive behavior.
significant correlations between T and antisocial behavior in lower class men only; upper class men, because of differential socialization, avoid individual confrontations, which might raise their T (and antisocial behavior).
fewer upper class than lower class men had high T levels; upper class socialization may mitigate influence of T. alternative: aggressive behavior with higher T levels leads to downward social mobility
Because upper class children have less environmental risks, their sociopathic behavior comes from stronger genetic predisposition, hence (1) the effect of the social environment might be larger than suggested by adoption studies, and (2) different pathways to sociopathy, need different strategies for prevention or remediation
2.4 Learning Theory
1. Conditioning
hypoaroused nervous system less sensitive to the emotional expression of other individuals, and to social influences in general, also less responsive to reinforcement and punishment, hence handicapped in learning through autonomic conditioning
difficulty inhibiting behavior when both reward and punishment are possible outcomes
in situations when most people would experience an approach-avoidance conflict, sociopaths and extraverts are more likely to approach
Because of high sensation-seeking, children with a hypoaroused nervous
system more likely to get into trouble, less likely to be affected by, and learn from, consequences of their behavior or parental punishment.
Primary sociopaths, unable to experience the social emotions, exhibit deficits on tasks which induce anxiety in others: passive avoidance, approach-avoidance, and tasks involving punishment; but they can learn well under other conditions
Secondary sociopaths and extraverts, have normal anxiety and responses
to punishment, but may be especially driven by high reward conditions
Primary sociopaths, with diminished anxiety and conditioned associations between antisocial behavior and punishment, unable to progress through the normal stages of moral development.
Unlike most children who are biologically prepared to learn empathy, they are contraprepared to do so, and remain egoistic- unable to acquire the social emotions of empathy, shame, guilt, and love
present at early age with "unsocialized" conduct disorder
Secondary sociopaths, with normal emotional capacities present at later
age with "socialized" conduct disorder
What socialization processes contribute to their development?
2.4.2 Social learning
cheating strategy is predicted to develop when a male (especially) is competitively disadvantaged, and criminal behavior (especially in males)
related to disadvantage in a two-stage process involving a variety of cumulative risk factors:
first stage: disrupted family life, parental neglect, abuse, inconsistent discipline, punishment as opposed to rewards, inconsistent feedback, and poor models of prosocial behavior.
pattern most common in parents who are criminal, mentally disturbed, undereducated, of low intelligence, or socioeconomically deprived leading to a cross-generation cycle of increasing family dysfunction
second stage: children with poor social skills disadvantaged in interactions with age-mates; rejected by popular children, consort with one another; then antisocial then escalates .
secondary sociopathy depend more upon environmental factors than primary.
2.5 Social Psychology
2.5.1 Machiavellianism
antisocial strategies not restricted to sociopaths.
majority of people arrested not sociopathic; many people antisocial behavior rarely enough or inoffensively enough to preclude arrest.
Some antisocial behavior is even considered acceptable: entrepreneuris, people who seek to control and manipulate others often become lawyers, psychiatrists, or behavioral scientists; "subtle, cynical selfishness with a veneer of social skills is common among scientists"
"Machiavellianism" or "Mach" scale: agreement or disagreement with statements like "Humility not only is of no service but is actually harmful," "Nature has so created men that they desire everything but are unable to attain it," and "The most important thing in life is winning".
Adults high on the Mach scale express "a relative lack of affect in interpersonal relationships," "a lack of concern with conventional morality," "a lack of gross psychopathology," and "low ideological commitment"; children high on Machiavellianism have lower levels of empathy than age-mates
High Machs have "instrumental cognitive attitude toward others", goal-oriented as opposed to person-oriented, more successful in face-to-face bargaining situations, "are especially able communicators, regardless of the veracity of their message", more resistant to confession after cheating, more plausible liars, like sociopaths, high Machs are often referred to as "cool".
"self-initiated manipulation of others" Mach may be low-level manifestation of sociopathy. sex difference consistent with the two-threshold model, consistent with age variation in testosterone levels, correlations with Eysenck's psychoticism and neuroticism scales and with serotonin levels
high Machs "impersonal, cognitive, rational, cool" approach with others, than low Machs "more personal, empathizing" approach); High Machs more accurate at assessing how other "target" individuals answered a Machiavellian attitudes questionnaire, using a statistical strategy, assuming everyone was about average;
hypoaroused and antisocial individuals are less attentive to social and
emotional cues than others.
Low Machs "projected," successfully differentiated between high and low
Mach, underestimated the scores of both, guessing at a level reflective of their own scores
(1) "impersonal, cognitive, rational, cool" approach to others might be
more accurate in the long run than "personal, empathizing" approach (where cooperative long-term partnerships are not possible); and
(2) errors of empathizing approach like playing the cooperation strategy when the cheating strategy would be more appropriate, makes one susceptible to being exploited by others who use the impersonal cognitive approach; high Machs outcompete low Machs in most experimental competitive situations
assumption that empathy-based approach to predicting the behavior of others is better than a statistical approach not necessarily correct; may be an emotion-based cognitive bias.
but low Machs would be more successful than high Machs in selecting a cooperator as a partner.
Machiavellianism is a trait or the underlying variation in personality
and the situational factors relevant to an individual's behavior at any given momen.
what can social psychology tell us about the within-individual situational factors which encourage or discourage cheating strategies?
2.5.2 The role of mood
Mood varies within individuals but less an immediate response to events
and more a generalized response to the environment
Positive mood and feelings of success enhance cooperative behavior. part of a long-term strategy by individuals who feel they can afford to pass up short-term gains to establish a cooperative reputation.
When sadness and feelings of failure follow losses, individuals likely
to be egoistic and selfish. In children typically found but in some children, and more in adults, sadness and feelings of failure can facilitate prosocial behavior. a deliberate effort to enhance one's (diminished) reputation among others; prosocial behavior often has a positive, gratifying effect.
If one is depressed,neither antisocial nor prosocial, but asocial. lethargy and anhedonia of depression
aggressiveness in boys is associated with the over-attribution of hostile intent to others. lead to increased "retaliatory" aggression, fueling cycle.
Guilt, often follows selfish behavior, increases subsequent prosocial behavior to reestablish reputation.
guilt, anxiety and sympathy are social emotions that primary sociopaths
rarelyexperience, so do not moderate their behavior to avoid them. sociopaths do experience fluctuations in mood (depression, optimism, or anger) in response to their changing evaluation of their chance of success and failure. If we can manipulate the sociopath's mood, can influence his behavior.
2.5.3 Cultural variables
Competition increases use of antisocial and Machiavellian strategies and can counteract increase in prosocial behavior after success. high competitiveness: high crime rates and Machiavellianism
High population density also associated with reduced prosocial and increased antisocial behavior especially in males
Based on models of kin selection and inclusive fitness, individuals should be more cooperative and less deceptive when interacting with relatives who share their genes, or relatives who share investment in common descendents.
identical twins cooperate more than fraternal twins in the Prisoner's Dilemma.
more altruistic responses on altruism questionnaire questions refer to
relatives, Machiavellian responses reduced.
people cooperate more with others who are similar to them even though not genetically related.
3. Integration, Implications, and Conclusions:
3.1 Integration: Sociopathy as an ESS leads to two types of sociopaths
3.1.1 Primary sociopathy
genotype results in a certain inborn temperament coupled with a pattern
of autonomic hypoarousal that make child tunresponsive to cues of normal socialization and moral development.
mechanism 1 (Section 1.2) of maintaining ESSs in the population;
frequency-dependent, genetic differences in life history strategies.
there will always be a small, cross-culturally similar, baseline frequency of sociopaths;
will display chronic, pathologically emotionless antisocial behavior throughout most of their lifespan and across a variety of situations;
should be equally likely to come from all kinds of socio-economic backgrounds but because impervious to the social environment almost all sociopaths from the upper-classes will be primary
not intellectually handicapped; will progress normally and acquire a theory of mind, but will be formulated purely in instrumental terms, without empathic understanding ;
may become excellent predictors of others' behavior, unhandicapped by emotion, acting, like professional gamblers, solely on statistical data rather than on hunches and feelings.
will use a pure cost-benefit approach based on immediate personal outcomes, with no "accounting" for the emotional reactions of the others with whom they are dealing. Without love to "commit" them to cooperation, anxiety to prevent "defection", or guilt to inspire repentance, they will remain free to continually play for the short- term benefit in the Prisoner's Dilemma.
3.1.2 Secondary sociopathy
an additional, fluctuating proportion of sociopathy allowing more flexibility to the general population to track the frequency-dependent nature of the success of the cheating strategy. M
Secondary sociopaths not extreme on the genetic sociopathy spectrum but because of exposure to environmental risk factors, frequent, but not necessarily emotionless cheating. Unlike primary sociopaths, secondary sociopaths will not necessarily exhibit chronic antisocial behavior; their strategy choices will be more closely tied to age, fluctuation in hormone levels, their competitive status within their referent group, and changing environmental contingencies.
more closely tied to environmental factors than to genetic factors, secondary sociopaths will almost always come from lower class backgrounds and their numbers could vary substantially across cultures and time, tracking environmental conditions favoring or disfavoring the use of cheating strategies.
(!) explains why cultural differences are correlated with differences in the overall incidence of antisocial behavior, and why the discrepancy in the ratio of male to female sociopaths decreases as overall incidence of sociopathy increases: since secondary sociopathy is less heritable than primary sociopathy, the effect of sex-limited genes less important for the development of secondary sociopathy, resulting in less of a sex difference.
3.2 Implications of the two-pathways model
Since primary sociopaths have a deficit in the realm of emotional motivation, presumably act primarily upon their cognitive expectations of others; to the extent that they do act upon emotions, it is most likely to be upon mood and the primary emotions (like anger and fear) rather than upon the social and secondary emotions (like love and anxiety).
extent to which a society will be able to diminish the antisocial behavior of primary sociopaths will depend upon (1) its influence on the sociopath's cognitive evaluation of society's own reputation as a player in the Prisoner's Dilemma, and (2) the primary emotion- or mood-inducing capacity of the stimuli it utilizes in establishing the costs and benefits of prosocial versus antisocial behavior.
Manipulating these two variables will also influence the numbers of secondary sociopaths by changing the size of the adaptive niche associated with antisocial behavior.
since secondary sociopathy is more influenced by the social environment
and secondary sociopaths are not devoid of social emotions, changing patterns in the nurturing and socialization of children and in the socialization and rehabilitation of delinquents and adult criminals is another possibility (!)
3.2.1 Minimizing the impact of primary sociopaths: society as a player
in the Prisoner's Dilemma
an entire society can be seen as a player, and its past behavior will be used by the sociopath to predict the future behavior of that society.
Like an individual player, a society will have a certain probability of
detecting deception, a more-or-less accurate memory of who has cheated in the past, and a certain proclivity to retaliate or not, based upon a cheater's past reputation and current behavior.
sociopath uses statistical approach to assess costs and benefits of different behaviors, so actual past behavior of the society will go into his calculations, rather than risk assessments inflated from exaggerated fears or anxieties that most people feel in anticipation of being caught or punished.
(!) Thus, to reduce antisocial behavior, society must establish and enforce a reputation for high rates of detection of deception and identification of cheaters, and willingness to retaliate. In other words, it must establish a successful strategy of deterrence. [!]
as group size decreases, cooperation increases, also increases with probability of memory error or individual recognition, effect of a loss on a cooperator, effect of a gain on a defector, frequency of punishment against defectors, the cost of punishment
game-theoretic models provide useful strategies for prediction and reduction of cheating and antisocial behavior
increasing probability of detection, identification, and punishment, can reduce crime [!]
make costs of cheating salient, predictable, swift
sociopath will "compute" cost-benefit ratio of the alternatives; money
and other immediate tangible rewards more motivating than social reinforcers or promises of future payoff; visual stimuli more salient than auditory
alternatives to crime must be stimulating enough and rewarding enough to engage the chronically hypoaroused sensation-seeker. more successful if we distinguish primary from secondary sociopaths.
recidivism rates went up for psychopathsbut down for nonpsychopaths after the same kind of "treatment".
3.2.2 Minimizing the prevalence of secondary sociopathy: society as a socializing agent and mood setter
social changes to minimize impact and incidence of sociopathy.
parent training, modelling, induction, and behavioral modification
cause and effect relationship between parental behavior and child behavior, two-way.
agents should be individually matched with each client/offender based on style and personality characteristics, to prevent high Mach and sociopathic offenders from taking advantage of low Mach employees.
As society gets larger and more competitive, individuals become more anonymous and more Machiavellian, leading to reductions in altruism and increases in crime. Social stratification and segregation also lead to feelings of inferiority, pessimism, and depression among the less privileged, which can in turn promote the use of alternative competitive strategies, including antisocial behavior
external locus of control, learned helplessness, reduced serotonin, increased aggression
"the vandal is a failed creative artist," a bored and frustrated sensation-seeker who "does not have the intellectual or other skills and capacities to amuse or occupy himself"
in addition to making the costs of antisocial behavior greater, providing early social support for those at risk, and developing alternative, nonexploitative, sensation-seeking ventures that can meet the psychological needs of disadvantaged and low-skill individuals.
3.3 Conclusions
(1) "Primary sociopaths" are a certain genotype incapable of experiencing the secondary, "social" emotions that normally contribute to behavioral motivation and inhibition; they fill the ecological niche for the "cheater strategy" found in low frequency in every society.
(1b) To minimize the damage caused by primary sociopaths, the criminal
justice system should reduce the benefits and increase the costs of antisocial behavior, while creating alternatives to crime which could satisfy the psychophysiological arousal needs of the sociopath.
(2) "Secondary sociopaths" use situation-dependent cheating strategies,
not as clearly tied to genotype, in response to disadvantages in social competition, varying with social circumstances.
(2b) To reduce secondary sociopathy, programs are needed to reduce social stratification, anonymity, and competition, intervene in high-risk settings with specialized parent education and support; and increase the availability of rewarding, prosocial opportunities for at-risk youth.
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Films look to me no less education then books and web pages. They depict female bullies in action and allow you to watch from the safe distance some pretty realistic depiction of their tricks and attack tactics:
Films depicting female sociopaths
Psychopaths in Movies
Female Sociopaths
How to Handle an Adult Female Bully eHow.com
Characteristics of a Female Bully | eHow.com
Female Bullies in Public Schools- The Rising Trend and School ...
Female Bullying- Addressing Relational Aggression Between Girls ...
Amazon.com Flying Grounded My Spiritual Triumph Over Female Bullying (9780595458394) Tami McCandlish Books
Mean Girls 101 1-2 Creative Strategies for Working With Relational Aggression w- CD Kaye Randall, LISW-CP & Allyson A. Bowen,
Cyberbullying Breaking the Cycle of Conflict A Qualitative Study of Black Female Experiences with Cyberbullying
Amazon.com Understanding Girl Bullying and What to Do About It Strategies to Help Heal the Divide (9781412964883) Julaine E.
Bullying From Both Sides Strategic Interventions for Working With Bullies & Victims Walter B. Roberts 9781412925808 Amazon.
Last modified: January, 20, 2021