As I am sure you can understand, it took me a while to digest last week's stomach turning story of the perverted
private life of 'upstanding' Republican Representative Mark Foley.
For those that missed out on the story;
In 2005, Foley sent five emails, some
of them sexually suggestive, to a 16-year-old former page sponsored by Rep.
Rodney Alexander (R-LA). Among other things, Foley asked for a photo of the
page, asked what he wanted for a birthday present, and expressed admiration
for the physique of another young male page (to whom he had also written).
The page forwarded the emails to a colleague in Alexander's office, saying "this
really freaked me out," and repeating the word "sick" 13 times
to describe the photo request. The page asked "if you can, please tell
Rodney [Alexander] about this," and mentioned another page who had been
warned about a Congressman who "hit on" interns.
On October 3, ABC
News reported that it had come into possession of as many as "52 separate
instant message exchanges, which former pages say were sent by Foley, using
the screen name Maf54, to two different boys under the age of 18." Another
former page, Tyson Vivyan, has said that he received "sexually suggestive" messages
from Foley in 1997, a month after he left the page program. Then on October
5 ABC News reported that, in 2002, Foley e-mailed one page with an invitation
to stay at his home in exchange for oral sex. The page, who was 17 years old
at the time, declined the offer. The same report stated that he emailed another
with a request for a photograph of his erect penis. And that was just for starters.
Now, I can understand that in modern psychologically ill America, a politician
might feel compelled to hide the fact that he or she is gay, but Foley isn't
your run of the mill 'deviant' (according to Bush and his nutjob
fundie Christian followers) homosexual, Foley is a paedophile, and in the case
of the sexual abuse of children, it matters not your sexual orientation. How
do we know Foley is a paedophile? We don't, all we know is that he sent lewd
messages to several underage Washington interns, but since when did the
public ever get the full story about corruption of any sort on Capitol
Hill? Sure, in normal life, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but as Monicagate
showed, sometimes a cigar is the means by which the public gets an peek at
the tip of the iceberg and of just how big a gap there is between politicians'
carefully crafted public image and their somewhat less than pious private reality.
While most normal people would have expected Clinton, having been exposed as
a lying philanderer, to die a slow political death, thanks to the amazing
power of the mainstream media, Clinton is today a noble 'elder statesman',
commmading 6 figure sums for spouting a few paragraphs of paramoralistic claptrap.
Suffice to say that, at this stage of the game, we can, with self-righteous
certainty, state that when a scandal erupts in American politics, especially
in relation to sexual deviancy, and always in the case of the abuse of children,
limited hangouts rule the day. Why? Because, as I said, such scandals are but
a scratching of the surface of what I suspect is a putrid and shocking beyond
your wildest dreams, American (or rather international) body politic.
Remember back in the 80's when Bush senior and Reagan was linked to midnight
visits of the White House for underage call boys?
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Of course you don't, because even though it was spread across the front page
of the Washington Times, it has somehow since been wiped from the pages of
American history and while daddy Bush were rewarded with another term and today
is a behind the scenes big time political mover and shaker, Reagan's tomb is
visited with reverance by hundreds of thousands every year.
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Dennis Hastert 'I swear I'm not a crook' (or a pedophile)
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It should come
as no surprise therefore that Foley's little secret was, for at least a year,
an open one, both in terms of the file that the FBI had on him and the fact
that two Florida newspapers, the St. Petersburg Times and the Miami Herald,
and the Fox News Channel had received copies of Foley's lewd emails as far
back as November 2005. And as if that were not bad enough, Foley's former chief
of staff, Kirk Fordham had complained in 2003 to Speaker of the House Dennis
Hastert (yes the idiot with a hammer who stands behind Bush in congress) and
other congressional leaders about Foley's "inappropriate
behavior".
Hastert, the paragon of virtue that he is, decided at that time to take no
action to protect young male interns from predators like Foley, preferring
instead to wait until someone else broke the story before he loudly condemned
Foley. Some form of justice for the duplicitous Hastert now seems likely with
calls being made for his resignation also, not that resignation is sufficient
punishment for these creeps. Hastert, while accepting responsibility for the
scandal, has refused to step down, declaring "I haven't done anything
wrong", which, given that he is very likely a psychopath, is probably
'the truth' as sees it.
The speed with which Foley's lawyer came up with the plausible explanation
that, as a teenager, Foley himself was abused by the local priest smacks of
a cop out and is a little to easy, not to mention the fact that Foley, surely
as a result of his continuing 'trauma', is having problems remembering the
name or location of the alleged priest. Foley has also revealed that he has
a drink problem, with his lawyer claiming that he petitioned the boys while
drunk, an excuse that also stinks to high heaven, given that at least one steamy
instant messaging session occurred during a sitting of congress, at which Foley
was certainly not drunk. Basically, if you think Foley's transgressions were
limited to one under 18 boy, you are not eligible for membership in the reality
based community and I have a nice holiday camp in Cuba to sell you. It is high
time that we all clued up on personal, and particularly political, power, those
that seek it, and how it is, for the most part, the domain of predators, hypocrites
and liars of all types.
Initial revelations about Foley's exploits at the end of September prompted
many more "Congressional house boys" to come forward, alleging a
history of inappropriate conduct by Foley dating back at least ten years. It
is safe to say therefore that Foley's obsession with young boys is not a twisted
version of the common 'mid-life crisis'. And this is where it gets really scary.
You see, during his 12 years in office, Foley was one of the foremost opponents
of child pornography, serving as chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and
Exploited Children and spreaheading a bill in 2002 to outlaw web sites featuring
sexually suggestive images of preteen children, saying that "these websites
are nothing more than a fix for pedophiles."
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Best man for the job?
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Foley's legislation to change federal sex offender laws was supported
by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, America's
Most Wanted host John Walsh, and a number of victims' rights groups.
President George W. Bush signed it into law as part of the Adam Walsh Child
Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
Foley also succeeded in getting a law passed that allows volunteer youth-serving
organizations like the Boy Scouts of America and Boys and Girls Clubs to have
access to FBI fingerprint background checks to help protect children.
Now I know that the best person for any job is often one with previous experience
in the specific field to which the job relates, but I don't think that this
applies when selecting politicians to oversee civil and government child protection
programs. It is, in fact, completely sick, and merely provides further evidence
for a theory that we have for a long time taken as fact: politicians (in the
US, the UK and Israel to name the biggest offenders) are deviant human beings
and inveterate liars, they accuse others of what they themselves are guilty,
and the truth is generally to be found 180 degrees from what their words would
suggest. They are able to lie about the most horrible crimes in such a convincing and shameless way that normal, decent human beings are left with no choice but to believe them. A quick check of this theory by way of cross-checking against world events over the past 5 years will immediately prove to you just how well it translates to reality: For example:
The Bush government states that it does not sanction torture, yet the facts clearly show that torture is a firm part of Bush government policy in the so called "war on terror", but millions of Americans still believe the word of their commander in chief.
The Bush government says that it is spreading "freedom and democracy" to Iraq and the Middle East, when the facts show that they have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan and murdered 300,000 Iraqis and tens of thousands of Afghanis. Yet millions of ordinary Americans think that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan are better off than they were 6 years ago.
The American and British governments claim that "Islamic terrorists" attacked American and British citizens on 9/11 and 7/7, when independent analysis of the evidence shows that it is very unlikely that this is the case. Yet many Americans and people around the world still believe in the "Islamic terror" myth.
The Israeli government claims that is is defending itself against Islamic terrorists, when the facts show that the state of Israel is the agressor in the Middle East and is actively promoting terrorism. Yet most Israelis, and many Americans, believe that Israel is "the only Democracy in the Middle East".
There are many more examples that I am sure you can think of to more or less categorically prove that the members of these governments lie every time they open their mouths and are currently attempting to turn reality on its head - and
all of it for the 'benefit' of the masses of humanity, (in this case 'benefit' translating to 'extreme detriment').
The plain and disturbing fact here is that individuals who repeatedly cheat, steal, abuse, torment and kill, while showing no empathy for their victims and no remorse when they are exposed (people like Foley, Hastert, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair, Olmert, Netanyahu, Rice, and probably thousands of other politicians) have long-since been scientifically studied and a core reason for their deviancy
defined: it is called psychopathy, and the individuals are psychopaths - genetically different from the vast majority of normal human beings in such a way that they are incapable of true human emotion and, most importantly, empathy for another human being. As I mentioned elsewhere:
Professor of Psychiatry
at Harvard Medical School Martha Stout, who has worked extensively with victims
of psychopaths, writes in her book The Sociopath Next Door
:
Imagine - if you can
- not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no
matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers,
friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single
one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral
action you had taken.
And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as
a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fool.
Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that
your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone
simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the
fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.
You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are
never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your
veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that
they seldom even guess at your condition.
In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered
liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently
invisible to the world.
You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority
of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain
undiscovered.
How will you live your life?
What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding
handicap of other people (conscience)?
The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because
people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the
same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease
of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human
beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience
or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones,
individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites.
[...]
Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.
If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and
you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of
deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With
enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back
safely and watch in satisfaction. [...]
Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the population. [Stout
- The Myth of Sanity]
Dr Robert Hare is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of British
Columbia, has dedicated almost 40 years to the study of psychopathy and is the
author of several books on the subject. Hare states:
the damage they [psychopaths] inflict on society is out of all proportion
to their numbers, not least because they gravitate to high-profile professions
that offer the promise of control over others, such as law, politics, business
management .. and journalism
Hare called these people "snakes in suits".
Hare performed two now-famous studies
which suggest that psychopaths really are different from normal human beings.
In the first, subjects were told to watch a timer counting down to zero, at
which point they felt a harmless but painful electric shock. Non-psychopaths
showed mounting anxiety and fear.
Psychopaths didn't even sweat.
In the second, the two groups had their brain activity and response time measured
when asked to react to groups of letters, some forming words, some not. Words
such as "rape" and "cancer" triggered mental jolts in
non psychopaths. In psychopaths they triggered precisely nothing.
In another study, Hare measured the brainwaves of psychopaths and others
as they were shown both neutral and emotional words.
Non-psychopaths responded with more speed and brain activity to emotion-charged
words such as rape or cancer than to neutral words such as tree. To psychopaths,
there was no difference.
In perhaps the most telling study conducted by Hare, clear evidence for the
argument that psychopaths are indeed fundamentally different in make up from
the majority of normal people was revealed:
Several years ago two graduate students and I submitted a paper to a scientific
journal. The paper described an experiment in which we had used a biomedical
recorder to monitor electrical activity in the brains of several groups of
adult men while they performed a language task. This activity was traced on
chart paper as a series of waves, referred to as an electroencephalogram.
The editor returned our paper with his apologies. His reason, he told us: "Frankly,
we found some of the brain wave patterns depicted in the paper very odd.
Those EEGs couldn't have come from real people."
Some of the brain wave recordings were indeed odd, but we hadn't gathered
them from aliens and we certainly hadn't made them up. We had obtained them
from a class of individuals found in every race, culture, society, and walk
of life. Everybody has met these people, been deceived and manipulated by them,
and forced to live with or repair the damage they have wrought. These often
charming - but always deadly - individuals have a clinical name: psychopaths.
[Hare, Without Conscience]
According to Professor Hare psychopaths are
impulsive - they lack empathy and remorse. They crave power and prestige, and
are extremely controlling. He described them as "knowing the words but not
the music." "They can learn to use ordinary words and to reproduce
the pantomime of feeling but the feeling itself does not come to pass."
No emotion; no ability to empathise with the suffering of another human being;
an ability to mimic feeling and emotion, to 'talk the talk' because they understand
that this is what is expected of them; gravitate to high-profile professions
that offer the promise of control over others, such as law, politics,
business management and journalism; radically different brain wave
patterns from those of "real people".
For a more indepth study of lies and psychopathy, see see Laura Knight-Jadczyk's "The Cult of the Plausible Lie".
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