How can we get him the help he needs, and save the world we love?
Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2003 5:20 PM
Subject: Campaign for the emergency commitment of President George W. Bush as
a danger to himself and others.
The usual criterion for emergency involuntary hospitalization is whether or
not the patient is a threat to him(her)self or others. Unless we want to continue
the irrational practice of calling the killing of one person murder and of thousands,
public policy, I seriously propose that a process be started to aquire the signatures
of three doctors and of a court order to commit President George W. Bush to
the Johns Hopkins Psychiatric Unit for observation and diagnosis as a mortal
threat to himself and to others. Psychiatric hospitals are subject to lawsuit
if they fail to hospitalize someone referred to them and that person does mortal
harm to himself or others. A citizens’ movement to obtain an involuntary
commitment of this man who threatens the peace and stability of the entire world
should be quickly and easily successful (or at least put a crimp in this administration’s
headlong plunge to destruction).
J. Carrigan MPS, LMHC
_____________________________________________________
The Toronto Star December 15, 2002
Don't
let Bush light Iraq fire
By LINDA MCQUAIG
Shooting frogs with BB guns was apparently pretty standard entertainment for
young boys in Texas in the 1950s. But for added amusement, George W. Bush and
his friends used to tuck firecrackers into the mouths of frogs, throw them in
the air, and watch them explode.
The story - recounted with fondness by a Bush childhood friend in a long, flattering
New York Times profile of Bush during the 2000 presidential election campaign
- never became an issue on the campaign trail.
Despite psychiatric evidence that children who are cruel to animals often go
on to be abusive adults, the U.S. media apparently decided that the torture
of frogs was nothing more than a charming little anecdote from Dubya’s
early years. (Imagine what the media would make of a charming little childhood
anecdote like that, if it were in Saddam Hussein’s background.)
It should have at least been a clue that Bush - now the most powerful man in
the world - has a taste for blowing things up, not to mention an insensitivity
to suffering.
_______________
Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@ By Joel Bleifuss | 1.27.03
see entire interview at: http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C
I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war,
might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers.
Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been
taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat
imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust
C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists,
aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities,
or “PPs.”
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis,
like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical
text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable,
they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do
not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!
And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom
and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and
investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter
what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now
hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead
of sick.
What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government,
is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with
doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply
can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools!
Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the
rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra
Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!
_______________________________________________________
Toronto -http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1128-02.htm
Bush anything but moronic, according to author
Dark overtones in his malapropisms President
MURRAY WHYTE
ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER
When Mark Crispin Miller first set out to write Dyslexicon: Observations on
a National Disorder, about the ever-growing catalogue of President George W.
Bush’s verbal gaffes, he meant it for a laugh. But what he came to realize
wasn’t entirely amusing.
Since the 2000 presidential campaign, Miller has been compiling his own collection of Bush-isms, which have revealed, he says, a disquieting truth about what lurks behind the cock-eyed leer of the leader of the free world. He’s not a moron at all - on that point, Miller and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien agree.
But according to Miller, he’s no friend.
“I did initially intend it to be a funny book. But that was before I had a chance to read through all the transcripts,” Miller, an American author and a professor of culture and communication at New York University, said recently in Toronto.
“Bush is not an imbecile. He’s not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he’s incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he’s a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss.”
Miller’s judgment, that the president might suffer from a bona fide personality disorder, almost makes one long for the less menacing notion currently making the rounds: that the White House’s current occupant is, in fact, simply an idiot.
If only. Miller’s rendering of the president is bleaker than that. In studying Bush’s various adventures in oration, he started to see a pattern emerging.
“He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he’s speaking punitively, when he’s talking about violence, when he’s talking about revenge.
“When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine,” Miller said.
“It’s only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion,
or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes.”
_______________________________________________________
From: "Teresa Binstock" <binstock@peakpeak.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 1:23 PM
Subject: is Bush a psychopath?
Dear Dr. Chernus,
I appreciate your columns in CommonDreams
(eg, http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0127-08.htm).
My primary field is biomedical aspects of autism. I’ve published in neuroanatomy, molecular genetics, immunology, and several related fields. I’ve long realized that were Dubya’s word-use mistakes evaluated at a diagnostic clinic such as the Child Development Unit of a Children’s Hospital, he would merit a diagnosis within the general ballpark of learning disabled. That his verbal errors indicate that type of disability suggests that his decision-making process is not fully informed by memory.
A professor intending to write a book about Dubya’s errors noticed an important fact (as reported in Toronto Star, 11.28.03), an observation that has increased the specificity of Dubya’s potential diagnosis. Dubya’s errors tend to occur in positive contexts and not to occur in negative and aggressive contexts.
Dr. Miller concluded that the patterning in Dubya’s gaffs is consistent with similar patterns found in sociopaths (10). Needless to say, I was intrigued. Analysis of linguistic patterns is a recognized diagnostic tool often accompanied by genetic testing (eg, for Fragile X syndrome), brain imaging (eg, MRIs), and brain-wave testing (eg, MEGs & EEGs).
A Medline search (within databases of National Library of Medicine) led me to a number of related studies published in peer reviewed medical literature, studies that focus upon language use by sociopaths and psychopaths and, relatedly, upon observable alterations in brain function. An initial bibliography is presented below (1-9). I have perused these articles and, as a result, have become more concerned about the likely validity of Dr. Miller’s initial observation.
Diminished empathy is associated with the psychopathic personality. He or she (usually he) does not react normally when perceiving emotional expressions of others. These differing reactions can be perceived via MRI and EEG and can differentiate normal people and non-psychopathic criminals from psychopaths.
Furthermore, aside from his verbal gaffs, Dubya’s public-policy choices and pronouncements regarding Iraq, the environment, and health care are consistent with diminished empathy. He does not give sufficient weight to the expressed opinions and feelings of others. For instance, several months ago Dubya et al made “factual” pronouncements about Iraq. Quickly, the CIA and FBI announced disagreement with the Dubya team’s statements. But that disagreement did not register as important to Dubya. ‘Twas an annoyance to be brushed aside.
Similarly, Dubya seems to have no real feelings for the environment nor for the tens of millions of people who want a cleaner environment and who want to preserve natural areas. Now, I’m not saying that he or any other politician can’t have a position different from pro-environmentalism, but Dubya’s stance is too often that of the neighborhood bully for whom a victim’s cries of anguish have no meaning. He appears to have impaired empathy that manifests as political decrees imposed without the give-and-take even of Congress.
Conclusion: Although further consideration is needed by others versed in neuroanatomy
and psycholinguistics, I believe we ought take seriously Mark
Crispin Miller’s observations about Dubya’s sociopathic personality
as indicated by patterns in his language (10). The U.S. government may never
have had a sociopath as President. The nearest parallel is Adolph Hitler—who
also was elected to high office before revealing his heart’s innermost
ambitions. Dubya is frighteningly similar. And many sociopaths are known to
be bright and to have kept the darker side of their personality hidden for years.
Let’s consider another parallel for its instructiveness about perception
and time. Ted Bundy was a serial killer of women. Most of us learned about him
and his personality after his arrest. Thus we knew the evil that lurked in his
heart. But consider victim #4 (or #7, whatever) when she was just meeting Mr.
Bundy. He was a good looking young man, and he must have had a fair amount of
charm—and that’s how he set the stage whereon his deeper motives played
forth. If, as Dr. Miller has suggested, President Bush indeed has a Sociopathic
personality, we as observers would (as in the case of Hitler) have been fooled
for a long time prior to his innermost self showing forth clearly. And now that
Dubya has been in office for slightly more than two years, most of us are no
longer fooled. As prompted by Dr. Miler’s preliminary observation. dubya’s
sanity and the underlying basis
of his motivations and decision-making merit intense scrutiny.
This letter and its citations are a preliminary step, one that furthers the
observations offered by Dr. Miller.
Sincerely,
Teresa Binstock
Researcher in Developmental & Behavioral Neuroanatomy
References:
1. Rieber RW, Vetter H. The language of the psychopath. J Psycolinguistic
Res 23.1.1-28 1994.
2. Williamson S, Harpur TJ, Hare RD. Abnormal processing of affective
words by psychopaths. Psychophysiology. 1991 May;28(3):260-73.
3. Patrick CJ. Emotion and psychopathy: startling new insights.
Psychophysiology. 1994 Jul;31(4):319-30.
4. Stevens D, Charman T, Blair RJ. Recognition of emotion in facial
expressions and vocal tones in children with psychopathic tendencies. J
Genet Psychol.
2001 Jun;162(2):201-11.
5. Swartz S. Issues in the analysis of psychotic speech. J Psycholinguist
Res. 1994 Jan;23(1):29-44.
6. Patrick CJ, Cuthbert BN, Lang PJ. Emotion in the criminal psychopath:
fear image processing. J Abnorm Psychol. 1994 Aug;103(3):523-34.
7. Levenston GK, Patrick CJ, Bradley MM, Lang PJ. The psychopath as
observer: emotion and attention in picture processing. J Abnorm Psychol.
2000
Aug;109(3):373-85.
8. Day R, Wong S. Anomalous perceptual asymmetries for negative emotional
stimuli in the psychopath. J Abnorm Psychol. 1996 Nov;105(4):648-52.
9. Kiehl KA et al. Limbic abnormalities in affective processing by
criminal psychopaths as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Biol
Psychiatry. 2001 Nov 1;50(9):677-84.
10. Bush Anything But Moronic, According to Author: Dark Overtones in His
Malapropisms
by Murray Whyte, November 28, 2002 by the Toronto Star
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1128-02.htm Toronto Star
cid=1035774887712