ARROGANT STUPIDITY=PSYCHOPATHIC PERSONALITIES
by Andrew Williams

Sometimes a book just falls into your hands at the right time. For the
last two months I've been absorbing a fascinating psycho-sociological
essay titled THE MEASURE OF MAN by Joseph Wood Krutch. Despite some
inevitable dating of text (it was published half a century ago) it is
crystal-clear about the origins of our current situations vis-a-vis
ourselves and the world at large (or, in Korzybskian terms, the
organism-as-a-whole in the environment-as-a-whole.)

I've been throwing out the term "psychopathic personalities" a lot lately
in order to describe the cabal running the US and its interminable wars.
I owe a debt of thanks for this term to Kurt Vonnegut, who in turn got it
from Dr. Hervey Cleckley, author of THE MASK OF SANITY. And now, thanks
to Krutch, I have a working definition of psychopathic personalities
(hereinafter p.p.'s): "the relatively aggressive, extroverted people...
who are tempermentally most likely to practice enthusiastically
the techniques available for 'conditioning.'"

Conditioning in this case, of course, meaning mental. And the evidence of
it is everywhere. It's in Tom Ridge in those preposterous PSA's urging US
citizens to "be ready." It's in the Metro and Ride-On ads urging us not
to fear terrorism, but fight it, with the words "fear" and "fight"
highlighted in blood red type. If such techniques can work on bulls, as
legions of bullfighters have demonstrated, then they might work on people.
So their "thinking" goes.

In the minds of p.p.'s, healthy = adjusted; adjusted=extroverted. Thus
doing is all-important and thinking=plans for doing. Questioning=
maladjustment; dissent=immaturity. As Krutch wrote, "They do
not know what they are making us into and refuse to permit us even to
ask."

Thus far, a significant majority of American citizens--as reflected in
polls--have gone for the okey-doke on the Wars on Terrorism, Some People
with Some Drugs, Civil Liberties, Iraq, Palestine and Anyone/Anything Else
Uncle Sam Doesn't Like. To all intents, they seem to have shrugged and
said,
in Krutch's words, "Here we go--to become what and in what future we cannot
guess." The burning question now is, is that all most of us are--biped
lemmings, ready to rush over the cliff at the behest of charming,
extroverted psychopaths? Current evidence, plus the horrific history of
Nazi Germany and the classic experiments of Dr. Stanley Milgram, seems to
say "Yes."

If there is a God, I cannot and will not believe It created us to be mere
cannon-fodder and ward-heelers for such human monsters. Such a fate would
remove dignity and honor from all human enterprises. We would be no
better, no more evolved than the cockroaches and as likely to be
supplanted by them if we take that final march into the sea, crimson
banners flying all the way. There must be something more to Humanity,
Krutch argues, than conditioning and imprinting, the will to obey and the
ability to be hypnotized.

Humankind, I believe, is not passive by nature. But we can be made so by
nurture--by the imprimaturs stamped on our neurons by Mom, Dad, Church,
Society and State. Each of these entities has the power to hypnotize, to
program, to control. Each wields incalculable influence. And to erase
and/or rewrite such programming takes years or decades of conscious
effort--all of which, ultimately, we must do ourselves.

Another term I've been liberally using--coined by the writer Harlan
Ellison--is "arrogant stupidity." It seems to me that this term dovetails
neatly with psychopathic personalities. As Ellison explains, "Arrogance
you can beat, because you can appeal to their envy, their ego, their
something--there's some way to weasel and work them. Stupidity you can
deal with because you can outsmart them, you can go around them...But
arrogant stupidity you cannot do anything with. It is immobile."

There you have it: a working socio-psychological definition of Bush and
his Boys in the Bund: arrogantly stupid psychopathic personalities, bent
on Empire but fumble-fingered in the achievement of it. Doesn't that
thought just make you wanna break out the aspirin bottle/cyanide
capsule/handgun/thuggee noose? It doesn't? Good, because it may yet not
be too late.

There is a story--one of many--told of the Sufi mystic Nasrudin, who had
fallen into disfavor with the then-current Sultan and was to be put to
death. Thinking quickly, he asks for one more year of life, in which time
he will teach the Sultan's horse to fly in exchange for his freedom. The
Sultan, dubious but curious, agrees. Nasrudin's friends asked him why he
concocted such a bizarre, difficult plan. Nasurdin explained, "Much can
happen in a year. The current Sultan could die or be deposed by one
friendly to me, resulting in my freedom. Also, a year gives me much time
to study the weaknesses of my prison and plan an escape. And finally, if
all else fails, maybe I can teach that damned horse to fly!"

The cliche "Where there's life, there's hope," like most cliches, holds
truth. We may yet find ways to chink and break the armor of these
A.S.P.P.'s. They could die or be deposed in elections. (Whether our new
representatives would be pressed from the same molds is as likely or
unlikely as one's world view obtains.) We can use modern technology to
find new ways of escaping conditioning and control. And, in the end,
maybe we *can* teach the horse to fly. The only one who says you can't is
you. You are the Captain of your soul. "There is nothing either good or
bad but thinking makes it so."

"What a piece of work is Man!
How noble in reason,
How infinite in faculties;
in form and moving how express and admirable,
in action, how like an angel,
in apprehension, how like a God."
-Shakespeare, HAMLET