Don't Give Sociopaths Your Trust

Imagine you were responsible for the death of an innocent or even not so innocent person. Imagine if you allowed a friend to drive home from your house drunk only to hear he wrapped his car around a tree. Such an incident would change you, so that you would likely do whatever you could to make sure you were never again complicit in such a situation.

If you hit someone with your car while texting and driving, would you not be altered by it, not feel immense personal guilt? If you did the wiring in a building and the house burned down because of it, wouldn’t you make sure you either damn well learned to install wiring correctly or else never attempt such a thing again?

The stories are many. A boxer kills another man in the ring in fair combat and can no longer pursue boxing as a career. A child dying of SIDS while in the care of a babysitter causes a young girl years of shame and guilt she must work through. A depressed family member who commits suicide can lead to unending amounts of self-recrimination for the survivors, who ask themselves what they might have done to prevent it.

We humans are often prone to taking the blame for situations beyond our control. But it is a a human response, a necessary part of coming to terms with ourselves as active agents and responsible human beings. We must grow through this sort of questioning and self-examination in order to provide meaning to our lives and insure we are the people we believe ourselves to be and want to be. We, most of us, want to be good human beings. We want to believe we have a positive effect on others and are willing to go to some lengths to insure we do no harm to others.

But not all of us. Some people are capable of the most despicable of behavior and walk right through it as though they had no hand in the matter. These people are called sociopaths. They are incapable of reflecting upon their actions, are utterly uninterested in assuming responsibility for anything they’ve done. They are built in such a way that they can only see the rewards and not the punishments. They are defective people and it is best that we weed them out from positions of power.

Unfortunately, positions of power are the exact thing sociopaths are likely to seek out. It is normal for the average person to be wary of wielding too much power, to be humble enough to doubt their abilities and viewpoints enough that they’re not eager to thrust them down other people’s throats. But sociopaths aren’t concerned with personal responsibility, all they see are the rewards available if they push themselves forward in their quest for power, wealth and fame.

Thus do we often end up with sociopaths ruling over us, especially when we neglect our responsibility in the process. Every time we get lazy, every time we achieve a degree of comfort and self-satisfaction, we open the door for sociopaths to assume positions of power they have no right to.

Which brings us to Adam Schiff. Adam Schiff pushed for and voted for the Iraq War. It cost him nothing to do so. And when the Iraq War’s popularity receded, when the reasons behind it proved false and the notion of a quick in and out operation revealed itself to be delusional, he afterwards stated, "Unfortunately, our intelligence was dead wrong on that, on Saddam at that time.”

And that’s it. No sense of responsibility for his actions. No sense that he need atone, apologize, reflect, confess. As I’ve already stated, the average person would struggle with the guilt and regret resulting in actions that may or may not have resulted in tragedy or death of a single person. Even if no one were to hold you responsible, it is hard to get rid of the notion you could have prevented death and disaster had you done things differently. At the bare minimum, it would change how you behaved going forward. Hell, even if you knew someone who had been permitted to drive drunk, even if you weren’t there at the time, you would be a little more conscious in trying to prevent a tragedy occurring again.

Not so a sociopath. A sociopath is intent in furthering his own interests, not helping others. Thus it is that Adam Schiff is capable of moving on with his life after voting for a war that killed a third of a million people and is still affecting millions of people’s lives for the foreseeable future. Rather than accept any blame, he blames our intelligence for being dead wrong.

What kind of response would I expect from someone who voted for a war on false information, information that many knew were false and refused to accept? What could such a person do to demonstrate he accepted the full moral weight of his decisions? Hara kiri would not be out of the question. Though I would not ask it of anyone, suicide would demonstrate they felt somewhat the depths of responsibility for the lives of others they could never sufficiently repair.

Leaving office in a cloud of shame would be mandatory. To forever have your name synonymous with disgrace and selfishness is a no-brainer. If you had any respect for the human race, you would need to place yourself at the very bottom of the species.

I can’t imagine how I would ever deal with that amount of blood on my hands. Perhaps if I gave up all worldly possessions, severed ties with all those I loved in order to spare them some of the reflected disgrace of being associated with me. Perhaps a lifetime spent in jail for my crimes, or in a more enlightened society, a lifetime of service to others in a leper colony or someplace where human suffering is greatest. To forever discard any garment that speaks of wealth or comfort or authority, to dress as the humblest of all humanity and eat of the simplest of foods. If I had so much blood on my hands, I could only hope that such complete abnegation of self might in some small way cleanse me.

I pray to God I never have to live with such a thing on my conscience, pray to God I never have to go before him with such crimes tied to me. Which is why I try to live a simple life, try never to assume more power than my conscience can deal with should I fail.

Meanwhile Schiff has learned nothing. He has apologized for nothing, and now lauds the very intelligence agencies he seemed to blame for his vote for the Iraq War. Again he pushes for antagonism with a foreign nation, convinced in his position in a way no rational person could be. Certain to the point of accusing Tucker Carlson of carrying water for the Kremlin. Tucker Carlson.

What else can you call a man like that but a sociopath?