Jezebel 
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New York, 8:41 AM
Mon Dec 7
18 posts in the last 24 hours
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12/04/09
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MR. SALAHI: Who's that up the road?
COP: The fuckin' Virginia Birthers.
MR. SALAHI: I hate birthers.
And if you don't know what happens next, you need to watch more TBS.
12/03/09
While Bush isn't my favorite president, his death would have been no less catastrophic, had it happened during his presidency. I wish people wouldn't act like Obama is the best president we've ever had, when he's only begun his term in office. Shouldn't actions be more important than a potential, or a symbol?
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I live in the South and I actually am afraid of that very thing happening, and it's because I have heard people say they don't like the president because he is black and they question his legitimacy (and not always because they're birthers, but because they question the notion of ANY black man being a legitimate president in their eyes).
I rode to the inauguration with 8 buses full of Southern blacks, many of whom had marched and been beaten in the streets of Selma and Birmingham, and never thought they'd see the day when a black man would be the leader of the free world. He represented for them not just hope and change, but a sign that all their sacrifices had not been in vain. Don't underestimate the power of a symbol for a great number of people. His death really would be catastrophic.
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My friends and family in the east and midwest don't say that either. The only criticisms they've heard are the fact that they dislike his lack of experience before obtaining the presidency. Which, I"m scared to admit, might be a viable opinion. Can Obama just DO something already?
12/03/09
I'm from California too. I moved to the South 10 years ago and was floored by what I saw. I don't want to make it sound like Redneck Central, because it's not, but people of a certain age, especially, felt free to call black men "boy" or actually use the n-word in front of me, assuming I wouldn't care. Or they just used it so often they didn't even notice. And since Obama's election, some of the prejudice has boiled over into outright expression in public. The run-up to the election was especially painful. My bf used to ride his bicycle on backroads and would report a number of "Obama is a half-breed" sort of signs in front yards and open fields.
12/03/09
Small anecdote, but I had a party on election night. After the result was called and everyone had stopped screaming, crying, hugging, one of my friends (who is black) said quietly-- "I hope they keep him safe." It gave me chills.
For me it would be beyond the devastating loss of a president; it would be the crushing loss of a symbol of progress.
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/tongue-in-cheek
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I mean, technically, if he is a psychopath, is that considered a serious mental illness? Could you call a psychopath sane? Why wouldn't you call him insane then?
I am not saying this man, and other serial killers like him, should not pay for his crime. I just have a hard time deciding how accountable he can be held. They ask if he didn't know what he was doing was wrong then why bury the bodies, but the desire to hide an act and the belief that it is wrong are two different things, are they not?
12/03/09
Edited for better wording
12/03/09
Like you, I'm not saying he shouldn't pay- he should and pay big. But I agree it is a curious defense.
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Psychopathy just points to a different moral compass, I don't think anyone involved in research in the area has ever argued that they are incapable of comprehending the legal ramifications of their actions. They may not believe an action is wrong, but they fully comprehend that society views it as such. Psychopathy is essentially solipsism taken to its natural conclusion, you could argue it's more a moral code than a mental state.
So, if buddy is a psycopath, and not suffering from something else, I tend to think he should be held responsible.
12/03/09
And, in fact, even if they claim, like Dahmer did, that "Yes, I knew what I was doing was wrong," does a true psychopath have a working understanding of what "wrong" even means? Or why it was wrong? A child will tell you they shouldn't play with matches, they might even tell you they know it is wrong to play with matches because they know someone could get hurt, but, given their mental capacity, can they understand what exactly that means or why someone getting hurt is a bad thing?
Psychopaths are characterized as having a complete lack of empathy. Where does empathy come from? Is the ability to be empathetic genetic? From all accounts Dahmer's parents were loving and kind. How can a parent raise two children and only one of them be a psychopath?
Can we punish these people for making choices based on a world view that lacks such basic traits as empathy?
12/03/09
They should be held accountable, wholly accountable, but we should be more interested in figuring out what it is that makes them do what they do.
12/03/09
They also lack basic empathy (as recent world events amply illustrate) but manage to live their lives inside the legal structure. Since they demonstrate that a lack of empathy does not necessarily damn you to a life of crime, I don't think that psychopaths who have committed crimes (in this case particularly henious) should be able to hide behind a diagnosis.
I've read some of Robert Hare's research that suggests the best way for psychopathic criminals to be rehabilitated is to refocus the deterrents from "it's bad to hurt other people" to "it's bad to break the law and this is why it will affect you personally." He doesn't suggest that there is any deficit in their make-up that makes them incapable of understanding what they do as wrong.
12/03/09
But that is exactly what he is saying. What is the definition of wrong? To you and I it means an understanding that an action you take will have an undesirable effect on other people. We don't want to hurt other people because we understand that they are just like us and our pain at being hurt is similar to the pain they feel at being hurt. We fundamentally grasp the concept of "wrong" as something that we would not want done to ourselves.
But psychopaths don't think anyone else is like them. They lack the ability to understand others have feelings. They don't have the grasp that something is inherently wrong and we can't teach them that. Instead, they have to be taught that what they do will cause affect them. Their behavior is modified through communicating to them differently. Couldn't it be argued that society's moral code is structured around an inherent understanding of what is wrong and that psychopaths don't have that? Couldn't it be argued that they need to be identified early and taught differently in childhood in order to be less likely to commit crimes?
12/03/09
Sorry, perhaps I wasn't articulating my point correctly. When I said, "He doesn't suggest that there is any deficit in their make-up that makes them incapable of understanding what they do as wrong, " I meant "wrong" to mean "having legal consequences", not "wrong" in reference to the societal moral strictures that govern our society. Yes, perhaps they don't have the skills to navigate society very well, but they do understand that this action has this consequence.
I think it's dangerous to conflate a legal code with a moral one. The two are very often related in most people's minds because the legal code was built on a moral one, but if you take away the morals, the legal framework still remains, and Hare seems fairly certain that the legal framework can be understood by the psychopathic mind - it isn't a given that, without the moral code, the legal one cannot be followed.
And Hare really seems to quite firmly believe that incarceration is really important to psychopaths that haven't been able to adopt the legal framework in the absense of morals... However, he does most of his work and research up here in Canada, where the penal system works very differently, and is already focused on rehabilitiation, so he's (was?) working with Corrections Canada to tailor a program to the needs of the psychopathic offender.
I absolutely agree that we should work to try and identify them earlier... however, they say you can't begin to apply Hare's checklist until a subject is no longer a teenager, because almost everyone would have passed the threshold score of psychopathy or at least sociopathy before they reached the age of ~21.
I work with a lot of teens in the youth justice system, and while a lot of them go on to lead crime-free lives, if they were to be tested now, they'd be classified as psychopathic for sure. And while I think the programs for psychopaths are really invaluable, I have to think that, if you're in that grey area, being talked to like you *are* a psychopath already, with no reference to emotion or empathy or morals, is going to steer you towards that line of thinking... I think what makes a psychopath is really complicated, but I have to assume at least part of it is your life experience... and if you mistakenly identify someone as a psychopath, it seems like it could be a self-fulfilling diagnosis...
12/04/09
Both Texas women, so I understand the mixup. :)
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You have given me much food for thought, so thank you. I will have to think on it.
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12/03/09
HOWEVER, I'll admit when I first saw the Nike foundation was involved, my first thought was "GREAT! The longer before they have kids, the more time they get to spend in sweatshops making overpriced sneakers!"
I don't even know if it's the same "Nike" or not. I could be a horrible person.
12/03/09
Nike would have their attack lawyers all over any other company/association/whatever using their name quicker than you could say, "Just Do It".
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If they and their "friends" listened to NPR, it must have been embarrassing. Certainly they will have a hard time finding sponsors for events from now on.
[www.npr.org]
[www.npr.org]