Late running brain.

[elfs]

Why do Psychopaths Exist?

Robert Hanson links to an article that shows that narcissistic, self-obsessed, lying, etc. guys get laid more often than their up-and-up counterparts, lays out the possible responses to the underlying study, and then asks what evolutionary bias would have led to nature selecting women who select for these traits in men.

Shorter Pat Buchanan: "We should have let Hitler win in Russia for Liebensraum."

His justification is a belief that the Final Solution would never have happened if the Germans had been distracted by their consolidation of power over the Russian continent.

Jim Henley on why Neoconservatism will dominate Republican foreign policy.

His argument is that the Neo's give a damn, are very successful at launching and keeping media platforms from which to make their case, and have the best story. His arguments about magical thinking among neos are definitely worth remembering.

Obama addresses urban policy

Grief, could anything be more wonkish? And yet, of all the things our candidates are talking about, the quality of life for the 50% of us who live in or near cities is very important, and at least one of the candidates is addressing it!

Barry Goldwater on our Imperial Presidency

Some of the current worship of powerful executives may come from those who admire strength and accomplishment of any sort. Others hail the display of Presidential strength ... simply because they approve of the result reached by the use of power. This is nothing less than the totalitarian philosophy that the end justifies the means. If ever there was a philosophy of government totally at war with that of the Founding Fathers, it is this one.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell used to target women.

While there was a slight increase in the number of service people targeted under DADT for 2007, it would appear that discharges of women for lesbianism has doubled in the past two years. The service is already uncomfortable with women in the ranks, and appears to be using DADT to expel them.

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that women *want* the psychopaths. I certainly didn't... ...but women tend to be more verbally oriented, I think. And psychopaths tend to use deception and power tactics in order to get the women involved in the first place.

Then, after a woman has been roped into involvement in one way or the other, she has to figure out whether to ditch the investment or keep trying (maybe he's a fixer-up? maybe a new set of appealing lies about reformed ways is actually truth?)

I've seen that dynamic played over and over again (in my own life, in friends' lives) and mostly, men play the role of deceiver. NOT ALWAYS, though. I've seen (a very few) men who believed when a woman said she'd do something she wasn't even planning to do.

As to Pat Buchanan's position: as far as I can tell, one of the things the Nazi party was complaining about was the huge influx of Jews from the east (a.k.a. Russian territories) into Germany once the Pale of Settlement (Черта оседлости) after the Pale was abolished in 1917. The Oostjuden were supposedly taking all the low-paid jobs, demanding welfare support, cooked with garlic, dressed funny and didn't know how to behave in a civilized country*.

Anyhow, part of the demonization of Jews was phrased as "they should go back where they came from" - and the masses of Jews came from the East (pretty much like the demand to send undocumented workers "home", which generally means Mexico). Without the huge influx of Jews from the East, would it have been possible to demonize the local Jews, inside Germany? I'm not sure. I think it pretty much proves that politics by demonization is evil and should not be engaged in, ever, because the edge cases are more damaging than the damage to free speech in prohibiting it.

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* Does that sound a bit like the descriptions of Mexican laborers you've head or seen lately? One lady from Texas described it as "have you any idea how much their ER visits cost us?"