In repsonse to “My Name is Bob Whitaker,” Derek says,

“Yes indeed…I don’t know Bob. I just know his ideas and thoughts. I guess that is enough really. ”

“I have been writing in short, declaritive sentences since I first read Hemingway. It is easier to communicate with others when you are direct.”

“Maybe that is why I feel like I fit in even though I don’t know squat in comparison with some of the elder, more learned commenters. ”

Comment by Derek

MY REPLY:

The last sentence pissed me off royally.

Everybody here, even including Joe, whose respect is not easy to come by and who is an old bastard like me, has made it clear that they respect you.

Dammit, and I think I speak for the rest of us older folks, you should APPRECIATE that!

All that apology doesn’t do a damned thing for me. What would compliment me would be if you were cocky about it, if you said, “Here I am in Bob’s Blog, where nobody gets a break. Bob and Joe and Peter and Mark and Shari and Anonymous and all the rest have no mercy. If they think I’m being dumb, they will say so.”

“I am running with the fastest crowd there is, and I am holding my own.”

Now THAT, for you and Shari and anybody else who uses apologies, would be a COMPLIMENT.

Because it is TRUE, which is the one thing we stick to here.

You can apologize yourself to death, but nobody here is going to give you a break.

So what’s the point of all the apology crap?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that a young man has not been around as long as Joe and I have.

We also know you are not purple.

Now that I’ve gotten to what is NOT rocket science, let me make a further observation.

Human beings regularly choke to death. That’s why we have the Heimlich Maneuver. Other animals don’t need it because they are not handicapped by the low-lying vocal chords we have. We DIE so we can TALK.

Evolution or Creation, there is a REASON we die so we can TALK.

Talk is critical to us.

You know me because you know what I SAY, not because I smell like a member of the pack. Dogs hardly notice TV because they can’t SMELL it.

We are an eye-oriented animal. We are an IDEA oriented animal. There is a REASON for this.

I am a white man. I LOOK like you. You know my ideas from what I SAY.

The OBJECT: to save people who LOOK like us. The MEANS: Ideas.

You KNOW me.

Peter asks:

Do you have some pointers to spot a sociopath? Are there any?

So far, all I can tell when talking to people who act a good part, is that some seem to have empty vibes like comatose patients. I think of them to myself as “flat-liners; it’s almost like there is no one there. I can miss this if the person’s act is really good or if there is a lot of emotion in the room. I met Clinton once and shook his hand a couple of times just to see what I felt. Although it was neat to speak with an ex-president, and there was a lot of enthusiasm abounding, I can’t say that I felt anything around and from him. If this was not because he was tired, maybe I found what a high-performing psychopath feels like.

I used to think that a bureaucrat who is utterly cold and lifeless was that way because he was socially stunted and a nerd stuck in an office (so many administrators are short, fat, bald and ugly). I have since learned that there ought to be some sort of emotional vibe emanating from someone or I should get the heck away from him. This kind of person has no restraint on their behavior and they will cause as much harm as they can — at random. Although the emotion is totally flat, there is still a strand of undirected malice leaking from them (and they often don’t give very good eye-contact either). Clinton, however, was just blank and acted the way one would expect him to in public, smiles and all. (However, I did think his handshake was fishlike and that he couldn’t look me directly in the eye for more than millisecond.)

Sorry Bob, this was an intuitive response. I am looking to you for any consistent patterns to remember for spotting a psychopath. I think this would help all of us, if you can enunciate them.

Comment by Peter

MY REPLY:

The point of comments for me is that they make ME think. So my answer is useless to you but your comment is valuable to me.

Straight question from Peter:

“Do you have some pointers to spot a sociopath? Are there any?”

Straight answer from Bob, after some thought:

I don’t know.

I can TELL someone is a psychopath, but it is practical experience because I HAD to learn to tell.

Your description of a definite psychopath, Bill Clinton is instructive. A true psychopath can look you in the eye.

But Clinton was tired and you weren’t worth the trouble to him.

All the commentators, including the conservative, talk about how CHARMING Clinton is. They can’t HELP liking him. He makes them think they are the only person in the world to them.

And he looks them straight in the eye. That is supposed to tell a Practical Man that someone is trustworthy.

Which is yet another reason why the person who thinks he is a Practical Man is the world’s stooge.

A person who cannot look you in the eye becasue he doesn’t believe what is saying is not a psychopath. He cannot look you inthe eye because he is not confident of what he is saying. But a true psychopath couldn’t care less.

George Bush, Senior told the Shiites to rise against Saddam. He said he would back them if htey did. Then they rose and he did nothing.

Stalin did exactly the same thing to the Jews who rose against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. Russian tanks sat there and watched while the Jews killed Germans and waited for the Communists, their allies against the hated Nordic gentiles, to come to their support.

Stalin was a definite psychopath. Bush may or not have been an actual psychopath.

From the point of view of the Warsaw Ghetto or the Shiites, it made no difference. To me, George Bush, Senior is hte prime example ofhte group that calls itself The Greatest Generation. Psychopaths have no conscience, the Greatest Generation was so morally weak that they NEVER showed the slightest sign of moral courage. They didn’t sell anybody out, they GAVE everything away.

In the first volume of Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn talks about Winston Churchill, the hero of The Greatest Generation. He HATES the man.

Churchill promised two million Soviets who fought against Stalin that if they surrendered to the Allies,t ehy woud be protected. As soon as they did so, he turned them over to Stalin, which was considerably worse than killing them on the spot. In fact, when they finally realize what was happening, most of them TRIED to commit suicide, but Stalin wanted them alive, so Churchill made sure they had no means to do it.

I have SEEN what Communists do to people they hate and who fall into their hands. If you fight them you carry a grenade, and it is not to be thrown at them.

I can’t make you understand what a horrible man Churchill was.

But was he a psychopath? Are those who worship him psychopaths? Is George Bush, Senior a psychopath or just a member of the The Greatest Generation?

My doctor brother can give you an informed opinion. Mine is entirely practical.

I can tell the difference between extreme moral weakness and INBORN psychopathy. That’s just experience.

In some way, it is easier to deal with a psychopath than with a person who has not the slightest hint of moral courage. Neither reacts to shame, but they both react to fear.

Let me think about this a bit and see if I can explain it further.

In reply to “My Name is Bob Whitaker” Shari says,

“I think I may be the only stranger who replies here. It seems that you all have some personal aquantance with each other. So I can say that I don’t obssess about Bob Whitaker. Actually I never heard of him until I started reading this blog. I have lived all my life way out west and never heard of a lot of things. I’ve tried to find things out though. It’s hard because as you know, you don’t learn what you need in college. At least I never did, but I quit after a couple years and got married. ”

Comment by Shari

I am glad Shari got the impression that we all know each other.

We don’t.

I hope it doesn’t disappoint anybody, but Elizabeth is hte only person here I can put a face to. I have met Peter, but I can’t put names to faces.

Oh, yes, I’ve met Richard.

My father was the top brick-maker on earth, and he was color-blind. I am a past master at politics and I can’t remember names or attach them to faces.

So my father and I both had to be very good at what we DID.

I am interested in ideas, in concepts, in THOUGHTS. That’s what I remember about people.

I guess I’m not a people person.

I know THOUSANDS of people, of course, and thousands know me. And I tend to be very entertaining in a group. So the idea that I am not a people person is hard for some people to comprehend.

I have no trouble talking to people anywhere, and I strike up acquaintances easily because I like people. Every person has a life experience just like I do, different as it may be. I understand them too well to dislike them.

But for me, the exchanges of feelings and ideas we have here are reality, not having lunch together.