Does 'sociopathic self-absorption' count as Narcissism?
Jay Bybee's sociopathic self-absorption:
The New York Times has an article today on Jay Bybee, the torture-authorizing Bush OLC lawyer and current judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The focus of the article is Bybee's recent Congressional testimony that several of the torture tactics used by the CIA were never approved by the Justice Department -- which means they should fall outside the scope of the Obama DOJ's immunity shield from prosecution -- but it was the last passage that I think is most noteworthy (h/t reader rg):
These are individuals who destroyed the lives of countless innocent people with gruesome and lawless "policies." Not only did they never suffer for it, they have been richly rewarded with wealth and life-long job security. And still, the only tragedy they see from everything that happened is their own trivial "suffering," i.e., the fact that they're criticized in some quarters for what they did. The term "sociopathic self-absorption" should have a huge picture of them next to it in the dictionary.
That's what happens when you create a society where elites can engage in the most wretched and destructive acts with total impunity: it engenders a blinding, empathy-free, effete sense of entitlement whereby they see themselves as the only ones who matter and their own plight as the only one worthy of consideration.
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
