Sunday, December 05, 2004

Can a country have a personality disorder?

This is a list of the traits of an individual with narcissistic personality disorder.
  1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
  2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
  3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
  4. requires excessive admiration
  5. has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
  6. is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
  7. lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
  8. is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
  9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
It sounds disturbingly like the Bush administration and many of its supporters, to me. The posts and comments on this site, and some of the comments on Raed's website, demonstrate an utter lack of empathy and a sense of entitlement that is staggering. I know that the fuckwads posting on Raed's site are trolling, but what kind of person would say, in response to a post about efforts to get emergency aid to civilians in Baghdad, that he hopes Raed's friends "end up waylaid and you find their headless bodies in a ditch along side the road. The naive morons deserve it"?

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