A GOOD PSYCHOPATH | 2004-06-05
I have been conducting interrogations at every level, from prisons to Capitol Hill, for decades. So I speak with some expertise.
Every professional theologian I have ever met is a psychopath, a.k.a.. sociopath, a person totally incapable of feeling genuine guilt, like Ted Bundy. After a lifetime of practice, an intelligent psychopath is far better at faking guilt than any normal person.
A ballpark estimate is that there are five million psychopaths in the United States.
One Catholic professor has been the official theologian for National Review magazine for decades. Their official historian is Dr. Jaffe, who says America is based on the words "All men are created equal."
I had lunch with National Review many years ago after he had written a book in which he used the term "WASP," meaning White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. His book was about how virtuous the Catholic ethnics were as opposed to the WASPs. I pointed out to him that I had worked in a lot of campaigns and other movements in Catholic ethnic areas, and they were just like Southern Protestants in the characteristics he cited..
I pointed out that he had coined the word "WASP" because he didn't dare use the word "Yankee," which would be accurate and contrast Southern and ethnic virtues with the failures and moral weaknesses of Yankees. He had insulted half of the White Anglo-Saxon population of America in doing this..
Like a good psychopath, he answered, "Yes." Morally speaking, talking to him was exactly like talking to a robot.
Liberals and respectable conservatives do consider white Southerners the one ethnic group they can insult. But even with that attitude a fashionable liberal or conservative shows some unease when he is caught in this kind of lying insult when facing a white Southerner. This National Review theologian gave me the flat, unemotional response that only comes from a psychopath. I have seen it many, many times and every experienced interrogator picks it up instantly. That is his job..
This is an important and practical matter for an interrogator because lie detector tests and many other methods are useless on psychopaths. So you have to know if you are dealing with one. An interrogator who can't pick up the fact that someone is a psychopath is like a doctor who can't find high blood pressure. He is an incompetent.
A psychopath is programmed, and you need to ask questions that don't hit his programming button to determine whether he is a psychopath.
My question did not trigger this particular religious psychopath's programming. If I had shown that he had insulted blacks or Jews, his lip would have trembled and his apology would have been public, as his "looking like guilt" programming dictated. As a psychopath with a lifetime's programming, he would have responded to that stimulus with the proper reaction. But my point about white Southern Protestants did not hit his switch. So he just responded with a robotic "Yes."