America's Raw Story

10 th Post

Life is a Crap Shoot

Life is a crap shoot whether walking down the street, driving on the highway and across the bridge, flying overhead, depending on  other organizations (besides those that build cars, trucks, bridges and planes), or just plain living. We take our chances no matter how selective and careful we may be.

But the chances get riskier when dealing with any of the more risky organizations or any of the card carrying corporate members of the Devil’s marriage, the unequal partnership between corporations and subservient government.

Trained as an organizational psychologist I still stay tuned to organizations and their people nearly six decades later. Recently, for instance, I was rereading a published book review of mine in which I criticized the book’s co-authors’ theory about how “highly reliable organizations” (HROs) should manage uncertainty in the face of hazardous operations and environment; and also their choice of organizations against which to “benchmark” their recommendations.

Since HROs presumably are less of a crap shoot I have decided to revisit their study and my review and write this essay. It overviews the nature of organizations, examines the organizations they benchmarked, reports on a cursory search for any real HROs, discusses other criteria besides reliability for judging organizational performance, and finally concludes with a commentary about organizational performance and life in general being a crap shoot at best and a hazard to humanity and the future at worst.

You might very well question why I write this essay at all, and having done so, why I chose this venue for it instead of some academic journal. The reasons are three-fold. Academic journals in my field tend to be unrealistic and esoteric. Not one of us can ever get away any day from one or more aspects of organized life. And there are times when we want a particular organization (e.g., a hospital; an airliner; etc.) to be highly reliable.

Organizations: A Sweeping but Fleeting Perspective

1. Origin. My guess is that the first collective efforts, resembling an informal organization, to achieve a common purpose appeared in the hunter-gatherer period of history.  The precursor of organizations as we know them today probably arose during the industrial revolution, although some civilizations such as that of China had very defined civil organizations thousands of years ago. As a matter of fact, the Chinese probably invented the familiar bureaucratic form of administrative organization.

2. Kinds. You name them. They in all their variety are everywhere pursuing purposes that define the kinds of organizations they are.

3. Size. Small to humongous. The world’s most humongous? My guess is the U.S. government by a long shot.

4. Shape. From flat to tall. The world’s tallest? My pick again is the US government. Years ago I counted the number of bureaucratic levels between the entry level claims representative for the Social Security Administration and the President of the US when SSA was still part of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare---37 levels. Now that’s a mountainous pecking order with the biggest pecker at the top.

5. Performance. This is where the rubber meets the road. If an organization doesn’t perform there is no real point in its existing. At the same time, many organizations should not exist because their performance is irresponsible, even disastrously so.

There is a saying in my field that “people make the place.” That’s only partly true because the reverse is also true; namely, that the place makes the people. Another way of putting it is that an organization’s actions and the consequences of those actions are caused by both the organization’s people and the organization’s place; i.e., the organization itself along with the circumstances and situations that the organization encounters and its people sometimes create.  

When the organization is a corporation and part of America’s corpocracy I can guarantee you that the place largely makes the people and mostly determines the organization’s performance, which usually amounts to negative successes (negative actions such as unethical and illegal ones that succeed in meeting the organization’s goals) and negative failures (negative actions that fail to meet the organization’s goals).

There are numerous criteria for judging an organization’s performance. The criterion of particular interest here for the moment is reliability. I define a highly reliable organization as one that unfailingly delivers the performance that end users expect and want and without any mishaps in the production or delivery phase.

The Benchmarked Organizations

The co-authors benchmarked five organizations as illustrating the right or the wrong way to manage for high reliability.

1. Bandelier, New Mexico Fire Department. A controlled burn became an uncontrolled inferno causing $1 billion damage.

2. The Bristol Royal Infirmary. It was known at the time as a doctor-knows-best culture with high children death rates. The place deserves to have been called an HDO, or high death organization.

3. Naval aircraft carriers. They have been, say the authors, “a prototype of high reliability systems from the beginning,” even though they say that the carriers “are the most dangerous 4 and ½ acres in the world.” My written reaction was that “I would give carriers barely a moderate rating considering the literature I’ve read on their safety record over the years. For instance, a fire broke out on the USS Kitty Hawk in 2008 causing many injuries and $70 million in damage.  Moreover, one study found that on-board injury rates were slightly higher than for industries in general.

4. Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. In my assessment this particular plant and all other nuclear power plants are ticking radioactive time bombs that protestors have tried for decades to get closed. A plant can be accident-free yet till release harmful radiation. Moreover, the Diablo Canyon  plant,  besides sitting on an earthquake fault line once missed, as noticed in a safety inspection, about 22 missed weld quality hold points. How much radiation escapes from 22 leaky welds?

5. NASA. Sending astronauts into outer space is tricky business. Every detail and backups must be highly reliable. Tragedy may be just a heart-beat away, and that is what happened with the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters in 1986 and 2003 respectively.

  

You can now understand my aversion to academic literature. The co-authors were clearly benchmarking unreliable organizations, apparently to present lessons learned on what organizations should not do in hazardous situations.  Maybe the co-authors could find no HROs to benchmark.

In any case, how well have the five organizations learned their lessons?  

Lessons Learned?

1.  The Bandelier Fire Department apparently hasn’t had an opportunity to show what they did or didn’t learn. The same dangerous weather and dry brush conditions discounted before the uncontrolled fire have not occurred since.

2.   The medical staff at the Bristol Royal Infirmary took umbrage at a staff anesthesiologist who blew the whistle on the circumstances surrounding the deaths and railroaded him out of his job.   

3.  The co-authors didn’t mention that aircraft carriers were once saturated with asbestos that found its way into crews’ lungs, later causing a serious lung disease and death in some cases.  Carrier construction still uses asbestos but much less of it.  Carriers still experience flight deck fatalities about once or twice a year.

4. No reported mishaps could be found at the Diablo Canyon power plant, yet it remains a disaster waiting to happen as it sits on an earthquake fault line. California authorities are debating whether to shut it down permanently. In 2014 a senior resident inspector was concerned that “the plant was operating outside the safety margins of its State license.”

5.  NASA seems to have missed or forgotten some of its lessons. There have been several failures since the coauthors’ study. In 2014, for instance, an astronaut was killed and another seriously injured when their space ship disintegrated during a test flight over California.

In Search of HROs

Are there any HROs operating today in routinely and potentially hazardous conditions? I could find none from my extensive search of the Internet.

Besides Reliability

Cheap-costly, inefficient-efficient, slow-fast, and shoddy-flawless are some of the other bipolar criteria for judging organizational performance. Yet another one that I must mention is socially irresponsible-socially responsible.

This additional criterion is particularly important when it comes to corporations. To me  corporate social responsibility means 1) staying financially viable, 2) providing socially beneficial products and/or services, 3) without knowingly causing any physical, psychological, financial or ecological harm, 4) without externalizing costs (e.g., job outsourcing, waste disposal), 5) without seeking or depending on “warfare welfare” or other government favors such as corporate personhood recognition, campaign financing, lobbying, subsidies, revolving doors, laissez-faire regulations, or criminal immunity, 6) conducting business ethically and legally, and 7) treating all stakeholders fairly and with dignity. As you can see, my definition is a very unforgiving one that allows no leeway because ethics, morality, and responsibility are not, in my opinion, relative matters. They only become relative when people morally rationalize their wrongdoing.    

No corporation in the corpocracy meets all of the above requirements. The corpocracy at large, moreover, is directly responsible for America being ranked the worst among industrialized nations on various measures such as income inequality and unemployment, for America being the most imperialistic nation on the globe, and for America being vulnerable to continuous blowbacks from drone strikes and other forms of unending, devastating and deadly military aggression done solely for profit and power.

The authors were oblivious to the broader context and implications of their benchmarked organizations’ performance. For instance, diplomacy, not war making, might stand more of a chance if aircraft carriers and all other weaponry were so unreliable as to be useless. The same goes for NASA and its revenue draining, risky, and scientifically meritless manned space program.

In Closing

It’s said that two certainties in life are death and taxes. Baloney. The second is mostly escaped by people and organizations living on tax welfare, or tax havens and tax breaks.  But there is another certainty, the focal point of this essay.

That certainty is the unreliability of life, which is a crap shoot. We take our chances every day aware or unaware, especially when we deal in one way or another with organizations in which we entrust our well being.

There’s another certainty when it comes to the organizations making up the corpocracy. Its corruptible politicians and corrupting corporations crap on the rest of us and the world’s regimes they try to change to suit themselves.

Finally, there’s yet another related certainty. What goes around comes around. Some day the US will get crapped on by the environment it has polluted and charcoaled, by horrendous blowbacks from enemies it has created, or by Armageddon from nuking Russia or China. 

America’s Raw Story

^9th Post

Investing in Death

There are roughly 15,000 publicly traded companies and countless millions of people who invest in them. Each of these companies belongs to an industry of companies in similar businesses. Three industries are the subject of this short article; the funeral service industry, the gun industry, and the war industry.

The first provides burial and crematory services and paraphernalia for people no longer living due to nonviolent domestic deaths. The second provides the means to cause violent domestic deaths. The third provides the means to murder people in foreign lands.

The first industry is tangential to the focal point off this article. The other two are the focal point. But to be true to the article’s catchall tile, I feel behooved to say something about investing in the first one, so I will start with it.

Investing in Death from Natural Causes

Funeral homes, crematoriums, and cemeteries, but excluding related costs such as headstones and crypts is a $15 billion a year industry in America. Almost gone are the days of small, family owned funeral homes. They are being gobbled up or swamped by funeral service corporations that promise investors healthy returns, at least if you buy one or more of the “six stocks to die for” as one authoritative source put it.

Investing in Death from Domestic Guns

It is said that Americans have had a love affair with guns and cars for a century. Until recently more people have died from car accidents than from guns. That apparently has changed and not surprisingly since there are more guns than cars in America.

Firearms’ makers and sellers tell investors and Wall Street that massive gun killings are a ripe opportunity for investors. The reason is simple. After a massive, homegrown slaughter the public panics and buys more guns.

Investing in Death by International Murder

Einstein called war an act of murder. I agree and would add that it’s an offensive act more so than a defensive act if you know the true history behind America’s endless wars since her founding. That’s why I call this industry the war industry, not the defense industry. The US government finally got smart and changed the name in 1949 from the Department of War to its current euphemism, the Department of Defense. But let’s not be fooled by our government that is always trying to fool us.

The war industry yields very good ROI’s (return on investments) if one is not squeamish or morally inhibited about investing in merchants of death. And thousands upon thousands of investors aren’t. A writer for Forbes magazine has given five reasons why other industrial sectors aren’t as good as the war industry; its stocks weather economic storms better; it dominates the market “selling Uncle Sam a billion dollars in goods and services every day, seven days a week;” it is “politically protected” (that’s an understatement); its oblivious to any “waning demand;” and its future prospects are more publicly known through news of any impending dips in the defense

budget and thus give cautious investors pause to reconsider” (when does that ever happen for more than blip of time?).

Protected Investors

We can partly blame the second and third industries’ investors for the consequences of their companies’ miscreant behavior but we can’t sue them for wrongful death and other damages. The reason why dates back over two centuries ago in America’s history when the first state in the union enacted a limited liability law and other states quickly followed suit in a race to the bottom. States initially gave their chartered corporations limited liability only if they provided public services, but with the advent of sham charters, any chartered corporation gets limited liability. That includes the chartered and insulated gun makers and sellers and war contractors.

The war contractors are also shielded from lawsuits for wrongful deaths for two reasons. The foreigners have no standing in our courts and our lawless, criminal, war perpetuating government makes murder by war legal.

Socially Responsible Investing: An Alternative for Morally Minded Investors?

One would think that out of 15,000 publicly traded companies there surely ought to be some socially responsible ones in which to invest. Well, name me one if you find a company that meets all of my seven criteria a company must meet in order to be rightly called socially responsible. A socially responsible company is one that 1) stays financially viable, 2) provides socially beneficial products and/or services, 3) without knowingly causing any physical, psychological, financial or ecological harm, 4) without externalizing costs (e.g., job outsourcing, waste disposal), 5) without seeking or depending on “warfare welfare” or other government favors such as corporate personhood recognition, campaign financing, lobbying, subsidies, revolving doors, laissez-faire regulations, or criminal immunity, 6) conducts business ethically and legally, and 7) treats all stakeholders fairly and with dignity.

The rationale for all but the first criteria is that they are hallmarks of the corpocracy, the Devil’s marriage between big corporations and government. The corpocracy is far more egregious than just being socially irresponsible. It is directly responsible for America being ranked the worst among industrialized nations on various measures such as income inequality and unemployment; for America being the most imperialistic and death dealing nation on the globe; and for America being vulnerable to continuous blowbacks from drone strikes and other forms of unending, devastating and deadly military aggression done solely for profit and power.

Closing Remarks

You know the old saying; “there are only two certainties in life, death and taxes.” I will add two more certainties; 1) America was born in the womb of war and will die in her arms unless the American people rise up to demand the end of the military/political/industrial complex; and 2) people who invest in the gun and war industries are as morally and socially irresponsible as people populating the complex and are not only investors in death but also accomplices of death by murder.   

America’s Raw Story

8^th Post

America’s Corpocracy

Conspiracy Theory or Conspiracy Reality?

The Conspiracy Reality of America’s Corpocracy

I was prompted to write this article when a twitter contact of mine wondered whether some of my writings about the corpocracy amounted to a conspiracy theory.  Having been a behavioral scientist most of my adult life I know a thing or two about what’s theory and what’s not.  I don’t know how anyone, scientist or lay person, could mistake the corpocracy for a theory. I doubt if any readers of articles published in the alternative news media would confuse the two. Nevertheless, I want to tell you what I have learned over the years.

A Tacit Conspiracy, Not a Public Wedding

I have called America’s corpocracy the “devil’s marriage between big corporations and what should be but isn’t the American peoples’ government. The marriage was not a public wedding by any stretch of the imagination. It was more like a tacit conspiracy between the two partners, with government being the subservient to the other in every respect.

To act together toward common goals is one definition of a “conspiracy,” and one of its synonyms is collusion. What are the conspirators’ goals? To name a few: keeping its marriage intact; staying for a lifetime in public office; protecting corporations’ fraudulent constitutional rights, not citizen rights; maintaining a hands-off policy toward corporate crime and ensuring legislation, regulations, and judicial verdicts that protect corporate interests, not the public’s interests or the general welfare; keeping the government’s plentiful and endless hand outs to corporations; privatizing public services; controlling the mass media; keeping the marketplace free, not fair; and to expanding and protecting a profitable hegemony in other lands (corporations want global markets and politicians want global influence).

Being a conspiracy doesn’t automatically mean the conspirators must operate secretly, although they obviously aren’t going to publicize their conspiring. That being so, how do we know they conspire and collude among themselves? The conspiracy’s goals stated earlier suggest the signs to look for as evidence. We don’t have to look hard. The signs pop up daily it seems, at least when reading the alternative media, not obviously the corpocracy’s mainstream media and propaganda.

Consider some signs from three of America’s industries in their control of “our” government and thus of 99%.of us. The three picked are the most dangerous industries because they are often extremely injurious and deadly in the consequences of their decisions and actions.

The “Defense” Industries

The “defense” industry, bar none, is the most dangerous as it inflicts on humanity destruction and death on a world-wide scale. The industry pushed for preemptive war with Iraq before Bush Jr.’s first administration and then was heavily represented among the war policy makers in the administration. It spends billions of dollars lobbying Congress. It locates facilities in all or almost all Congressional districts to ensure servitude. It makes sure the most compliant politicians chair and sit on influential committees. It persuades Congress to authorize purchase of obsolete, unreliable, and extravagantly expensive weapons. It constantly engages in contract fraud with impunity. Ad infinitum.

Lest we forget the companion gun industry, its lobbyists have basically been assured a carte blanche by “our” government to arm Americans to the teeth with almost any form of firearm.

The Health Care Industries

These industries are a cluster of industries made up of big Pharma, the health insurance industry, and the provider industry, all conspiring with “our” government, to keep Americans in dept and in poor health needing expensive attention. The bête noir of this conglomeration is the pharmaceutical industry. Over the years it has reaped an astounding 7,000 percent return on its investment in lobbying Congress and has gotten in return for its bribery such favorable government actions as defeat of mandatory discount pricing; protection of drug patents in trade agreements; joint research patents with public institutions allowed; Medicare price negotiations with companies prevented; government list of preferred drugs prohibited; availability of generic pediatric drugs delayed; faster government drug safety reviews; company recommended reviewers allowed; bill to make generic drugs more accessible defeated; bigger hurdle before government warning letters issued; approval of some drugs just from animal testing; medical device makers get favorable considerations; unapproved uses of drugs gets journalistic license; restrictions eased on direct-to consumer advertising; tax credits given to makers of orphan drugs; licensing of new sites for making drugs eased; continuous review of approved new sites ended; pre-clinical trial data allowed for patent application; criteria for awarding patents for genes relaxed.;  price control proposals dropped by government; companies allowed to pay fee for faster reviews; faster review of drugs for life-threatening diseases; distribution of drug samples allowed; easier for brand-name makers to sue generic makers; government promotes university-industry partnerships; and  allowed to tap research at subsidized facilities.

The Chemical/Agriculture Industries

I put the chemical and agribusiness industries together because chemicals saturate the food chain and agribusiness thrives on chemicals. There’s an old nostrum that “we are what we eat,” which is why these two industries are so hazardous and potentially deadly, especially with their genetically modified organisms that are an assault on and gamble with nature that may ultimately have dire consequences for our species.

Within this pair of industries is the Monsanto Corporation. Mike Adams, chief contributor and editor of NaturalNews.com, says that “MonSatan---is now the No. 1 most hated corporation in America---and the destructive force behind the lobbying of the USDA, FDA, scientists and politicians that have all betrayed the American people---.”

Monsanto is simply too big and has too many allies outside government (e.g., American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology) and too many friends in government, both at the federal level (e.g., former Monsanto executives appointed to positions with the USDA) and state level (e.g., Secretaries of Agriculture) to be thwarted in its continuing drive to reap profit from its toxic products that threaten the health and lives of animals and humans alike. It was the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 that opened the sluice gate for GMOs by issuing the absurd ruling that nature could be patented. And it will very likely be this same captive, infamous court that bats down all lawsuits against Monsanto and the rest of the chemical and agribusiness industries. But whatever they unlikely lose at the Federal level they can try recouping and conspiring at the state level. “Don’t count Monsanto out” concludes the co-editors of Vanity Fair in a long and detailed expose.

Industries at Large

There are over 100 US industries. Take a random pick. Any industry, besides the three just cited is most likely to be a “card-carrying” member of the conspiratorial corpocracy. Banking industry? Remember the government’s bailouts after the second greatest depression? Remember the bail outs in the auto industry? Energy industry? As I recall oil big wigs were influential in the build up to the invasion of Iraq. I could go on to cite many other industries, but I think my point has already been made. Any industry that is supposedly governed by government regulations, and most if not all are, is ipso facto a conspirator with “our” government. The most flagrant instances are the many times industry representatives ghost write the regulations and/or the regulations, lax or not, are not enforced.

Privatization

The epitome of collusion may be the many instances where corporations buy public services and public land out from under our noses.

Here is a privatization riddle. What a) sorts mail but is not the USPS, b) cuts Social Security checks but is not the SSA, c) counts the census but is not the Bureau of the Census, d) monitors air traffic but is not the FAA, and e) runs space flights but is not NASA? Give up? It is Lockheed Martin, the largest military contractor in the U.S.

Pick any type of public service or public land and you will find some corporate owners. Public schools? Not any longer in many school districts. After Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans privatizers swept in and took over the public schools. Health care industry? Our health care ought to be a human right not to be put on the auction block. Public toll ways?  Not any longer in some states. Law enforcement? In some areas private police have the same authority as deputy sheriffs. And pause on this. The State of Arizona even sold its State Capitol and then leased it back.

Privatization, argue Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich, co-authors of The Fox in the Henhouse, is the private sector’s way to “undercut, limit, shrink, or outright take over any government and any part of the public sector that stands in the way of corporate pursuit of ever larger profits and could be run for profit.”

Conspiracy within a Conspiracy

I suppose there are numerous instances where petty conspiracies arise within one part of the government to spoil or thwart another part. I’m not going to bother trying to ferret them out. Politics as usual is rife with internal rivalries as appointed officials vie for influence.

The conspiracy I have in mind here is within the corporate part of the corpocracy. Probably the most prevalent form of it is the collusion among corporations in fixing prices. Whenever government is lax in stopping the practice it conspires with the price fixers.

In Closing

“Our” government is accountable to no one, a scofflaw committing all sorts of legal and illegal wrong doing daily up to and including murdering people with drone strikes. This government, moreover, in good faith as a conspirator, rarely holds corporations accountable for all sorts of wrongdoing, including defrauding and gouging the government. Is it any wonder then that the two parties to the marriage made in Hell conspire to raise Hell with 99% of Americans and the rest of the world?

 .

America’s Raw Story

7^th Post

Subjugated Americans

with their

Minuscule Liberty Quotients

Under the Screws of the Corpocracy

Liberty Quotient of the Subjugated

Self Power/Corpocracy Power

·                    autocracy

·                    bureaucracy

·                    corpocracy

·                    democracy

·                    kleptocracy

·                    mobocracy (yes, it’s a word)

·                    monocracy

·                    plutocracy

·                    technocracy

·                    theocracy

·                    timocracy

The word “corpocracy” hasn’t made it yet into the dictionary, unlike the other “cracies,” or into public conversations as far as I know.¹ “Cracy” is derived from the Greek “kartia” for power. The corpocracy exemplifies regime power, the getting of more and more of it and the continuous abuse of it in serving its own interests at a terrible cost to public interests and the common good. Power, but a very different kind of power, is also a defining characteristic of “democracy.”

There is such an inherent conflict between these two “cracies” that they can’t co-exist in the same nation and they don’t coexist in America. In America the corpocracy rules with tyrannical-like power. The self-ruling democracy power of the people has been taken from the people.

The Devil’s Marriage

Where did the power of the people go?

To a marriage made in Hell did it flow.

Leaving democracy in the lurch,

Jilting Americans and much worse.

Not a Shotgun Wedding

The marriage was anything but a shotgun wedding. It was a wedding for the sake of mutual “badvantages” (advantages for all sorts of bad behavior, legal and illegal).  Both partners compromised (some critics might say “corrupted”) each other. Both got huge, unending dowries. Corporations (most but not all are U.S. corporations) get almost on a daily basis “power and profit gifts” in the form of favorable legislation, favorable regulations and deregulations, favorable judicial verdicts, welfare handouts, impunity from lawlessness, military help in global exploitation, and laissez-faire capitalism. And what do the politicians get? The Capital Hill bunch (aka “Corporate Hill”) gets career employment in plush offices. The oval office puppets get brief prestige and mostly posturing power. And the robed bench sitters for life get to rule in favor of the corporate interests that helped to get them appointed. The first dowry far overshadows the second but neither partner can afford a divorce. They will stick together through thick and thin. 

Self-Rule: Not in a Corpocracy

Self-rule is synonymous with democracy. It represents both a moral and a practical balance between the anarchy of no governance, or extreme individualism, on the one hand, and totalitarianism, or oppressive governance, on the other.  Self-rule by 99% can’t exist in a corpocracy.

Self-Rule and Our Life’s Equations

In a true democracy people in all walks and stations of life have self-rule or as much control as possible over their life equations. You, me, everyone has the same general equation. It may just be the most important non-mathematical equation anyone will ever see in their lifetime:

 Our Selves + Our Situations          =              Whether/How Much

                                                                          Health, Happiness,

                                                                             and Prosperity

                                                                 We Have or Don’t Have                                    

In a true democracy the outputs on the right side amount to an optimum level of general welfare for all Americans, not just the wealthiest ones.

In a corpocracy, the equation is much different. The corpocracy has considerable power and control over most Americans’ life’s equations and thus their general welfare. Here is what the equation looks like today for all but the wealthiest Americans:

Our Selves + The Corpocracy          =         Much, Much Less       

                                                              Health, Happiness, and Prosperity

                                                                                      for

                                                                                Most of Us                                                                                       

                                                       

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and the “promotion of the general welfare” the American Constitution promised us are more than “just” declarations of the sanctity and importance of our life’s equations. It’s an affirmation of humanity and support for the general welfare in a civilized society.

America’s Raw Story

(A New Title)

6th Post

Under the Socioscope

The Badvantages of Bush and Obama

“Badvantage” is my term for any situation or circumstance that gives an advantage to bad behavior. Any president of America probably has more badvantages than any other living human being. 

In the previous post we put Bush and Obama under the psychoscope to understand partly why they do what they do. In this post we complete the explanation of their behavior by putting them under the socioscope to find their badvantages. As I see it, there are at least eight of them.

Seductive Positions

History is replete with leaders seduced by the powerful positions they held. Power is readily available to be exploited and abused. The U.S. presidency is certainly a seductive position, but its power, as with all seductive positions, is usually moderated to some extent by the relative strength s and weaknesses of the other badvantages and any countervailing forces.

Organizational Size

Bigger organizations have more power available to the organization’s leaders to wield and usually with impunity. Needless to say to America’s taxpayers and to the rest of the world, the U.S. government is the biggest national government in the world, and there are numerous mega corporations.         

Tall Organizational Structure

Large organizations like governments and corporations are hierarchies with “pecking orders.” People at and near the top do the ordering and people below follow them. The hierarchy is a perfect place to order wrongdoing to be done and then to blame it on people at the lower levels. 

Organizational and Social Culture

Culture, whether that of a government agency, a corporation, or that of a society is like an autobiography that says, “This is our history, who we are, what we believe, what we value, and how we operate.” Any U.S. president, like most people whether plebeians or potentates, operates within both an organizational and social culture and is influenced by it to varying degrees in varying situations.

As an illustration let’s consider first President Obama’s organizational culture and zero in on its most potent element, namely, his “shadow government” made up primarily of the CIA, the NSA, and the military.  His shadow government influences, if not sometimes predetermines his decisions if we can believe the authenticity of reports from various sources, a few of which I will cite here.

The reason why Obama blocked criminal persecutions of officials in the previous administration according to various sources is that he was worried that “the CIA, NSA and military would revolt” and he reminded his confidants of “what had happened to Martin Luther King,” an implicit allusion to the alleged  assassination arranged by the CIA. [18] If Obama did not also mention the assassination of President Kennedy under similar circumstances it was probably too discomforting for him to have done so.

From a few other sources have come reports that also seem to cast doubt on Obama’s unilateral authority. We learn, for instance, that   he told the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was whining to him about the CIA’s getting a disproportionate share of the war pie that “The CIA gets what it wants.” [19] And we hear indirectly from Senator Ron Wyden, member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and who reportedly has had “‘several spirited discussions’ with Obama,” that “It really seems like General Clapper, the intelligence leadership, and the lawyers drive this in terms of how decisions get made at the White House.” [20]

Not being privy to either Obama’s mind or to his inner circle, what are we to make of such reports?  Are Obama, and were his predecessors, puppets or puppeteers? What I make of it is simply that President Obama, just like the rest of us, does not live in a vacuum. He is not the sole reason why he does what he does.

Another part of Obama’s organizational culture of course is the political one in the form of the U.S. Congress. It is dominated by the party twins, Democrats and Republicans. Any U.S. president can count on any Congress being almost to a person war and spy hawks. If there were any doubts about these hawks and their dependence on the war and spy industries Chapters 4 and 5 ought to dispel them.  

Now let’s turn for a moment to Obama’s much larger context, the culture of the society in which he lives. It is perfectly suited for his position and its shadowy government for it is a sociopathic culture that not only accepts but expects endless warring and spying. [21] This second culture is a creature of the first but they feed off each other.

Upside- Down Incentives

U.S. presidents and corporate CEOs are addicted to them. An upside down incentive, as you can probably guess, is one that rewards bad behavior and/or punishes good behavior. The most egregious upside down incentive is the case of U.S. warriors-in-chief and their regimes never having to worry about being prosecuted as war criminals by the International Criminal Court to which the U.S. deliberately did not join. International war criminals these people are, stupid they are not.Another potent upside down incentive is provided by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations (including those in the war and spy industries)  are persons and thus allowed to finance the campaigns of politicians, rendering them mouthpieces for their corporate patrons. 

Best or Worst of Times

The best of times, which stokes greed, tends to bring out the worst in human nature just as the worst of times, which stokes need, tends to do the same. Fortune 500 companies, for instance, tend to get into legal trouble more often when times are good. In the case of U.S. presidents, however, the worst of times is when they get more militaristic. The difference is that an American regime in its militaristic imperialism creates its own worst of times by turning potential friends into enemies. Nothing boosts its profits and power and distracts the home folks from domestic plight more than having an enemy or two or three. Making sure America has enemies is a very potent badvantage for a U.S. president. Think about it for a moment. The U.S. is thousands of miles across water and land from her enemies that wouldn’t be America’s enemies if America stayed at home. But when has her imperialistic regimes ever stayed at home?

Global Enticements

Globalization is the contemporary euphemism for imperialism or “global gobbling.”The globe is one giant opportunity for market expansion, resource exploitation and political manipulation by the more powerful nations, which helps explain why U.S. regimes try to be the most powerful of all. The prospect of installing or protecting dictatorships to protect U.S. corporate investments on foreign soil in the pretext of spreading and defending freedom is just too much of a temptation for CEOs and U.S. presidents alike to resist.

One of the most alluring global plumbs up for gobbling has always been oil. The engines of America’s corpocracy run on oil. That dependency goes a long way toward explaining American imperialism. Eventually there will be a worldwide desperate need for water that will replace oil.  

The Powerful Corpocracy and Its Allies

America’s corpocracy, the “Devil’s Marriage” between big government and big business, along with the duo’s allies are a gigantic, endless badvantage for all people in and associated with the corpocracy and its corporate driven political and economic systems, not just with the corpocracy’s warring and spying component. [22] They all feed off one another at the expense of the public. Large corporations, including those in the defense and intelligence industries expect and get countless favors and the subservient government’s politicians provide them in exchange for public office. It is truly a Devil’s Marriage.

There you have it, eight badvantages, and there’s absolutely no doubt that every one of them has tempted or pressured not only Presidents Bush and Obama but also their predecessors. The badvantages help explain and influence but do not exonerate their negative leadership (i.e., bad behavior and bad results for the common people). Leaders, like everyone else, despite the badvantages, are responsible for their own behavior and its consequences; that they never are held accountable can be blamed on the badvantages.

Closing Remarks and a Confession

Given their PMUs and GMUs revealed under the psychoscope of the previous post PLUS their socioscope is it any wonder that Bush and Obama do what they do? Understanding why, however, obviously should not excuse them (a subject for a future post).

Let’s consider for a moment some of my own past in light of a psychoscope and socioscope. Why did I accept a graduate school research position funded by an Air Force Grant? Why did I did I teach an introductory psychology course at an Air Force base? Why did I work for a year for a defense contractor right after graduate school? Why did I protest the Vietnam War silently while working for the US government?

The answers can be found through my own psychoscope and sociscope of my PAST for which I am now trying to make amends.

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Endnotes

18. Swanson, D. Mark Udall and the Unspeakable. Dissident Voice, November 22, 2014.

19.  Coll, S. Remote Control: Our Drone Delusion. The New Yorker, May 6, 2003, 77.

20. Lizza, R. State of Deception: Why Won’t the President Rein in the Intelligence Community? The New Yorker, December 16, 2013, 48-61, 50.21. Derber, C. Sociopathic Society: A People's Sociology of the United States. Paradigm Publishers, 2013.  See also, Lewis, AR. The American Culture of War: A History of US Military Force from World War II to Operation Enduring Freedom. Routledge, 2012.

21. Derber, C. Sociopathic Society: A People's Sociology of the United States. Paradigm Publishers, 2013.  See also, Lewis, AR. The American Culture of War: A History of US Military Force from World War II to Operation Enduring Freedom. Routledge, 2012.

22. Brumback, G.B. The Devil’s Marriage: The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch, Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2011.

Please post your comments, good or bad.

America’s RAW Deal

5th Post

Under the Psychoscope

Two of History’s Bloodiest War Lords

Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama

Snapshot: What They Have Done

·                 Authorized secret wars in nearly 3/4^th of the planet

·                 Destroyed cities and villages

·                 Sent millions to their graves

·                 Bombed weddings and funeral

·                 Replaced popular leaders with dictators as US pawns

·                 Created countless enemies and potential terrorists

·                 Squandered trillions for war instead of building a new America

WHY? WHY? WHY?

People, including presidents, do what they do because of their PMU (psychological makeup), GMU (genetic and gender makeup) and also because of the situations or circumstances they create and/or face. [1]

In this psychoscope the two president’s PMUs and GMUs will be examined for an explanation of their destructive and deadly behavior. In the next post the two presidents' circumstances will be examined.

What the Psychoscope Shows Us

Their DNA

Some research suggests that a particular gene is more likely to be found among leaders than followers. [2] Other research suggests that a person’s genetic makeup may to some extent predispose the person to a life of crime. [3] “Putting two and two together,” is it much of a stretch to wonder if their genes have at least a minor influence on their committing international war crimes?

Their Gender

Do you know of any female U.S. president? Wars throughout history have been started and fought by males with very few exceptions (Cleopatra and Margaret Thatcher, for example). While testosterone may play a tiny role in a male leader’s aggression, we live in a male dominated society, which means among other things that males are expected to dominate and to be aggressive when confronted with conflicts.

Their Background

A person’s background is the person’s history, and you know the old saying, “history is prologue to the future.” There’s a grain or more of truth to it, and more so when some of the person’s behavior is habitual since a habit (e.g., the war and spy habit) is the past repeated, is it not? A person’s background tells us how that person’s characteristics have evolved and what role they played in the person’s lifetime of responses to a lifetime of situations.

Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth so to speak and a member of a dynasty with a sense of entitlement that sometimes surfaced on the wrong side of the law and with impunity. [4] His father, George Walker Bush, before becoming the first U.S. president in the Bush family had been a director of the CIA.

Obama’s parents were allegedly on the CIA payroll and that agency reportedly “financed his college education and gave him his first job afterwards.” [5] Is he indebted to the CIA? Is he afraid of the CIA given its history of assassinations? I will return to the matter of the influence the “shadow government” (i.e., CIA and NSA) allegedly has on whoever sits in the Oval Office in the next post.                                                                             

Their Personalities

Let’s turn now to their personalities and raise some questions about whether these socially undesirable personality traits; greed/ambition, morally unprincipled, narcissism and close mindedness are associated with their kind of leadership behavior. 

Greedy/Ambitious? 

We know they are ambitious. Anyone is who climbs up to the Oval Office.

Morally Unprincipled?

Anyone who starts a war against another nation on a pretext or who orders drone strikes is morally unprincipled and will do whatever is necessary to achieve desired ends.  Bush, a born-again Christian would naturally disagree. So would Obama. Let’s hear what the latter himself has said about his own moral character: “---I think I’m pretty good at keeping my moral compass while recognizing that I am a product of original sin.” [6] The subordinating clause of that statement is a perfect example of a moral rationalization as in, “well, we all sin in our own ways.”  And again in his own words:  “One of the things that I’ve learned to appreciate more as President is you are essentially a relay swimmer in a river full of rapids, and that river is history.” [7] In other words, you can blame what he’s doing on history. And he’s partly right.

To the extent that any war/spy commander in chief has any hint of morality it is compartmentalized, a form of moral rationalization and a habit typical of most humans. Certain mental compartments are reserved for scruples and others for behavior ranging from the less scrupulous to evil. I will give you one example from Obama’s repertoire of behavior. A few days after he had eulogized Dr. Martin Luther King, the antiwar activist when alive, the president announced he would be doing some more bombing. [8]

Now, we can interpret that seeming contradiction in two ways. Either his eulogy was nothing other than posturing, which is second nature to politicians, or he was pulling the eulogy out of a moral compartment and deciding from a different compartment to go bombing again. Either way, he was at worst exhibiting unprincipled morality and at best conditional morality.

Narcissistic?

What national leader isn’t narcissistic? An extreme form of narcissism is a sense of grandiosity, as President Obama seems to display in this remark; “Here’s my bottom line, America must always lead on the stage. If we don’t, no one else will.” [9]Another extreme form is a lack of empathy.  Have you ever seen the two of them express empathy or remorse over innocent people killed by their military decisions? Sometime after I wrote that last sentence I spotted an article in the New Yorker quoting Obama in a speech to the National Defense University saying about civilian deaths from drones that such incidents are “heartbreaking tragedies” that would be haunting memories for “as long as we live.” [10] I think his expressed remorse was mostly posturing rather than being deeply felt especially since he went on to defend the use of drones.

Hubris is another element of this personality trait. It was displayed by President Bush standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and boasting “mission accomplished;” and in this boastful remark; “The interesting thing about being president is that you don’t feel like [you] owe anybody an explanation. [11]

Psychopathic?

It would not be unusual if Bush and Obama were psychopathic. Apparently it is “normal” if we can believe the findings from a study that relied on some 100 historical experts’ analyses of data on all U.S. presidents. The researchers say they found this personality trait in every U.S. president. [12] Noted psychoanalyst Dr. Justin Frank seems to have found it also when analyzing the backgrounds and behavior of Bush and Obama. [13]

Close-minded? 

Ron Suskind was the senior national-affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000 and the author of a book and articles about Bush. Mr. Suskind writes that when asked by his top deputies to explain his decisions “the president would say that he relied on his ‘gut’ or his ‘instinct’ to guide the ship of state, and then he ‘prayed over it.’” [14] Anyone believing their decisions is guided by the supernatural are not likely to open their mind to alternative decisions.

As for President Obama, he once told a reporter; “And every morning and every night I’m taking measure of my actions against the options and possibilities available to me---.” [15] Now that statement suggests he’s open-minded, but he certainly has been close minded about ending the drone strikes and reaching out to the world with an olive branch.

Close-mindedness is the personality trait that seems to be the most correlated with less intelligence. The more close-minded a person is, the more to suspect that person is not as intelligent as an open-minded person. That may be why the policy decisions and actions of Bush and Obama have seemed so mindless. Habits, after all, don’t require any superior intelligence or critical thinking.

Beliefs?

Firmly held beliefs are like ideologies that have hardened into certainties. Nowhere is that more pronounced than in the case of religious beliefs, where believing becomes seeing, not the other way around. More down to earth, a pronounced belief of every American president is that of manifest destiny, the belief, no, the certainty that America is destined to be the leader of the world. The neoconservatives and neoliberals of today that bend the ears of our presidents are living examples of this ideology in action. The invasion of Iraq, for example, was planned long before 9/11 by influential neoconservatives with connections to the White House. [16]Another pronounced belief, so intuitive and counter intuitive at the same time, is the conviction, or maybe a rationalization if the belief is a pretense, that certain wars, America’s wars most certainly, are always “just and necessary.” Recall my argument in an earlier post blasting that belief to smithereens.

Selfish Purpose?

Absolutely. As with Bush and all previous U.S. presidents, Obama is acting for his own self-interests, not for the interests of the American people, even though he will most certainly disagree and would, I’m sure, argue he is acting in the best interests of America. If that is true, his actions have certainly failed in any case.

Purpose, along with intentions and expectations, are an extremely strong influence on human behavior. They help motivate and guide it.

Ordinary, simple habits don’t need an explicit purpose. Take the case of the cigarette smoker ((but don’t take him/her in the same room). That habit basically drives itself. The need for and sight of a cigarette is all that is needed to keep the habit alive. The warring and spying habits, by virtue of their enormity of scale, need self and publicly proclaimed purposes.     

Why Do Americans Elect Such People?

The answer, I think, is two-fold. First, American voters have little say in the selection and election of their presidents.  The Constitution’s specification of the dysfunctional Electoral College, the government’s controlled Federal Election Commission, and corporate campaign financing guarantee that the “twin” parties’ candidates will dominate the ballots. Second, American education is one of an addicted regime’s most reliable “habit helpers.” It is never in any regime’s advantage to have most if not all citizens educated to think for themselves. If they did there would be an entirely different and better America.  Psychologist David Dunning and sociologist Mato Nagel have theorized and showed through a computer simulated election that incompetent people can’t judge leadership qualities. [17] That finding is not accidental. America’s regimes plan it that way.

EndNotes

1. I first conceived of the idea of the human equation in my book on organizational performance:
Tall Performance from Short Organizations through We/Me Power. 1^st Books Library,  2002.
2. Prigg, M. The Secret to being a Great Leader? It's in your Genes, Researchers Say. DailyMallJanuary15,2013.
3. Cohen, P. Genetic Basis for Crime: A New Look. The New York Times, June 19, 2011.4.  4. Parry, R. Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. The Media Consortium, 2004.

5. Ross, S. Obama’s Ties to CIA May Explain His Totalitarian Views. Veterans Today, May 3, 2013.

6. Remnick, D, Going the Distance: On and Off the Road with Barack Obama. The New Yorker, January 27, 2014, 41-61, 61.

7. Ibid., 61.

8. Sirota, D. What Happened to the Anti-War Movement? Nation of Change, September 6, 2013.

9. Blum, W. What Would a Psychiatrist Call This? Delusions of Grandeur? The Anti-Empire Report #130. Dissident Voice, July 12, 2014.

10. Coll, S. The Unblinkable Stare. The New Yorker, November 24, 2014, 98-109.

11. Nader, R. A Letter to George Bush. Dissident Voice, January 1, 2014.

12. Howard, J. Psychopathic Personality Traits Linked With U.S. Presidential Success, Psychologists Suggest. The Huffington Post, September 13, 2012.

13. Frank, J. Bush on the Couch. Harper Perennial, 2005. Obama on the Couch. Free Press, 2012.

14. Suskind, R. Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush. The New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004; and, Suskind, R. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill. Simon & Schuster, 2004.

15. Remnick. Op. Cit., 61.

16. There are many accounts of how 9/11 was a golden opportunity for Bush and gang, including his neoconservative tutors to carry out a plan years in the making to invade Iraq. See, e.g., Battle, J. The Iraq War-Part I:  The U.S. Prepares for Conflict, The National Security Archive, 2001; Beversdorf, T. The Most Essential Lesson of History That No One Wants to Admit.  First Rebuttal, December 7, 2014; and Weber, M. Iraq: A War For Israel. Institute for Historical Review, March, 2008.

17. Wolchover, N. People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say. OpEdNews, February 28, 2012.

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