A modest proposal, via Midtown Miscreant

Some folks are no damn good, and never were. Snip:

I think some of us are just born bad. Something is missing, the wiring is all f**ked up. A battalion of shrinks and social workers cant fix what's broken. There is a line that most of us won't cross, we won't kill just because we can, or because we want to. Some of us can cross that line without hesitation or concern over the consequences.

Comments

[Drew]

MM, again, great entry. It's simple--personal accountability.

[Mikeybackwards]

I would find MM's entry to be more convincing if he offered some idea how we determine who are those f***ed up people. I mean, after all, most of us won't engage in multiple felonies like he did. So what evidence does he offer that he is no longer one of those people who are f***ed up in their wiring.

[Tom K]

The police often take ruthless advantage of the special penalties for shooting at them. It isn't fair that a person can be jailed for life for shooting at a police officer and missing while another can get out in less than ten years for killing a human being. In the meantime rogue police units roam neighborhoods and beat people at random and even attack people who go to the station to complain about it.

If they had to live under the same conditions that we'd do they would shape up.

[Searching]

He doesn't. In fact he states examples of two men, one that he thought would go one direction and one that he thought would go another.. yet both ended up on the same road.

As far as MM goes.. you be the judge....

[Searching]

My comment was in response to Mikey

[Tom K]

I'll put another opinion in: Try to deal with these messed-up people, which is not an original idea at all, by figuring out who to hurt, we're going to wind up hurting a lot of people who don't need to be hurt. Even accepting the argument that sociopaths should all be destroyed, for the sake of argument, we're going to get a lot of false positives because sociopaths are not as likely as the general population to engage in sociopathic marker behavior. The mark of the sociopath is to appear to be a good citizen. I'm more trusting of people who have genuine smudges on their reputations.

So yes, we may have real segments of the population that it is legitimate to hate, until we realize that we don't know which individuals they are. We're a lot better off with philosophies that create a society that sociopaths can't be sociopaths in, or that lessens their effect without having to identify individuals. A less controlling and authoritarian society is a less useful environment to a sociopath.

[Tom K]

OK, that was tangled. The genuine mark of a sociopath is pretending to be a good citizen and without conscience it's amazingly easy to do that. When searching for one people are going to be looking for behaviors that they see as sociopathic, like committing crimes, and it doesn't work like that.

[Searching]

I am glad you came back on .. I was about to ask you to step away from the bong....

[Wisdom]

Are we talking about 'Dexter'? LOL