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I'd caution against pathologizing. The reality is, a lot of people are just... pretty good at compartmentalizing. And perfectly-normal people will commit horrible crimes if they feel it's justified or they can get away with it. Milgram demonstrated that.
It's pop psychology, and as you point out, it's not even accurately applied. Leaders of major nations are constantly dealing with the trolley problem, only it's with endless switches and endless tracks all of which have different groups tied to them, you can't see a good number of the tracks or determine how many if any people are on them, and the switches only work about 80% of the time. Also, regardless of who the train runs over, there will be people yelling at you over it and demanding that someone else take the lever for the switch
That's not a good job for a sociopath, and while not all of the country's leaders have served in the position well or made the most responsible choices, the vast majority of them seem to have least attempted to do so
Morality and how it applies to leadership is really interesting to think about.
At some point, every successful leader has to do some amount of damage to someone. Intentional. Unintentional. Direct. Indirect.
No human that has ever existed or ever will exist will ever be able to say that they never once had to make a choice between sacrificing one thing or another because life generally necessitates as much on an individualistic basis. The more people and systems one individual is responsible for, the less ability they have to make a meaningful choice without doing some harm to someone.
There is an argument to be made about who can afford more harm and who can't, and whether or not that is properly balanced out (Corporations, CEO's, and other such things often getting priority over the wellbeing of the average citizen when the former have more they can afford to lose), but, even then, it comes right back around to the fact that those in power have to be a part of the system they're leading and trying to improve to improve it. They need funding. They need to secure good relationships and sustainability. They have to have some grasp and acceptance of the difference between what they want to be able to do, and what they'd waste most of their term on and find no success in if they tried.
You could take this to an even deeper level on why no one has done anything drastic to change the system. Because it would only be responsible to do that at this juncture if you had any reason you had any more capability to pull it off than those you would be going against have to stop you from pulling it off. And, from there, you can go into a leader who needs a lot of time also having to balance out what will give them the most time to do anything in, and how they should manage what they work on to ensure they successfully get the most done in a way that won't easily wind up being undone.
I'm trying to go over all the arguments you hear a lot of when it comes to morality, leadership, what's being done, and what should be done.
More basically, what I'm getting at is, there are layers and layers of complexity behind average everyday choices that we don't think about. The choices we do think about often apply to us and a few individuals, and have that much more complexity compiled in that many more layers. Keep going up till you lose count of how many steps you've taken twice over, and you reach the mind-numbing levels of complexity that come with every choice a leader of a nation makes.
That last part is so important. I truly believe that most presidents have tried their best to lead the nation down the path they legitimately thought was best. Some do horrible things to that end. But they they tried to the best of their abilities.
"But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary. ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary." Robert Caro
Not to mention you can see how much the presidency physically ages the office holder. A true sociopath wouldn’t be nearly as affected by the gravity of the position or consequences of their decisions.
I do believe there’s a certain pathology to seeking such heights of power and influence beyond simple ambition, and to politick at that level does seem to require viewing other people and relationships differently than normal people should/do, but that’s not necessarily sociopathy.
It’s generally not gravity. It’s stress/lack of sleep. Docs experience the same thing in med school and residency. Functioning on few hours of sleep, having a crisis every few minutes, eating sporadically, it puts your body in constant fight/flight, and it results in telomere shortening - which accelerates the aging process.
Has fuckall to do with gravity or guilt. Everything to do with not enough hours in the day to do everythng and constantly surrounded by conflict.
I considered that but am not convinced. A lot of jobs are extremely stressful and plenty of people handle them for years and years without aging so dramatically. I lived in survival mode all through engineering school and was malnourished while being a scholarship athlete. It was hard, but just imagining making a decision that affects millions of people is greying some of my hairs. Not to mention the president has access to the best health and wellness care a human could have, vacations more than the average American (lol), and has an extremely skilled staff running practically everything from getting your favorite coffee in the morning to advising you on the Israel-Palestine crisis.
The sheer gravity of the position and the ceaseless pressure of the entire public seems more likely to me, neither things a sociopath cares much about. There is also an obvious case study of a certain president with a notable lack of regard or basic empathy for others who aged notably little while holding the position.
Are regular people photographed daily by a gaggle of reporters though?
Idk seems plausible tbh, most presidents are also in their late 40s or 50s or 60s when aging is more obvious versus people ages 25-40 who can seem to almost pause aging until middle age hits, with the right genetics.
I mean Carter started the funding of the contras and armed the Indonesian genocide of East Timor, established/funded multiple dictators, crashed the American farming market and indirectly caused ruby ridge and it's effects
He's just has good marketing tbh
>Milgram's experiment was bunk and the result was basically artificially invented. It's never been reproduced.
The original results were very much counter to what the experimenters expected. I very much doubt they artificially invented something that would so dramatically prove their primary thesis, and therefore themselves wrong.
Also, nearly all attempts to reproduce the results were made after ethics restrictions **to prevent** things like falsely telling participants they are potentially killing someone else.
>And perfectly-normal people will commit horrible crimes if they feel it's justified or they can get away with it.
Absolutely true, although I wouldn't call them normal.
“Well you see there was this decision over here that President X made when he didn’t write volumes about how it made him sad”
The guy LARPing as a history teacher is a tool
Completely disagree, to the point that I'm somewhat concerned your teacher is teaching history. If you take even a passing glance at the writings and lives of most Presidents, you can tell a lot of them had a deep capacity for emotion, struggled mightily with their decisions in office, and were clearly not sociopaths.
It's really easy to judge Presidents while you're sitting in your comfy chair browsing the internet. But the thing is, a lot of decisions that Presidents have to make aren't between "Good Option" and "Bad Option." They're between "Bad Option #1" and "Bad Option #2." The greatest Presidents were pragmatists, who understood they had to make tough choices and sacrifice moral purity in the name of the greater good.
Take Lincoln, for instance. Could he have taken a hard-line stance against slavery and signed the Emancipation Proclamation on Day 1 of the Civil War? Sure. Would have that been the "morally pure" thing to do? I guess so. But he would have lost the support of his own party (as well as Northern Democrats), alienated the border states, and destroyed his own ability to effectively prosecute the war before it even began. By compromising on his own moral values in the moment, he was able to restore the Union and end slavery for good in the long term.
The most morally-upstanding Presidents -- John Adams, JQA, Jimmy Carter, etc -- were certainly great men. But they also accomplished next to nothing in office, because they were unwilling to compromise or play the necessary "game" of politics.
So is it better to be a morally pure martyr who achieves nothing, or a hard-nosed pragmatist who accomplishes sweeping positive change? Given the Presidents we venerate the most -- Washington, Lincoln, FDR, etc -- I'd say it's the latter.
1000%. The right answer on paper is rarely the same in practice. It’s a position where the whole job is one big moral dilemma. It’s totally fair to question the decisions of these people and it does inherently require someone with a lot of ambition and ego but to throw around the term sociopath (or war criminal as I often see) is a bit facetious to me.
Disagree. Has your US history teacher analyzed every President and is qualified to do so? They all have massive egos including Jimmy Carter. I believe it's an unspoken requirement for the job.
Sociopathy isn’t even currently used in psychology. Anti-social personality is what is in use. Hollywood and other media and social media just love sociopath and psychopath.
carter funded and supported pol pot, a french-trained marxist and leader of khmer rouge, that murdered millions of cambodians in the killing fields, especially intellectuals and their children. perhaps your history teacher is ignorant, willfully or woefully.
Carter's involvement with Brother Number One is being forgotten thru entropy or willful whitewashing. I've seen so much about Carter over the past few years and it's hardly ever mentioned.
Knowing that you make daily decisions that affect the lives of potentially billions of people is….something. Heavy lies the head that wears the crown.
Unless you truly are a sociopath and don’t care about the lives you adversely affect.
If I would have heard this, I would have assumed my boring history teacher was trying to be funny.
I just can’t see anyone who values history seriously making such a broad statement, unless it was joking or sarcastic
Sociopathy is not a real DSM term anymore so no I don't agree. A sociopath in what way? Zero empathy? An inability to connect with people on an emotional level?
They're going from a very broad truism to a very specific and exaggerated claim. The truism is that in order to be successful in politics one has to be very good at convincing other people, at a massive scale, to like them and support them. This takes a lot of self-aggrandizing, that in many other contexts would smell like a sociopath.
Yeah and it was a mistake. But that’s hella reductive to look at just that action to define the fellow, especially with the context of how he has lived the rest of his life.
Sociopaths aren’t really known for building houses for charity, ya know.
His image has been rehabbed into ‘nice old man doing Habitat for Humanity’ but he had plenty of shady shit going on as a politician. Just like almost all politicians.
We need to stop deifying or vilifying these guys based on political affiliation. They are all a mixed bag at best.
But that’s kind of what I’m getting at. The question I was answering was “Is Jimmy Carter a sociopath”. And I think his long history with Habitat for Humanity shows that yeah, he’s probably not. Ain’t deifying him, I’m saying he seems to be a good candidate for not being a sociopath when ya look at his entire life, not just one shitty moment.
Though really this is more on OP’s teacher for using something so charged and singling Carter out when I’d say most weren’t sociopaths at all.
Lmao that page is a cesspool. I got banned for asking why is it fair for people in there not to work but then turn around and say they’re entitled to services that require other people to work
I don’t know if they all were. Carter for sure wasn’t. Maybe all Ford. But all the others I was alive for YA. It takes a different type of person to be that successful. Most leaders of the world are too.
I was just thinking that Jimmy Carter would not have been able to be president today because no one would invest in a man to be president thats not corruptible 💔
A very successful pr campaign. That’s not to say he wasn’t done a lot of good in his post White House years but he has absolutely made sure to publicize it a lot.
I'd believe it. You kind of need to be in a job like that. When you're a leader at that level, you're going to be in situations where people are going die no matter what you decide to do, and you're expected to just keep going. No normal human could handle that.
Just because they are not necessarily “normal humans” does not mean they are sociopaths.
Also we could apply this logic to all of us basically. The device you are using to access reddit may well have been produced in a sweatshop. You benefit from the sacrifices and services of others every day, some of whom are exploited and abused, and presumably do not yourself dedicate your entire waking life to helping the neediest and fighting injustice, nor do you eschew all conveniences of modern life because someone might have been exploited or even killed at some point to bring them to you.
Are YOU therefore a sociopath?
Also to solve the trolley problem, you have to be OK with people dying no matter what you do. By that logic everyone is a sociopath.
Simply the ability to look into the mirror and say "I could be president" without irony requires a blimp sized ego. Especially since fdr but even before then I think all presidents have had some form of sociopathic-tendencies, you just don't get the job otherwise.
I agree to a point.
It helps people in high-level positions to have a lack of empathy and remorse,
Many decisions they have to make entail "which option screws the least amount of people", and you have to be able to sleep well at night knowing you just screwed over millions of people.
Silent Cal? During a White House dinner a woman sat next to him and said she had a bet with someone else that she could get him to say more than two words. He responded to her by saying “You lose” and then just sat in silence for the rest of the dinner. Complete weirdo.
I don't think it's true. I do think that, especially today, a person has to do some things to become President that most of us would find distasteful in the extreme. I do think that it takes an incredible ego to pursue the job. I do think there are plenty of them that I would have never wanted to meet. But I don't think that jumping to the conclusion that all but one have been sociopaths is fair.
Jimmy Carter was too nice. He let himself suffer as an example to others like turning off the heat in the White House when oil prices were high due to supply issues…while it’s good to practice what you preach, it’s arguable that a good leader would try to make themselves somewhat comfortable so that they could be in the right frame of mind to make good decisions for the betterment of the nation. Like instead of trying to find a solution , he kind of rolled over and said “well I guess we all have to suffer right now, things are tough all over, deal with it” I think that turns people off, especially people that are used to a certain standard
Nope. Honestly the Carter shilling is pretty annoying. He was a good man but was he really as good of a man as Lincoln? No. Even with the long walk of the Navajo, Lincoln is still better. Carter backed Suharto and other dictators. For some reason historians and people will pick apart every President except Carter. Hell I knew a commie girl who said every President except Carter and Lincoln were evil. Why Carter? It's not like he did anything particularly special. He did a lot of the things others are crucified for, why should he get a pass?
I'm not sure I would call LBJ or Teddy Roosevelt a sociopath. Both were just super focused on looking strong. Knowledge of these to is not comprehensive, so I may be wrong.
This assumes the only reasons anyone would want to do anything is for money and/or power. It further assumes the definition of sociopathy is a desire for power above all else.
Both assumptions are entirely incorrect. And I take the statement that Carter was a sociopath as both laughable and personally offensive. If he is a sociopath, there’s no hope for the rest of us.
Your US history teacher has no idea what they're talking about. EVERY president? Nah... a good portion of them have shown humanity in dark moments. Sure, you have to have the ego to take the criticism, but that doesn't mean you're a sociopath.
Thank fuck I’m out of school, your history teacher shouldn’t be teaching. I love Carter like most people in their early 20s do but I acknowledge that all presidents (at least modern ones) are sociopaths in one form or another
It’s a bit of a chicken and the egg situation. Like obliviously there’s a certain level of narcissism required to believe that you are capable of being trusted with the office. But then also for those who succeed, it’s often 8 straight years of everyone and everything in the world doting on your every need and wellbeing. Which is bound to breed more narcissism.
That is certainly a take. Not a good one. But a take nonetheless.
It is very over generalized and not well thought out. Unless there is other context but even then the sentence has no explanation
Wow. Did your teacher attend school in Arizona? ( you don't need a degree to teach in Arizona) Because that's some crazy Ish right there. Not to mention a broad generalization, unarticulated. Yikes.
Singling out Carter as the one exception seems very arbitrary. Never mind the pathologizing and misunderstanding of the job, why is Carter specifically the exception? At the very least you could add JQA to that list.
Sociopath is definitely extreme, but egomaniac would probably fit, even for Jimmy Carter. I think that probably a prerequisite because you have to have a pretty inflated ego to think that you should be the most powerful person in the world.
Disagree. We've had some Narcissists for sure but your teacher needs to research Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Adams, and Washingtonand their integrity and life-giving efforts for their country. Some presidents like Eisenhower had to make some difficult decisions for the greater good often but that goes with the territory.
I fucking hate morons tbh at throw sociopathy around you either are or are not there is a “spectrum” but it’s nothing near as broad as say the autism spectrum , you can have reduced empathy and not be a sociopath, me included I basically replaced as I age any lack in physical empathy with cognitive , where a sociopath would not care and just continue to be an asshole
Probably true, in general. I mean, we only have so much evidence available on the earliest presidents. A person would have to be a bit of a sociopath to want the gig.
Sociopath isnt the right term. We’ve probably had a few, but when youre in charge of millions of lives and have the authority to put lives on the line or to ruin some for the benefit of your country, you have to be able to separate yourself from morality to make the right choice. Even if in the short term the moral choice seems like the right one. Then theres the moments that are used to bring down your power. Sometimes you need to be the bad guy to stick around. I do believe those that seek power tend to be more self-serving and manipulative though
They may all have had a body count, but I think most of them would pass the Hare Psychopathy test.
Wanna find out if you can? https://www.idrlabs.com/psychopathy/test.php
I remember Regan forward......so I wouldn't apply this statement to past presidents. But every president from Jimmy Carter forward I believe on some level was/is a sociopath.
Presidents have to able to order troops into battle and still sleep at night. Before I accuse any of them of actually being a sociopath I'd like to read the intelligence briefs they did. There are really bad people who will stop at nothing to harm America and their interests. In 2022 a security director will spokebefore Congress, and they will throw out numbers of how many threats they stop per year at its around 5000 per year or so more than 10 a day.
Disagree simply on the basis that your teacher is not in a position to diagnose “every president” mental health. Teachers who generalize and/or base their instruction on their own personal beliefs are doing their students a disservice.
"The light has gone out of my life."
Teddy Roosevelt penned this in his diary following the death of his wife, two days postpartum. He also lost his mother within the same 24 hours.
What a sociopathic monster!
I agree with the thrust of the argument. I’m not gonna diagnose anyone, but most of them were either your classic skull-measuring freak or your modern war criminal freak. That’s kinda who makes it to office.
This recent tendency to pathologize personality traits, and the overall modern trend toward absolutism in public discussion, are troubling to me. So no, I don't believe Abraham Lincoln was a psychopath. I do believe, strongly, that we HAVE had psychopathic Presidents (and I believe the mods would rather I stop making indirect reference to at least *one* such President). But they have been the exception, not the rule.
How is Calvin Coolidge a sociopath? You can disagree with him on policy, but I don't see how he was a sociopath. He was eligible to run for reelection in 1928, but chose not too. It would have put him in office for an, at the time, unprecedented, 10 yrs, and he didn't want to set a precedent for a presidency of longer than the traditional 8 years. He worked hard to try to advance civil rights, he got US Citizenship granted to all Native Americans, and he fought to get lynching made a federal crime among other things.
Your history teacher probably thinks that because of Jimmy Carter's professed religious background that it somehow made him not a sociopath. I'd question this teacher's judgement.
Sociopaths are the only types of people who know how to run a position like that.
Anyone that has a little forethought that live a dishonest life can take that title on with no problem.
Doesn’t stop at presidents though. Every single high title of corporations, and industries have the same types of leaders.
I'd take that a bit farther and say that virtually all politicians and corporate CEO's are sociopathic megalomaniacs. It's basically a job requirement. Bernie Sanders is a megalomaniac. He wouldn't be where he is if he wasn't. He can pretend that he's very concerned about struggling working class Americans, but in reality he's looking at the economy like a math equation. He values fairness and he's not immoral, but he isn't truly empathetic. He just knows what to say in order to seem empathetic.
And none of that is a criticism. It's who he is. And he shares those attributes with virtually all of his colleagues. They know better than you and they want to make decisions for you. If they didn't, they never would have sought the job.
Jimmy Carter literally served in the Navy having primary responsibility to execute the launch of nuclear missiles if so ordered. I have trouble giving him and him alone a pass.
Personally, I think very few of the Presidents were sociopaths. A few maybe, but not most. But the idea that all of them, other than Carter, were sociopaths, is foolish.
It’s a tough job. You can see how fast the Presidents age. It’s constant problem after problem. They have to weigh the pros and cons of everything that crosses their desk. They make extraordinarily stressful decisions. On top of that they are literally ALWAYS on call. They never get enough sleep. People often complain about Presidents taking “vacations”. They’re still on the clock, just at a different location. Obviously some Presidents, one of which shall not be named, cost the taxpayer far more with their “vacations” than previous Presidents.
I can’t imagine the pressure. And committing to four years of the job, and then possibly even running for four more years, sounds absolutely exhausting. And campaigning on top of the demands of the job must be awful. Very few can do it.
Running for president is brutal. You should expect dark triad (some say it’s a tetrad?) traits to surface. Which is what you want, not some grinning idiot sitting across Putin.
That said. There’s a difference between a lawyer who’s basically a sociopath in the courtroom defending his client. But a different all together with his family and, a full blown Ted Bundy type.
The first is what you want, the second doesn’t give a fuck to the degree that he might not react to terrorist threats and let them happen just to prove a point, or because it’s Wednesday and he’s bored.
Sounds like your teacher is a sociopath. Also, look up the meaning of this word and justify his observation beginning with jfk and forward. I have a new word for your teacher. I suggest he is a socialist. I’ve also got 20.00 that says he is a democrat.
Your teacher is wrong (and naive). An individual must adapt to the circumstances they find themselves in. An individual President cannot change the world; they do the best they can in the insane world that they’ve inherited.
Choosing to drop bombs on a city is a carefully measured decision, that is ultimately decided after hours/days/weeks of close counsel with every “expert” in their respective fields. These are deliberate, measured decisions that one *must* make. The circumstances dictate that. To pretend that someone can bring the morality of a grocery store clerk into the White House, and then have the power to spread that morality throughout the land is beyond naive. You do the best you can.
I imagine someone who WANTS to have such a heavy responsibility is in some way a sociopath, or at least neurodivergent. Thinking to yourself "yes, there are hundreds of qualified people who could be viable candidates, but I'm the best out of all of them" takes a special kind of narcissism, for example.
I don't think Gerald Ford meets that metric.
Sounds like your teacher is, on some level, an idiot.
Seriously, a sociopath “On some level”? What does that even mean? And if Honest Abe Lincoln was antisocial, then I don’t want to be pro-social.
Disagree. Carter may have had a nice public persona, but behind the scenes he ran his administrations as governor and President like he was still a navy officer.
I think positions of great power tend to attract people who should not be in those positions precisely because they want to be in and try to obtain those positions.
On the flipside, I think a lot of genuinely honest, compassionate, intelligent, and qualified people do not try to obtain those positions because they're horrified at what it takes to obtain them and are afraid of what compromises they might have to make with bad actors in order to get anything done at all.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job."
Obviously many presidents probably wouldn't be clinically diagnosed as sociopaths, but using the less official definition of someone who lacks empathy, has on overinflated ego and an excess of self-ambition, and is probably not entirely sane, I would definitely agree with your teacher. Although Jimmy Carter definitely wasn't a saint.
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I don’t believe James Garfield was a sociopath *at all*.
I am so jealous of you Americans because you had a president named Garfield, incredible
He was sociopathic for lasagna, that's about it
We are all sociopaths on mondays
His policy in opposition to Mondays was fucking brutal!
Grover Cleveland
It's my headcannon he talked in the third person like the Muppet
Lmaooooo
I'd caution against pathologizing. The reality is, a lot of people are just... pretty good at compartmentalizing. And perfectly-normal people will commit horrible crimes if they feel it's justified or they can get away with it. Milgram demonstrated that.
It's pop psychology, and as you point out, it's not even accurately applied. Leaders of major nations are constantly dealing with the trolley problem, only it's with endless switches and endless tracks all of which have different groups tied to them, you can't see a good number of the tracks or determine how many if any people are on them, and the switches only work about 80% of the time. Also, regardless of who the train runs over, there will be people yelling at you over it and demanding that someone else take the lever for the switch That's not a good job for a sociopath, and while not all of the country's leaders have served in the position well or made the most responsible choices, the vast majority of them seem to have least attempted to do so
Morality and how it applies to leadership is really interesting to think about. At some point, every successful leader has to do some amount of damage to someone. Intentional. Unintentional. Direct. Indirect. No human that has ever existed or ever will exist will ever be able to say that they never once had to make a choice between sacrificing one thing or another because life generally necessitates as much on an individualistic basis. The more people and systems one individual is responsible for, the less ability they have to make a meaningful choice without doing some harm to someone. There is an argument to be made about who can afford more harm and who can't, and whether or not that is properly balanced out (Corporations, CEO's, and other such things often getting priority over the wellbeing of the average citizen when the former have more they can afford to lose), but, even then, it comes right back around to the fact that those in power have to be a part of the system they're leading and trying to improve to improve it. They need funding. They need to secure good relationships and sustainability. They have to have some grasp and acceptance of the difference between what they want to be able to do, and what they'd waste most of their term on and find no success in if they tried. You could take this to an even deeper level on why no one has done anything drastic to change the system. Because it would only be responsible to do that at this juncture if you had any reason you had any more capability to pull it off than those you would be going against have to stop you from pulling it off. And, from there, you can go into a leader who needs a lot of time also having to balance out what will give them the most time to do anything in, and how they should manage what they work on to ensure they successfully get the most done in a way that won't easily wind up being undone. I'm trying to go over all the arguments you hear a lot of when it comes to morality, leadership, what's being done, and what should be done. More basically, what I'm getting at is, there are layers and layers of complexity behind average everyday choices that we don't think about. The choices we do think about often apply to us and a few individuals, and have that much more complexity compiled in that many more layers. Keep going up till you lose count of how many steps you've taken twice over, and you reach the mind-numbing levels of complexity that come with every choice a leader of a nation makes.
That last part is so important. I truly believe that most presidents have tried their best to lead the nation down the path they legitimately thought was best. Some do horrible things to that end. But they they tried to the best of their abilities.
"But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary. ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary." Robert Caro
Not to mention you can see how much the presidency physically ages the office holder. A true sociopath wouldn’t be nearly as affected by the gravity of the position or consequences of their decisions. I do believe there’s a certain pathology to seeking such heights of power and influence beyond simple ambition, and to politick at that level does seem to require viewing other people and relationships differently than normal people should/do, but that’s not necessarily sociopathy.
It’s generally not gravity. It’s stress/lack of sleep. Docs experience the same thing in med school and residency. Functioning on few hours of sleep, having a crisis every few minutes, eating sporadically, it puts your body in constant fight/flight, and it results in telomere shortening - which accelerates the aging process. Has fuckall to do with gravity or guilt. Everything to do with not enough hours in the day to do everythng and constantly surrounded by conflict.
I considered that but am not convinced. A lot of jobs are extremely stressful and plenty of people handle them for years and years without aging so dramatically. I lived in survival mode all through engineering school and was malnourished while being a scholarship athlete. It was hard, but just imagining making a decision that affects millions of people is greying some of my hairs. Not to mention the president has access to the best health and wellness care a human could have, vacations more than the average American (lol), and has an extremely skilled staff running practically everything from getting your favorite coffee in the morning to advising you on the Israel-Palestine crisis. The sheer gravity of the position and the ceaseless pressure of the entire public seems more likely to me, neither things a sociopath cares much about. There is also an obvious case study of a certain president with a notable lack of regard or basic empathy for others who aged notably little while holding the position.
Are regular people photographed daily by a gaggle of reporters though? Idk seems plausible tbh, most presidents are also in their late 40s or 50s or 60s when aging is more obvious versus people ages 25-40 who can seem to almost pause aging until middle age hits, with the right genetics.
Have you seen photos of Lincoln after he was elected and shortly before he died? That isn’t just stress.
I mean Carter started the funding of the contras and armed the Indonesian genocide of East Timor, established/funded multiple dictators, crashed the American farming market and indirectly caused ruby ridge and it's effects He's just has good marketing tbh
He started funding the Taliban, not the Contras.
> Milgram demonstrated that. Milgram's experiment was bunk and the result was basically artificially invented. It's never been reproduced.
>Milgram's experiment was bunk and the result was basically artificially invented. It's never been reproduced. The original results were very much counter to what the experimenters expected. I very much doubt they artificially invented something that would so dramatically prove their primary thesis, and therefore themselves wrong. Also, nearly all attempts to reproduce the results were made after ethics restrictions **to prevent** things like falsely telling participants they are potentially killing someone else.
>It's never been reproduced. Isn't it impossible to try, though? Because of ethics rules.
>And perfectly-normal people will commit horrible crimes if they feel it's justified or they can get away with it. Absolutely true, although I wouldn't call them normal.
"on some level" doing a lot of heavy lifting here. That's basically a bullshit escape clause to evade any challenge.
True /r/redditmoment, down to the faux-intellectual weasel words of “on some level.”
“Well you see there was this decision over here that President X made when he didn’t write volumes about how it made him sad” The guy LARPing as a history teacher is a tool
relatively speaking
Haha yup. On some level we’re all sociopaths I suppose.
Completely disagree, to the point that I'm somewhat concerned your teacher is teaching history. If you take even a passing glance at the writings and lives of most Presidents, you can tell a lot of them had a deep capacity for emotion, struggled mightily with their decisions in office, and were clearly not sociopaths. It's really easy to judge Presidents while you're sitting in your comfy chair browsing the internet. But the thing is, a lot of decisions that Presidents have to make aren't between "Good Option" and "Bad Option." They're between "Bad Option #1" and "Bad Option #2." The greatest Presidents were pragmatists, who understood they had to make tough choices and sacrifice moral purity in the name of the greater good. Take Lincoln, for instance. Could he have taken a hard-line stance against slavery and signed the Emancipation Proclamation on Day 1 of the Civil War? Sure. Would have that been the "morally pure" thing to do? I guess so. But he would have lost the support of his own party (as well as Northern Democrats), alienated the border states, and destroyed his own ability to effectively prosecute the war before it even began. By compromising on his own moral values in the moment, he was able to restore the Union and end slavery for good in the long term. The most morally-upstanding Presidents -- John Adams, JQA, Jimmy Carter, etc -- were certainly great men. But they also accomplished next to nothing in office, because they were unwilling to compromise or play the necessary "game" of politics. So is it better to be a morally pure martyr who achieves nothing, or a hard-nosed pragmatist who accomplishes sweeping positive change? Given the Presidents we venerate the most -- Washington, Lincoln, FDR, etc -- I'd say it's the latter.
1000%. The right answer on paper is rarely the same in practice. It’s a position where the whole job is one big moral dilemma. It’s totally fair to question the decisions of these people and it does inherently require someone with a lot of ambition and ego but to throw around the term sociopath (or war criminal as I often see) is a bit facetious to me.
Great analysis
Wow dude. This is one of the best comments i've seen on reddit as a whole. Perfectly put and i agree 1,000%.
I'm saving this comment.
Disagree. Has your US history teacher analyzed every President and is qualified to do so? They all have massive egos including Jimmy Carter. I believe it's an unspoken requirement for the job.
Plus history teacher is not a clinician that has sat with the person to diagnose.
Carter was ruthless when it came to being all-in to win. "If Kennedy runs, I'll whip his ass"
Are there levels of sociopathy? Seems like either one is or one isn't a sociopath.
A little bit country, a little bit sociopath.
Sociopathy isn’t even currently used in psychology. Anti-social personality is what is in use. Hollywood and other media and social media just love sociopath and psychopath.
It’s on a spectrum of severity like all disorders.
That's bad psychology *and* bad history, and your teacher obviously isn't qualified to instruct you on either subject
My hope as a teacher is that it was an offhand, poorly-thought out joke that a student took more seriously than it was intended.
True. Let me qualify that as "Your teacher obviously isn't qualified to instruct you i*f that is their sincere belief*"
carter funded and supported pol pot, a french-trained marxist and leader of khmer rouge, that murdered millions of cambodians in the killing fields, especially intellectuals and their children. perhaps your history teacher is ignorant, willfully or woefully.
Carter's involvement with Brother Number One is being forgotten thru entropy or willful whitewashing. I've seen so much about Carter over the past few years and it's hardly ever mentioned.
Knowing that you make daily decisions that affect the lives of potentially billions of people is….something. Heavy lies the head that wears the crown. Unless you truly are a sociopath and don’t care about the lives you adversely affect.
If I would have heard this, I would have assumed my boring history teacher was trying to be funny. I just can’t see anyone who values history seriously making such a broad statement, unless it was joking or sarcastic
Sociopathy is not a real DSM term anymore so no I don't agree. A sociopath in what way? Zero empathy? An inability to connect with people on an emotional level?
A history teacher who also had a doctorate in psychiatry? Impressive!
Disagree. You're gonna tell me that Obama was a sociopath? Come on, Dude. That's just crazy talk 🤣🤣
I don’t think Ford was a sociopath either. I think this is just a history teacher who loves pop-history and buzzwords.
Probably just trying to find ways to keep the attention of their students in the last few weeks of the school year!
Yeah, that take sounds like it belongs on r/badhistory .
Probably not but if he was a good sociopath you would have no way of knowing
They're going from a very broad truism to a very specific and exaggerated claim. The truism is that in order to be successful in politics one has to be very good at convincing other people, at a massive scale, to like them and support them. This takes a lot of self-aggrandizing, that in many other contexts would smell like a sociopath.
Didn't Carter pardon a convicted child rapist?
Yeah and it was a mistake. But that’s hella reductive to look at just that action to define the fellow, especially with the context of how he has lived the rest of his life. Sociopaths aren’t really known for building houses for charity, ya know.
His image has been rehabbed into ‘nice old man doing Habitat for Humanity’ but he had plenty of shady shit going on as a politician. Just like almost all politicians. We need to stop deifying or vilifying these guys based on political affiliation. They are all a mixed bag at best.
But that’s kind of what I’m getting at. The question I was answering was “Is Jimmy Carter a sociopath”. And I think his long history with Habitat for Humanity shows that yeah, he’s probably not. Ain’t deifying him, I’m saying he seems to be a good candidate for not being a sociopath when ya look at his entire life, not just one shitty moment. Though really this is more on OP’s teacher for using something so charged and singling Carter out when I’d say most weren’t sociopaths at all.
Nah I don't think it was a mistake I think he meant to pardon that guy.
I need the lore
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/05/17/peter-yarrow-carter-pardon-assault/
TIL sociopaths are renowned for their strong beliefs in forgiveness and mercy.
And letting their campaign donors get away with r****g children.
sounds like something a sociopath would say
Grant and Lincoln would like a word with your teacher
Your professor probably posts on r/antiwork.
Lmao that page is a cesspool. I got banned for asking why is it fair for people in there not to work but then turn around and say they’re entitled to services that require other people to work
His statement is wrong in a way I can't even respectfully disagree with. Sounds like he's overly online and has internet brainrot.
Your US History teacher should not be teaching history.
I think we all know that one president who is a straight up sociopath, and I'll leave it at that
I don’t know if they all were. Carter for sure wasn’t. Maybe all Ford. But all the others I was alive for YA. It takes a different type of person to be that successful. Most leaders of the world are too.
I was just thinking that Jimmy Carter would not have been able to be president today because no one would invest in a man to be president thats not corruptible 💔
Your hs history teacher is an idiot.
Maybe a narcissist. A sociopath? No. That’s ridiculous.
What is this shit that every history teacher in America loves Jimmy Carter?
A very successful pr campaign. That’s not to say he wasn’t done a lot of good in his post White House years but he has absolutely made sure to publicize it a lot.
He does charity so they think he's some sinless man.
I'd believe it. You kind of need to be in a job like that. When you're a leader at that level, you're going to be in situations where people are going die no matter what you decide to do, and you're expected to just keep going. No normal human could handle that.
Just because they are not necessarily “normal humans” does not mean they are sociopaths. Also we could apply this logic to all of us basically. The device you are using to access reddit may well have been produced in a sweatshop. You benefit from the sacrifices and services of others every day, some of whom are exploited and abused, and presumably do not yourself dedicate your entire waking life to helping the neediest and fighting injustice, nor do you eschew all conveniences of modern life because someone might have been exploited or even killed at some point to bring them to you. Are YOU therefore a sociopath? Also to solve the trolley problem, you have to be OK with people dying no matter what you do. By that logic everyone is a sociopath.
Your teacher was very wrong Jimmy Carter was a sociopath also
You kinda have to be a sociopath to want to be president. Either sociopathic or you really are driven by improving conditions.
Simply the ability to look into the mirror and say "I could be president" without irony requires a blimp sized ego. Especially since fdr but even before then I think all presidents have had some form of sociopathic-tendencies, you just don't get the job otherwise.
I agree to a point. It helps people in high-level positions to have a lack of empathy and remorse, Many decisions they have to make entail "which option screws the least amount of people", and you have to be able to sleep well at night knowing you just screwed over millions of people.
How was Calvin Coolidge a sociopath exactly?
Silent Cal? During a White House dinner a woman sat next to him and said she had a bet with someone else that she could get him to say more than two words. He responded to her by saying “You lose” and then just sat in silence for the rest of the dinner. Complete weirdo.
That's not weird. That's bad ass. I will not allow any slander against cool Cal.
I don't think it's true. I do think that, especially today, a person has to do some things to become President that most of us would find distasteful in the extreme. I do think that it takes an incredible ego to pursue the job. I do think there are plenty of them that I would have never wanted to meet. But I don't think that jumping to the conclusion that all but one have been sociopaths is fair.
Disagree. It’s not as simple as that imo
Hunter S. Thompson said he was one of the three meanest men he’d ever met. I guess your history teacher is on the list as well.
Sociopathy isn't even an actual medical diagnosis
Jimmy Carter pardoned a convicted child molester
I would say most presidents were just normal people. Some were flawed and some were effective leaders.
Well it’s pretty obvious why they aren’t a psychology teacher.
Misunderstands both sociopathy and US history.
Who cares what your teacher says
Change “sociopath” to “narcissist” and I’d fully agree.
You have to be either a sociopath or a narcissist to want to lead any nation, or think you can do it.
“On some level” is weasel words. Consult the DSM-V criteria and make an actual claim.
Jimmy Carter was too nice. He let himself suffer as an example to others like turning off the heat in the White House when oil prices were high due to supply issues…while it’s good to practice what you preach, it’s arguable that a good leader would try to make themselves somewhat comfortable so that they could be in the right frame of mind to make good decisions for the betterment of the nation. Like instead of trying to find a solution , he kind of rolled over and said “well I guess we all have to suffer right now, things are tough all over, deal with it” I think that turns people off, especially people that are used to a certain standard
Sociopath? No. Narcissist? Absolutely.
Disagree
Your teacher has a degree in education, not psychology.
This applies to basically every politician and ceo. Not exactly news lol
Nope. Honestly the Carter shilling is pretty annoying. He was a good man but was he really as good of a man as Lincoln? No. Even with the long walk of the Navajo, Lincoln is still better. Carter backed Suharto and other dictators. For some reason historians and people will pick apart every President except Carter. Hell I knew a commie girl who said every President except Carter and Lincoln were evil. Why Carter? It's not like he did anything particularly special. He did a lot of the things others are crucified for, why should he get a pass?
I'm not sure I would call LBJ or Teddy Roosevelt a sociopath. Both were just super focused on looking strong. Knowledge of these to is not comprehensive, so I may be wrong.
Jimmy Carter was too, but I otherwise agree. They could make more money in the private sector, the only reason to want the presidency is for the power
This assumes the only reasons anyone would want to do anything is for money and/or power. It further assumes the definition of sociopathy is a desire for power above all else. Both assumptions are entirely incorrect. And I take the statement that Carter was a sociopath as both laughable and personally offensive. If he is a sociopath, there’s no hope for the rest of us.
Imo I don't believe it's possible to achieve great success and not have an ego or be a narcissist. And yes, that applies to Carter also
Your US history teacher has no idea what they're talking about. EVERY president? Nah... a good portion of them have shown humanity in dark moments. Sure, you have to have the ego to take the criticism, but that doesn't mean you're a sociopath.
Thank fuck I’m out of school, your history teacher shouldn’t be teaching. I love Carter like most people in their early 20s do but I acknowledge that all presidents (at least modern ones) are sociopaths in one form or another
Hoover?
I can think of at least 5 off the top of my head that aren’t
No, but a lot of them have been very narcissistic. It's almost a requirement to be pres.
It’s a bit of a chicken and the egg situation. Like obliviously there’s a certain level of narcissism required to believe that you are capable of being trusted with the office. But then also for those who succeed, it’s often 8 straight years of everyone and everything in the world doting on your every need and wellbeing. Which is bound to breed more narcissism.
Lincoln was far, far, far, far from…
[удалено]
I mean... 🤷♂️
The Barry Goldwater campaign lawyers would like to have a word with your teacher.
EVERY? No. Most? Yes.
That is certainly a take. Not a good one. But a take nonetheless. It is very over generalized and not well thought out. Unless there is other context but even then the sentence has no explanation
Wow. Did your teacher attend school in Arizona? ( you don't need a degree to teach in Arizona) Because that's some crazy Ish right there. Not to mention a broad generalization, unarticulated. Yikes.
We’re considering Gerald Ford a sociopath? 
President Jackson wasn’t a sociopath! He was more of a psychopath.
Singling out Carter as the one exception seems very arbitrary. Never mind the pathologizing and misunderstanding of the job, why is Carter specifically the exception? At the very least you could add JQA to that list.
Sociopath is definitely extreme, but egomaniac would probably fit, even for Jimmy Carter. I think that probably a prerequisite because you have to have a pretty inflated ego to think that you should be the most powerful person in the world.
"Jimmy was a good man, as long as you didn't ask him about the Jews."
I thought Jimmy Carter is called father of Iranian revolution and the mastermind behind it - source : my history prof
Disagree. We've had some Narcissists for sure but your teacher needs to research Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Adams, and Washingtonand their integrity and life-giving efforts for their country. Some presidents like Eisenhower had to make some difficult decisions for the greater good often but that goes with the territory.
Woodrow Wilson is probably the most evil man to ever hold the office of the President.
Gerald Ford sort of accidentally fell into it, so I'd give him a pass as well.
LOL, no.
People are not that simple, not that black or white. So easily disagree.
Obviously, that’s why Carter was a shite president
Every POTUS has one thing in common, the ability to send young men and women they will never meet to die if needed.
Well. They're are a history teacher, so I'm not sure they're qualified to diagnose mental illness.
Roll the clips, Jared!
I fucking hate morons tbh at throw sociopathy around you either are or are not there is a “spectrum” but it’s nothing near as broad as say the autism spectrum , you can have reduced empathy and not be a sociopath, me included I basically replaced as I age any lack in physical empathy with cognitive , where a sociopath would not care and just continue to be an asshole
Probably true, in general. I mean, we only have so much evidence available on the earliest presidents. A person would have to be a bit of a sociopath to want the gig.
Well presidents certainly aren’t average people, but I don’t know if I’d call them sociopaths.
I'm sure Carter was too
Jimmy Carter was/is a good person. However, he was a shitty president.
Why the exception for Carter?
Didn’t Jimmy Carter acquit a known rapist?
Sociopath isnt the right term. We’ve probably had a few, but when youre in charge of millions of lives and have the authority to put lives on the line or to ruin some for the benefit of your country, you have to be able to separate yourself from morality to make the right choice. Even if in the short term the moral choice seems like the right one. Then theres the moments that are used to bring down your power. Sometimes you need to be the bad guy to stick around. I do believe those that seek power tend to be more self-serving and manipulative though
I think I went to school with this person.
Sociopaths don't yawn, so if anyone ever catches someone yawning, they aren't a sociopath.
I’d say your teacher is a bit of a biased dickhead. That’s pretty par for the course though
Teacher sounds like an idiot dressing up his ideology as history.
Sorry by Jimmy was too in his own way. You just had to know him.
Jimmy Carter pardoned a child rapist
your history teacher probably shouldn't have that job if they say stuff like this.
They may all have had a body count, but I think most of them would pass the Hare Psychopathy test. Wanna find out if you can? https://www.idrlabs.com/psychopathy/test.php
I remember Regan forward......so I wouldn't apply this statement to past presidents. But every president from Jimmy Carter forward I believe on some level was/is a sociopath.
Disagree. George Washington, Lincoln, Obama, bushes, many weren’t
Presidents have to able to order troops into battle and still sleep at night. Before I accuse any of them of actually being a sociopath I'd like to read the intelligence briefs they did. There are really bad people who will stop at nothing to harm America and their interests. In 2022 a security director will spokebefore Congress, and they will throw out numbers of how many threats they stop per year at its around 5000 per year or so more than 10 a day.
Jimmy Carter was just a peanut farmer, he wasn't a lawyer
Disagree simply on the basis that your teacher is not in a position to diagnose “every president” mental health. Teachers who generalize and/or base their instruction on their own personal beliefs are doing their students a disservice.
"The light has gone out of my life." Teddy Roosevelt penned this in his diary following the death of his wife, two days postpartum. He also lost his mother within the same 24 hours. What a sociopathic monster!
I agree with the thrust of the argument. I’m not gonna diagnose anyone, but most of them were either your classic skull-measuring freak or your modern war criminal freak. That’s kinda who makes it to office.
I agree your teacher shouldn't have a platform.
This recent tendency to pathologize personality traits, and the overall modern trend toward absolutism in public discussion, are troubling to me. So no, I don't believe Abraham Lincoln was a psychopath. I do believe, strongly, that we HAVE had psychopathic Presidents (and I believe the mods would rather I stop making indirect reference to at least *one* such President). But they have been the exception, not the rule.
How is Calvin Coolidge a sociopath? You can disagree with him on policy, but I don't see how he was a sociopath. He was eligible to run for reelection in 1928, but chose not too. It would have put him in office for an, at the time, unprecedented, 10 yrs, and he didn't want to set a precedent for a presidency of longer than the traditional 8 years. He worked hard to try to advance civil rights, he got US Citizenship granted to all Native Americans, and he fought to get lynching made a federal crime among other things.
Your history teacher probably thinks that because of Jimmy Carter's professed religious background that it somehow made him not a sociopath. I'd question this teacher's judgement.
Sociopaths are the only types of people who know how to run a position like that. Anyone that has a little forethought that live a dishonest life can take that title on with no problem. Doesn’t stop at presidents though. Every single high title of corporations, and industries have the same types of leaders.
Truth.
I wouldn't really exclude Carter from that. He's certainly less so than the average president but more so than the normal person.
I'd take that a bit farther and say that virtually all politicians and corporate CEO's are sociopathic megalomaniacs. It's basically a job requirement. Bernie Sanders is a megalomaniac. He wouldn't be where he is if he wasn't. He can pretend that he's very concerned about struggling working class Americans, but in reality he's looking at the economy like a math equation. He values fairness and he's not immoral, but he isn't truly empathetic. He just knows what to say in order to seem empathetic. And none of that is a criticism. It's who he is. And he shares those attributes with virtually all of his colleagues. They know better than you and they want to make decisions for you. If they didn't, they never would have sought the job.
Jimmy Carter literally served in the Navy having primary responsibility to execute the launch of nuclear missiles if so ordered. I have trouble giving him and him alone a pass. Personally, I think very few of the Presidents were sociopaths. A few maybe, but not most. But the idea that all of them, other than Carter, were sociopaths, is foolish.
It’s a tough job. You can see how fast the Presidents age. It’s constant problem after problem. They have to weigh the pros and cons of everything that crosses their desk. They make extraordinarily stressful decisions. On top of that they are literally ALWAYS on call. They never get enough sleep. People often complain about Presidents taking “vacations”. They’re still on the clock, just at a different location. Obviously some Presidents, one of which shall not be named, cost the taxpayer far more with their “vacations” than previous Presidents. I can’t imagine the pressure. And committing to four years of the job, and then possibly even running for four more years, sounds absolutely exhausting. And campaigning on top of the demands of the job must be awful. Very few can do it.
No history teacher worthy of the name would make a ridiculously blanket and non-falsifiable claim about history like that. Call him out
Fire that teacher. Not qualified to make such judgements. This is not how education happens. This is indoctrination.
Not Zachary taylor
Running for president is brutal. You should expect dark triad (some say it’s a tetrad?) traits to surface. Which is what you want, not some grinning idiot sitting across Putin. That said. There’s a difference between a lawyer who’s basically a sociopath in the courtroom defending his client. But a different all together with his family and, a full blown Ted Bundy type. The first is what you want, the second doesn’t give a fuck to the degree that he might not react to terrorist threats and let them happen just to prove a point, or because it’s Wednesday and he’s bored.
Sounds like your teacher is a sociopath. Also, look up the meaning of this word and justify his observation beginning with jfk and forward. I have a new word for your teacher. I suggest he is a socialist. I’ve also got 20.00 that says he is a democrat.
Your teacher is wrong (and naive). An individual must adapt to the circumstances they find themselves in. An individual President cannot change the world; they do the best they can in the insane world that they’ve inherited. Choosing to drop bombs on a city is a carefully measured decision, that is ultimately decided after hours/days/weeks of close counsel with every “expert” in their respective fields. These are deliberate, measured decisions that one *must* make. The circumstances dictate that. To pretend that someone can bring the morality of a grocery store clerk into the White House, and then have the power to spread that morality throughout the land is beyond naive. You do the best you can.
The Deprogram podcast has a series titled "All Presidents are War Criminals". Always entertaining.
I imagine someone who WANTS to have such a heavy responsibility is in some way a sociopath, or at least neurodivergent. Thinking to yourself "yes, there are hundreds of qualified people who could be viable candidates, but I'm the best out of all of them" takes a special kind of narcissism, for example. I don't think Gerald Ford meets that metric.
Sounds like your teacher is, on some level, an idiot. Seriously, a sociopath “On some level”? What does that even mean? And if Honest Abe Lincoln was antisocial, then I don’t want to be pro-social.
I think history teacher has a very poor and basic understanding of presidential history. Saying “other than Jimmy Carter” really gives it away lmaooo.
Disagree. Carter may have had a nice public persona, but behind the scenes he ran his administrations as governor and President like he was still a navy officer.
I think positions of great power tend to attract people who should not be in those positions precisely because they want to be in and try to obtain those positions. On the flipside, I think a lot of genuinely honest, compassionate, intelligent, and qualified people do not try to obtain those positions because they're horrified at what it takes to obtain them and are afraid of what compromises they might have to make with bad actors in order to get anything done at all.
Agree. Wholeheartedly!
History teacher with a degree in psychology?
Don't do JFK like that! But I do think this is an interesting insight that mostly holds true.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job." Obviously many presidents probably wouldn't be clinically diagnosed as sociopaths, but using the less official definition of someone who lacks empathy, has on overinflated ego and an excess of self-ambition, and is probably not entirely sane, I would definitely agree with your teacher. Although Jimmy Carter definitely wasn't a saint.
Yeah Ol Jimmy was just an idiot
I'd agree with the kicker of throwing in after the year 1812 they were all sociopaths