Unless, of course, the whole point of the “giant robots attacking” gambit was to show you just how unsubtle he is and preclude consideration of the option of a telepathic conqueror working behind the scenes and co-opting the government one politician at a time.

Mwu-ha-ha. 😀

Mooby World head office.

Your “strong tradition of democracy” has been largely kept channeled into reasonably predictable channels (deviation from which is condemned by moderates, bourgeois and not; try reading some accounts of how ex-slaves practiced democracy until wealthier blacks “taught them better”). You can vote for any public post, from dogcatcher to president (so long as “the right people” agree with who’s running for the job), but God help you if you try to use democracy to try and get a say in how your work-life is organized.

And given how bourgeois democracies (including the US’s “strong tradition of democracy” [which apparently isn’t meant for non-whites]) have used and been dependant on using colonization and military juntas in opposition to those who wanted to at least try and set up real, local democracies (read something about the history of Haiti), it’s risible, ignorant, and insulting that you tout any of the so-called “Western democracies” for anything like a “tradition of democracy” but sneer at “various third world countries” and their “traditions” as if it’s, what, genetics, maybe . . . ?

Fanaticism is one helluva drug.

Idk, while we don’t have any definite proof, the circumstantial evidence is pointing pretty hard to “would murder someone if it was even the slightest bit more convenient for her than not doing that”. She was monologuing at her son about how she was going to kill him and it was his fault while having tools and a shovel in the trunk of the car, like, she wasn’t trying to throw him off the scent while they drove to a surprise party.

We sure do throw people in jail for attempting to murder their children though, even if they don’t get to finish it. The tone of this comment is frankly kind of disturbing to me.

I’m not sure where I’m arguing that she deserves it? Because she doesn’t. What she deserves is to be put away someplace small and dark where she can’t hurt anyone else. Because she has, very clearly, been hurting people, even if the narrative is hinting more than outright saying so. I also never said a word about her mental illness, only her actions, which include murdering her husband without any attempt to deescalate the situation and attempted murder of her child, the guilt for which all the expensive torture sessions in the world do nothing to mitigate. And I am standing by that last point, because come ON, it doesn’t matter whether she literally got to the point of actual harm when there’s that amount of premeditation and intent on clear display. She was going to kill him, and I don’t understand how that’s an arguable point.

My point here is she is a bad person, and the amount of justification for her actions I’m seeing play out here is…extremely concerning.

She is totally guilty of attempted murder.

an attempted offense crystallizes the moment the first concrete step is taken towards realizing the criminal ends, with the intention of doing so. To use the old example, looking at a house and thinking about robbing a house isn’t an ‘attempt’, but if you start going up to houses and checking the doors to see if they’ve been left unlocked, with the intent of illegally entering if it s…BAM. Attempted criminal offense.

Taking your child out, alone, in the middle of the night, to a (presumably) secluded location, with what I presume to be the murder weapons in a box, with the intent to murder him? Totally fits that criteria. Proving it in a court of law would be difficult, because so much depends on her mental state/subjective intentions, but…we have access to that via Patrick.

You don’t have to be in the physical process of trying to kill someone to be guilty of attempted murder.

well she asked if he was reading her mind, I’m sure if he wasn’t she would have told him about going to see chuckles the clown.

See, you call her a “horrible abusive sociopath” when her actions have all been things non-sociopaths are more than capable of.

She clearly wouldn’t have killed her husband if she wasn’t held at gun point. Deciding the dog was too much of a hassle? Yes, most people probably wouldn’t kill it right there and then, but leaving it at a kill shelter where it’d suffer the same fate or just straight up abandoning it? Yeah, that’s something ‘normal’ assholes are definitely capable of. And don’t even get me started on mothers who decide killing their disabled child is the only option they have – they usually wind up receiving a disturbing amount of sympathy.

You can lack a conscience and still avoid harming others due to simple sensibility. It’s generally easier to get by in life if you avoid harming others. Sociopathic doesn’t mean sadistic.

… Do I really need to describe how being “extremely antisocial” does not necessarily automatically include inflicting harm on others?

The conditions you’ve set can describe an evil person. Or simply a mouthy asshat. Or even just somebody who keeps to themselves and finds other people in general annoying.

I’d still say that someone who acts contrary to the laws and customs of society and is devoid of typical social practices isn’t necessarily going to be regularly harming others.

And the thing about looking too hard at specific definitions is, when I go looking for a clear definition of “sociopath” or even a clear distinctive difference between “sociopath” and “psychopath” there’s… a rather large grey area. (Most tend to agree that the main difference is whether one was born that way or developed that way due to childhood trauma.) That’s the thing about differences between individual people; they’re vast. Definitions for people with antisocial personality disorders range from saying “they lack empathy entirely” to “they can manage a close resemblance when asked to imagine the things they see happening to themselves” to “they actually can sometimes genuinely care about someone – usually only family members if so – it’s just not the default”. And there are a whole host of other traits that may or may not be included. A lot of the articles I’ve read about it say that psychology has really only scratched the surface there.

Plus, due to the nature of antisocial personality disorder in general, the most (in)famous and well studied cases are going to be about the ones who were the most unhinged. The ones who function normally in society (or put up a good enough facade) aren’t ever even going to be diagnosed, let alone studied.

What some articles say (and what I tend to agree with) is that APD in general falls along a spectrum. Like basically anything else.

So it all boils down to how severe the behavior is. Someone only mildly to moderately antisocial and amoral may never do anything worse than most people if they’re rational enough to understand that (getting caught) acting like a selfish jackass doesn’t do them any favors in life.

You can lack empathy, you can lack a desire for social behavior, and yet still be a better person than many “normal” people who go out and do things like murder their lover for cheating on them.

And I’d rather keep the description of “evil” for those who have actually done cruel, evil deeds, instead of just slapping it on those who have a disorder that makes them statistically more likely than average to [i]potentially[/i] do evil deeds.