This rant reminded me of a book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths. It was a humanistic look at the inner workings of such people and their fundamentally limited experience of human emotion.

The job of a CEO might be difficult for someone like me. Long hours, high stakes, endless political intrigues, systematically exploiting labourers - but to a psychopath, all they see is big opportunities, excitement, and cruel delights. The position is one that seems oddly suited for one who lacks pity, remorse, or a need for emotionally substantive experiences.

It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..." "You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?" "No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people." "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy." "I did," said Ford. "It is." "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?" "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?" "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?" "What?" "I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?" "I'll look. Tell me about the lizards." Ford shrugged again. "Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it." "But that's terrible," said Arthur. "Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.

i think it would be more comforting to think its reptilians in power rather than humans who act like that.

This is a smear campaign against lizards. /s

Nice try, The Reptile!!

It’s a known thing that sociopaths and psychopaths can rise to the top in corporate structures.

It's not just that they can - they excel at it. Maybe basing our economic system on greed and competition was a bad idea?

Having a pet lizard has made me have a hard time taking the "lizard people/reptilians" conspiracy theorists seriously. Like, have these people actually been around reptiles? Deeply unserious creatures. Not generally social, sure, but they definitely have body language and would fail terribly at running some kind of complex scheme.

Also a lot of politicians can lick their own eyes.

It's from the 1980s film/TV series, "V".

All of these conspiracy theory nuts believe the most banal stupid crap.

Ted Cruz is the lizard, though. I can tell, not from his lack of body language cues, but simply because his human-skin suit is so ill-fitting. Also, as a cold-blooded creature, he leaves for warmer places (like Cancun) when Texas gets too cold.

If imagining the elites are lizard people helps people come to terms with the need for violent revolution then I’m fine with it honestly.

I don't like the word "psychopath" because if you look at the etymology, it's just Greek for "mentally ill person". I don't like the association our language historically has between evil people and mentally ill people.

My boss's boss is eerily kinda like that. She gives me the creeps because she's also trained as a nurse and she could probably kill if she wanted to and get away with it.

In as much as (there is some evidence to suggest that) sociopaths lack the capacity for empathy on a neurological level, given that empathy is a recent evolutionary capacity unique to mammals, it could be argued that sociopaths are less mammalian in a crucial sense than typical humans.

Moreover, as I understand it, some of our neurological systems were inherited or developed from pre-mammalian evolutionary ancestors.

So...from a certain point of view...this crazy conspiracy shit can be made to seem slightly more plausible. In a mundane kind of way.

Presumably, people whose brains lack these later distinctively mammalian neurological systems perceive the world, social interactions, and ethics very differently.