At least three jurors cried, but Tsarnaev did not…
…as he was sentenced to death.
I don’t think the jurors cried from sympathy. I think they cried from excess of emotion, relief, and exhaustion. It’s somewhat surprising that in Boston, a town where 62% had favored a life sentence, the jury was willing to impose the death penalty. But these jurors had already been death-penalty-qualified in order to be able to serve.
Tsarnaev’s cool demeanor during the trial only solidifies my opinion that he’s a psychopath. His lawyer, Judy Clarke, who had never lost a death penalty case until now, had said:
“If you’re looking to me for a simple and clean answer as to why this young man, who had never been arrested, who had never sassed a teacher, who spent his free time in school working with disabled kids ”¦ if you expect me to have an answer, a simple, clean answer as to how this could happen, I don’t have it,” Clarke told jurors in her closing statement. “I don’t have it.”
I do. But it’s an answer—psycopathy—that doesn’t really answer much of anything, because it’s something we do not understand.
To those who say “he’s a jihadi terrorist” I say “Of course.” But, unlike a lot of terrorists (including his older brother, Tamerlan), I don’t think philosophy or religion was the primary motivator in Dzhokhar’s case, although it certainly was something he spouted. But, as I wrote in my PJ piece back in July of 2013, in which I quoted psychopathy expert Hervey Cleckley’s definitive work The Mask of Sanity:
”¦[T]he [psychopath’s] central personality”¦[is] covered over by”¦a perfect mask of genuine sanity, a flawless surface indicative in every respect of robust mental health. .. [T]hose called psychopaths are very sharply characterized by the lack of anxiety (remorse, uneasy anticipation, apprehensive scrupulousness, the sense of being under stress or strain)”¦
It is my opinion that when the typical psychopath”¦occasionally commits a major deed of violence, it is usually a casual act done not from tremendous passion or as a result of plans persistently followed with earnest compelling fervor. There is less to indicate excessively violent rage than a relatively weak emotion breaking through even weaker restraints.
Dzohkhar’s jihadism was “a relatively weak emotion breaking through even weaker restraints.” It seems as though Tsarnaev didn’t care much whether his victims lived or died, but it also seems as though he only cares marginally more whether he lives or dies.
Here’s hoping Tsarnaev’s promised 72 virgins are all MALE [ s n i c k e r ].
All evil movements attract psychopaths. Nazis had them, the Soviets had them, ISIS has them. I suppose the easiest modern equivalent is Islam.
All evil movements attract psychopaths.
It has been apparent for some time now that psychopaths make up most of the jihadi movement. Not all Muslims are psychopaths but many are trained, encouraged (violently or not) to accept that psychopathy is somehow normal and part of their faith. They weren’t normal in the beginning of Islam either but held brute power. Which came first? Islam or psychopaths. Obviously psychopaths who find it very useful and are drawn to it like bees to honey. It is both a rationalization and organization tool.
I remember reading about Ted Bundy — how he was a charming, articulate, friendly man to some people. People who “knew” him were shocked to learn he was a serial killer. He was psychopath. And what I read, he seemed to fit Cleckley’s description to a “t.” And from what I’ve read about this cockroach, you’ve sold me that he, too, is a psychopath.
Bundy had a lengthy career requiring planning and deception and logistics.
Tsarnaev had at least a couple of weeks of planning and logistics and work.
The picture of a whim making it through weak defenses doesn’t seem to fit.
I mean, this stuff was a lot like work.
Islamic ideology goes a very long way to explaining all.
As for the perp…. this is a victory by the terms of jihad.
Look at the fanatics blowing themselves up in Iraq at this very hour.
See Belmont Club,… the OTOW campaign footage… and the LWJ snaps from Ramadi.
blert
At least some of the fanatics are coerced. Women raped and told the only way to recoup their shame…. Do it or your family dies….
Mentally challenged individuals….
Deluded. “Just park the truck there by the market and leave as if you’re going down the street.”….
I would have been happy if his sentence was hard labor at a super max prison without chance of parole.
“But it’s an answer–psycopathy–that doesn’t really answer much of anything, because it’s something we do not understand.”
Neo admits that applying the label on Tsarnaev doesn’t explain much of anything but then she uses her post to explain that because of his presumed psychopathy that his motivation for jihad was weak at best. That seems to be somewhat contradictory.
An alternative explanation is that he like about a billion other Muslims really does believe that Islam is the true religion and that he is a devout Muslim. As such he believes that as soon as he dies fighting in jihad he will live in eternity with all the booze he can drink and with 72 virgins to rape. Why would someone who is about to live in Muslim heaven be sad to receive the death penalty?
If he is a psychopath who is only motivated by self interest jihad would be all the more attractive to him because Islam was invented by a psychopath and its doctrines are designed specifically to appeal to the Muslim’s self interest.
Lets see if he has the *sincerity* of Tim Mc Veigh
and rejects all appeals & demands a quick
“carry out”. Appeal lawyers will cry, the public won’t.
As far as the lawyers pining that *he* helped disabled kids, well he laid his bomb at the back of the sweet faced 8 year old Martin Richard !
Local retrospect (out of towners check out the Boston Herald for Howie Carrs column, “Stop crying moonbats etc.) of those Lefties lamenting
this adjudication, often fail to recall that these brothers were, given asylum, given academic support through their formative years, given
money access through EBT, given free attendance to local colleges * classes with sympathetic instructors. The older brother drove around in a luxury car (BMW I believe) & they both were *naturalized as Americans just 6 months prior ! Naturally the Lefties gloss over *all of those perks*, would that ever, ever, be done for a deserving native born but poor American ??? Hell no, that !
I do. He bombed a public place to massacre / murder innocent people… Geesh!
“All evil movements attract psychopaths
And recruit psychopaths, and cultivate psychopathy — and even create psychopaths?
Hervey Cleckley:
1. a perfect mask of genuine sanity
2. sharply characterized by the lack of anxiety (remorse, uneasy anticipation, apprehensive scrupulousness
3. when the typical psychopath…occasionally commits a major deed of violence, it is usually a casual act done not from tremendous passion… than a relatively weak emotion breaking through even weaker restraints.
One of many aspects of Islamic doctrine and judgments — whether fard (compulsory), mustahabb (recommended), halal (permitted), that forges psychopathy in human beings — honor killings.
If, at the behest of Islam, the men of a culture/society partake in honor killings, i.e. overcome the natural, imbued in all humans (by God himself, apparently though, not Allah) blood bond and brutally murder their own women; mothers, sisters, wives, daughters — what to make of it? How to characterize such a culture/religion? Psychopathic?
Never in history had there been so prodigious and primitive a sense of honor (personal/familial), in so great a mass of dishonorable human flesh, as when Islam came along and sanctioned and demanded it. The Muslim may now act not only immoderately but psychopathically, and justifiably claim he does so because Islam demands it.
I wonder whether Cleckley would conjecture that the plurality of the masses, i.e., those of weaker restraints, i.e., delta/omega males, for example, are more at risk, significantly, to being induced to psychopathy?
Certainly Cleckley would not argue against anticipating the plurality of the masses, i.e., those of weaker restraints, may be more easily induced to Marxism, Leftism, Liberalism, utopianism. Why not psychopathy?
It’s possible that what passes for psychopathy in Muslims–in our view–is actually a different way of thinking, as George Pal implies.
It was not so long ago as these things go that psychology and philosophy were in the same department in colleges. Besides saving on deans, it may have been an idea that part of being mentally ill is having an impracticable world view which would be cured by studying philosophy.
As has been said, many mentally ill people seem perfectly rational as long as you don’t look at their premises.
I knew a high school Spanish teacher who had a student of Arab descent. Born in this country, and a good kid all around. Good, smart student. But when in advanced Spanish it came time to read about el Cid, she declined because it would have demeaned her faith. Figuring first that it was odd a high school kid could have heard of el Cid; figuring the connection between an eleventh-century skull buster and a twenty-first century kid whose religion was Islam, not to mention the enormous leap to “demean” is difficult without simply saying, “They think altogether differently,” and that this isn’t something she thought up by herself. Must have come from the old farts at whatever Muslims call their version of Sunday school.
Whatever that line of thought may look like, it is not a line of thought we would recognize as rational.
If we were, for example, to run into a guy named Godwinson who was complaining his family ought to be on the throne of England, and the Plantagenets, Tudors, Windsors, etc. were all illegitimate, we’d think he’s…nuts. I submit he’d have more going for his argument than this kid in a public high school in middle-class, midwestern America had for hers. And he’d be the crazy one.
Religious fanatics may or may not be psychopaths. I don’t know that we know enough about Tsarnaev to say definitively that his acts and participation in the bombing with his brother was on account of psychopathy.
Steve, and any others that would be satisfied with life in prison. Isn’t it society (the hardworking taxpayer in this case) that is punished for the evil, if that is the response? Feeding, clothing, housing, medicating, etc etc the guilty murderer! No thank you. As citizens we have endued the State with the responsibility to carry out justice and protect society. It is very clear to me, what best protects society here. I would rather take responsibility for feeding a rabid dog in a cage, then house in this “criminal justice system” the perpetrators of such atrocities. Twenty years ago, I think most citizens were pretty clear on the meaning of the 10 commandments–religious or not. At the present time, even among the religious there exists a dubious understanding of what was once obvious.
Tsarnaev’s cool demeanor also leads me to conclude that he’s a psychopath.
While his lawyer, Judy Clarke never had a case, as there was no possibility whatsoever that Tsarnaev would not be found guilty, IMO she essentially conceded the death penalty, when she said that, “if you expect me to have an answer, a simple, clean answer as to how this could happen, I don’t have it,” Clarke told jurors in her closing statement. “I don’t have it.” as… to fight the death penalty successfully, she had to have an ‘answer’ that offered an exculpatory explanation.
“I do. But it’s an answer–psychopathy–that doesn’t really answer much of anything, because it’s something we do not understand.”
We don’t know the specific unconnected or damaged ‘wiring’ in Tsarnaev’s brain that led to his psychopathy but we do know that he is incapable of real empathy and compassion. And that is… all we need to know. I.E.;
However, I think that Cleckley somewhat misses the point, when the typical psychopath… commits a major deed of violence, the reason “it is usually a casual act done not from tremendous passion” is because psychopaths are incapable of deep emotion. As, the ‘wiring’ for that is disconnected/miswired/damaged. As a result, when a psychopath does plan, it cannot by definition be with “earnest compelling fervor”.
Elliot asks, “Which came first? Islam or psychopaths.”
Psychopaths. Islam however does reward psychopathy, in fact it demands submission to psychopathy.
Steve at 8:40 am,
Such a sentence would be disproportional to the crime and therefore itself an injustice. Compassion, inappropriately extended to the cruel is cruelty to the victims.
Dennis,
It is demonstrably untrue that all Muslims believe that Islam is the true religion. Of the ones who are sincerely ‘moderate’ (the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya makes certainty impossible) they are in profound, willful denial. And they are so because… to face the truth and truth’s resultant demand that Islam be rejected is to, in many cases face death. And, in all cases, face the complete ‘disownment’ by family and, being completely ostracized by one’s former friends. The penalty for apostasy in Islam is physical death, or failing that, one’s social death.
So moderate Muslims remain silent but in doing so become culpable and thus complicit in the violence.
G Joubert,
Personally, I don’t subscribe to the notion that all religious fanatics are psychopaths, though clearly some, perhaps various, mental deficiencies are involved.
I would argue that it is not Tsarnaev’s acts and participation in the bombing with his brother that defines him as a psychopath but his demeanor during his trial that does so.
Geoffrey Britain:
Dzhokhar’s cool demeanor was not only during the trial, although he certainly did exhibit that during the trial.
I wrote my article on his psychopathy way before the trial. I was basing my theory on his reported demeanor both before and after the crime itself. Reports by friends about how he acted in the days leading up to it and after it, plus videos of him doing things like buying some milk at a store a few minutes afterwards, were the sorts of things I mean. In the Rolling Stone article (or perhaps it was another lengthy article I read; I’m doing this from memory) his demeanor in the days after the crime, according to friends, involved (among other things) joking about the bombing. He seemed as carefree as ever.
His upbringing prepared him for this moment. He’s probably about where he always expected he’d be, in one manner or another a martyr for jihad. That, together with his religious fervor, explains his apparent coolness in the situation. But all that isn’t necessarily psychopathy. We’d have to know more about other aspects of his life.
neo,
Thanks, I thought I had a vague memory of that too but less specifically and too vague to mention it.
G Joubert,
It seems to me that if he had “religious fervor”, it would not be expressed as “apparent coolness” but rather as passionate denunciation of Americans, our society and our judicial process. That, he answered to a ‘higher power’, one that had directed him to attack the infidel. But he exhibited none of that.
Imagine a war time situation, such as in occupied France during WWII. You are an American service member, caught behind enemy lines. You can speak French and German passably, and you are able to survive by blending in. One way to blend in is to be sociable, and to appear carefree, even whimsical. But it’s all just an act. You intend at your first opportunity to kill as many of these Nazi bastards as you can. And let’s say one day you do. And you take great satisfaction in doing so. Does any of this make you a psychopath?
Does any of this make you a psychopath?
If you had training, no.
No training, yes.
Too bad these mad dogs can’t be led by disinformation to attack certain targets that are harming Western civilization. Instead, they are led by Islam to do Islam’s dirty work.
But since they want to die, we might as well make better use of them in the battlefield and on the strategic level.
There are a lot of people who contest against the Pamela Gs, who need a surgical removal. The tank or frontline vanguard will not be able to hold the line forever, before the civilians in the back shopping at malls, will be terminated soon.
The convicted subject does not seem to fear the social pressure and power that other normal humans are sensitive to. Certainly he should understand the power the State has over his life, yet he does not give them credence or much concern. He does not look worried for his life because the State cannot use the fear of death as a leverage.
Such individuals are rather unique in the human spectrum. In cases like Socrates, not bending to your society when your society is full of tyrants can provide benefits to humanity. But in other cases, not bending to your society’s rules of peace and human rights, can other deleterious effects.
Islam attracts psychopaths. No other religion works quite as well for them.
One of the major recruiting tools, pace Obama and GITMO, that ISIS has is a religious justification for shedding inhibitions that would normally restrict one from, say, having sex slaves. You get to be Ariel Castro and go to heaven.
I’m not a theologian, so I wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s only one interpretation of Islam. But I do know that it can work great as a gang code.
There’s a reason Islam gets a lot of converts in prison.
G6loq:
It’s not just that he acted casual before or afterwards. It also is what you might call his pre-planning personality. He is uniformly described as having always been happy-go-lucky, friendly, unworried, etc.. That’s why so many of his friends (long-time friends, too) were flabbergasted that he could have done this. His insouciance was not a pose or something learned as a result of training. It was part of his personality.
Read the Rolling Stone article if you haven’t done so already, to get a better idea of what I’m referring to. For example:
This is the consistent description of him over time by virtually everyone who knew him.
More:
This is not the stone-faced demeanor of the trained jihadi. This is the guy’s character, consistent for years. More:
Classic Cleckley-type psychopath.
Classic Cleckley-type psychopath.
Yup! my point exactly!
I had the training, martial arts, flight school, corporate America, raising kids, I can switch it on and off at will. Psychopaths are naturals.
One other possibility, when they do his autopsy maybe they’ll find a brain tumor.
Maybe that’s what it is all about. Muslimism is a mass case of brain tumors … Bastards!
He made a choice. He elected to terminate human life. He will now live or die with the consequences. He should be credited for not attempting to obfuscate the nature of his action. In a darkly ironic way, his integrity is refreshing.
I have an alternative explanation to Tzarnaev’s behaviour: he is a Chechen. They upbring their sons not to show any emotion in public. The whole their culture is psychotic to the core.
Sergey:
His brother was quite different in personality, so I don’t think it was that.
He apparently did show some emotion on May 4:
What does that mean? Does it comport with being a psychopath?
Ann:
Yes.
I had read about that earlier, and IMHO it is telling. The stories of his victims raised not a moment of sniffles or a flicker of emotion, and they were harrowing apparently. He placed that bomb at the feet of a family with young children without a moment’s hesitation.
The aunt in question was a reminder of his own youth. He was crying for himself, I think, and it was just a moment, something that reminded him of happier days. Apparently he had not seen that aunt, nor she him, since he’d been 8 years old, until that moment in the courtroom. Her crying triggered his (and his was not especially dramatic, just a few tears); her extreme emotion was triggered by seeing HIM there and testifying. She was talking about what a cute kid he had been. I believe he was weeping for that, but just briefly and not with any great depth. And that was it for tears or really any emotions at all. Psychopaths can on occasion feel sorry for themselves.
somebody once said that if you like throwing gays off buildings, shredding women and burying children alive, war is like a superfun summer camp for the guys who enlist in ISIS.
I note that ISIS doesn’t have a shortage of guys trying to sign up….
Resolved! It is NOT Islam. It is personality disorder.
“Ortiz’ Law.”:
Ortiz’ Law would hypothesize that the longer a person discusses Islamic terrorism, the more certain it will be that that person will say the act or acts in question have absolutely nothing to do with Islam. No, no, no.
Geoffrey Britain Says at 12:30 PM said:
“Dennis,
It is demonstrably untrue that all Muslims believe that Islam is the true religion.”
I agree that there may be some Muslims who are not true believers. The number I gave, 1 billion, is obviously an estimate which amounts to about 50% of the total World population of Muslims.
http://www.muslimpopulation.com/World/
Whew, I’m glad we have established Tsarnaev is a psychopath. For a while there I thought he was evil. Silly me.
Lest we all forget: the bothers are considered ‘good’ for the murder of their three Jewish ‘friends’ — on the anniversary of 9-11.
As for how they budgeted: like typical jihadis they were tapping The Man for welfare while running a seriously profitable retail establishment for the distribution of controlled narcotics.
The cannabis at the murder scene sunk something intense. No dog was needed.
We’re not talking ounces — kilos.
Only the best for the Boston college crowd.
The triple homicide is deemed closed, IIRC.
AFTER the Boston Marathon bombings the connection to the murders became embarrassingly obvious. 9-11, jihad, cannabis, — the works.
Aren’t Leftists just like him though? Except the true believer or unbeliever in this case, doesn’t need to work at it, while Leftists must go to great pains to excuse their own blood guilt and rationalize their crimes against humanity, often at the expense of other people.
But in the end, once the rationalizations take and they believe in it, they are indistinguishable from the Hague Nazis that claimed they were following orders and thus not guilty of war crimes.
Perhaps they even believed it by then.
Which means they aren’t as ruthless or as efficient as Tsar, since he didn’t seem to need any rationalization or work at all for it to be.