A Radical Reset
Our Republic has been converted into a democracy which is just another name for mob rule. The mob is getting what it wants, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, good and hard. One day soon, the entire edifice is going to collapse under its own weight and what takes its place historically will be tyranny. A Radical Reset is the alternative and the system is called Antipolitism. It calls for a new republic based upon merit and not ambition. No parties, no money in politics, no careers in politics, and only serving the public good.
A Radical Reset
Sociopaths Run Our Government. Here's How We Fix It.
What happens when we build a political system that rewards sociopathic behavior? In this thought-provoking episode, I dive deep into the psychological makeup of our elected officials and why our current political structure attracts people who prioritize winning above all else.
Drawing from personal experiences in prison, I explore the crucial differences between sociopaths and psychopaths - a distinction that helps explain why our Congress operates the way it does. Sociopaths, who reinvent themselves daily with a "that was yesterday, this is today" mentality, thrive in our political environment precisely because they don't feel the weight of guilt or shame that would crush most normal, decent people.
The brutal reality is that good people avoid running for office because they value privacy and fear character assassination. Everyone has aspects of their past they'd prefer remain private, and our system ensures these private matters become public spectacles during campaigns. The result? A Congress dominated by lawyers and career politicians who care more about winning than serving.
My solution is "antipolitism" - replacing elections with random selection from qualified citizens. This lottery-based approach would transform political ambition into civic duty, bringing ordinary achieved Americans into government service for single terms without the character assassination that accompanies campaigns.
As I prepare to run for Arizona's 4th Congressional District, I reflect on how my own past mistakes have paradoxically positioned me well for this mission. When you've already experienced public shame and worked through it, you become bulletproof to the typical political attacks that deter good people from service.
Ready to explore a radical alternative to our broken political system? Listen now, and then grab your copy of "A Radical Reset: The Manifesto of Antipolitism" to learn more about how we can transform American governance.
Happy Friday everybody. It's me, herbie K, your host here at A Radical Reset, the home of antipolitism. We're going to talk a little bit about that today, but before I go on, if you'd like to pick up the manifesto of antipolitism and learn all about it, as well as my policy prescriptions for pretty much anything that we're facing these days, pick up a copy of A Radical Reset the same as the title of this podcast on Amazon, on Kindle, paperback or hardcover. Please pick up your copy of A Radical Reset by me, herbie K, okay, oh, and don't forget to share this podcast. Yada, yada, yada. You know the rest. Let's talk a little bit today about winning and about why winning and winning alone attracts sociopaths. So our congress, our congress, is made up primarily of sociopaths.
Speaker 1:Now, this has not all always been true, and I want to be clear about what I mean, about what is a sociopath versus a psychopath, versus, you know, a normal human being, normal, your average everyday person, has got, you know, a much more healthy view of the world. First of all, when I was in prison, I had a lot of experience with sociopaths and psychopaths, so I got I got a really a lot of up close and personal things. In fact, I used to worry. I'll be honest with you. I used to literally spend hours worrying that I was a sociopath. You know, at my nadir, you know, when I had committed the crime that sent me to prison and I had realized what I had done and I was absolutely wracked with guilt, I went, I literally sought out psychologists and counselors to help me because I was afraid I was a sociopath. You know why would I do something like this? How could I hurt 35 people, which are the number of my victims, 35 people who were friends of mine, who trusted me, and I should say former friends. They're not my friends now, and not because I don't want them to be, but because they hate me, and I don't blame them, I'd hate me too. And how could I do this to them? And I felt I was just gnawed by guilt and by overwhelming feelings of remorse and sadness and replaying in my head of all the things I did, and I just was beating the living crap out of myself.
Speaker 1:And I went to see the shrinks and, as I said, and anyway, one guy really summed it up to me and got my head out of it, which was really great. It kind of um cleared the way for me to think a little further and get into things like, for example, anti politism. And I was in prison and think about other things than the sheer weight of guilt that was all over me. And the bottom line was he turned to me and he said you're not a sociopath, but you might be an idiot. This is what he's saying to me. And I said how can that be? And he said because if you were a sociopath you wouldn't care. And that I found an incredibly relieving thing the very fact that to this day, I have to be honest with you.
Speaker 1:I hate to start just digressing when I say things like I have to be honest with you in all honesty, that's an expression, but shouldn't we always be honest? Shouldn't we always be talking to each other honestly? I don't know, I don't know where that expression comes from. It's like some of the time where we're not talking honestly, although all people lie and so on and so forth. But I try to be honest all the time and in all honesty, as I said, I have to tell you that I sink back into the remorse and guilt all the time about what happened and when I find myself slipping back there I have to literally out loud, tell myself to stop it, because there's no productive purpose to regrets.
Speaker 1:Regrets are a sucker's game, you know. The problem with regrets is when you regret something, you replay it in your head. But the problem is it's a game that's already been played, so every time you replay it in your head you're going to come back to the same place of remorse and sadness if you're not a sociopath and that really accomplishes nothing but to hold you back from whatever potential you might have down the road. So I have come to understand that the remorse, the sadness that I feel is something that I embrace. I'll never lose it because I am deeply, deeply saddened by what I did. There's just no other way for me to put it. But and I just can't well, I don't want to shake that feeling. It's reaffirming to me that my head's on straight, but at the same time I no longer allow myself the luxury of regret. It sends you back into a, a Scylla and Charybdis, sucking you underneath the waves, down to the depths of depression and non-productivity. But anyway, let's talk about um, let's continue this discussion that we're on.
Speaker 1:So I said earlier that everybody in Congress was a sociopath, and that's a very broad generalization. There are a few exceptions. There are people who run for office who are genuinely, genuinely interested in public service. I would say, for example, I think Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky, is a terrific guy, also from Kentucky which makes me want to visit Kentucky, by the way is Thomas Massey. And Thomas Massey is a libertarian in every way and even though he ran as a Republican because he wanted to win, he's a libertarian. And the bottom line is I don't think he's a sociopath either. He takes very principled positions all the time and there are a few people like that in Congress, but they can be counted on one hand. So, out of the you know, 535 between the Senate and the House of Representatives, people in Congress, you know, maybe five of them aren't sociopaths. The rest are Now sociopaths.
Speaker 1:I learned in prison are different than psychopaths. And again, I'm not a psychiatrist, but I'm just going to give you the Herbie difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. And what is a sociopath? A sociopath, to my view, is somebody who reinvents himself every day. Okay. So in other words, if a sociopath screws you over and then you come to them the next day and they ask you for another favor. You look at them like they're out of their mind because they just screwed you over. Their reaction is something to the effect of well, that was yesterday and this is today. You know you find this a lot with. For example, if you have an addict in your family who looks you straight in the eye and tells you what you want to hear, to get what they want, that's a sociopath. And if you say to them but you lied to me yesterday, they'll say that was yesterday, but I need this today, and that's a very sociopathic response.
Speaker 1:A sociopath is a person who is self-centered to the point of delusion and to where they feel no guilt. Okay, guilt is not something that weighs on sociopaths particularly. They do something and they justify it, and then that was yesterday and this is today. That's a sociopath, and we have lots of sociopaths in Congress. What we don't have a lot of, thank God, are psychopaths.
Speaker 1:A psychopath is a person. A sociopath at least can identify with you as a human being. Sociopaths can love. Sociopaths can have families. Sociopaths are capable of having at least a rudimentary relationship. A psychopath is not. A psychopath views you the same way you look at hamburger, you know, as virtually an inanimate object to be eaten or used. You know what I mean, and I mean that, of course, metaphorically. But a psychopathic murderer doesn't in any way identify with the pain of the victim, where a sociopath will, but then will shrug it off as something that had to be done. And that was yesterday and this is today. There's the difference. And so most of your sociopathic types are not potentially murderous, where psychopaths are all potentially murderous, although there are plenty of psychopaths and there are people that know they're psychopaths that are functional within society because they have a handle on their psychopathy. And again, I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, so I'm not going to go into the depths of the possibilities of what your future might be if you're a sociopath or a psychopath.
Speaker 1:I'm saying in this podcast we'd all be better off if we did not have a Congress full of sociopaths. And the reason that we have a Congress full of sociopaths is simply because it is so personally destructive to run for office today. So, for example, I am going to run for office next year. I'm going to run for Congress, and in fact I just had a meeting about that two days ago and I'm filing my letter of intent with the state as we speak. I'm preparing it and I am going to start circulating my petitions to get on the ballot as a libertarian for Arizona's 4th Congressional District I'm going to—the incumbent in that district, by the way just as a side note is a Democrat.
Speaker 1:His name is Greg Stanton. At one point he was the mayor of Phoenix. He's a very typical zero politician and a good example of what I'm talking about today, and I don't mean to pick on Greg Stanton. I didn't pick to run in Congressional District 4 because I have a thing for Greg Stanton, but because I think there's a possibility to reform the Democratic Party into something viable from the ashes of destruction and progressivism that they've put themselves into. But I've discussed that before. I'm not going to rehash it today. But what I am going to say is I know that when I run for office I am going to be slandered. You know everything in my background that I share it all with you freely is going to be brought up, and the only reason that I'm not afraid of it, and the thing that makes me kind of ideal for the mission that I've set out for myself, which is to start a movement of anti-politicism to save our republic, is because my reputation is so destroyed by my own actions that it doesn't really matter what anybody says about me. It's a unique position to be in. It's kind of like I don't know. If you've ever liked, I'll give you a good example.
Speaker 1:My sons and I were on a fishing trip in Miami Beach one day and we were fishing with a guide. His name was Alan Sherman. It's neither here nor there. We were fishing on his bay boat and we were out in Biscayne Bay fishing and we were near what was called the Venetian Causeway, which is a causeway, a series of bridges that connects Miami Beach to Miami. Miami Beach is an island, essentially off Miami, okay, or it might be a peninsula, I think it does connect at the top, but anyway, neither here nor there. So we were fishing.
Speaker 1:Anyway, there was a downpour. Miami Beach gets these incredible downpours on sunny days. We called them sun showers. Growing up, you could be standing on the you know like on your block, and you could see the rain pouring so hard you can't see the houses through the other side of the rain that's pouring and you could be standing in sunlight. And that's what happened.
Speaker 1:We were fishing on the boat and we got caught in a sun shower and it just poured on us and it happened so fast that we didn't have time to get on our frog togs. Frog togs are a brand name of just anti-rain gear that fishermen carry with them At least in Miami they do because of these sun showers. Anyway, we didn't get it on in time and we got so drenched it started to get funny and we sat there in the boat. First we were all scrambling to get on our frog togs. Then we all kind of gave up at the same time and just sat in the boat and laughed as the rain and you have to I'm sure those of you who live in climates where you get this kind of rain understands it was just a downpour. I mean, we were maybe 50 yards from the causeway itself and for a few minutes there you couldn't see the causeway for the force of the rain. That's how heavy the rain was and we got so wet that it became funny and we couldn't.
Speaker 1:Basically, you can't get any wetter, and that's kind of how I am using that metaphorically with my own reputation. My own reputation is so destroyed because of my own actions that there's nothing else that any, that A there's nothing else to come out and B, nothing anybody's going to say is going to insult me any more than it had in the past, and I've long since come to grips with it. And since my family is fully aware of my ugly past, I have no secrets to keep. So I'm in the unique position of not having secrets, and already being exposed kind of makes me bulletproof for this sort of thing at this stage in my life. So that's why I well, that's not why, but that's one of the reasons that I at least looked at or considered, or one of the factors I considered when I decided to run for office, or one of the factors I considered when I decided to run for office. So the bottom line here is that for most people, they have not destroyed their lives and commit crimes, they have not gone to prison. Most decent people don't do the stupid things and the immoral things and the complete breakdown of character things that I did in order to put myself in that position, thank goodness, and because of that they don't want to run for office.
Speaker 1:You know, we all have secrets. All of us have secrets, and I'm not interested in your secrets. Mine are out in the open, but I'm, you know, as a healthy person I'm not really interested in the private. I don't see what one thing has to do with another. I understand that behind closed doors, many, many people, if not most people, are kind of freaky. We all have our little kinks of what we would call freakiness. It might be sexual freakiness, it might be how you relax, you might be a functional addict or alcoholic. We don't need to know that, as long as you're functional. I'm just saying that there are secrets that people maybe it's a mistake, an affair you had in the past and you put it behind you and you never it was.
Speaker 1:You know there are two kinds of people that cheat on their spouses. There are chronic cheaters and there are whoops cheaters. And a chronic cheater is a person who cannot help themselves. They're constantly, constantly, and this is male or female. I'm not drawing a line to one gender or the other, but I've met plenty of predatory, sexually predatory men and women both, who are constantly cheating on their spouses. They're just driven to it as a compulsion, and compulsive behavior is very tough. We all have compulsions and if you have a sexual compulsion or any other compulsion, you can tell yourself you're not going to do it, but you're going to do it. Okay, that's what a compulsion is. It's really hard to fight. But then there's the most common kind of cheater, which is the whoops cheater.
Speaker 1:You know you're away on a business trip. You're in the lounge of the hotel, you have a couple of drinks, you get a little liquored up. A beautiful woman walks in. Maybe she's sexually aggressive. One thing leads to another, yada, yada, yada. You have a fling in the hotel, but now you are completely weighed down in guilt and you just don't know what to do with yourself. And this is something. Now you're smart enough.
Speaker 1:I might get a slight digression here. If this is you and you have made a mistake like this and you're wrestling with yourself, should I tell my spouse? The answer is no, you should not tell your spouse. I'm going to advocate this is a secret to be kept, and this is why I say look, don't destroy your marriage for nothing. If it was a genuine mistake, then put it behind you. If you go confess it when there was literally no harm, no foul except in your head, you're not doing that for their benefit, for your wife's benefit, or your spouse's benefits, or your children's. You're doing that for you. You're trying to get the guilt off of your shoulders. Well, I got news for you, buckaroo. Suck it up and take the guilt. And, by the way, most of us do. Most of us understand this. We so cherish our relationship and we feel so bad over fudging it up that we keep this a secret. We bury it in our past. We swear to ourselves, and keep this swear, that we're not going to do it again. But this is just a typical secret that stays a secret.
Speaker 1:Or maybe a period in your life that you went through where you did a lot of bad things for a small period of time and then you pulled out of it, whatever it might be. Maybe you were inappropriate at some point in your life with a coworker. Might be. Maybe you were inappropriate at some point in your life with a coworker. Maybe you were I don't know. Maybe you know. I don't know what you could have done. There are a million. There are a million things. If I sit here and try to think of all the things that we can all do to screw our lives up, but the truth is we've all done them.
Speaker 1:All of us have things in our backgrounds that we would rather not talk about. If you're saying to yourself right now, I don't have anything in my background I don't want to talk about. Well, I hate to say this. You're an incredibly boring person. You know it's our mistakes that give us our color and our flavor, so to speak. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes. Good decisions come from experience. But experience comes from bad decisions, and that comes from making mistakes. So I'm not, but most people don't want them dragged out into.
Speaker 1:Don't run for office, and the best people some of the best people are the ones with the biggest secrets to hide, because they've taken so many scars in their lives that they've learned lessons. I don't consider myself particularly unusual. In other words, you know that I went to prison, I did this bad thing and I'm on a path to redemption. I'm not the only person I've ever met that's on a path to redemption as a result of their actions. You know's say that you'd like to do something good, you'd like to achieve something positive for your fellow man before your time here on this planet is out and you'd like to go out and do something. But then you look at your spouse and your children and you think to yourself about the things, the thing or things plural in most cases it's plural that you've done over the years. The longer you've lived, the more likely it's going to be plural that you're going to have a number of things that you don't want to have come out, and so you don't run for office and we suffer for it. Because the best people nobody should be expecting perfection.
Speaker 1:So the idea behind anti-politism is, of course, that we select based on merit, on a lottery, on a random basis. In other words, you are called to duty and since you can only serve one term of whatever office it is, you're called to serve in and that you're done, you're out of the pool forever. You'll never serve another political or public office. We convert what was an ambition into a duty of service, and I think that changes not only the nature of our Congress to become much, much better, but it also creates I believe it will create a culture of civic duty, pride and learning. In other words, I can see where, for example in the public schools and in the private schools as well, the curriculum would be altered. Since, you know, growing up.
Speaker 1:People used to say you could grow up to be president one day. That's an old, you know axiom or an old saying. But the truth is, unless you're born into certain circumstances and have the ability to access certain colleges and you know money and so on and so forth. With very rare exceptions, you're not going to be president, but in antipolitism you could be for real. You could be called the Congress, you could be called the Senate, you could be called to serve as president or vice president of the United States. And since that is a real possibility, if you live a life of achievement, it would then motivate you, even unconsciously, to want to know as much as you can about how your country truly works, so that if, in fact, you are called to duty, um, you are prepared to do that duty, so that and I think that's a very positive what you know thomas soul says there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
Speaker 1:One of the trade-offs of anti-politism is it is a positive tradeoff. We're going to go from people in an attitude of civic responsibility or civic knowledge at least I'm not sure of the word I want to use, but will become pervasive culturally, because we all know those of us who work hard enough that we achieve a level that we might be in the lottery ourselves. That is to say, we're in the top third of income earners, we're over the age of 35 and we haven't committed a crime. That's pretty much it. But that you've climbed the ladder to achieve that success, you know you're exactly who we want in Congress. But that means you've also probably done some crappy things, and that's why anti-politicism makes for a much better Congress. Because you're not going to go through a political campaign, there's not going to be any opposition research, there won't be anybody digging into your background. Now I address that, by the way, in the book A Radical Reset by.
Speaker 1:I think that we need to criminalize or at least make the slander and libel statutes very. I think that we need to criminalize or at least make the slander and libel statutes very, very, very strict, because if a person does agree to serve in Congress, is selected by lottery, and they do go in and they do have a secret. Unless that secret is criminal, it's nobody's business. And you know there's a social media industry of personal destruction, a social media industry of personal destruction. So even though there won't be political parties and even though there won't be elections, there will still be individual representatives that will do things that other people won't like. Obviously, no one's going to agree on everything you do and consequently, someone who's really a nasty bastard might go out there and dig up whatever it is that you did and smear you with it.
Speaker 1:So I propose that we pass a law that doesn't and I realize that this treads a line on the First Amendment, so this will have to be very carefully written but basically criminalizes slandering someone serving, who's been selected in the public sphere, unless they've been indicted by a law enforcement authority, by a grand jury, or they've been arrested, unless it's an actual fact that there is a criminal charge that's been placed against them, independently of their service. It should be against the law to well, not against the law, and I know the slippery slope here, but it should be. Let's just say this it should be a criminal offense to destroy someone's reputation without grounds. You're going to have to be able to produce the grounds why you said what you said. Gossip and malicious gossip just to destroy that's fair game.
Speaker 1:When people are pursuing office for career and ambition which is why we get all sociopaths, because they know it's coming it's an expectation and it's built into the system. But when someone is drafted that is not built to their expectations. So we must protect them from personal destruction. Again, it'll have to be a very carefully written law, but it needs to be there because we can't make people's lives hurt just because they serve. It should be out of the question. You know, if we discover that somebody's anyway, I've beaten this horse to death. You get my drift. Now it's extremely important for our future that we get away from these ambitious sociopaths, because when you're an ambitious sociopath which means that you reinvent yourself you don't care what you did yesterday. That means you can do things like spend completely unjustifiable amounts of money, because that's not your money and it helps you further your career and that's all you're caring about is winning, and when all of your focus is on winning and winning above all else, it it clouds your every judgment, and winning is such an empty thing. Anyway, I don't think people really realize that.
Speaker 1:I saw an interview that went viral on the internet that really sparked this in my mind. It was done by scotty scheffler. Um, those of you who don't follow golf, scotty scheffler. Scheffler is the number one rated golfer in the world Right now. As we're speaking, the British Open is well. It's not being played right now because of the time difference. It's over for the day, but at the crack of dawn this morning I got up early and was watching the British Open on Peacock, which actually has the Golf Channel live watching the early rounds. The finals will be this weekend. Of course that'll be available on regular broadcast TV.
Speaker 1:But anyway, scheffler is once again in the top 10 and moving to win another major and he's won 16 tournaments and he's won, I think, three or four majors and he's just a phenomenal guy. But he was talking about winning and he said you know, it's really something that he's learned in his life is that he's fought so hard to win. And then, after the win, you know you get three minutes of fun and then it's over. And if you don't have family and you don't have things that are more important to you than winning, your life is a very empty thing. And I think for the majority of these congresspeople, winning is so important to them that they don't think past the winning. They don't think about what are they going to do with it. There's no sense of service, there's no sense of duty, it's all about the winning. And once they won, because they've sacrificed their family lives, because everything in the world that they've ever done is going to come out, so, even if they stay together, their marriages are generally ruined.
Speaker 1:I would evidence the Bill and Hillary Clinton marriage. I mean, he's once again in the news. Turns out that he was hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. A lot Talk about a sociopath, by the way. Talk about a sociopath. And Barack Obama, the living embodiment of sociopathy. But anyway, these people will go ahead and destroy their marriages as we speak. The Obamas, I think. Slight another digression I predict that the Obamas will become the first presidential couple post-presidency to divorce.
Speaker 1:They clearly hate each other. You know before, the or she hates him. He's a sociopath. He doesn't care one way or the other, but she hates him. It's fairly obvious. I had read in various sources prior to him being elected back in 2008, that their marriage was on the rocks then and she agreed to stay in, and only for his presidential run. And now that it's over, you can see that she's spreading her own wings, whether you like it or not, and it's clear that there's trouble in paradise. And why is there trouble in paradise? Because it was the marriage of convenience to begin with and his ambition overwhelmed everything else. And he's a sociopath and he destroyed his marriage and she stuck with him because she's probably a sociopath too, who enjoys the perks of power as much as he does, because birds of a feather flock together, as they say.
Speaker 1:But is this who we want serving us in Congress? Is that what we want? Sociopaths and mostly lawyers, I mean. The other thing you know about the Congress is about 60% of it are attorneys. Well, guys, what is an attorney? But a paid verbal prostitute, okay, or written prostitute? An attorney is someone you hire to advocate for you, whether they agree with you or not. An attorney, a good attorney, will take your case and will advocate for you, regardless of what stupid goddamn thing you've done, whether it's civil or criminal, and they'll advocate for you. If they're a good attorney, they'll advocate for you strenuously and that's an important job.
Speaker 1:But the problem is it doesn't belong in Congress, because that is verbal prostitution. You're basically selling your abilities to argue for somebody who's done something that is repugnant in many, many cases. So you do it. You're doing it for money, ambition, power and to win. You know I won that case. I win, I win. Winning is great, I love to win, I'm competitive, but winning lasts just a couple of seconds and the next thing you know you're on to the next.
Speaker 1:You know it's over and these people live hollow lives and they're representing us in Congress, and they all come from the same legal background of, you know, intellectual prostitution. That's what it is. It's intellectual prostitution, and so this is what we're left with, and the reason anti-politism is so superior is that we're not going to definitely have 60 lawyers. We're going to have the percentage of lawyers in congress that make up the country, which I think is around one percent or so of people in this country, or attorneys, one or two percent, something like that, and so, um, that's how many, just by the sheer luck of, or the laws of randomness, if there is such a law, but, you know, by sheer random selection, that's about all we'll get. And good, I think that we've proven that we need something other than lawyers in Congress writing, you know, 5,000 pages. That's the other thing. Lawyers, there's never too many words for a lawyer. Anyway, I think I pretty much wrapped it up today, so let me try to sum up this, this sprawling conversation we've had, and then we'll move on to the weekend and have a good time.
Speaker 1:Winning is not everything. We don't want sociopaths in congress. We don't want people who are so shameless that that they'll they'll destroy their families in order to win and to achieve power, which is an aphrodisiac and leads to all kinds of troubles. Instead, let's become anti-political. Let's become anti-politics, where we believe that service should be a duty, and a duty to be honored and cherished, and then done one and done, and then back to your life. That's what anti-politicism is all about. That's why it's smart, that's why it should be the future, that's why it should be what replaces this democracy that we've managed to set up, which is just a code name for mob rule. Thank you very much for joining me today. It's been a pleasure, as always. Don't forget to pick up your copy of A Radical Reset, the Manifesto of Antipolitism, on Amazon. Don't forget to share this with your friends, and God bless you, god bless your family and God bless America.