Middle Management Psychopaths; The State Needs and Protects Them

Most low level government employees are biding their time.  They don’t desire to push people around.  Most senior executives are politicians.  They don’t want to get their hands dirty.  They don’t want to make a politically dangerous order requiring underlings to engage the edge of the knife.  Executives want the results.  Wink-wink, nod-nod but, they don’t want to tell others to kick skulls.  There are too many people that will quote their statements.  Too many people documenting what they do.  The state is about force and it needs someone to bring it to bear: an unprincipled brute that can produce results; fake results if needed; a pile of “guilty” dead bodies if needed.

Maybe an inside trader needs to be produced.  Maybe a “monopolizing” company needs to be identified and attacked.  Maybe a raw food producer needs to be zip-tied and thrown in the pen to make an example.

The problem for the state is that most government employees are people who want to maximize the benefit to themselves while staying largely invisible.  Invisible means not making waves.  They have an inkling that what the government does is coercive but, they don’t want to be the coercer.  They don’t want to write a ton of tickets.  They don’t want to mobilize on a Saturday night and beat people who are chanting about freedom.  They would rather cash their government paycheck, rent a Redbox movie, and chill out with their family.

What can solve this problem for the state?  The state is nothing without force.  The state peons, for the most part, don’t live to beat people up and steal from them.  The executives want heads on platters – with manufactured guilt attached – but, who will make this happen?

Enter the career psychopath.  This person makes himself known early on.  This person shoots people and breaks things and has all the answers.  A dead guy was making a threatening gesture and verbally threatening to kill.  A person transporting money gave a neat unrecorded confession.   Another person was corralled with irrefutable evidence for an unsolvable crime.

Executives have a paradoxical reaction to this person.  They are scared of him but, they need to produce crises with corresponding government solutions.  This guy can get it done.  But, in a bigger sense, this fledgling Rudolf Hoess is being wasted as a teeth-kicking traffic cop who covers his tracks with grandiose fabrications.  His head busting and lack of conscience could be better used to produce a bigger violent result from a mostly complacent sedentary group of underlings.  So, the executives, who have already received a fair amount of glory from the psychopath, can see bigger things in their futures if this arrogant unfeeling brute can be turned loose on a group of relaxed subordinate employees who haven’t produced the smoking gun or rounded up a gang of “lawbreakers” recently.  The psychopath can be given a task, e.g. “take this group of guys and produce a dead terrorist,” and he will comply.

After the psychopath is promoted, he is usually kept hidden.  He is the executive’s secret weapon.  He occasionally produces embarrassing overt mass destruction or mass murder but, his results as the crisis producer and resolver are undeniable.  He must be protected.  Executives become accustomed to the regular “results” produced by the psychopath and his fear driven underlings.  The psychopath creates an odd esprit de corps in his unit, sometimes by cursing and throwing things and sometimes by coldheartedly threatening to ruin employees’ careers.  It is not a veiled threat.  He knows his value to his superiors.  The underlings also know his prowess at lying convincingly.  This skill could easily be turned against them at a moment’s notice.  An airtight case of insubordination could be produced at the drop of a hat and the underlings’ reputations would be ruined.

The psychopath knows what upper management wants.  The need for crises and results become unspoken.  Many awards and accolades are produced internally for the psychopath.  Individual executives are protective of their personal pet psychopath manager.  He is their “problem solver.”  Others subordinate managers anger the executive when they go on and on about legalities, proper procedures, and lack of law-breaking targets.  The psychopath says, “Yes sir,” and hits the road immediately.  He will come back with results.  He is all too ready to produce a scene involving a raid on a government rented warehouse filled with government supplied illegalities and props.  If the paid private purveyors of illegality actually put the crime in motion before the raid, as they were employed by the state to do, he will have them killed, gain a confession, or do both.  A survivor’s danger to society will be articulated to prosecutors so that the appropriate gag orders can be implemented.

A rash of transfer requests come from the psychopath’s underlings.  They see the lies.  They witness the violence.  The transfer requests are branded as disloyalty by the psychopath in personal discussions with the executive.  Underlings learn of this so they stop requesting transfers.  They look for other duties, even ones involving more effort, as long as they can relieve some of the prick to their conscience that results from the lies and barbarism they are involved in.

Most employees are relieved when they eventually flee a middle management tyrant.  For the more conscientious, it is more tolerable for them to endure the grumblings of executives regarding underproduction of crises than to be part of the “effective” tyrannical squad that is lauded by the agency at every turn.

The violent psychopath is often kept below the executive ranks because of the delicacies of public appearances, interagency contacts, and media interviews.  His propensity for tyrannical outbursts or displays of pathological deception cannot be risked in an environment surrounded by media observers or outside agencies.  This is not always the case though.  He is sometimes brilliant enough to cultivate a quid pro quo arrangement with selected media pawns.  The pawns will get every story, sometimes with photos, if they aggrandize and protect the individual feeding them the stories.  They know the game and help him reach higher plateaus.  In more secretive agencies, there is little to keep the psychopath from rising to higher ranks, since the visibility of even executive employees is limited.

An assignment for an investigative reporter:  Find the groups that produce airtight spectacular cases.  Find the manager who is the common denominator.  Follow his career and interview his underlings.  Wait a minute.  You might become his next airtight case.  Never mind.