like I see through the water that runs down my drain

     When I was thinking about troublemaker dictators of recent history, I came up with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Pol Pot.  In Bill Eddy's new book, the core troublemakers of recent history that he discusses are Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

In Eddy's discussions,
HCP = "High Conflict Personalities"


---------------------- [excerpt / Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths -- and How We Can Stop, by Bill Eddy] ------------------------------

Preface

About This Book

     This book emphasizes extreme cases, but the fundamental patterns herein can be applied to HCP leaders at all levels of government, business, and communities.  I wrote this book in three sections.

Part I:  How Narcissists and Sociopaths Get Elected

     Part I first covers the patterns of high-conflict politicians, how their narcissistic and sociopathic traits can be extremely dangerous and extremely deceptive, and how you can spot them early on (Chapter 1).  

Next, I describe HCPs' emotional warfare:  how they seduce and attack and then divide and dominate whole communities and nations (Chapter 2).  This is made possible because voters tend to split into four groups that fight with each other endlessly in response to this emotional warfare:

Loving Loyalists,

Riled-Up Resisters,

Mild Moderates, and

Disenchanted Dropouts (Chapter 3).

     I then cover how the high-emotion media attracts high-conflict politicians from the fringes of society and launches them into leadership positions around the world, multiplying their emotional warfare thousands of times to reach millions of people (Chapter 4).


Finally, I explain how the core secret of their narcissistic and sociopathic power is repeatedly promoting stories about a Fantasy Crisis Triad ("there's a terrible crisis caused by an evil villain that requires a super hero to solve -- me!") as the only way to sell themselves to voters, because of their lack of skills for solving real problems (Chapter 5).

Part II:  The Fantasy Crisis Triad Worldwide

     In Part II, I provide eleven examples of how Fantasy Crisis Triads have been used repeatedly by high-conflict politicians over the past hundred years to gain unlimited power.  First, I analyze the original examples of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong, including how their personalities developed and how they rose to power (Chapter 6).  

Then, I examine five present-day elected leaders from around the world who have taken their countries in a simplistic authoritarian direction using the same strategies (Chapter 7).  

I then delve into American examples that fit this pattern:  Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump (Chapter 8).  Finally, I review key mistakes that were commonly made in all of these examples (Chapter 9).

(Next:  
Part III:  How to Stop High-Conflict Politicians)

__________________________________
___________________________________

Eastern Kentucky University
Online Theses and Dissertations
January 2016

Nixon's Wars:  Secrecy, Watergate, and the CIA

Chris Collins

Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

Eastern Kentucky University

In partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

December, 2016

Abstract

     Watergate is considered the most infamous political scandal in American history.  It resulted in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, and it had a profound, lasting, and damaging impact on the American people's trust in government.  

The story of Watergate is often intertwined with that of President Nixon -- his corruption, paranoia, abuse of power, and dramatic political demise.  


     This thesis argues that the crisis of Watergate was rooted not merely in the personality and conduct of the tragically flawed Nixon, but in the deep, systemic government secrecy that developed in the United States at the onset of the cold war.  

There are four central ways in which this institutional secrecy affected the Watergate affair:  

(1) The emergence of a "national security" ideology in the United States in the immediate postwar years gave rise to hidden foreign policies and secret, often illegal, government activities; 

(2) the growing public awareness and discontent regarding this secrecy in the 1960s, particularly concerning US involvement in Vietnam, which thereupon led to the increasing regularity of national security leaks (media disclosures of state secrets); 

(3) the mentality of President Nixon and his subordinates concerning the use of illegal clandestine operations ("dirty tricks") to combat perceived domestic enemies -- a practice that had been employed by US intelligence and law-enforcement agencies for decades; and 

(4) the involvement of the CIA in the events surrounding Watergate, which demonstrates the secrecy and autonomy prevalent in the intelligence community, often to the detriment of American democracy.

-30-