Mini-Enrons and Little Eichmanns

The fact, which we manage to supress most of the time, that our world is run by flat-out psychopaths is getting harder and harder to avoid. A look at the top of the power pyramid (or as close to the top as we are allowed to see) shows this pretty clearly. Here is Joe Bageant :

Few of us believe that it is ordinary folks who sell a nation into hell, cast it in infamy. In a democracy, “the people” supposedly cannot be the problem. Right now some of the smartest people I know are more convinced that the problem is George W. Bush and the dysfunctional little Adams family he has created (or who created him, no one is quite certain). The problem being of course that they are a danger to human civilization and the planet. The fallacy, however, is believing they are more insane than the rest of us, although a couple of them probably are. Not many healthy, well-adjusted people look at Karl Rove or Donald Rumsfeld without a small flinch of horror and pity. The kind of fear one has of snakes and the kind of pity one has for people who appear congenitally deformed in character. Rather like the kid I knew in grade school that poured lighter fluid on baby birds and lit it. Now we know what such kids grow up to become.

Bageant goes on to say that this does not absolve those of us lower down the power structure of blame. We “good Germans” or ‘little Eichmanns.”

Yet a walk through an American suburb or one of our bland “office campuses” can throw a thinking person into a darker funk than Rummy or Karl “Toad of Darkness” Rove ever will. We should be far more worried about the Good Germans with orderly lives who populate all those office complexes here in the suburbs of our nation’s capitol. They are designers at the defense company in our building who create control systems for fighter missiles, or the government contracted psychologists in the building across the lawn who help write what are essentially military torture manuals and killing protocols . . . or, for that matter, all the people at my own magazine publishing office. We specialize in military history magazines that glorify all wars American and create the state sponsored mythology of our “heroes fighting for democracy around the world.” Meanwhile, company 401-Ks are invested in Halliburton, Raytheon, mass distributed mind suppressants such as Prozac and the like. Thus, from my building I can see the sprawling workplace of other “Little Eichmanns” of which Ward Churchill spoke, and cannot delude myself that I am not one of them.

When and if America is ever hauled before the tribunal it is so richly earning with every Iraqi child mangled and every soul it ships to Egypt to be tortured in unspeakable ways, out of sight of the world, what will be my excuse? Will it be: “I only generated the propaganda because I needed the health insurance that came with the job.” Will that be an acceptable answer before the world? Who among us is guilty and who is innocent? Is the person who makes the night goggles for the American sniper on a Baghdad rooftop guilty? Is the person who made Lynndie England’s CD player guilty, the one they played while leading those naked weeping men around on dog leashes and in hoods? What about American workers who make Kevlar vests? Are they saving lives, or are they enabling killers to do their work more safely? And this is to say nothing of the Americans who wipe the Doritos crumbs from their double chins, lean toward their televisions and cheer on the young “heroes.”

Good questions. When you think of the advantages the powerful psychopaths have over people of conscience, though, it may be unreasonable to fix too much blame on people who are just keeping their heads down hoping not to be noticed. And, if you think about the damage caused by garden-variety psychopaths at every level, the problem becomes even more difficult, particularly when the late-capitalist econonomic system’s characteristic entity of the corporation is a pure psychopathic form.

The New York Times had an article recently about what they called “A Mini-Enron on Every Corner” that provides an intimate case study both of how the economic system encourages and rewards psychopathic behavior and of how much damage psychopaths can cause to the social fabric, right down to the level of an individual family. The article, by Kurt Eichenwald, tells the story of two brothers, David and Greg Gordon:

On that Christmas day in 1998, life could hardly have seemed better for the Gordon brothers, David and Greg. They brought their wives to celebrate the holiday amid the festive décor of their parents' home in Conroe, Tex., a onetime oil boom town north of Houston. As family members relaxed, the brothers eagerly compared notes about their triumphs of the last year.

The stock market bubble was still expanding. For David Gordon, a corporate lawyer from Tulsa, that translated into a flourishing business helping companies go public or make acquisitions. For Greg Gordon, who ran a successful wholesale jewelry business with his wife, Lisa, the flood of market wealth had created a heated demand for the luxury items he sold.

Then, as they sat near the Christmas tree, David broached a thought. Why not combine their talents, linking some of the highflying businessmen he knew with Greg's thriving company, Con-Tex Silver Imports? It seemed the perfect path to even greater wealth and achievement for all the Gordons.

Instead, it ripped the family apart. Within years, Con-Tex was destroyed - the victim, according to a court-appointed examiner, of mismanagement and potential criminality. David and Greg, once so close, stopped speaking to each other as they battled in court. Their parents, too, were dragged into the dust-up, testifying on behalf of one son's interests - and against the other's.

How could it happen? How could a small company be wrecked so quickly amid myriad accusations of financial wrongdoing that went undetected until the whole place came tumbling down?

The answer is, it happens every day. The Con-Tex story is not just the tale of the downfall of one company or one family. It is a microcosm, a look at an underbelly of the investing and corporate worlds where hokey deals and mysterious webs of linked investors are part of the workaday business.

In the last few years, in the wake of the high-profile collapses of Enron, WorldCom and other onetime giants, steady attention has been focused on cleaning up the practices of companies at the top of the corporate pyramid. But the companies at the bottom - which make up the vast majority of corporate entities - still exist under the radar of public scrutiny, despite too often playing fast and loose with the rules.

While the article tries to remain objective and present the points of view of both brothers, it becomes clear, although the author of the piece does not use the term, that the more affluent and powerful brother is a psychopath. David Gordon, with no evidence whatsoever, accuses his more naïve brother of the very things he (David) did. This is typical of the psychopath. The ability to lie without a shred of remorse, is one of the advantages a psychopath has. The psychopath brazenly lies, accusing his or her accuser of the very deceit he or she is guilty of. Bystanders at some point give up, thinking that there must be some wrongdoing on both sides. Which is what I thought when I began reading the article, only to find out that the only thing Greg did wrong was to trust his brother:

For Greg Gordon, what happened is obvious: the brother he once trusted, he has argued in court filings, transformed Con-Tex into a public company solely to profit by manipulating the share price - and ultimately tried to take away more than 60 million shares he owned. "I had a real belief in my brother, but I was stupid," Greg said in an interview. "He's a crook."

For David Gordon, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing and denies having done anything improper, the real culprit is Greg. "You try to help your brother build a business, you think your brother is honest, has integrity, and then you find out he doesn't," he said in an interview. "I have watched my brother completely tear the family apart. This is a deal where he blew through $3 million and wanted to blame someone else."

The details of the Enron-like fraud that David Gordon set up are worth reading, but too involved to go into here. David Gordon specialized in these “mini-Enrons,” basically pump-and-dump schemes using a complicated system of empty corporate shells. What is interesting in the larger context is the environment that encourages psychopathy, the environment that would paint David as more successful. First there is the competitive selfish culture that we in the United States think is the natural order of things:

The Gordon family had always been competitive. The men - George David Gordon Sr., a prominent lawyer in Conroe; George Jr., who went by David; and James Gregory Gordon, or Greg - had been accomplished athletes. Family ski trips always included races, and the two brothers, both successful tennis players in college, could often be found battling it out on the courts.

More often than not, David was the victor. But Greg thought himself the better player. "He was my damned big brother," he said. "He was always playing mind games on me."

After college, David quickly seemed the one headed on to big things. He earned a law degree from the University of Tulsa, joined a law firm where he cut his teeth on securities work, and eventually hung out his own shingle.

Greg's career possibilities seemed more limited. After graduating from the University of Arkansas with a degree in physical education, he attended some junior college classes, learning gemology. He sold jewelry door to door, then found some success in handling jewelry road shows for the Sam's Club division of WalMart, but soon he was looking for his next step

But perhaps more important is the eroding or trust and the demoralization of the rest of the population who actually have consciences:

The unseen victims, though, are not just investors, but workers who saw their jobs evaporate. "I had 32 employees that, through no fault of their own, David cost them their life," Greg said. "One of them lost their home, their car." David, of course, blames Greg for that outcome.

But still, part of Greg can't let go of the brother he once loved. "Do I miss him?" he asked. "Yeah, in a weird way."

These days, he says, he spends a fair amount of time thinking about their childhood together, about their competitions, about their friendship. "I cherish those moments now more than I ever did," Greg said, "Because now they're gone forever."

The problem is that “the brother he once loved” was an illusion. Psychopaths can create the illusion of humanity, but they don’t have humanity. For more on this see Official Culture – A Natural State of Psychopathy by Laura Knight-Jadczyk.