I’m a computer scientist, so I don’t actually know what I’m talking about when I describe Trump and Duterte’s mental pathology. At least not in a clinical sense. I have never read the DSM. But then when has anyone ever allowed lack of knowledge to hold them back when it comes to commenting?

I think that the unfortunate truth is that the human race is insane. We have these nice labels for murderous people like Duterte so that we can make them an “other”. They are not like us. Except that Duterte is extremely popular. He’s got over an 80% approval rating (although Mac McCarty suggested that there was turmoil that may not have been widely reported in the Western press).

When I think of psychopaths, I think of people who are capable of murder without any thought. They can wipe out humans the way people wipe out bugs. But again, there is the problem with the banality of evil. As Goldhagen pointed out in his book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, murder is a dark stain that is shared by much of the human race.