A kinda shirtsleeve observation.
What would you call someone to whom people are only real in terms of what is to be gained or lost by using them? You know; you’ve met the kind. No conscience (except one that can be faked for a show of “sincerity” and humanity). Someone for whom a distorted self-image places them at the pinacle of existance, for whom others are just markers in a game.
A literate person would call such a person a sociopathic personality, or—depending on the extremity of their ego involvement and destructive manipulation and coercion of others—an ego-centric personality disorder bordering on, or crossing the border into, the psychopathic.
I simply call such a person a politician.
Seriously. Examine all the politiciqans you have met, have known or now know. Include the behaviors of politicians as you can piece them together from news reports (although reports from Mass Media Podpeople can be unreliable) and voting records, constituent contacts, etc.
Now, I have known some few politicians at the local level who were only borderline sociopaths, and some few who were (at least for a while) seemingly decent people. At the state level, I’ve known a couple who seemed to be real people.
At the national level? *whew!* Have to look long and hard to find the scant handful of politicians who ought not to be locked away in some deep, dark dungeon for the good of humanity.
Seriously.
Now, that’s not to say that politics is the only place where such critters can be found (although I’d dare say you’d find it impossible to spit ANYWHERE in a room full of congresscritters and NOT hit a sociopath). No, the entire Hivemind of Mass Media Podpeople is populated with these monsters (or self-made idiots who fit in well with the Hivemind), and Academia Nut Fruitcakes don’t fall far from the tree, either. In fact, this monstrous creature can be found rather abundantly among the clergy, sad to say (although admittedly in fewer numbers than among the political class, the Mass Media Podpeople and Academia Nut fruitcakes).
But the political class… that’s the motherlode of sociopathy.
Analyzing my head off at Stop the ACLU, Conservative Cat, TMH’s Bacon Bits