Vonnegut on "Psychopathic Personalities," or "PPs"
Via digg, from an In These Times interview that Vonnegut gave in 2003:
[Snip] What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!
Reminds me a little of Yeats' famous lines:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
So it goes.