ULTIMATE ERROR  novelist reviews Doomsday Clock’s recent jump forward

ORLANDO, ORANGE COUNTY, FLORIDA—4:52 a.m.

It may be a few minutes before 5:00 a.m. here in Florida, U.S.A., but it’s two and a half minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. On Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of their symbolic clock 30 seconds forward from their 2016 position.

The change represents a consensus among the scientists that events and rhetoric of the previous year have “pushed humanity closer to destruction.” The non-profit Bulletin also announced that they arrived at their decision after careful consideration of “cavalier” attitudes among popular world leaders regarding nuclear weapons and climate change.

While the Doomsday Clock’s ticking does little to comfort those of us troubled by humankind’s seeming death wish, it comes as little surprise. We seem to be going out of our way, as a species, to put psychopathic narcissists into positions of great power.

It’s a topic I’ve discussed before, here on my ULTIMATE ERROR blog, and it continues to fascinate me. Homo sapiens seems unable to comprehend the full ramifications of electing narcissistic psychopaths: They are incapable of caring about others! National and international leaders INCAPABLE of caring about anyone but themselves. This is science, not politics.

Some of these deeply disturbed world leaders also have access to the most lethal weapons of mass destruction: nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them half way around the globe. Without exception, they are smug about their power and destructive potential. The majority of the populations in these countries know it’s a mistake that the psychopaths have gained so much power. There is only one solution to this ERROR, and that’s the removal of the “leaders” who should never have held the offices in the first place.

A great obstacle in the process of removal, however, is the despot’s clever manipulation and, in some cases, reinvention of language. Large swaths of citizens are purposefully perplexed by misinformation and contradictory statements by the regime. Amidst the chaos, confusion, and smokescreens, the psychopathic narcissist may take any action he wishes, with minimized objection.

So, the uprising of the opposition necessary for the ruler’s removal is more or less constantly skirted and/or undermined by the confused population segments. To varying degrees, such movements are afoot today in North Korea, Russia and, yes, the U.S.

Perhaps even more troubling than the leaders’ mental illnesses combined with their access to nuclear weapons are their attempts at usurpation of truth from the public. Their strategy is to make all information and news unworthy of trust, so that large numbers of people begin to feel they “might as well” believe whatever the authoritarian says, since you can “never really know” what the truth is. In a very real sense, it is mind control, and it affords the psychopathic narcissist his ultimate goal: limitless power.

My upcoming novel, ULTIMATE ERROR, is about the proneness of homo sapiens to compound our mistakes. Pride and greed often combine to threaten our very existence on Earth.