Virtue signaling, high and low

One correlation that becomes clear when you look at the prison pen pal advertisements is that inmates who are obvious sociopaths always take pains to let you know what good people they are.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with Death Row inmates. If you were to take them at their word, there has never been a more giving, loving, caring group of people.

Take a look here, and here, and here, and here.

They are, to use a phrase generally used in another context, virtue signaling.

And even with the inmates who were not on Death Row, generally, the worse the crime, the more effort they take to let you know how virtuous they are.

Inmates who are in for, say, a minor drug offense rarely take such pains to tell us what wonderful people they are. (Generally, they try to emphasize how sexy they are.)

We've seen that the only people who ever talk of their consciences as distinct entities are people who lack one.

And one of the distinguishing traits of sociopaths is their emotional falseness. We saw it with Lance Armstrong telling us that if he ever cheated at golf and got caught he would be heartbroken forever.

We saw it when Bill Clinton told us that he feels our pain.

We saw it with Karen Sypher telling that desk sergeant about what a devout Catholic she is, how much she cared for her dying grandmother, and how much she regretted her abortions.

We see it when Tony Robbins says, "To know that in some small way I’ve made a difference for at least one person and that I have helped them to begin to create the quality of life they truly deserve is what drives me most."

These are all just poses. And we see them over and over again.

(If you look closely, you'll see the more skillful sociopaths actually pose physically, too, as Bill Clinton demonstrated here and here. One sociopathic tell, as both he and Karen Sypher have demonstrated, is the wiping away of nonexistent tears.)

One thing that has become clear after the recent pecking party directed at Harvey Weinstein is how similar the virtue signaling crowd is. There's a strong parallel here with the sociopathic inmates: the more loudly people proclaim their goodness, the less of it there is.

I'm not referring to the women who were Weinstein's victims; they've had to keep their outrage and hurt bottled up for many years because they feared Weinstein's clout in the industry, and are now finally getting a chance to vent their anger. That's certainly understandable.

I'm talking about the people who were not his victims, but who are releasing statements about how shocked they are and how much they disapprove of that type of behavior. It doesn't take exactly the same form as when the inmates saying directly what loving, caring people they are; but the underlying message is exactly the same.

This is virtue signaling, plain and simple. And it's really not all that much different than when the Hollywood crowd virtue signals by paying lip service the right causes. (Actually, Harvey himself, an extremely outspoken liberal, is a prime example of that.)

It's like that old saying about how the only people who advertise their honesty and integrity are those who have none.

It's true of Death Row inmates, and it's true of Hollywood stars.

The harder they try to look noble, the worse they are. It's almost a straight line correlation.