Hope for America!!

[Alex K]

He is quite literally a sociopath.

That's what I was thinking too, ever since his admission of not finding empathy to be important. It's an alien concept to him. He was made one, again by his own admission of being beaten when growing up. Probably combined with a healthy dose of fear the lord and his meaningless concept of love.

From what I've read about sociopathy or psychopathy (can never tell them apart properly), it can be a combination of predisposition and upbringing. It roughly went like this - many of those who have a predisposition for sociopathy because certain emotional reactions are not automatically present for some possibly genetic reason, still develop a relatively normal sense of empathy by literally learning it while being brought up in a stable and loving environment. If both of those factors are missing however, you will grow up with a dysfunctional sense of empathy.