Politicians (and lawyers and high-flying executives) can be very nasty people. They are also involved in fields where "normal" behavior is quite rough and competitive, even devious. And behaviors that one applauds in one's own leaders are often seen as malicious, spiteful, even pathological. I'm hesitant about turning everything into a matter of psychopathology.
If it was wrong for the therapeutic profession to start "psychoanalyzing" Barry Goldwater from afar, do 50 years and a change of party make it right? Also, does slapping a label on a politician, say Nixon or Johnson, or Carter or Clinton, really tell you any more than we already know about them? Or does the label leave us knowing and saying less than we already do?
I think you're right about Obama's childhood wounds and neediness and right about his creating an alternate reality for himself. I have to wonder about some of your examples, though. Observers may see more pettiness and desire to humiliate in powerful people than is actually there. I'm pretty sure that Obama has enough ways to get back at people and make his power felt that he doesn't need to intentionally mispronounce the word "corpsman."
My main point in posting, though, was just to say that narcissism doesn't mean psychopathy or sociopathy. People see "narcissist" and think "Hitler" or somebody who's going to start dropping bombs on them. Narcissistic weakness or brittleness can have very bad effects. You don't want a narcissistic leader, and maybe you can't say that often enough. But the fact that narcissism in a leader doesn't mean Hitler is also something that bears repeating.
You’re right. Just because Obama is a walking, talking, textbook case of Malignant Narcissism doesn’t mean we should mention the obvious. We should pretend he’s no different than any other self-centered person. Otherwise, liberals might think we were racist.
Btw, is your definition of Malignant Narcissism “Hitler”? It sounds like that is the extent of your knowledge.
I.e.: Malignant Narcissism = Hitler
Hitler = Malignant Narcissism
One more thing. The one type of person who will never, ever be able to recognize & identify a sociopath is a person who lacks empathy. You say some of my examples are petty. That tells me you have no empathy for the objects of Obama’s mean streak. But MNs are very careful when it comes to picking targets. They only pick the type they can wound. If their sadistic verbal—and otherwise—jabs have no effect, they move on. They only settle in with people who can be hurt.
If you are not the type of person who can be hurt in a similar way, & you lack empathy, there is a 100 percent chance you will NEVER recognize or comprehend a Malignant Narcissist when you encounter one. & this is what I get from you. ‘Oh, Obama said something hurtful to Michelle in public? Big deal. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill’.
You wouldn’t, I gather, have noticed that he did it again. He managed to find a way in public to needle Michelle about French Fries. & the needling obviously hurts, because she cut him off mid-sentence to say she is going cold turkey on fries. She was obviously humiliated. Obama has found her vulnerable spot & he just keeps rubbing salt in that wound. But to you that is just pettiness, right? Needling & hurting one’s wife repeatedly in public, in front of a national audience, no big deal.
Empathy. You either have it or you don’t.
‘My main point in posting, though, was just to say that narcissism doesn’t mean psychopathy or sociopathy. People see “narcissist” and think “Hitler” or somebody who’s going to start dropping bombs on them. Narcissistic weakness or brittleness can have very bad effects. You don’t want a narcissistic leader, and maybe you can’t say that often enough. But the fact that narcissism in a leader doesn’t mean Hitler is also something that bears repeating.’
x, I’m going to try once more. It doesn’t seem as if we will make any progress, but who knows.
Anyway, you say, ‘People see “narcissist” and think “Hitler” or somebody who’s going to start dropping bombs on them.’
Actually, I have never in my life heard anyone suggest anything remotely like that. (Other than you, that is.) The average person has some grasp of narcissism, and it doesn’t involve bombs. Many people also understand Malignant Narcissism, and it doesn’t involve bombs either. Where you get this idea is anybody’s guess.
However, lets take your bizarrely unconventional description of narcissism and ask if it excludes Obama. [That appears, to me anyway, to be the point. To posit a meaning to the term narcissism not recognized by any psychological authority, but one that simply lets Obama off the hook. (As if you have the power to decide what ‘narcissism’ actually means, when in fact the term has been defined quite apart from any thoughts you may have on the subject.)]
Anyway, you say narcissism implies dropping bombs on people. Well lets look at Obama & his drone activities. There are numerous reports from WH insiders to the effect that Obama takes an obsessive, unnatural interest in drone strikes. It, along with golf & vacations, is one of the few activities he engages in that truly excites him. Indeed, there is a well-sourced book, written by liberals, that quotes Obama as having ***frequently*** said to his aides, “I’m really good at killing people”. [From Double Down, by Mark Halperin & John Heilemann.]
Then there’s this:
“’
His administration also expanded the drone war: There have been 326 drone strikes in Pakistan, 93 in Yemen, and several in Somalia under Obama, compared to a total of 52 under George Bush.
In 2011 two of those strikes killed American-born al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki and his American-born, 16-year-old son within two weeks.’
Jeremy Scahill, author of “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield” told NBC News that Obama will “go down in history as the president who legitimized and systematized a process by which the United States asserts the right to conduct assassination operations around the world.”’
So even according to your radically unique and, frankly, strange, definition/description of narcissism, Obama fits the bill. I guess he is truly a Malignant Narcissist after all.
Cite for above quotes:
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/11/04/Obama-I-m-Really-Good-at-Killing-People