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Dissecting Obama
FrontPageMag.com ^ | May 7, 2010 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 05/07/2010 9:45:41 AM PDT by newheart

Anyway, what is the general philosophy that guides this President abroad? I think there are four or five elements, and I’d like to just go briefly through them and then apply them to specific policies and countries—and see if we can spot their presence. One, of course, is that he’s a post-modern President. That’s a fancy word for saying a culture that arose after the modern period, the so-called the post- modern period. And within it is a belief system that incorporates things like utopian pacifism. He seems to believe that as a child of the Enlightenment that if very brilliant, smart, educated, technocratic people get together, they can adjudicate differences rationally and without rancor, and that we can leave our Neanderthal past of emotions behind—especially to the degree that we are led and enthused by people like himself that were properly educated, properly cool, properly charismatic with the less fortunate who sometimes cause trouble and are misunderstood.

(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...


TOPICS: Government; Politics
KEYWORDS: foreignpolicy; hanson
A long but, as usual, very lucid and insightful analysis from VDH.
1 posted on 05/07/2010 9:45:42 AM PDT by newheart
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To: newheart

Marking for later.


2 posted on 05/07/2010 10:00:59 AM PDT by Dinah Lord
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To: newheart

ping for later


3 posted on 05/07/2010 10:03:17 AM PDT by wintertime
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To: newheart

If you don’t read anything else, read the concluding remarks to Hanson’s questioners. It is the best description of the ignorance, arrogance and willful ideological blindness that characterizes our first, ‘post-American’ president.

“Odder still, he flies around in this jet and he promises a hundred billion here and a hundred billion there. and he talks about this summit and everybody’s coming to him for advice, in all of that, he never makes the obvious connection: Why is it that I, Barack Obama, have the most influence in the world? Why is it that I get to make the decisions? Why is it that I have the most sophisticated military? Why is it that my economy is what everybody’s looking to?

He never succeeds to make the connection that the reason is that we have a singular, exceptional Constitution. The capitalist system produces goods and services like none other. We have a civil society. We solved the multiracial problem. This is the most amazing contribution. And all that has translated into all these prerogatives— wealth, leisure, opportunities—that Obama enjoys, both before and as President. And, therefore, every time we go by a grave, we want to thank God for those people who died in Okinawa or thank God at for those who fell Shiloh. And he doesn’t get that—that he is a beneficiary of a most generous successful tradition whose logic result is his own privilege.

So all that he does comes on the fumes of all these generations who did this. And our president of all people doesn’t have enough character or insight to at least acknowledge that he is a beneficiary of all this. And I think that’s the most shameless thing about it, a sense of indifference to the very protocols and traditions that allow a U.S. president to have power and influence unrivaled in the word—all impossible if much of Mr. Obama own agenda had been enacted in the past. Thank you.”


4 posted on 05/07/2010 10:14:28 AM PDT by newheart (History is an outbreak of madness--Ellul)
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To: newheart
A brilliant tour de force by Victor David Hanson which is aptly named because it is really a dissection of Barack Obama. Hanson absolutely filets the man.

Sometime ago, before the inauguration, I published a reply which has my take on Obama's character and which stands as an answer to those, like Chris Matthews today, who extol Obama's intelligence. I do not think that he is exceptionally intelligent rather I think he is clever and manipulative. I think that is apparent in every stage of his biography before he took office. Now, Victor David Hanson makes plain that it explains every step the administration has taken in foreign affairs.

Equally, I disagree with those FReepers who proclaim that Obama is stupid. He is not. He is clever and he is manipulative but I do not think he is possessed of a high and clear intelligence which leads to wisdom of the kind that was possessed by men like John Adams, Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan. But Obama is smart enough to know what appeals to people and all his life he has swum in a stream of political correctness which has given him an eschatology upon which he can always draw and which also gave him a vocabulary which he can always deploy to appear in the mainstream of political correctness and, not incidentally, to appear intelligent.

Finally, I do not accept the criticism frequently found on Free Republic that Obama is incapable of intelligent disquisition if he is deprived of his Teleprompter. Nothing could be further from the truth. His years in academia have equipped him with a forensic methodology and a vocabulary that serves him well, in fact, it enables him to appear quite intelligent.

I would like to set forth again reply I wrote before his inauguration because I think it parallels the speech of Victor David Hanson:

I think he is a narcissist who survives and prospers not by addressing problems but by manipulating people. Narcissists like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama are not stupid, they are wonderfully clever and exceedingly effective in reading their victims and manipulating them.

I think that Barack Obama has a worldview provided to him, posthumously, by Saul Alinsky which gives him a framework for analysis. In other words, Obama does not "analyze", rather he "sorts" and puts data into their appropriate slots provided by the philosophy of Saul Alinsky. He has learned a vocabulary which enables him to contrive a front of effectiveness, a seriousness of purpose and depth of character which is all a sham.

Think of Barack Obama as the professional coordinator at an Alinsky meeting. For those old enough, think of Barack Obama as the leader of an EST meeting of the 1970s. These experiences give him an eschatology, a vocabulary, a forensic ability to manipulate, and ego satisfaction. What was he doing as editor of the Harvard Law Review if he was not producing actual work? He was acting out as a community organizer with the shtick modified to fit a new venue. If one examines his career at every level the pattern is the same. As a constitutional law lecturer he produced no written work but he was evidently perfectly fit to the culture of the law school. In the Illinois Senate he voted present but ingratiated himself with the Daley machine. He barely passed go in the United States Senate but he knew the vocabulary and he passed muster with the likes of George Soros. In each instance, Barack Obama behaves as a narcissist, very shallow, producing no work product, but selling a great package.

If one takes away the Marxist belief system provided to him or reinforced in every step of his development from his mother to Frank Marshall Davis, to Columbia University, the Harvard Law school, William Ayres, to Reverend Wright, one is left with a truly hollow man. That is why Obama is such a dangerous ideologue. There is no Obama apart from a lifelong sham, a compensation for always being advanced beyond his competence because of his race and his ability to manipulate. He simply cannot stop the act and get off stage because there is nothing but the act.

Obama is a man without a soul and without a spiritual compass. His relationship to Reverend Wright reveals that he has no real spiritual quality to him for there could hardly be a more rank apostasy than in the church which he attended for 20 years. It has nothing to do with spirituality and everything to do with ego satisfaction. It is the opposite of the Judeo-Christian message.

Obama cannot abandon his radicalism because there is no other there there. He is a massive compensation system. His body is a life-support system for his narcissism and the narcissism is utterly dependent on the received wisdom from Saul Alinsky and the rest of them.


5 posted on 05/07/2010 10:42:45 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: newheart
No, the problem is that if they are nuclear, they will cause a collective, continual, non-stop sense of dread in Israel. People will never know whether they can be deterred or not. They’ll never know from one day to another what a theocrat will say. All that will have a cumulative effect, as we heard last night, quite presciently by the Senator—that more people will want to emigrate out of Israel, that more people live tense and unhappy lives. It’s sort of putting a gun to somebody’s head, and saying, “I’m going to turn the six-bullet chamber and see whether the one bullet fires—maybe or maybe not. It’s a form of nuclear Russian roulette, and it will have an emotional toll on Israel. Obama doesn’t seem to get that.

Obama "gets it". He understands that having an Iran with nuclear arms will be a constant threat to Israel ( with all the emotional anxiety that goes with it.)

Obama HATES Jews!...and..He is pleased to have Jews suffer.

Is it because he is possibly a Muslim? Raised for part of his childhood in Indonesia? His association with Rev. Wright? His "elite" education? Possibly, it is all of these factors.

6 posted on 05/07/2010 12:40:15 PM PDT by wintertime
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To: wintertime; nathanbedford
Obama HATES Jews!...and..He is pleased to have Jews suffer.

I don't know if Obama hates Jews. In fact, I suspect that he does not in any universal sense, he has far too many Jews working in his administration for that to be the case.

Is he Muslim? I doubt it. Is he Christian? He would say so, and depending on what he meant by that I might not be in the position to question his statement. (No doubt that one will get me in trouble.) I have an alternative theory, and here is where I disagree somewhat with nathanbedford, who suggests in post 5 that Obama is a man without a soul and without a moral compass.

Instead, I believe that his belief system is more akin to Baha'i, though not in any formal sense. (The Wikipedia article on Baha'i is not informative if you are curious.) They believe in God, one who is inaccessible, but they also believe that our knowledge of God is a matter of progressive revelation and as such, they argue that all religions are merely part of that progressive revelation, thus lending a degree of credence to all religions. It is also interesting to note that Baha'i is an offshoot of Shia Islam.

They argue for an essential 'oneness' to all humanity and look toward the day when we all, as rational beings, are able to eliminate prejudice and achieve a collective unity that transcends nations. Baha'i calls for the development of a new global social and political structure and universal demilitarization.

From the Wikipedia article: The Bahá'í writings note that unity will not be arrived at through the suppression of difference, but instead when each respects the intrinsic value of other individuals and cultures.In this view, it is not the diversity that causes conflict, but rather people's intolerance and prejudice towards diversity.(Could be a direct quote from Obama's infamous Cairo speech.)

I would argue that these beliefs track closely with the generally unnamed religious impulse of the left, including those who prefer to be called progressive. (Although, as their feel-good approach begins to fail, they will not hesitate to move on to 'suppression of difference.') It is the 'all you need is love' 'I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect har-mo-nee' view of life that fails to recognize the realities of humanity's fallen nature and fails to understand that all religious belief systems are NOT the same.

As noble sounding as it may be, it is the ideal narcissist world view making it the perfect vehicle for someone like Obama, the narcissist-in-chief. (That is where I absolutely agree with nathanbedford, Obama's narcissism is his defining trait.) Tolerance becomes the supreme virtue in the Baha'i worldview and tolerance is among the more subjective and condescending positions a human being can take. Tolerance allows you to believe that you are more evolved than others, but that you will 'tolerate' them and 'help' them catch up with you.

I think Obama, because of his mixed racial heritage, his education and his multi-cultural experiences in childhood, does believe himself to be the ideal model for the enlightened, global citizen of the future world without borders and without prejudices. He genuinely believes that he can 'talk' people into changing. And although that grows out of his narcissism, it is his naivete that scares me the most. Because, as Col. Jessup so memorably put it, in the climax of 'A Few Good Men,' "Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns."

7 posted on 05/07/2010 2:15:25 PM PDT by newheart (History is an outbreak of madness--Ellul)
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To: nathanbedford
But Obama is smart enough to know what appeals to people and all his life

I would say he is a survivor. Someone who basically had to grow up and survive without nurturing. The lack of nurturing is key to his personality and narcissism. It also explains his cold distance from things.

Survivors have a sort of street smart. They learn to illicit approval, read people and get the things they need from people. A dangerous MO for a leader, IMO.

8 posted on 05/08/2010 12:51:57 AM PDT by riri
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To: riri
Well said. I think I should have posted this reply on this thread as well instead of just pinging one of the posters:

No American T-Shirts Allowed

Samstag, 8. Mai 2010 08:48:59 · 34 of 34

nathanbedford to Making_Sense [Rob W. Case]; newheart; wintertime

It is not an accident nor a convention of chronology that the first story of the Judeo-Christian Bible is the story of the fall, the story of disobedience, of a challenging by man of God's supremacy and his estrangement from God. Nor is it accidental that the First Commandment is about the primacy of God and the second is about submission to him-and only him.

Since I think we are agreed that Obama is the narcissist, we must be in agreement that Obama finds these constraints of the Judeo-Christian heritage to be anathema. This is the state of all liberals. All are in rebellion against the sovereignty of God because they themselves would be God. Any religion which calls them to submission is a threat to the ego and it is the ego which is the Faustian parasite that keeps them in rebellion.

Compelled to play God, leftists and narcissists of one degree or another must rationalize their condition. Much of that is done unconsciously and it explains, for example, the visceral hatred of Sarah Palin, a kind of Billy Budd effect, which betrays the leftists psychological as well as spiritual nakedness. This is why we find the Democrats always disparaging Republicans as "stupid" because they cannot tolerate an eschatology which turns on anything but they themselves organizing the heavens and the earth. There can simply be no other authority. By carrying a Down's syndrome baby to term, Sarah Palin became the physical embodiment of man's submission to God and to God's law.

When they nod their head towards religion they come up with a kind of religion that safely leaves them uncircumcised both physically and psychically. In other words, they find a religion like Baha'i which leaves them entirely unfettered or, more to the point, their egos undiminished. So the leftist's reaction to Christians is much the same as his reaction to believing observant Jews, he is repelled. But he has not the same reaction to secular Jews or to secular Christians for the reasons set forth above.

This is why the left did not fear Bill Clinton no matter how big the Bible he toted out of church because they knew that he was only making broad his phylacteries for show. Likewise their reaction to Obama: they were always confident during the campaign that he supported the kind of religion which they would find tolerable because it made no assaults on the ego.

To extend the hypothesis, this is why leftists can be so murderous-because not only do they lack the restraints imposed by religion, they have perverted religion to the point that they have become God and their egos are utterly unrestrained. That is why I think Obama has the potential to get America into a very bloody war. I do not share the idea that he will conduct a foreign policy like Jimmy Carter's but on tranquilizers and shrink from confronting a threat to his own power. I believe Barack Obama fully capable as a narcissist to commit atrocities to keep alive the ego parasite within.

I believe the key to understanding Obama is the psychological need to play God.The mystery comes from his art in disguising his narcissism.


9 posted on 05/08/2010 1:03:29 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: nathanbedford


"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."

A 'Curiouser and curiouser' bump for later.

10 posted on 05/08/2010 1:29:13 AM PDT by BIGLOOK (Keelhaul Congress!)
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To: nathanbedford
Erhard Seminars Training. Obama as trainer.

He has criticized our Constitution as not doing enough to redistribute the wealth. As though it ought. He is more Das Capital than Federalist Papers.

Davis had him from nine to eighteen, extolling the glorious Red Army.

Wright had him for twenty years of anti-American, anti-capitalist training.

Alinsky agitation is his default technique.

Was he under Brzezinski's wing at Columbia.

He's a clever tool. His decisions benefit Putin, Ahmadinejad, a panoply of enemies of America.

No vestige of the free market may remain. America is not a Christian nation.

The narcissist has been given the power of the highchair king.


11 posted on 05/08/2010 1:48:57 AM PDT by PhilDragoo (Hussein: Islamo-Commie from Kenya)
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