Ayers may have written the book, and I believe he did, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t reflect any truth about Obama’s father and mother, and their influence on his political/social ideology. After all, his philosophical and political accomplishments mirrors that of his parents.
Neurosis effects the way in which you think, and react, and view the world, and affects the way in which you live.
But I do not accept this explanation because it implies that Obama is not culpable due to a medical condition. You’re suggesting that the “neurosis” is the cause of his actions. Not so. Obama is far more diabolical than simply reducing his motives to neurotic narcissism.
Furthermore, to suggest that Obama can’t help himself by way of this neurosis is to be void of an otherwise ideological motive. It’s not one or the other.
I would say neurosis is the deeper motive, the ideology is more of a prop to be discarded or taken on as the situation calls for.
Interesting you use the term diabolical, which modern thinking attempts to reduce to some psychological cause or disorder, e.g., if Satan would only had more sessions with his therapist he could be cured.
I could buy diabolical quite easily.
Ideology, for me, is not a spring in itself. If Obama's dad was a capitalist and preached capitalism and had the same bad stuff befall him, would Obama now be a capitalist? Hard to say. There is something else underlying it -- a hole or psychological motive -- that has little to do with the content of his thinking. And maybe it is a parent pleasing motive. But it is still about filling some hole in his being.