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.
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.
Well put, as always. As Horowitz explained so well in Radical Son, the problem with the left is that they have no concept of original sin and, therefore, cannot account for evil. Hence they deny evil (except in their enemies) and argue that all of our problems stem from 'misunderstanding.' Believing mightily in his own power of persuasion, Obama subscribes to the Rodney King school of foreign policy.
It is no surprise that Obama became a student of Alinsky. With his obvious lack of concern with constructive outcome and belief that the end (destruction of the current order so another order can somehow magically appear) justifies any means, Alinsky stands squarely in the line of philosophical narcissism exemplified best by Nietzsche: "What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome."
We have seen the result of the application of Nietzschean narcissism in the political arena and it is not pretty but it may be inevitable.
To the point of this thread, it should come as no surprise that the media fails to report or fails to report accurately on events like the flag t-shirt fiasco in California. They share the mindset. Like Obama they have fallen prey to a timeless truth, "Professing themselves to be wise, they have become fools." Thus they are utterly incapable of providing an objective view of such events because they really don't see the problem.
It follows that most of the press will be worthless in providing a check on Obama except insofar as they merely react to his arrogance and snubbing of them personally. You are right, Obama is no Carter. At least Carter had some residual restraint in his spirit based in growing up in the Church (as alien as that seems today). I am doubtful that Obama has that. I am concerned that as his policies fail he will resort to increasingly irrational action as any cornered narcissist would. If he fails to be re-elected we should very closely watch his activities from November to January. A President can do a lot of damage even without congressional consent. And if he is re-elected, then as Billy Budd ironically put it, "Farewell 'The Rights of Man'."