If one concedes, as the author does, that Hitler and Stalin were narcissists, one ought to consider that both of these men were utterly doctrinaire. Hitler confected an entire socialist and racist worldview, wrapped up with nationalism, which he exploited but also thoroughly believed. He was, to quote Churchill, "a maniac of ferocious genius, the embodiment of the most virulent hatred that ever corroded the human breast." And he was also a carpet chewing narcissist. One could say the same things about Stalin.
And I will argue the same thing about Obama. By the way, I do so without bothering with the obligatory apologies and protestations when anyone cites the Nazi era by way of comparison that there is no and can be no fair comparison. I think the comparison is apt but the particulars are not so extreme.
Anyway here is a reply advancing the twin characteristics of our man: narcissism and Marxism.
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.
