July 2009: Is Barak Obama a Manchurian Marxist or merely a narcissist on the make?
Every patriotic American should hope that the essential Barack Obama is, as is means that we have leftist ideologue in the most powerful position in the world whose motives border on treason. There is a third possibility, namely the Barak Obama is merely what he shows the world that he is, a left of center liberal with conventional notions that big government is needed to solve big problems.
In arguing for the Bill Clinton model, the author argues entirely by analogy. Argument by analogy may be persuasive but it is not cogent. To count up the parallels between the two biographies and conclude that they are both narcissists and will govern according to the same mold because they come from broken homes or because of their wives are lawyers is just fatuous. The argument has to be, they are this kind of men because they came from this kind of broken home and because they are this kind of men they will govern this way. Their broken homes make them narcissists and, because they are narcissist, they will govern as opportunists.
The problem with this kind of argument by analogy is that it is simply unscientific. Many men come from broken homes, endure similar biographies as these two, and do not become narcissists. Take a look at Winston Churchill's background, it would psychologically scar anybody, it might have made him solipsistic, but he did not govern that way. Abraham Lincoln's youth of deprivation and isolation, not to mention his relationship with his father, would lead one to suppose he should be counted a narcissist. But he was not and he certainly did not govern that way. Each man is rightly revered for his courage against all odds-hardly the characteristic of a narcissist.
This business of psychoanalyzing politicians is treacherous. When done by analogy it is entirely unpersuasive. It smacks of Rush Limbaugh's satirizing the numerology of Louis Farrakhan. I think it is is far more productive to get out of these swamps and look at what the subject actually does and says.
Here is where this business gets Kafka-like. If Barak Obama truly is narcissistic, it is pointless to look at anything he says because he is by definition a consummate liar and a deft manipulator. Certainly no one would dispute the truth of that as it applies to Bill Clinton; not even leftist Joe Klein who caught it early on when he wrote, anonymously, Primary Colors which is a paen of grudging admiration for the master manipulator even as he manipulated the author. A narcissist who denies his narcissism is merely playing out his neurosis.
The law has a presumption which might be of use here. When a party makes an admission against his own interest that admission is thought to be reliable. So if Barak Obama tells us that he is not a socialist, the denial is not worth much and would not be worth much even if he were not a narcissist. But when Barak Obama tells Joe the Plummer in an unguarded moment that the nation's wealth should be redistributed, that is an admission against his interest in appearing to be centrist and it is highly credible. Likewise his admission that higher taxes do not increase revenues but are nevertheless desirable because they redistribute wealth, should be regarded as very revealing.
Of course the safest method of analysis is to ignore what the candidates say on their own behalf and look at what the hell they do. Obama's biography betrays at every turn that he is a Manchurian Marxist. His profound associations have been with communists from his mentor Frank Marshall Davis to William Ayres. He made another admission against interest in his biography when he admitted that he associated with Marxists on campus. His associations include long and intimate attachment to the Black Liberation Theology preacher, Rev. Wright. This is simply a black face on Marxism.
His record in the Illinois Senate and in the United States Senate as an extreme leftist confirms his biography. Since entering the Oval Office I know of nothing that I can think of domestically that President Barak Obama has done which is not consistent with the thesis that he is a Marxist. His record on foreign affairs is more mixed and less conclusive but I think that if one regards his apparent moves to the right in, for example, Afghanistan as moves to protect his own existing power rather than ideological shifts to the right, the Marxist model still fits. In other words, American impotence abroad is one thing if one is a leftist seeking power and quite another thing if one is a leftist already in power.
I think the real question is how committed a Marxist is Barak Obama? Is he so rabid an acolyte of the Saul Alinsky School that he will actively contrive a crisis to seize ultimate power? Or will he will he merely govern on the left but seize an opportunity only if circumstances serendipitously offer?
In other words, so long as we continue as we are I think our representative democracy will survive Obama. My fear is that we will have a profound financial crash with huge unemployment numbers; or we will experience a wave of the Weimar Republic like inflation which destroys virtually every institution; or we sustain a severe or series of severe terrorist strikes; or there is an atomic attack somewhere in the world; or the Iranians or some other crazies, possibly possessed of the bomb, possibly in league with Russia and/or Venezuela, manage to shut off the world supply of oil; or there are assassinations in America.
An event like one of these could be the occasion for Obama to seize ultimate power. I believe he is psychologically prepared to do so but I cannot be sure. If he were to do so, the grab would be rationalized as a move to save the country and an opportunity to finally put the country right. I believe he is psychologically ready to do so because he is a leftist and a God player and an acolyte of Saul Alinsky. This is what the Frankfurt School and the Alinsky School have been striving for without respite for decades.
It is hard to believe that if Obama is offered the ultimate prize that he would walk away like Cincinnatus or Washington.
November 2009:
If we have got our man right, "he just switches without a blink" because he is unconstrained, unconstrained by conscience, unconstrained by the media and unconstrained by political philosophy. In other words, as a sociopath he lies because he knows he can get away with it.
If conditions around him were otherwise, I believe he would behave otherwise because these narcissists are usually acutely sensitive to nuance and are near geniuses at telling people what they want to hear. Think of Bill Clinton. By accident of history-and race-Obama is uniquely positioned in this season to be virtually immune from criticism. Of course, this is wearing away as the people and party inevitably attempt to reassert themselves. When that happens, I expect to see Obama adapt very quickly.
It seems to me he is a man in conflict because of competing desires: narcissism vs. Marxism. I think he is first a narcissist with all the sinister attributes and dangerous proclivities associated with the absence of conscience. I think he has seized on Marxism as a way of feeding the narcissism in that the Marxism provides a comprehensive theory with an answer for everything which he need only sort through and apply. It assures him of his superiority because Marxism purports to have special insights that the world is ignorant of.
There is great danger there because neither narcissism nor Marxism provides a safe haven or a rational resting place and leaves him prone toward tyranny and demagoguery.
Februar 2010 :
I think you are not far off in your indictment of Obama. One could say the man is either a fool or a knave but I think he is the narcissist who must play out his hand.
Before his election many of us predicted that Obama would attempt to deconstruct the capitalist system and impose some sort of grab bag of Marxism, Harvard intellectualism, and black liberation theology on the world's greatest economy and oldest democracy. Some of us, and I include myself, were concerned about the possibility that Obama might seek to wreck the Democratic/constitutional system and impose a Hugo Chavez style tyranny. As he reached his high water mark of influence and we saw the threats they posed against talk radio, the Internet, the census, the creation of paramilitary civilian projects, etc. etc. we feared that he would engineer a crisis, or at least exploit a fortuitous crisis, to impose his tyranny.
As Obama's power and influence broke against the rock of the American people and began to disintegrate on the issues of health care and spending, we thought that, if he were prudent, he would, Clinton like, change his public image and at least throw a head fake to the right. It has become clear from the State of the Union speech that he will not take Saul Alinsky's advice and tactically retreat in the face of pushback but he will instead press on.
I think he will push on because psychologically he has no alternative. He is the narcissist who has adopted radicalism-some grab bag of Marxism mixed with his African- Americanism-as a method to feed the narcissism. He cannot abandon the ideology because it would be to abandon the exoskeleton which he inhabits and without which he would crumple.
What I am about to say will no doubt be seized upon by the left as an example of the fringe right. I am not unaware how invidious it is to make comparisons to Hitler, nevertheless, because Obama occupies the place of the most powerful man in the world where he can do mankind virtually infinite harm, we must point out the risk. The kind of psychosis that drove Hitler to destroy Germany in the service of his narcissism could be at play in Obama. He could see himself as Samson bringing down the temple to destroy his tormentors with him. We have learned recently that the Castro brothers and Che Guevara were ready to engage in nuclear war resulting in the inevitable destruction of Cuba if America invaded. It is not just the religious nuts like the leader of Iran who would destroy the world to feed their own ego.
And he could choose spending as the means to do it.
August 2011:
Rereading those posts written before the election, one is struck again by the narcissism of Obama, the flip side of which is a haughty disdain for the middle of America, the "bitter clingers". His vacation in Martha's Vineyard is only the last in a parade of backhands to the American people. But the real important inference to draw is that he disdains us because we are benighted and he is possessed of the truth. We are ignorant and he is schooled. He knows that America is essentially evil and the last barrier to the onrush of global socialism and racial justice. He knows that our patriotism is the faith of fools and that we are scarcely worthy of his time and effort to manipulate us.
This sort of individual can prove to be virtually immune to the influence of events, the thrust of history, or sheer common sense. Worse, he might well be sociopath act and incapable of compassion for his own people, white and black. If so, he is capable of submitting his people to the most awful trials to perfect his vision of utopia.
He has leapt into the oval office with a worldview in which he has been indoctrinated by communists, condoned by academics, and exploited by politicians. He found it so easy to seduce us as he seduced the media, George Soros, and his fellow academics. There has never been a reckoning for Barak Obama because he votes present in every crisis. We do not know how deeply he is rooted in reality and how deeply he is rooted in his fantasy. If it is the latter which rules his psyche, he is like all sociopaths, a very, very good actor who knows how to manipulate his audience.
He is the most dangerous kind of individual in whom to invest ultimate power. That is why it is impossible to predict how he will react in this crisis whether it be thrust upon him or of his own making.
