Opinion Forum

Who and What is that Obama Person, Anyway?

March 3rd, 2013

Few know and they aren’t telling us. All we know for sure is that someone wrote his semi-fictional (auto?) biography, that he tells us things that are often untrue and harmful and that he frequently does harmful things.

Is this how he wants to be seen?
Is this how he sees himself?

What does President Obama tell us?

He tells us whatever seems politically expedient. It can be fact based, fiction based or at least ideologically twisted depending on what he, his minions and minders think will work best for themselves — regardless of the consequences for the nation. It seems to have worked well for him and for those who guide his way. A comparison might be drawn to popular fad diets, another species of hopes and dreams about miraculous changes to come. They provide hopes and dreams of weight loss, health and beauty requiring little if any effort or discomfort. True believers cherish such hopes and dreams and expect the promised changes. The lack of desired results (beyond the pleasures of experiencing the hopes and dreams) seems not to matter even if the only results turn out to be consistently bad. There’s always another promising sour cream, garlic and ice cream diet on the way. Surely, that will work!

Selling fantasies successfully is remunerative for the seller, for those who craft the message and for those who carry it to the great unwashed. Fad diets can bring fame and fortune. Ineffective and harmful false solutions to the nation’s problems — and to non-problems such as global warming costumed as problems — can bring their proponents power and sometimes fame, more socially harmful than mere fame and fortune.

Few in the “legitimate media” challenge President Obama’s toxic pablum disguised as good red meat. The few who do may be yelled at and told that they will “regret” having challenged whatever he said. Might the Woodward-Sperling flap change the way “legitimate media” react to the President? “Keep it up, White House, and the press corps will wear your scorn as a badge of honor.” I suspect that it is another hoped for change that won’t materialize, if for no better reason than that it would necessitate confessions of error by media personalities. Confessing error, even or perhaps particularly to oneself, is unpleasant and therefore difficult — more so when one’s errors have persisted for a long time and caused pain. It seems more likely that access to the person of the President and his underlings, even for droppings of trivia and worse, will continue to trump all else.

What does President Obama do?

He has shown himself, at least thus far, to be a highly successful politician; “charlatan” seems more accurate. He came from nowhere and thence from Chicago to become the President in 2009 by exhibiting great flair as a charlatan. Now in his second term, he continues to demonstrate that flair. It seems to be what he most enjoys. Governing? Not so much.

Even as Barack Obama was warning of the dreadful consequences of the budget sequester looming on March 1, he spent days away from Washington, apparently out of touch with Democratic as well as Republican congressional leaders.

His efforts seem to be directed principally toward those whom he can persuade easily to agree with him and thereby boost his already massive ego.

It appears that Obama prefers delivering such messages to crowds of adoring supporters over actually governing.

His theory seemed to be that if he kicked his job approval rating up a few points, Republicans would agree to the revenue increases he is promoting, just as they agreed to a tax rate increase in the “fiscal cliff” showdown.

But his job rating continues to hover just above 50 percent. That’s not nearly high enough to compel cooperation.

In addition, his campaign rhetoric undercuts his credibility with politicians of the opposite party and perhaps of his own.

It’s not that these people resent being criticized. They understand that that is part of the game.

But the substance of the criticism suggests the president is not serious about public policy. (Emphasis added.)

An article at Power Line suggests that these (among other) quotations from Winston Churchill about some of his contemporaries would be at least as well applied to President Obama:

About Baldwin (1936):

Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.

And this bit about Chamberlain, from early 1938, applies perfectly to Obama:

When we have the Prime Minister here, what is the good of worrying about the Foreign Secretary? What is the point of crying out for the moon when you have the sun, when you have the bright orb of day in whose refulgent beams all the lesser luminaries hide their radiance?

Does President Obama seek to surround himself with less than brilliant moons so that in comparison he will shine like the sun — “the bright orb of day in whose refulgent beams all the lesser luminaries hide their radiance?” Or do the powers behind the throne — perhaps the leading one of whom is Iranian born Valerie Jarrett — arrange that for him?

Jarrett rarely appears in a media setting and apparently contents herself with being President Obama’s éminence grise. In his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Bertrand Russell spoke of this.

The purest type is that of the eminence grise – the power behind the throne that never appears in public, and merely hugs itself with the secret thought: «How little these puppets know who is pulling the strings.» Baron Holstein, who controlled the foreign policy of the German Empire from 1890 to 1906, illustrates this type to perfection. He lived in a slum; he never appeared in society; he avoided meeting the Emperor, except on one single occasion when the Emperor’s importunity could not be resisted; he refused all invitations to Court functions, on the ground that he possessed no court dress. He had acquired secrets which enabled him to blackmail the Chancellor and many of the Kaiser’s intimates. He used the power of blackmail, not to acquire wealth, or fame, or any other obvious advantage, but merely to compel the adoption of the foreign policy he preferred. In the East, similar characters were not very uncommon among eunuchs.

To at least some unknown extent, Ms. Jarrett appears to be President Obama’s Baron Holstein. She provides the brains and he provides the public show needed to change her dreams for the future of the United States into his reality and that of his true believers. In the process, he enjoys great glory.

Rather than try to convince those who don’t agree with him, President Obama apparently prefers basking in the adulation of those who already do. It has worked well for him thus far, although under the “great unifier” the nation has become more, not less, divided. It has been claimed, with substantial justification it seems, that he is a narcissist or suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.

Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of the Malignant Self Love believes “Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist.” Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens. Vaknin says that Obama’s language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest friends suggest that the man is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). …

One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality. His admirers become his co-dependents. Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and does not deserve their attention. (Emphasis added.)

Please do think about the highlighted sentence. It’s important. The linked article goes into the matter in greater detail and is well worth reading.

Being the nation’s greatest celebrity would probably be very enjoyable for someone suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder. According to this NPR article dated March 2, 2013,

Doesn’t the president get enough attention?

The president is always the star of the show. When just about any major event occurs — whether it’s a downturn in the unemployment rate, a natural disaster or some crisis overseas — much of the news media ask how it’s going to play out for the president, the central actor in our national drama.

But then there are additional moments when the president injects himself into non-news contexts. President Obama, in particular, seems to be fond of appearing in as many pop culture venues as possible, whether it’s The Daily Show or The View.

A lot of that has to do with chasing after a fractured viewing public wherever it can be found. It’s no longer enough to grant interviews to the anchors of the major broadcast networks.

“If he pops up on American Idol or a Super Bowl halftime show, this is just a president in the modern era trying to talk to a whole constituency of audiences by going all over the place,” says Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University.

But Obama has been eager and willing to appear in so many different forums that it raises the question of whether it’s possible, in the modern media age, for even a president to become overexposed.

“You get this sense that you can’t turn on the television without one of the Obamas on it,” Thompson says.

After first lady Michelle Obama appeared on the Oscars, just a couple of days after dancing with Jimmy Fallon in a performance that went viral, even fans of the Obamas thought there could be a chance that familiarity could breed disquiet, if not contempt.

President Obama has been a “transformational” President. His First Lady is well on her way to transforming what we see in — and perhaps want and hence expect from — a First Lady. I can’t imagine any former First Lady behaving in similar fashion. Is she, or is she becoming, the new normal?

His heroes – hatred of America:

Despite his ill-gotten success, but raised by Communist he and she wolves, Obama is destroying the country he has been taught to hate since he was a child; the same country that gave his grandparents an excellent income and lifestyle in Hawaii and Obama a life of privilege and enrollment at Honolulu’s finest school. There is no other logical or rational explanation. He is destroying the country with vigor and prurient joy. Therefore, that was and is his intention. His early heroes were Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Adolph Hitler. He later graduated to admiring the oft-mentioned self-proclaimed Luciferian Saul Alinsky.

Harsh? Certainly. Is there a smidgen or much more of truth? Probably. It’s a credible explanation of the ideological path on which he and those chosen to guide him strive to set the nation.

Conclusions

I don’t know whether President Obama et al have succeeded in dumbing down the electorate or whether they have merely succeeded in using and furthering the work of others. Whichever it may be, the consequences are — and may well continue to be — indistinguishable.

Will a potential successor try to emulate President Obama or try instead to depart from the path he has so successfully trod? Will both the Democrat and Republican parties continue to move to the left? Can things be dumbed down sufficiently to win without keeping to their well worn path? If a new candidate tries to take a different path will he become President Obama’s successor in office or merely another rejected candidate soon to be forgotten? Will a candidate who continues the Obama March succeed instead? Will the push for stringent gun control succeed or will it serve as a tipping point back toward sanity? Molon Labe? Will something else, like a severe depression or even war, tip us back toward sanity or toward even more insanity? Might enough voters simply become weary of the Obama Vision? I almost (but not quite) wish I knew. I don’t.

(This article was also posted at Dan Miller’s Blog.)

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Jarrett, Messiah, Michelle, narcissism, NPD, Obama, second coming
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