Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Okay, I need a Ricochet reality test here. We thriller writers do spin scenarios from time to time and I look at Obama now and feel we're living through an old Fletcher Knebel novel. I see a narcissist whose delusions have been confirmed all his life by a left wing environment in which he operated without effect and therefore without consequences. It would be as if, instead of writing, I described my novels to my wife while she told me I was greater than Dickens. (But enough about my sex life.) Now, he's suddenly tossed into the real world at the very top... and it turns out all his brilliant ideas don't actually work. In fact, the USSR proved socialism was misguided; Europe's vaunted soft socialism was underwritten by American capitalism; and, oh yeah, 9/11 put paid to multi-culturalism. The whole agenda is schoolhouse rot! Obama looks to me as if he's reacted by going into some sort of dissociative daze, utterly divorced from reality. Am I making this up? Tell me I'm making this up. Hey, Fletcher Knebel's dead: I could put the plot to good use.
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Jul '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
When I'm having trouble dealing with reality, I go on vacation.
May '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Andrew, are you also advocating the first and most famous Knebel novel, Seven Days in May?
Edited on Aug 25, 2010 at 12:50pmMay '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Do you remember the M*A*S*H episode when they were all having the awful dreams, and in Charles's dream he was a magician, holding a sparkler and tap dancing while the patient died?
That's what Obama reminds me off. He wants to stand back and get applause for doing "magic", meanwhile the country's dying.
Jun '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
You've described "the One" perfectly, but you'd better start writing fast. You're going to have a lot of competition: this story practically tells itself.
And, yes, you are a lot better than Dickens. Bill Dickens, that is.
May '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
My nomination for Ricochet line of the week.
May '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
You ask if he has gone nuts, implying that there has been some shift in his mental state. I don't think he's gone anywhere. Same old Barack as always, just, as you said, running into hard reality for the first time in his career.
I really don't think he's "nuts" in any meaningful way. Just a feckless fellow that has had an easy run. You run into his type all the time in companies. Some guys are just easy to promote, where as some more substantive people gain scars and dirt as they accomplish things. Easier to go with the guy who's shirt is still clean and pressed. I'll bet the military has some of the same.
Of course the prospect for the country, with domestic economic trouble and rumblings across the world is terrifying.
May '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Better put, is the nation now just gotten sane?
Aug '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
It's all so depressing... When do we start talking about college football around here? Oh wait, another true freshman QB, pre-season injuries abounding, maybe that doesn't help my mood...
Aug '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Bravo Andrew. It takes courage to come out and openly declare an unpleasant truth about an individual or group that has the power to harm you. Especially when you work in an industry that's heavily invested in the darkness we face.
There's no question in my mind that Obama and many of his handlers are seriously mentally unbalanced and are a very real danger to America. The bald-faced lying, distortion of facts, and contorted straw-man falsehoods Obama is guilty of - and has gotten away with - are more than alarming.
I have a lot of experience with extreme narcissists and have seen their tactics first-hand, over long periods. I've explored the kernel of it that exists in my own soul, also. They nourish delusions of grandeur and omnipotence, and the 'charming' ones like our president, successfully delude others.
Of course, they're merely covering up for a terrible deficit and inhumanity, a vacuum inside themselves. When they fail, as they always do in the end, they project onto others their own terrible feelings and hatreds. Their great fear is exposure, and their thin skin is a defense.
This is the signal character trait of tyrants.
Jul '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
With due respect, why ask this question now? Does his staff, whose foolishness has been exceeded only by their malevolence to this country, no longer consider him the "Black Jesus?" Is it because his ideas, derivative of the most infantile columnists of the Daily Worker, circa 1950, are now seen not as brilliant but as destructive by, one hopes, a majority of Americans? Because America is a mean country and he and his Mrs are only taking what they deserve, partying like Roman emperors and looking at the presidency as their just deserts? He has sworn allegiance to the cult of Obama and has been pretty steadfast in his loyalty. It is due to the appalling judgement of the voters and the mindless adulation of the media that such a trivial man has been so exalted. He is the one who is nuts?
Jun '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
It's not far away, R&B ... and some good natured banter around Nov 13 (UGA vs AU) might be fun.
As for Obama, I hesitate to psychoanalyze his mental state. It's too easy to fall into the same trap that got him elected: the blank slate that allowed people to project their hopes (and fears) onto his persona. Maybe it makes for good fiction, but it's downright scary in the real world.
Aug '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Auburn has a football program?
Jun '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Well, we have an offense. So we at least have half a program.
Jun '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
I'm not sure Obama is dissociative, but he's certainly disengaged. He didn't realize the presidency would mean actual hard work which explains his frequent whining. Voters believed they saw in him a new type of politician and statesman, but what they got was a vacuous celebrity. His only talent was, and remains, a knack for self-promotion. I'm starting to lean toward those who think he might just hand off the nomination to Hillary in 2012. He can then take his act on the road and enjoy his status as a former president earning buckets of money for short speeches in front of his adoring believers. Cushy work if you can get it. Just the kind he likes.
Aug '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Andrew, I fully agree. I think he's already drifting off into visions of fully-funded junkets making campaign-style speeches bashing the USA (with no consequences) before adoring, standing-O(bama!) crowds at Davos, TED, etc., and then an extended stint as Secretary General of the UN. In other words, he's looking at Bill Clinton and thinking, yeah . . . .
Jul '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Hello? Mr. Theory, meet Mr. Practice. He's about to kick your behind.
Good God! What do we expect to happen when an academic yarn-spinner has to deal with reality? He's getting steamrolled. Couldn;t happen to a nicer guy.
Jul '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
I think I might dispute the notion that President Obama is realizing his brilliant ideas don't actually work. I'm pretty sure he remains convinced they would work, if only we pesky citizens would stop complaining and let him get on with completing his program. Then we would all see how right he is about…well, about everything, actually.
What's set him lurching about in that weird, disoriented fashion is that, for the first time in his life, he is confronted with vigorous, principled opposition to everything he stands for. Until now, he's risen so effortlessly through the ranks of academe and politics that he's genuinely come to believe that it's his destiny to remake the world for us. Don't we know? Haven't we heard? He's The One, darn it. We're supposed to gaze in silent wonder while he solves all our little problems and takes away all our little cares. And all he asks in return is our eternal gratitude.
May '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Andrew, the mistake you are making is in looking at everything from the logic of conservative paradigms. Obama and the rest of the left live in an alternate universe where our rules of logic simply do not apply. This is how you arrive at a situation where only 26% of Americans think the country is on the right track, yet 67% of DC elites think everything is going swimingly.
He's not nuts. In his reality he is still awesome and wonderful.
Aug '10
Re: Has Obama Gone Nuts?
Exactly right, Steve. Washington's ruling elites think the country is on the right track; while over 75% of ordinary Americans say we're on the wrong track. The more you try to understand elitist thinking, the closer you are to the Funny Farm
Exhibit A, from the Washington Post yesterday: 'Taliban could be misleading its forces' - page A13.
They're telling their people to hold on until we leave! Imagine, those dishonest Taliban saying America's planning to pull out of Afghanistan! Haven't they heard that it's probable that some U.S. soldiers will stay, depending on conditions? Don't they listen to our Messiah-in-Chief and his Disciples?!
The real story, in the third paragraph, was Marine Corps Commandant James Conway saying that, "We think right now it's probably giving our enemy sustenance".