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NARCISSIST
[Authored by Mickey Walker*, TPJ Columnist]
Q: How many psychiatrists
does it take to change a light bulb? A: One. But the light bulb has
to want to change. Cute, hunh? So how many shrinks does it take to
change a Narcissist like George W. Bush? Let’s examine some of Bush’s
“my-way-or-the-highway” policies and attitudes for the last six years to
see if the “Narcissist” shoe fits.
Without equal, Bush
arrogantly struts about the planet with his six-gun, bite-me diplomacy,
daring other countries to step out of line. He smirked at the United
Nations when world countries begged him to hold off on attacking Iraq.
But Bush,
listening to his own inner voices, scared us into believeing that he
needed to attack Iraq now or the “smoking gun might come in the form of
a mushroom cloud.”
Four years later the United States finds itself Bush-bogged down in
the worst, longest, most sordid war our country has ever known. Weapons
of Mass Destruction never existed. Saddam Hussein never lit up a cigar
and uncorked a bottle of brandy with bin Laden, and the two of them
never plotted jointly to attack the United States. Bush/Cheney was
wrong.
Over 3,200 US soldiers
have died in Bush’s Iraq War. Over 15,000 have been gravely wounded
with missing arms and legs. How many Iraqis have died? 100,000?
200,000? Who knows? The wounded, the broken, the sad eyes and faces in
the rubble, are what’s left of the Iraqi people. It is tragic how all
this pain and suffering is due to one basic untruth, that Saddam had
Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Downing Street Memo indicates that
Bush wanted to attack Iraq even before 911, and Richard Clarke and other
White House staffers corroborated this.
By 2 to 1 margins, most
all polls taken today show Americans strongly favor Bush bringing our
troops home. Some polls indicate that Iraqis want us to get out of
their country by over 3 to 1. So what would any good Narcissistic
president do? Why, no question, he would send in more troops. Say
what? That’s right; Bush just sent another 30,000 troop “Surge” into a
hellish Civil War that he created. 160,000 soldiers now find themselves
in the crossfire between warring Sunnis and Shias who, if they ever stop
to combine forces it’s for the sole purpose of killing Americans. So
what is it about the 2006 General Election that Bush doesn’t get?
Americans want Bush to bring our troops home. And he doesn’t get it. Like
all good Narcissists, does he forget that he represents the American
people? Or does he just give us his infamous smirk, shrug his
shoulders and do things his own bloody way, as usual?
Wikipedia, the free
Encyclopedia, states: “The terms ‘narcissism’, ‘narcissistic’, and
‘narcissist’ are often used as pejoratives, denoting vanity, conceit,
egotism, or simple selfishness.
The name was
chosen by Sigmund Freud from the Greek Myth of Narcissus who fell in
love with his own reflection in a pool of water and fell in and
drowned. The term narcissism means love of oneself, and refers
to the set of character traits concerned with self-admiration,
self-centeredness and self-regard. Applied
to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an
indifference to the plight of others.” Freud takes it further. He says
that a Narcissist sees everything and everybody as mere extensions of
himself. A Narcissist thinks nobody else exists. This Freudian
analysis is intriguing. It’s significant when looking at our 43rd
president and some of the “one-way” decisions he has made during the
past six years. For openers, Bush continues to wage war when vast
majorities, home and abroad, beg for it to stop. He treats us as if we
don’t exist. The will of the people is not the will of George W. Bush.
This “oneness”
with one’s own self-importance and turning a deaf ear to the plight of
others seems to be a fingerprint of the Bush administration. Isn’t that
terribly Narcissistic? Arrogantly Bush told us once that he was the
“Decider” and that (by George) the rest of us Americans did not get a
say. In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said Saddam had
attempted to buy yellow cake uranium from “Africa.” When that Bush
baloney got debunked by Ambassador Joe Wilson as forged intelligence,
Bush bristled. Wilson had called Bush out, and that’s a mistake you
never want to make with a Narcissist. He might just do something
radical. Like leak the secret identity of Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie
Plame who worked undercover for the CIA. Strong evidence pointed to the
White House. Plame was working for the United States government in
espionage duties as an operative, and wouldn’t that matter to our
president? Guess not, if he’s a narcissist. She was working to gather
intelligence on countries who had and who sold WMDs, but Bush’s getting
even with her husband was more important? Guess so. A federal jury
convicted Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s top aide, in the Plame/White
House scandal. And to boot, the Libby Jury that convicted him
apologized to Scooter because the jurists felt the evidence showed that
Libby had taken a fall for bigger fish in the White House. With the
corruption and treason appearing to go to the White House bone, head,
and ass, the jury just knew that the crime evidence of leaking Plame’s
identity should have smoked out Rove and Cheney and maybe even Bush.
The jury wanted more. Maybe we should listen to them.
Before 911,
Richard Clarke told Bush and Rice that intelligence showed that al Qaeda
had plans to fly airplanes into American buildings. Apparently, Bush
had his own ideas about that. But why wouldn’t he listen to Clarke, a
saged terror expert with years of experience in the White House under
President Clinton? Good question. How did Bush’s refusal to listen to
Clarke’s advice help prevent the 911 attacks? And whose intelligence
does a Narcissist usually trust? His own.
Dave Lindorf of
“Capitol Hill Blue” said that when Republican congressmen went to the
White House to advise Bush against pushing for stronger articles in the
Patriot Act, Bush shouted at them. “Stop
throwing the Constitution in my face! It's just a goddamned piece of
paper.” When one of them warned that his push for more police state
powers in a new version of the legislation that Congress initially
passed in the wake of the 9-11 attacks might alienate some of his
conservative backers, the president shouted, “I don't give a goddamn:
I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."
Does that sound like a
sensitive president who cares about the American people? Or a bleedin’
Narcissist who could care less about us or even the US Constitution,
itself? In his mind, are we but mere extensions of King Bush? Does he
think we even exist?
Bush cut out our
rights of habeas corpus with a sharp dagger. Even now he smirks as he
wiretaps our private conversations and emails without lawful court
orders and warrants, while Gonzales pants like a smiling wolf. In the
night, some American citizens get shipped to foreign countries, like
Syria. There, they are tortured. They have no right to a lawyer or to
a phone call. Bush mocks human rights by proclaiming that he has the
right to torture. And he affixes his “signing statement” mark to
McCain’s No Torture Bill, writing that he has the right to torture if he
wants to. Doesn’t that destroy the bill, scuttle Congress and trash our
separation of powers? In total arrogance, doesn’t Bush seek to preempt
Congress by making up his own laws? Isn’t he telling us he is now
dictator of the United States and that Congress can pass no law that he
cannot overrule, change or rescind? How Narcissistic is that?
Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo are testimonials to Bush’s narcissistic character.. The
world knows. And all of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ jawboning in
Bush’s behalf just does not help us believe that torture is justified.
Our collective conscience as good Americans finds Gonzales’ legal
sleaze to be repulsive. We cannot accept the Attorney General’s word
that Bush has the right to torture. It’s bull. No Attorney General can
make us believe that Bush’s shredding the Constitution to bring
terrorists to justice serves our best interests as an honest people,
either. Didn’t Bush and Gonzales swear under oath to protect, uphold
and defend the Constitution? So by burning and shredding the
Constitution, how many terrorists have Bush and Gonzales caught and
brought to justice? And how many innocent Americans have they illegally
wiretapped? Where is Osama bin Laden, anyway?
Does Narcissism
in the White House know no boundaries? By claiming Executive Privelege,
Bush tried us on for size by saying Gonzales could refuse to testify
under oath over the recent US Attorney firings. First Bush wants to
shred the Constitution to his liking and then he seeks to choke the
truth by eliminating US Attorneys who will not serve him agaisnt his
political enemies. My God. Who but an insensitive narcissist would
attempt to scuttle our own system of government at every little crooked
turn like Bush and his lap dog, Gonzales? It’s typical of a White House
in love with itself. Plain and simple, this White House does not promote
a Democratic government in the United States. From all Narcissitic
signs, it looks like Bush has us headed for a dictatorship. Can anyone
believe illegal wiretapping, torture and now attempting to stack the US
Attorney docket, could exist in America? What kind of president would
want to exchange our democracy for something like this? What would Karl
Jung say?
Our own battered soldiers
in Iraq, stop-gapped and retoured repeatedly, provide hard evidence that
Bush ignores the horrible reality of the Iraq War. It’s horrible. Our
soldiers deserve better. That they have fought for four years without
proper body and vehicle armor is symptomatic of a narcissistic president
who cannot prioritize his most sacred duty of all: to see that our
troops have the best and safest arms and equipment with which to wage
war. That so many men and women come home with blown off arms and legs
is hard evidence of an administration’s refusal to end a hopeless war
and bring our troops home. That our VA hospitals have jacked our
Veterans around after they came home is inexcusable. And just because
the miserable Bush Budget cuts to fund Veterans Programs finally caught
up with the president, he is knows that he is responsible. Or does he?
Could a narcissist admit to a reality so damning to his own image?
Does one need a degree in
Psychiatry to determine that Bush listens to no one and, like a runaway
train, charges ahead on his own? His purposes seem clear: enriching
his “Have More” friends and supporting, staging, and directing a war
where war corporations make Trillions and Social Security and Medicare
go bankrupt and get flushed down the toilet. So why would Bush be
expected to empathize with the plight of our soldiers? Ask the
still-suffering, homeless, and uprooted victims of Hurricanes Katrina
and Rita. While coldly sending thousands more to Iraq Bush has not kept
his promises to help restore New Orleans and other plighted cities on
the Gulf Coast. But what else is new? Ordinary Americans simply do not
get a top priority in Bush’s delusory world of the “Have Mores.” And
the latter seem to know that Bush is the best narcissist to look out for
their mercenary interests.
Q: How many Presidents
does it take to change America and the world, forever? A: Only one.
Six years later that reality falls upon us. So how many Shrinks does it
take to change a narcissist? Only one. But then Bush has to want to
change. And some things never change.
_________
* Mickey Walker is a
native Texan who is retired. He was educated at Kansas University on a
football scholarship (teammate with Gayle Sayers and John Hadl).
Commissioned in the Navy, Walker served in Viet Nam, Joint Services
special weapons instructor, Sandia Base, New Mexico, plant supervisor
weapons assembly plant, member US national disaster control, nuclear
weapons. Honorably discharged 1970, Lieutenant Commander, USN Reserve
duty for 10 years. Upon discharge from service, he was employed in
lumber manufacturing and a securities broker.
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UPDATED: APRIL
29, 2007
