Two Reasons Why I Mislike President Obama

After nearly six years of watching this man in action, the first four of which I was fairly vocal (inasmuch as one can be vocal in a blog that no one reads), expressing a veritable alphabet of emotions: anger, bewilderment, bitterness, concern, disgust, dismay, exasperation, frustration. You get the idea. 

Now nearly six years in, emotion and agitation have been replaced. I'm less angry and more resigned. There's a dullness, a sinking feeling, even a sort of sadness. I, like so many, was right about this man. But the truth is, he's so much more than what I suspected. I don't think he's malicious, malevolent, conspiratorial. It's almost worse. He's a narcissist of the worst order. He's arrogant, intolerably so. Narcissism is bad enough, but it's not necessarily a deal breaker. Bill Clinton was (is) narcissistic. But his narcissism wasn't fatal. Combine narcissism with arrogance, put it in a place of power, surround it with fawning yes-men, prop it up with an acquiescent, uncritical media, and you really do have a problem, big time.

A new alphabet, this time of adjectives: arrogant, condescending, duplicitous, haughty, manipulative, narcissistic. 

At first, as I said, one gets all worked up and agitated and exercised. And early in this game, one genuinely believes that by pointing out these blindingly glaring character deficits, those who haven't seen them yet will suddenly see them, will have their ah ha! moment, agree, and, at the very least, be a bit more scrutinizing. But it doesn't happen. And after awhile, it dawns on one, that not only will those people not see the deficits that you so clearly see, they actually regard those deficits as qualities! 

About that time, one remembers pithy sayings, like, "There is none so blind as he who will not see," realizes one is fighting against a blindness, of sorts, and little by little, day by day, stops saying anything, and only sits back and gapes, open-mouthed, as the fundamentally transformed world that this man promised (the one promise he kept), continues to unfold. Deception runneth deep. 

Emotion mutates into resignation, with surreptitious glances at the calendar: two more years, two more years. Will this nation survive two more years with this foolish, arrogant man calling the shots? 

Fortunately there are a few who haven't stopped trying to explain. Today, for example, I'm reading Dan Henninger (Wall Street Journal) and Victor Davis Hanson (scholar, historian, author). Henninger illustrates Obama's arrogance, while Hanson focuses on his dishonesty. Two of the main reasons I mislike this president.

Who is listening? Surely not the members of my immediate family. But I'm resigned to this, as well. 


The Humbling of a President, by Dan Henninger

Brief excerpt (in case the article is only available to subscribers): 

There is a story about Mr. Obama relevant to the war, battle or whatever he declared Wednesday evening against the Islamic State, aka ISIS. It is found in his former campaign manager David Plouffe's account of the 2008 election, "The Audacity to Win." Mr. Plouffe writes that during an earlier election race, Mr. Obama had a "hard time allowing his campaign staff to take more responsibility." To which Barack Obama answered: "I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I'll hire to do it." 

Audacity indeed. In a 2008 New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza, Mr. Obama is quoted telling another aide: "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors." Also, "I think I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters." 

And here we are. 

In the days before Mr. Obama's ISIS address to the nation, news accounts cataloged his now-embarrassing statements about terrorism's decline on his watch—the terrorists are JV teams, the tide of war is receding and all that.

What we now know is that Mr. Obama is not even close to being his own best Secretary of State, his own best Secretary of Defense, his own best national security adviser or his own best CIA director.  The question is: Does he know it? Can a humbling experience of such startling proportions have sunk in? It had better. What the U.S. needs if it is to prevail in the battle Mr. Obama put forth Wednesday is the genuine article of presidential leadership. What the U.S. does not need in the Oval Office is a utility infielder playing everyone else's position. We are competing against global terrorism's heaviest hitters, who have established state seizure as a strategic goal. 

If Mr. Obama still thinks he's better than Susan Rice, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and John Brennan, then he and the nation supporting his anti-ISIS effort are being poorly served. 

Obama's Untruth, Inc., by Victor Davis Hanson 

Brief excerpt:

Obama’s prevaricating has lost him any thought of a legacy, all the more so because for years as a candidate and as president he pontificated about his new transparency and the need for executive candor — itself an untruth at best, and at worst a cynical ploy to provide cover for a deliberate effort to enact policies that could not be honestly presented to the American people. 

The two fuels that run Untruth, Inc., are, first, a realization that most of the president’s policies, whether deliberately or as a result of indifference and laziness, run counter to what most Americans support, and, second, a media establishment so invested in his agenda that it will not call the administration to account. So the engine of lying keeps humming. 

On any given day the president of the United States can step up to the teleprompter amid the latest disaster and swear that he did not do what he just did, or insist that someone else, not he, did the dastardly deed, or simply skip over recent history and make things up. The press at first quibbles, then nods in agreement, and Obama is empowered to do it again and again. We have not seen such a disingenuous president since Richard Nixon — but he, at least, was countered rather than enabled by the media.

Narcissim Run Amok: Thoughts After the Isla Vista Rampage

I'm beginning to develop a theory about the next generation. 

Not having to do with access to guns. That's a separate issue. But having to do with the way this generation (millennials and younger) are being raised, not only without God and faith and and a morality that transcends human wisdom (right/wrong, good/evil), but also being raised as if they're the center of the universe. 

Maybe this next generation should be called the "narcissistic generation." YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, selfies. This is their world. Affirmation is not an option but a necessity. One of my students wrote in a paper this semester that if she doesn't get at least 50 "likes" on a Facebook post she removes the post. 

Even if it turns out this guy Elliot Rodgers had some kind of mental disorder, it doesn't change my thinking. I believe he's an inevitable by-product of the societal trend that fosters self-affirmation. Social media not only perpetuates this trend, it probably spawned it. 

From childhood, millennials have been nurtured on the idea that they're self-important, that everything has to go their way, that they are "winners," that nothing bad should ever happen to them, that they deserve happiness, that the world revolves around them. And when it finally dawns on them that the world does not revolve around them, those that that are already a bit "off" (like this guy apparently was) are already be primed to commit atrocities like this. 

But not, of course, before they get out their I-phones and videotape themselves, up close, in our faces, talking about how they've been wronged. 

Factor in the secularist, anti-Christian, anti-God thinking that now permeates both the schools and public square, and the inevitable result is pretty frightening. What we saw in Isla Vista last night is just a symptom of a greater ill: narcissism run amok.   

Isla Vista Shooting Suspect Left Disturbing Manifesto (Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2014).

Insufferable Facebook-isms

I'm tempted to post this article (linked below) called "7 Ways to be Insufferable On Facebook" on my Facebook page. However, if I did, I suspect that might make me insufferable. 

Here's a snippet.

A Facebook status is annoying if it primarily serves the author and does nothing positive for anyone reading it . . . To examine this a bit, let’s start by discussing the defining characteristics of statuses that are not annoying.

To be unannoying, a Facebook status typically has to be one of two things:

1) Interesting/Informative
2) Funny/Amusing/Entertaining 

You know why these are unannoying? Because things in those two categories do something for me, the reader. They make my day a little better.

Ideally, interesting statuses would be fascinating and original (or a link to something that is), and funny ones would be hilarious. But I’ll happily take mildly amusing—at least we're still dealing with the good guys.

On the other hand, annoying statuses typically reek of one or more of these five motivations:

1) Image Crafting. The author wants to affect the way people think of her.

2) Narcissism. The author’s thoughts, opinions, and life philosophies matter. The author and the author’s life are interesting in and of themselves.

3) Attention Craving. The author wants attention.

4) Jealousy Inducing. The author wants to make people jealous of him or his life.

5) Loneliness. The author is feeling lonely and wants Facebook to make it better. This is the least heinous of the five—but seeing a lonely person acting lonely on Facebook makes me and everyone else sad. So the person is essentially spreading their sadness, and that’s a shitty thing to do, so it’s on the list.

The author then provides examples of insufferability, nearly all of them falling under the general heading of "image crafting." Rather hilarious, not to mention embarrassing. I wonder how often I've been insufferable. I think I was pretty insufferable during the 2008 election of he-who-shall-not-be-named.

The scary thing is, if the entire concept of social networking is designed to promote, propagate and perpetuate narcissistic behavior, why do I continue to skulk about in this community? Yet when I think of closing up my account once and for all, I wonder what I'll miss out on. And so I linger.  

Anyway, here's the article. Very funny. Not sure who the author is, but it's from a blog called wait but why. 

"7 Ways to be Insufferable on Facebook"