America’s RAW Deal
5th Post
Under the Psychoscope
Two of History’s Bloodiest War Lords
Presidents
George Bush and Barack Obama
Snapshot: What They Have Done
·
Authorized secret
wars in nearly 3/4th of the planet
·
Destroyed cities
and villages
·
Sent millions to
their graves
·
Bombed weddings
and funeral
·
Replaced popular
leaders with dictators as US pawns
·
Created countless
enemies and potential terrorists
·
Squandered
trillions for war instead of building a new America
WHY? WHY? WHY?
People, including presidents,
do what they do because of their PMU (psychological makeup), GMU (genetic and
gender makeup) and also because of the situations or circumstances they create
and/or face. [1]
In
this psychoscope the two president’s PMUs and GMUs will be examined for an
explanation of their destructive and deadly behavior. In the next post the two presidents' circumstances will be examined.
What the Psychoscope Shows Us
Their DNA
Some research suggests that a particular gene is more likely
to be found among leaders than followers. [2] Other research suggests that a
person’s genetic makeup may to some extent predispose the person to a life of
crime. [3] “Putting two and two together,” is it much of a stretch to wonder if
their genes have at least a minor influence on their committing international
war crimes?
Their Gender
Their Gender
Do
you know of any female U.S. president? Wars throughout history have been
started and fought by males with very few exceptions (Cleopatra and Margaret
Thatcher, for example). While testosterone may play a tiny role in a male
leader’s aggression, we live in a male dominated society, which means among
other things that males are expected to dominate and to be aggressive when
confronted with conflicts.
Their Background
A
person’s background is the person’s history, and you know the old saying,
“history is prologue to the future.” There’s a grain or more of truth to it,
and more so when some of the person’s behavior is habitual since a habit (e.g.,
the war and spy habit) is the past repeated, is it not? A person’s background
tells us how that person’s characteristics have evolved and what role they
played in the person’s lifetime of responses to a lifetime of situations.
Bush
was born with a silver spoon in his mouth so to speak and a member of a dynasty
with a sense of entitlement that sometimes surfaced on the wrong side of the
law and with impunity. [4] His father, George Walker Bush, before becoming the
first U.S. president in the Bush family had been a director of the CIA.
Obama’s
parents were allegedly on the CIA payroll and that agency reportedly “financed
his college education and gave him his first job afterwards.” [5] Is he
indebted to the CIA? Is he afraid of the CIA given its history of
assassinations? I will return to the matter of the influence the “shadow
government” (i.e., CIA and NSA) allegedly has on whoever sits in the Oval
Office in the next post.
Their Personalities
Let’s
turn now to their personalities and raise some questions about whether these
socially undesirable personality traits; greed/ambition, morally unprincipled,
narcissism and close mindedness are associated with their kind of leadership
behavior.
Greedy/Ambitious?
We know they are ambitious. Anyone is who climbs up to the
Oval Office.
Morally Unprincipled?
Anyone
who starts a war against another nation on a pretext or who orders drone
strikes is morally unprincipled and will do whatever is necessary to achieve
desired ends. Bush, a born-again
Christian would naturally disagree. So would Obama. Let’s hear what the latter
himself has said about his own moral character: “---I think I’m pretty good at
keeping my moral compass while recognizing that I am a product of original
sin.” [6] The subordinating clause of that statement is a perfect example of a
moral rationalization as in, “well, we all sin in our own ways.” And again in his own words: “One of the things that I’ve learned to
appreciate more as President is you are essentially a relay swimmer in a river
full of rapids, and that river is history.” [7] In other words, you can blame
what he’s doing on history. And he’s partly right.
To
the extent that any war/spy commander in chief has any hint of morality it is
compartmentalized, a form of moral rationalization and a habit typical of most
humans. Certain mental compartments are reserved for scruples and others for
behavior ranging from the less scrupulous to evil. I will give you one example
from Obama’s repertoire of behavior. A few days after he had eulogized Dr.
Martin Luther King, the antiwar activist when alive, the president announced he
would be doing some more bombing. [8]
Now,
we can interpret that seeming contradiction in two ways. Either his eulogy was
nothing other than posturing, which is second nature to politicians, or he was
pulling the eulogy out of a moral compartment and deciding from a different
compartment to go bombing again. Either way, he was at worst exhibiting
unprincipled morality and at best conditional morality.
Narcissistic?
What
national leader isn’t narcissistic? An extreme form of narcissism is a sense of
grandiosity, as President Obama seems to display in this remark; “Here’s my
bottom line, America must always lead on the stage. If we don’t, no one else
will.” [9]Another extreme form is a lack of empathy. Have you ever seen the two of them express
empathy or remorse over innocent people killed by their military decisions?
Sometime after I wrote that last sentence I spotted an article in the New
Yorker quoting Obama in a speech to the National Defense University saying
about civilian deaths from drones that such incidents are “heartbreaking
tragedies” that would be haunting memories for “as long as we live.” [10] I
think his expressed remorse was mostly posturing rather than being deeply felt
especially since he went on to defend the use of drones.
Hubris
is another element of this personality trait. It was displayed by President
Bush standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and boasting “mission accomplished;”
and in this boastful remark; “The interesting thing about being president is
that you don’t feel like [you] owe anybody an explanation. [11]
Psychopathic?
It
would not be unusual if Bush and Obama were psychopathic. Apparently it is
“normal” if we can believe the findings from a study that relied on some 100
historical experts’ analyses of data on all U.S. presidents. The researchers
say they found this personality trait in every U.S. president. [12] Noted
psychoanalyst Dr. Justin Frank seems to have found it also when analyzing the
backgrounds and behavior of Bush and Obama. [13]
Close-minded?
Ron
Suskind was the senior national-affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal
from 1993 to 2000 and the author of a book and articles about Bush. Mr. Suskind
writes that when asked by his top deputies to explain his decisions “the
president would say that he relied on his ‘gut’ or his ‘instinct’ to guide the
ship of state, and then he ‘prayed over it.’” [14] Anyone believing their decisions
is guided by the supernatural are not likely to open their mind to alternative
decisions.
As
for President Obama, he once told a reporter; “And every morning and every
night I’m taking measure of my actions against the options and possibilities
available to me---.” [15] Now that statement suggests he’s open-minded, but he
certainly has been close minded about ending the drone strikes and reaching out
to the world with an olive branch.
Close-mindedness is the personality trait that seems to be
the most correlated with less intelligence. The more close-minded a person is,
the more to suspect that person is not as intelligent as an open-minded person.
That may be why the policy decisions and actions of Bush and Obama have seemed
so mindless. Habits, after all, don’t require any superior intelligence or
critical thinking.
Beliefs?
Firmly
held beliefs are like ideologies that have hardened into certainties. Nowhere
is that more pronounced than in the case of religious beliefs, where believing
becomes seeing, not the other way around. More down to earth, a pronounced
belief of every American president is that of manifest destiny, the belief, no,
the certainty that America is destined to be the leader of the world. The
neoconservatives and neoliberals of today that bend the ears of our presidents
are living examples of this ideology in action. The invasion of Iraq, for
example, was planned long before 9/11 by influential neoconservatives with
connections to the White House. [16]Another pronounced belief, so intuitive and
counter intuitive at the same time, is the conviction, or maybe a
rationalization if the belief is a pretense, that certain wars, America’s wars most
certainly, are always “just and necessary.” Recall my argument in an earlier
post blasting that belief to smithereens.
Selfish Purpose?
Absolutely.
As with Bush and all previous U.S. presidents, Obama is acting for his own
self-interests, not for the interests of the American people, even though he
will most certainly disagree and would, I’m sure, argue he is acting in the
best interests of America. If that is true, his actions have certainly failed
in any case.
Purpose,
along with intentions and expectations, are an extremely strong influence on
human behavior. They help motivate and guide it.
Ordinary,
simple habits don’t need an explicit purpose. Take the case of the cigarette
smoker ((but don’t take him/her in the same room). That habit basically drives
itself. The need for and sight of a cigarette is all that is needed to keep the
habit alive. The warring and spying habits, by virtue of their enormity of
scale, need self and publicly proclaimed purposes.
Why Do Americans Elect Such People?
The answer, I think, is two-fold. First, American voters
have little say in the selection and election of their presidents. The Constitution’s specification of the
dysfunctional Electoral College, the government’s controlled Federal Election
Commission, and corporate campaign financing guarantee that the “twin” parties’
candidates will dominate the ballots. Second, American education is one of an
addicted regime’s most reliable “habit helpers.” It is never in any regime’s
advantage to have most if not all citizens educated to think for themselves. If they did there would be an entirely different and
better America. Psychologist David
Dunning and sociologist Mato Nagel have theorized and showed through a computer
simulated election that incompetent people can’t judge leadership qualities.
[17] That finding is not accidental. America’s regimes plan it that way.
EndNotes
1. I first conceived of the idea of the human equation in my
book on organizational performance:
Tall Performance from Short Organizations through We/Me Power. 1st Books Library, 2002.
2. Prigg, M. The Secret to being a Great Leader? It's in your Genes, Researchers Say. DailyMallJanuary15,2013.
3. Cohen, P. Genetic Basis for Crime: A New Look. The New York Times, June 19, 2011.4. 4. Parry, R. Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. The Media Consortium, 2004.
Tall Performance from Short Organizations through We/Me Power. 1st Books Library, 2002.
2. Prigg, M. The Secret to being a Great Leader? It's in your Genes, Researchers Say. DailyMallJanuary15,2013.
3. Cohen, P. Genetic Basis for Crime: A New Look. The New York Times, June 19, 2011.4. 4. Parry, R. Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. The Media Consortium, 2004.
5.
Ross, S. Obama’s Ties to CIA May Explain His Totalitarian Views. Veterans
Today, May 3, 2013.
6.
Remnick, D, Going the Distance: On and Off the Road with Barack Obama. The New
Yorker, January 27, 2014, 41-61, 61.
7.
Ibid., 61.
8.
Sirota, D. What Happened to the Anti-War Movement? Nation of Change, September
6, 2013.
9. Blum, W. What Would a Psychiatrist Call This? Delusions of Grandeur? The Anti-Empire Report #130. Dissident Voice, July 12, 2014.
10. Coll, S. The Unblinkable Stare. The New Yorker, November 24, 2014, 98-109.
11.
Nader, R. A Letter to George Bush. Dissident Voice, January 1, 2014.
12.
Howard, J. Psychopathic Personality Traits Linked With U.S. Presidential
Success, Psychologists Suggest. The Huffington Post, September 13, 2012.
13.
Frank, J. Bush on the Couch. Harper Perennial, 2005. Obama on the Couch. Free
Press, 2012.
14.
Suskind, R. Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush. The New York
Times Magazine, October 17, 2004; and, Suskind, R. The Price of Loyalty: George
W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill. Simon &
Schuster, 2004.
15.
Remnick. Op. Cit., 61.
16.
There are many accounts of how 9/11 was a golden opportunity for Bush and gang,
including his neoconservative tutors to carry out a plan years in the making to
invade Iraq. See, e.g., Battle, J. The Iraq War-Part I: The U.S. Prepares for Conflict, The National
Security Archive, 2001; Beversdorf, T. The Most Essential Lesson of History
That No One Wants to Admit. First
Rebuttal, December 7, 2014; and Weber, M. Iraq: A War For Israel. Institute for
Historical Review, March, 2008.
17.
Wolchover, N. People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists
Say. OpEdNews, February 28, 2012.
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