AN AMERICA MICHELLE OBAMA CAN BE PROUD OF...
I didn't even know there was such a thing as a "Dependency Index", but it basically supports what I said in this post about how our "progressive" liberals foster dependence.

According to the IBD article:

The American public's dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.

The conservative think tank's annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were "traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families."

The increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president, the data show....

The report also found that spending on "dependence programs" accounts for more than 70% of the federal budget. That, too, is up dramatically. In 1990, for example, the figure stood at 48.5%, and in 1962 just over a quarter of federal spending went to dependence programs.

(There's a nice graph to go along with the article at the link)

Finally! An America Michelle Obama can be proud of!


- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:43 AM |

 
SUGAR DADDIES AND THE MOMMY STATE
Are these people insane?

First they come for the alcohol, then for the tobacco, then for your sugar.

When the day arrives when you have to undergo a background check and endure a three-day waiting period to enter a Dunkin’ Donuts, you can trace the loss of your unrestricted access to a Boston Kreme or French Cruller to this moment. Namely the publication in the journal Nature of an article calling for regulating sugar as a health hazard, although stopping “far short of all-out prohibition” (that would be too extreme).

Apparently nothing is too extreme for these busybodies.

Lowry goes on to note:

Under this regime, we’ll go from gun-free school zones to Snickers-free school zones. Lustig and Co. want to double the price of a soda by taxation. They seriously propose starting to card young people who try to buy a Dr. Pepper, with an age cutoff of 17. This will make 17 a fraught age: Old enough (with parental consent) to join the military and old enough to buy chocolate milk....

The mindset of the Robert Lustigs of the world is that we can’t trust parents or individuals to make sound choices. ....

If this all seems good for yuks, just wait ten years.

Let me just state that if Barack and Michelle occupy the White House for another term, then we can anticipate an even shorter wait time for our sugar-free utopia.

The entire Democratic Party (along with significant numbers in the Republican Party, unfortunately) have morphed into annoyingly intrusive, know-it-all nannies, whose goal is not to persuade you that their ideas are correct or even better than yours; but to force you to accept their ideas by making them laws.

We used to contemptuously call such people busybodies (which was not a compliment), and, by and large, were mostly able to ignore their nitpicking power plays to control or change our lives.

Sadly, we can't do that anymore.

When they start controlling everything from mandating health care coverage to the type of light bulb you use in your lamps' to the amount of sugar and other items you consume, a free society just becomes another oppressive postmodern deceit.

But we the people have let all these postmodern busybodies of all political persuasions think they can get away with running out lives, especially when they precede their power grab with the sickeningly sweet bromides like, "BUT, IT'S FOR THE CHILDREN!!"

Here is Mathhew Yglesias, who thinks that the "trouble" with America is that we don't give our children good enough school lunches. We give them Pizza—the horror of it all!:

I was being a bit contrarian about an aspect of this on Twitter the other day, but obviously it’s insane to declare that your average slice of public school pizza meets healthy eating standards for high nutrition. Everyone understands that. Sometimes public policy goes awry because of good faith disagreement about the issues, but there’s no serious disagreement about whether “feed kids more pizza” is a valid way to improve the nutritional content of school lunch. Read Michele Simon on the gory details of the ferocious lobbying that led to this outcome. Compare that to the story of Finland’s 1999 school lunch reform, which basically took the form of well-qualified people giving parliament a few options reasonable options and then parliament picking one whose budgetary costs they were comfortable with.
This contrast tells us a lot about America. It has a lot of lessons to teach. Most notably, it reminds us that provision of public services in this country tends not to work very well and also that low-quality provision is not inevitable. But all too often in the United States we have programs that are too dominated by the interests of the service providers. And all too often in the United States we have partisans responding to these controversies thanks to arbitrary facts about the organizational structure of the service providers. So we’ll argue about “unions” or “agribusiness” or “for-profit colleges” without seeing the underlying common structure of the problem.

A government that works well is a really valuable thing to have. It can give you reasonable nourished, healthy kids who learn a lot in school. It can give you safe streets and reasonable commuting times. It can prevent banking panics. There’s more to life than that stuff, but it’s not nothing. But you have to fight to make it work

Got that? The trouble with America is that the government can give us "reasonable noursished healthy kids who learn a lot in school" but the evil private sector is only interested in profits.

Yglesias is a true believer in the soft, compassionate tyranny of the mommy state. His touching confidence that the government will keep us all healthy and safe from the evils of the world (or, at least the evil of pizza for lunch) is amusing, albeit misplaced.

This kind of busybody dogoodism is even less amusing when it emanates from the sugar daddies who are currently running our government.

Most congresspersons, be they Democrat or Republican, have never met a government program they didn't like, as long as it helps them get elected or re-elected. “Promise the Suckers Anything!” (Suckers=Us). And, of course, human nature being what it is, most people are enthusiastically willing to take something when it is promised to us for nothing.

But, their ready and contradictory promises aren’t without consequences. And, they cost somewhat more than nothing.

There are two problems here. The first is how we the people casually shrug off any personal responsibility and abdicate our self-reliance and freedoms. If we do it often enough; eventually we will develop an enlarged sense of entitlement to other people's money and effort.

Next, we will be caught up in aggrieved victimhood, when the gravy train stops. If you doubt this, then take note of the riots in Greece and Italy and Portugal over the fact that even though their countries are completely broke and bankruptcy is upon them; they refuse to acknowledge reality, demanding like children that everything go on as usual and that they continue to receive what was "promised" to them by their own self-absorbed and anti-reality politicians.

Pretending that the real world doesn't exist is something to be expected from infants and children; in adults it is malignantly narcissistic.

The list of what these sugar daddies and mommy statists are willing to control in YOUR life to increase THEIR power, goes to infinity and beyond. Believe me, there is no end to what these Postmodern busybodies will try to control about your life and your choices in order to make themselves feel good.

Ironically, these are the same people who are presumably "pro-choice" and champion "abortion rights" and a Woman's right to choose, arguing that, since it is her body, she gets to kill the fetus if she doesn't want it. But never mind all that choice business when it comes to putting demon sugar in that body.

These crusaders for peace and social justice and bans on everything are everywhere, but they are scariest when we ourselves give them the power to make us into children and act out their malignant parental fantasies.

Take Nancy Pelosi, the poster child for the mommy state; who loudly proclaims her every action to be "for the children!" Her most recent gambit is to “do for childcare what we did for healthcare.”

No child care provider left behind.

In a rational and yes, a "just" society, these busybodies would be laughed at. In a society that valued self reliance and personal responsibility, they would rightly be considered complete and total idiots.


- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:00 AM |

 
DELUSIONAL TRIVIALITIES
Mark Steyn writes that the state of our Union is broke:

Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans:

“The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You’ve been a terrific crowd!”

I gather that Americans prefer something a little more upbeat, so one would not begrudge a speechwriter fluffing it up by holding out at least the possibility of some change of fortune, however remote. Instead, President Obama assured us at great length that nothing is going to change, not now, not never. Indeed the Union’s state — its unprecedented world-record brokeness — was not even mentioned.

In his usual dry, humorous manner, Steyn goes on:

...[A]ny historians stumbling upon a surviving DVD while sifting through the ruins of our civilization will marvel at how his accumulation of delusional trivialities was apparently taken seriously by the assembled political class.

An honest leader would feel he owed it to the citizenry to impress upon them one central truth — that we can’t have any new programs because we’ve spent all the money. It’s gone. The cupboard is bare. What’s Obama’s plan to restock it? “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,” the president told us. “Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”

But why stop there? Americans need affordable health care and affordable master’s degrees in Climate Change and Social Justice Studies, so why not take everything that Warren Buffett’s got? After all, if you confiscated the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it would come to $1.5 trillion.

Which is just a wee bit less than the federal shortfall in just one year of Obama-sized budgets. 2011 deficit: $1.56 trillion.

One of the things I spend a lot of time doing in my work as a psychiatrist is encouraging patients that I see--patients whose lives are characterized by repeatedly making bad choices; by projection (blaming everybody else for the plight they find themselves in); and by delusional thinking (not necessicaril to the point of frank psychosis, but delusional nonetheless when it comes to their situation)--to slowly learn to appreciate the distinction between the internal world and the external world.

This is called "reality testing".

The ability to appreciate that external reality is NOT the same thing as what might be going on inide your head is a critical task of development. This task is made much harder these days because the dominant philosophical model, Postmodernism, basically asserts the opposite--i.e. that there is no distinction, and that what you are thinking or feeling IS the same as, and even superior to, external reality.

This philosophy is dominant in educational circles; and itunderlies most K-12 and college curricula.

This is why so many supposedly intelligent people develop such misbegotten notions about the world. This is why so many of them end up coming to see people like me when their fantasies and delusions pop like bubbles when they eventually run into the brick wall of reality. And they always do run into that wall, sooner or later.

The accumulation of "delusional trivialities" in one person's life can and will eventually lead to significantly negative consequences for that individual at some point. When the delusions are shared by the leaders of a nation, all of its citizens will eventually suffer the consequences.

In the case of our own country, our leaders appear to be only minimally interested in the reality of our debt situation; and their trivial "fixes" are like putting a bandaid on a wound where one's lifeblood is being pumped out. Instead of stopping the bleeding, they seek new and better ways to transfuse the patient to stay ahead of imminent collapse and death.

Where are we going? We are being led down the psychopath to economic destruction by the empty-headed promises of hope and change, made by people so blinded by the enchanting delusions clanking around inside their heads, that they have been able to ignore reality for a very long time.

Reality, however, will not be ignoring them for much longer.


- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:56 AM |

 
THE DEBT GENERATION
My daughter's generation begins to speak out:




They have reason to be a teensy bit upset...just watch:

Visit USADebtClock.com to learn more!

And how long would it take to pay this debt off?



Hope and Change, Baby!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:53 AM |

 
THE LIBERAL SOLUTION: FOSTERING DEPENDENCE
The hysteria on the left regarding Newt Gingrich's calling President Obama the "Food Stamps President" and asserting that more people are no on food stamps than at any other time in history, is fascinating.

Tom Blumer says that Gingrich was factually correct, both narrowly and broadly, then goes on to document why. Blumer cites Gingrich's response to the Food Stamp question and the resulting charge of "racism" leveled at him:

When conservatives care about the poor and conservatives offer ideas to help the poor, and conservatives suggest that the poor would rather have a paycheck than a food stamp, the very liberals who have failed them at places like the New York Times promptly scream “racism,” because they have no defense for the failure of liberal institutions which have trapped poor children in bad schools, trapped them in bad neighborhoods, trapped them in crime-ridden situations. Liberal solutions have failed, and their only answer is to cry “racism” and hide.

It used to be that "welfare" was thought of in this country as a compassionate and temporary means of supporting those in poverty, with the overall goal of helping them in various ways to get out of poverty and providing for themselves as quickly as possible. Gingrich's stark contrast between the "Paycheck vs Food Stamp" attitude reflects this attitude; and it also reflects the deeply held belief that welfare, particularly in the long run, has detrimental psychological effects on the recipients and can make them permanantly disabled.

Indeed, the primary psychological consequences of such long-term charity, especially for those who are aware on some level that they are not disabled, is the slow, steady erosion of genuine self-esteem and feelings of self-worth.

In typically pervere manner, the "progressive" political left has developed a strategy to cover that problem as they forge full steam ahead in creating a permanent class of people dependent on the State. In the same way that they have distorted "self esteem" in childhood development and hyped it to the point that it fosters and enables an unhealthy narcissism, they have managed to foster a narcissistic sense of entitlement in welfare recipients, by eliminating any sense that handouts are a negative thing; and neglecting to mention that they foster dependence, passivity and continued poverty.

No, everyone is ENTITLED to handouts. Poverty is just something bad that happens to them and not ever the result of bad choices on the recipient's part; but rather the result of greedy rich people taking away their share of the American pie--nothing more. And the solution is always--not private charity (how demeaning!), but state-sponsored redistribution of wealth.

Strange as it seems today, people used to object to being the objects of handouts and charity , and the concomitant pity and condescension that it implied; except perhaps in dire circumstances. They looked to their own extended families and friends; or their church for help.

You might put aside your sense of pride and accept it for a while but, again, the goal was to "get back on your feet" as soon as possible.

Not any longer!

In an article in the NY Times from exactly 1 year ago, we are informed that, "Once Stigmatized, Food Stamps Find Acceptance":

A decade ago, New York City officials were so reluctant to give out food stamps, they made people register one day and return the next just to get an application. The welfare commissioner said the program caused dependency and the poor were “better off” without it.

With millions of jobs lost and major industries on the ropes, America’s array of government aid — including unemployment insurance, food stamps and cash welfare — is being tested as never before. This series examines how the safety net is holding up under the worst economic crisis in decades.

Now the city urges the needy to seek aid (in languages from Albanian to Yiddish). Neighborhood groups recruit clients at churches and grocery stores, with materials that all but proclaim a civic duty to apply — to “help New York farmers, grocers, and businesses.” There is even a program on Rikers Island to enroll inmates leaving the jail.

“Applying for food stamps is easier than ever,” city posters say.

The same is true nationwide. After a U-turn in the politics of poverty, food stamps, a program once scorned as “welfare,” enjoys broad new support. Following deep cuts in the 1990s, Congress reversed course to expand eligibility, cut red tape and burnish the program’s image, with a special effort to enroll the working poor. These changes, combined with soaring unemployment, have pushed enrollment to record highs, with one in eight Americans now getting aid.

Commenting on the article, The Weekly Standard noted at the time:

As with any social program, there are many people on it who are indeed needy, but the article makes clear that the revival of food stamp popularity has more to do with state and local officials who are glad to curry favor with local constituents using federal dollars.

Since they're not paying for it, local officials and a network of aid organizations happily aid the federal government in recruiting more food-stamp recipients, regardless of how much they actually need the assistance. Meet Juan Diego Castro, who demonstrates how the system works:

Juan Diego Castro, 24, is a college graduate and Americorps volunteer whose immigrant parents warned him “not to be a burden on this country.” He has a monthly stipend of about $2,500 and initially thought food stamps should go to needier people, like the tenants he organizes. “My concern was if I’m taking food stamps and I have a job, is it morally correct?” he said.

But federal law eases eligibility for Americorps members, and a food bank worker urged him and fellow volunteers to apply, arguing that there was enough aid to go around and that use would demonstrate continuing need. “That meeting definitely turned us around,” Mr. Castro said.

Of course it is morally correct, Juan! Especially in this day and age. Dependence is GOOD! Accepting a handout shouldn't make you even in the slightest bit anxious or impact your fragile self-esteem at all! You are entitled to other people's money, even if you are able to support yourself now!

The Food Stamp program (or SNAP, or whatever it is called now) is not the only program that started out with a good premise intended to help people or make life a little easier. But somehow with programs like this it always ends up fostering dependence and making eventual independence a mere pipe dream.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not saying that it is wrong in any way to help people in need. I am not saying that people who need help are bad. I am suggesting that the specific approach that has been favored by the political progressive left and the Democrats has serious, psychologically damaging consequences that lead to never-ending dependence, passivity, and continued poverty.

And that approach is to let the government do it, i.e., to use other people's money to redistribute wealth in the manner the progressives want. Donating to private charities is clearly UNprogressive. Witness their personal stinginess in this area: Romney gives 15% of his large income to charity, while Obama gives 1%. But Obama and those of his political persuasion believe they are better people because they want to give YOUR money away to help people. Romney to them (and to some deluded people on the right) is just another evil, money-grubbing capitalist.

Paychecks or Food Stamps? The Free Market or Crony Socialized Capitalism? Private charity or Government Redistribution of Wealth? Independence or Dependence? Obama-style hopeychangey or Real Hope and Real Change?

Two visions of where America should be heading couldn't be more sharply defined than these choices.



[Cartoons by Chip Bok here]
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:25 AM |

 
SAME OLD, SAME OLD USELESS RHETORIC FROM A USELESS PRESIDENT
Mickey Kaus says it was boring to read since he couldn't watch it. My response to that is that it would have been boring to watch if it hadn't been so infuriatingly empty of meaning and divisive; while all the time attempting to sound profound (8th grade profound?) and conciliatory (Presidential? Really? Really??)

And if you had the sense that you heard it all before....(h/t Instapundit)



To those of you 9th grade and above (I'm talking to YOU, Republican candidates!) will you please do something so that he does not get re-elected??? PLEASE? Otherwise, I'm throwing my support to this grownup:


- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:00 AM |

 
EVERY FOUR YEARS, AMERICA HAS A MAJOR EXERCISE IN POLITICAL NARCISSISM
It's called the Presidential Campaign, and it starts earlier and earlier with every iteration. And, of course, in between the campaigns for both parties is the usual, everyday political narcissism we see emanating from Washington DC like some bad odor hovering over the country.

What do I mean by an exercise in political narcissism?

Far too often, narcissistically flawed individuals are hopelessly attracted by the grandiose opportunities of the political arena (as well as the Hollywood arena) like moths to a flame. Their sense of self is starkly invested in the desire for power over others (always, of course, "for their own good") , constant admiration and adulation and grandiose ambitions. This makes them remarkably adept at what is called the "politics of personal destruction".

For the narcissist it is always a zero-sum game he or she plays with other individuals. From the perspective of the narcissist, if someone else "wins", the narcissist "loses". It cannot be otherwise, since on some level they know that their own talent and skills are way overblown. Hence, they cannot hope to "win" based on those talents alone. Thus, the behavior of the classic narcissist is mostly directed toward making others lose so they can win by default. To that end, there is no behavior or tactic that is considered out -of-bounds or over-the-top.

This leads us to the current state of political discourse in this country and the ubiquitous personal attacks that have become the trademark of all political campaigns in both the Republican and Democrat parties.

If you want to understand why political campaigns have become so virulent and personally vicious you need not look any farther that this sad truth. While politics still occasionally brings out those who have strong personal integrity and values; often it is the people of no demonstrable integrity and elastic values who are obsessively attracted to the field and who triumph--and that is true on both sides of the political spectrum.

By that, I mean that those who would actually make the best leaders generally opt out of the process, because they tend to be too healthy to generate the continual all-consuming rage necessary to destroy all opponents; or they lack the required-- and mostly distorted --sense of personal "perfection" and grandiosity that drives the power-hungry.

Clearly, there can be other conflicts that motivate people in politics other than a broken sense of self. This is not an indictment of all politicians; but it does apply to many. Healthy self-respect and self-worth, i.e., healthy narcissism is essential for functioning in any profession; or, for that matter, for simply functioning effectively.

There are few politicians who are deficient in grandiosity and self-serving behavior. It becomes an issue of character when their identity gets re-invented regularly to please people. A healthy individual would not want to be POTUS if in doing so he would regularly have to violate his own sense of personal honor and integrity.

Such a committment to values and ideals is based on narcissism too, but it is the healthy kind of narcissism; the kind that generates values and ideals to begin with (for a discussion of this see here).

For a typical pathological narcisssist, the only value and the only ideal is himself.

I am frequently reminded that it is hopelessly naive these days to expect the electorate to vote for a person based on what that person actually stands for; instead, these days most people respond to the negative campaign ads that slice and dice the other guy; and are mainly influenced by botoxed faces and Hollywood-packaged good-looks rather than the content of any candidate's character. The less they know of that character, the better!

Unless you can dig up some dirt; then it becomes like a reality TV show and everyone is entranced.

As far as good looks, do you imagine that a Golda Meir or a Margaret Thatcher would have a chance to become the first woman president of the US. Not these days, for sure where there is favored a certain overly-thin, botoxed, plastic look--not only for the women, but for the men.

Real personal integrity and character comes from having a consistent set of values and exhibiting behavior driven by those values. Today's classic narcissistically-driven politicians can only flutter in the political winds, and, Zelig-like, easily adopt whatever characteristics their adoring public care to project onto them.

It is easy to be tough and ruthless with political adversaries in the US political battlefield. The kind of threat political adversaries pose is hardly life-threatening (though in other, less civilized nations it may well be). Political bullies in both parties feel perfectly safe in viciously attacking and denigrating those who oppose them. And, when it happens occasionally that a political adversary unexpectedly shoots back and won't go away, the bully easily falls back on the "victim" role and whines about "vast right or left-wing conspiracies" or sheds a few tears on cue; or belligerantly attacks anyone within reach.

This is not the kind of person who can face real threats in the real world very effectively because this is not the kind of person who can effectively deal with threats they do not perceive as personal--why should they care much about any other kind, unless the latest polls indicate they should?.

The best leaders are not obsessed with themselves; or with polls; or with accumulating power by pandering to all sides.

Those leaders may, in truth, have many other personal flaws--but not particularly of the dangerously narcissistic variety. Whatever those flaws (and we all possess them), they are characterologically able to be more concerned about dealing with external reality; rather than in preserving a distorted and fragile internal one. Avenging petty slights and insults is not a high priority to a psychologically healthy person. Those healthy individuals are far more likely to direct their psychological energy toward dealing with real-world geopolitical threats that endanger both their country and the people they have the responsibility to protect; rather than using that country or the power of their office to counter threats to their endangered self and act on their grandiose fantasies about themselves.

The latter is the same psychological pathology that is rampant among dictators and dictator wannabes of all stripes. Their concern about others in their group/nation is purely of the “l’état c’est moi” variety.

That the needs of the nation, or the people they serve, might be different from their own; or that doing the right thing is often different from doing the popular thing, are foreign and dangerous concepts to the political narcissist.

The only reality they know--or care about--is the one inside themselves.

Having said all this, the voters of this country should also do a little introspection, because frequently these voters of all political persuasions, enable and encourage the narcissism of their leaders.

The sad truth is that negative campaigning works.

It appeals to the average voter who does not bother to look past the headlines or news bites to seek truth about a given situation. Oftimes, there is no "truth" to be discovered; or that can be discovered; and one must make voting decisions based on little things like character, integrity, past behavior, and mitigating factors.

It's not easy when accusations against character and integrity are hurled around unthinkingly and without consideration for facts.

And then, there is always the reality that candidates for public office, even that of the Office of the POTUS, cannot be held to an impossibly high standard of behavior, i.e., they cannot be expected to be "perfect" in every way.

If such a candidate were ever found by either political party, then I would be the first to do everything I could to ensure theat he would not get elected. Such candidates are either lying or hiding something about themselves, since such perfection is not generally a characteristic of the human species.

"Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone" seems like a good idea for these political campaigns, along with the vignette: "There is no one who has not sinned."

So, what is a voter to do?

First, we have to stop rewarding excessive political narcissism. No one is a God; no one is The One; no one is The Messiah who will lead us out of the Wilderness. While it is tempting to want to place all our faith and hope into one vessel, it is an abdication of personal responsibility and a flight into dependency and the desire for someone to take care of us.

Been there, done that as a nation--fairly recently, in fact.

It is also fairly natural, i.e. human, thing that we should flock to someone who promises to give us lots of free stuff. Children especially are attracted to such individuals. But,when you are grown up you usually have realized that getting "something or nothing" is a con, and that anyone proposing such a thing is nothing more than a con artist.

A real leader will not make unrealistic promises; his personal integrity and honesty would compel him to do what he thinks is the right thing, even if it is unpopular and difficult to do; and he would be able to state his reasons for doing what he did; and be able to persuade you that it was indeed the right thing to do--or be willing to live with the consequences afterwards if he doesn't. A real leader has nothing to hide and is honest about his mistakes.

This does not mean that a real leader is unable to compromise when the situation calls for it; but an honest man or woman who is not narcissistically preoccupied with pleasing or manipulating everyone does not compromise with fundamental values and understands when those values are at stake and when they are not.

That's why it is so important to understand a politician's basic character, because character underlies values.

Isn't it time America had a real national debate about what constitutes character in a politician?

I am not particularly satisfied with the Democratic Party answer to this quesion, because they are more concerned with demonizing anyone they label as "hypocrite" (i.e., anyone who espouses some high ieal what they consider the Good, but who personally fails to live up to it and lies to themselves about their own failures). The Democrats seem to believe that you just make every "sin" a political virtue; or accept that "anything goes" in the personal integrity sphere as long as the person is ideologically pure. They justify the way they treat corrupt or immoral Democrats is justified because Republicans are "hypocritical".

The Republicans aren't that much better, constantly espousing personal virtue and even legislating it onto others (something that the Democrats do as a matter of principle, for "our own good"). While Republicans are often intolerant of human frailty, at least they don't actively promote it like their political adversaries, whose relativistic morality makes excuses for everyone's behavior, except when it suits them politically to use such information to demonize their opponents.

Nevertheless, "demonizing one's opponents" is what it's all about these days. Candidates who refrain from doing it are punished at the polls. Candidates who try to speak about the issues have trouble gaining traction unless they too join in the demonization, even when it is against potential allies and not opponents.

So, now we come to the Republican Presidential Primary. How is one to choose?

Character does matter and so do Ideas. So does behavior and performance in both the personal and public spheres.

Each of us much decide for ourselves which candidate's character and ideas; behavior in the past and present, are most appealing to us and will work for our nation. Each of us much decide, based on past performance, past displays of character, what each candidate's future performance and character is likely to be.

As we say in psychiatry: The best predictor of FUTURE behavior is PAST behavior. Other factors may be involved, of course; and obviously, people can change for the good and give up their bad behaviors.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they are entitled to our vote. I believe in redemption for even the devil himself--but I wouldn't vote for him for President.

For example, most people will take into consideration the fact that Gingrich's past behavior in his personal and public life indicates that he had some serious character flaws which led to erratic performance and (to be blunt) narcissistic gratification chosen over responsibilities and committments. People can make mistakes and be genuinely sorry and changed for the better. The behavior I refer to happened quit a number of years ago in the past (I believe). I do not denounce Gingrich: he is only human. The question is, has he changed as he claims? Has his character improved? How will he function under stress? Will he continue to seek narcissistic gratification over his responsibilities and committments--to his family, his party and his nation? I do like his ideas; and I will be watching closely how he behaves during this primary season. In the end, he may be the best possible candidate to support--but I have not made up my mind based on the information provided and the behavior observed recently.

As for Romney, he has also some things in his past that indicate a flawed and weak character. He is definitely a good-intentioned person, but his political ambitions have lead him to support and believe in things all over the political map, left and right and East and West--a serious charge when considering character and values. I do not denounce him either for his time at Bain and I find it rather reprehensible that any conservative would, assuming such a conservative believes in the free market at all.

Santorum for me is pretty much WYSIWYG. He is politically consistent and his character seems steady. He says what he thinks wheter or not it is popular; and there is a lot to admire in that, even if you don't agree with him on some issues. He may be too much like the kind of Republican who wants to legislate morality for others, and I, for one, don't care for that. But he has some interesting ideas and he argues that he would leave most of the morality issues to the state and local levels. He will be demonized forcefully by Democrats and the Obama Administration because they disagree on policy as well as ideology. They will attempt to make it a character issue.

Paul has much to recommend him from an economic and idea perspective. But he too was so narcissistically engaged in the pursuit of his own personal glory, that he allowed some very nasty stuff to be published in his name in the past. I think he is unable to see the Big Picture in the foreign policy area, but some of his ideas there bear open discussion and debate and I am glad he is in the race to bring them up.

The only other candidate right now is Obama. I do not hesitate to say that most of his adult life has been an exercise in political narcissism and the accumulation of personal power. If Democrats and Independents who voted for him (and not a few Republicans, I would venture) are now disappointed, then they should read this post again to understand the psychological dynamics (their own as well as Obama's). Obama's ideas are old and stale. They have been tried all over the world with dismal and horrific results. All we have to do is to look at what is happening in Europe to see where it will all lead. But Obama has used these ideas to advance himself over the years

As far as Obama's character: He also has lots of skeletons in the closet for which he has received a pass from his Party; the media; and most of the voters. I suspect that if as much information about his past was known as is known about all the other candidates, there would be hell to pay.

But he came out of nowhere, a tabula rasa who was felt to be The One, The Messiah. He received a Nobel Prize for Peace for doing nothing to speak of; and several years later has brought America to the brink of economic and political disaster. His associations with people like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers are despicable, as is his ability to rapidly terminate any relationship which might do him political harm. I see him as a rather weak character overall; which strong narcissistic traits, whose ideas I totally deplore.

When it comes down to a choice, I prefer almost anyone on the Republican side and at least several on the Democratic side of the aisle.

It's going to be a long and painful year in many ways.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:21 PM |