"It's All About ME!"

The protesters highlighted in the news recently, along with all the photos of their slogans and antics could very well be described by the motto, "It's All About Me!"

Here is a great op-ed piece by Ralph Peters that examnes the sad little lives of the professional left: (hat tip: The Anchoress)

Set aside the get-Bush-at-any-cost political hustlers, the earnest college students not yet seasoned by reality, the Jew-baiting free-Palestine detachments and the very few who have thought seriously about the war and found it lacking.

You're left with the legions of Cindy Sheehan wannabes — meandering souls who, were they only capable of honesty, would be wearing t-shirts that read, "It's not about the war, it's about me!"

Were we able to psychologically profile the demonstrators, we'd find that most of them have a great deal in common: Disappointing lives, failed relationships and the desperate need for a cause of any kind. If we weren't at war, they'd be marching to save pinworms from drug-company aggression.

Of course, opposing a war involving American troops is the best cause of all. Our country has disappointed the protesters intimately — failing to hand them, free and clear, the lives to which they feel themselves entitled. So forget that our troops are re-enlisting at record rates and willingly risking their lives in a war they believe in. The self-satisfying cry of the demonstrators is "Bring Our Troops Home Now!"

It would be far easier to be sympathetic if a single spokesperson for the media-amplified anti-war movement laid out a convincing model of what would happen in Iraq or Afghanistan if our troops just came home.

It all reminds me of the patient I was seeing on September 11th, 2001; who, when I asked her how she felt about the attack on the WTC, said: "What do I care about a bunch of people in New York? What about ME??? Look at you! You don't care what's going on with me now. All you care about is that some plane flew into a building."

Normally, I don't feel like strangling my patients. Even though she was absolutely correct in what she said (I wasn't thinking about her particular problems at that moment in history), I still wanted to strangle her.

One of the frequent lefty commenters on this site has said repeatedly in his angry comments about Bush and the Iraq War that he "doesn't give a sh** about Iraqis."

Just like my patient didn't give a damn about those people in the WTC in New York.

Why should they? In their sad little minds, the world should be all about them. All eyes and attention should be on them all the time. Of course it isn't, but that fact only further stimulates the rage and acting out behavior.

Peters describes their acting out behavior as "Protest Therapy", but participating in these protest circuses is far from "therapeutic". Unfortunately, the attention the participants receive--from the media and from other unhappy little souls of the left--only reinforces their underlying narcissism and encourages exhibitionistic and childish behavior that contributes little or nothing of substance to their own or to other people's lives.

The goal of any effective therapy would be exactly the opposite.