IRAN IS VOTING FOR OBAMA ! WHAT A SURPRISE

And, sadly, the President actually thinks this will help him in the big debate on Foreign Policy tonight.

Ira Strauss comments on the latest October Surprise:

It’s from Iran again, an October move that could throw the election, and this time it’s for real. Iran is near to agreeing to hold direct nuclear talks with the U.S. It throws a big bone to Obama, on the eve of his final foreign-policy debate with Romney.

Plainly, it does not want to face a Romney presidency.

It’s not something dreamed up after the fact, as in the 1980s “October Surprise.” This time around, the story comes from the parties that stand to benefit from it, and it’s out there in real time — indeed, with exquisite campaign timing.

And, guess what! Israel is out of the loop! Just Us and the Iranians, all cozying up for yet another little chat.

Obviously, both the Mullahs of Iran and President Obama think the American public is pretty stupid. And they may well be right.

I've said it before on this blog, and I'll say it again: the Iranians have got all their religious ducks in a row to actually use nuclear weapons they likely already possess or anticipate possessing (remember Pakistan?).

That is my psychological interpretation and it dovetails with the arrogant, smirking demeanor that always accompanys the calculated baiting of the West by Ahmadinejad, the Iranian Psychopath-in-Chief. Just last month, that same psychopath made his apocalyptic intentions crystal clear to the world.

Whether it is making suggestive remarks about the state of Israel and its future demise; or speculating on the 12th IMAM who will usher in a New World Order (no wonder he wants Obama to win the Presidency!), Ahmadinejad always tries to appear to be a beacon of reason and nuanced diplomacy.

He reminds me a lot of many of the paranoid patients I have dealt with over the years.

All the behavior and rhetoric of the past five years strongly suggest that the Iranians will certainly use their nuclear weapons capability at a moment of their own choosing--negotiations and diplomacy be damned.

Of course, they would want that moment to be a grand, heroic, Islamic gesture. They would need such a gesture to maximize their sense of Arab honor while simultaneously shaming their hated enemy, the Jews. They would need for the gesture to come at exactly at the moment when they can most appear to be the enlightened purveyors of "peace" and "brotherhood".

The hapless intellectual leaders of the West will continue to bend over backwards and even engage in desperate contortions to appease and mollify the sociopathic bullies of Islam; but that will only escalate their violent behavior and give them the rationale they need to press on, more self-righteously convinced that they are superior. This is the completely predictable psychological response to appeasement, solicitation, and compassionate understanding. It's simple really.

Bullies will always push the envelope of bad behavior when they think they can get away with it. They think they can get away with it when Obama is the leader-from-behind of the Free World.

And they are getting away with it, aren't they? Remember the sense of relief and jubilation with which the recent NIE was received by almost everyone. Whew! We don't have to worry about Iran any more! Isn't that great? Except, we now know it was a lie.

Just as the latest manipulation 2 weeks before the election is a lie. Don't you wonder exactly who the liars are?

The whole October Surprise is designed to bring a transient sense of safety and security that is only possible with psychological denial. Osama bin Laden is dead and Al Qaeda is on the run! (escept they're not as 9/11/12 proves). Iran wants to negotiate! (except they really don't and have shown no motivation to actually negotiate ANY of the times they have agreed to sit down and talk).

No rational person wants to believe that Iran could be so crazy and suicidal that they would really try to "wipe Israel off the map." The 2006 NIE was tremendously reassuring because it suggested that the religious fanatics of Iran are really motivated by rational considerations, just like us! They abandoned the quest for nuclear weapons in 2003! They want peace, after all!

Wrong.

They clearly don't want something to happen that would interrupt or put a premature end to achieving their ultimate goal. And logically, rationally, they will do whatever they need to make sure of that. It's their ultimate goal that's the problem.

Don't forget that reason and logic can--and frequently are--used to promote the most illogical, irrational and insane of objectives. In the end, reason and logic are only intellectual tools and their usefulness depends entirely on the reality and truth of the premises for which they are being used. If the premises or objectives for which they are being used are bogus; or if they are not what you think they are; or the opposite of what your own would be under the circumstances; then it hardly matters that the Mullahs and Ahmadinejad give the appearance of being reasonable fellows negotiating rationally with the West.

I can easily imagine Ahmadinejad rubbing his hands together like The Simpson's Mr. Burns, cackling, "Exxxxcellent!" as they promise one thing even as they do the opposite--which logically and rationally proves to them the superiority of Islam and the inevitability of Allah's will.

It's no use saying that by pursuing the development of a nuclear warhead they would use against Israel doesn't make any sense and would be completely irrational, not to mention downright suicidal.

They have repeatedly stated they think it would be worth the human price.

Just think of Ahmadinejad as the ultimate, high-tech suicide bomber who has wrapped that nuclear bomb belt securely around his entire country.

I have said before that I hope I am wrong in this assessment, but all my psychiatric instincts continue to tell me that this is a situation where we are facing imminent suicidal and homicidal behavior. And, the lives of millions are in the balance....



UPDATE: And then there's this: Iranian media say that Romney will steal the election and that riots are expected....

And this, from the UN (guess who they want to win?):

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights has warned Americans not to elect Republican Mitt Romney in next month’s presidential election, saying that doing so would be “a democratic mandate for torture.”

I can't think of a worse torture than to have to live under Obamanomics and Obama foreign policy for another 4 years.

OBAMA MEETS THE BITCH

Watch Biden, Axelrod, Gibbs, and Carney blame the State Department and the intelligence community for the failures that led to the attack and the conflicting storyline that emerged afterwards at the link.

This brings up the psychological phenomenon of deflecting blame, which is a form of scapegoating; and which, in psychiatry, is considered a form of projective identification and/or psychological displacement (see here for a discussion--both are types of denial).

In order to avoid feeling bad about something, a common defense is to transfer or displace responsibility and blame to someone else, or to a group. The most common example of scapegoating is "anti-semitism"; and blaming the Jewish people for all sorts of evils has become a well-established and psychological mechanism in the Arab and Muslim world to deflect awareness of their own cultural and religious inadequacies. It also allows them to believe they are "peaceful" and "loving" people with a "peaceful" religion, since all their own hostility and rage is displaced onto the evil Jew.

The definition of a scapegoat is "one that bears th e blame for others; one that is the object of irrational hostility."

Scapegoats are common when the psychological defenses of denial and projection are being used. Projection, to quickly remind you, is the psychological process of attributing one's own unacknowledged or unacceptable feelings, thoughts and behaviors to others.

The Arab world has this defense mechanism down pat. One of the expressions of a shame culture is the rampant psychological projection and refusal to accept responsibility for the atrocities committed in the name of Islam. Not only are we regularly subjected to imams, religious leaders, and leaders of Muslim states stating even now that 9/11 or the London bombings were not committed by Muslims; they also regularly blame the Jews for such acts. In this way they can avoid the shame of taking responsibility for evil.

Now, let's move on to the Obama Administration, and President Obama himself; who never met a bad outcome for his own beloved policies or ideology that he couldn't blame on someone else.

It is the same psychological mechanism as scapegoating.

Projective identification is the more immature (or primitive) aspect of the defense mechanism; one that children routinely use ("Not me!")



As you can see from the Family Circle cartoon, it's a way for a child to deflect blame and remain innocent of the charges leveled against him (or her) by an angry parent.

Usually, for a child, this is an unconscious process (and perfectly normal, I might add); but if it is observed in an adult, others may rightly begin to wonder if the person is out of touch with reality.

Adults are more sophisticated (unless they are also psychotic) and they tend to use psychological displacement , a more neurotic defense mechanism. It can be unconscious or done with full consciousness, since self-deception is a key feature of avoidence of responsibility and the assignment of blame to others.

Obama has spent the last four years blaming his predescessor for his troubles. He has spent the last four years blaming Republicans for being "obstructive" (despite the fact that he had a majority in both houses for 2 years; and despite the fact that he vowed he would "bring us together). Obama has found relatively willing scapegoats--i.e., people who would fall on their swords for his sade--in all those he threw under the bus along the way.

Now Hillary Clinton has taken "full responsibility for the security situation in Benghazi"; and thank heavens! a full investigation is ongoing, the results of which will be available sometime after November 6. But Hillary knows full well that "the buck" doesn't stop with the Secretary of State. It stops with the Commander in Chief, who was AWOL in Las Vegas (or was it on the golf course? I forget. I just know he wasn't attending his security briefings because they're such a drag to his superior intellect).

But I can say with full confidence after Benghazi and the death of our Ambassador and other Americans on 9/11/12, that Clinton and President Obama (her putative boss and the Commander in Chief where the buck ultimately stops) have had their 3 AM wake-up call; and they have been found unprepared and inadequate for the job. Think "deer in the headlights"....

Instead of keeping America safe in reality; they are more concerned with appearances. "Bin Laden is dead" they proclaimed and the terror threat presumably vanquished. 9/11/12 just did not fit into either of their narratives. So what's a good leftist to do? DENY, PROJECT, DISPLACE! Anything but the truth; anything but accept the consequences. Move along, nothing to see here, and it's all Mitt Romney's fault for politicizing it all.

Reality is such a bitch.



[other cartoons by Paul Nowak here)

BEYOND THE RULE OF REASON

Here is Andrew McCarthy on the Obama Administration's denial of any wrong-doing or cover-up (the buck always stops somewhere else with Obama and his friends) on Benghazi:

The desultory vice-presidential debate underscored that, even if there were not a thousand other reasons for denying President Obama a second term, the Libya scandal alone would be reason enough to remove him.

By the time the ineffable Joe Biden took center stage Thursday night, Obama operatives had already erected a façade of mendacity around the jihadist murder of our ambassador to Libya and three other U.S. officials. The vice president promptly exploited the debate forum to trumpet a bald-faced lie: He denied the administration’s well-established refusal to provide adequate security for the diplomatic team. Just as outrageously, he insisted that the intelligence community, not the election-minded White House, was the source of the specious claim that an obscure, unwatched video about Islam’s prophet — a video whose top global publicists are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — spontaneously sparked the Benghazi massacre.

Our emissaries in Libya understood that they were profoundly threatened. They communicated fears for their lives to Washington, pleading for additional protection. That is established fact. Yet Biden maintained that it was untrue: “We weren’t told they wanted more security again. We did not know they wanted more security again.”

Shameful: so much so that even Jay Carney, no small-time Libya propagandist himself, would feel compelled to walk Biden’s denial back the next morning. But the vice president was far from done. His assertion that “the intelligence community told us” that protests over the video had sparked the murders of our officials was breathtaking, even by Biden standards.

Nevermind that Obama had better things to do than keep up with national intelligence or security; or that he had no time to meet with Israel's Netanyahu, because he was too busy being "eye candy" on The View.

When it comes to the fact that Islamic fanatics want to kill Americans and destroy our way of life, Obama simply puts his hands over his ears and refuses to listen. He killed Bin Laden all by himself, don't you know? And that ends the discussion.

Let's admit that reality can be a bit ambiguous and that there can be as many interpretations of it as there are people on earth. But, as Gagdad Bob points out, that fact

should not be taken as an excuse to believe that all interpretations are of equal value. Nevertheless, this latter belief is the hateway drug into the various pneumapathologies of the left, e.g., multiculturalism, moral relativism, the "living Constitution," etc.

Again, if there is no objective way to arbitrate between competing versions of reality, then it comes down to a matter of raw power.

And, as Dr. Godwin suggests, this behavior is literally what makes hell on earth, "...for hell is anyplace that is beyond the rule of reason -where reason, quite simply, does not apply."

Obama is all about the rule of appearances. His administration has been slowly and inexorably leading this country to a place beyond the rule of reason.

And his Administrations preference for appearance over reality; relativism over truth; and style over substance derives from postmodern metaphysics, which holds that there is no objective reality and my version of it is as good as yours so nyah nyah nyah (stick tongue out to indicate the conversation is over).

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that describes existence, and it leads directly to Epistemology, which concerns itself with knowledge.

METAPHYSICS (What is existence?)----> EPISTEMOLOGY (How do we know it?)

The answers derived from these two branches of philosophy lead directly to several other key branches of philosophy, including Ethics (how should we behave?) and Politics (what degree of force is permissable?). So you can see that one's metaphysics is a crucial foundation to how one interprets the world and how one behaves in it.

For those of you who think all this philosophy business is too abstract and irrelevant to your life; you are very very wrong. Catastrophically wrong.

These ideas have everything to do with your life and how you live it. They are also the crux of why the world we live in seems to be more and more incomprehensible and insane.

When you begin with the belief that reality doesn't exist outside your own head, then, it is just a very short--and minor--leap to accepting that words don't matter and can change meaning on a whim; or that it doesn't matter how you behave; that everything is relative anyway, including truth and morality.

But, just because reality is ambiguous and sometimes difficult to determine; it hardly gives someone carte blanche to say that every interpretation is of equal value and should be treated as such. That way lies madness...and madness is exactly what we are dealing with in today's world.

You can deconstruct it however you want, but ideas matter. Reality matters.

BOOM!

Romney comes through and dominates the debate.

The booms you are hearing are leftist heads exploding as they come to grips with the myth they manufactured about their messiah.

Facing an unpleasant reality is always painful.

Perhaps now they can begin to face the degree of devastation the One has left in the last four years??

Nah....in a few days they will go right back into denial and have devised a rationalization for Obama's performance--or should I say, found someone to blame for it.

Watch and learn, kiddies, about supremehypermegadenial....


[political cartoons by Gary Varvel]

UPDATE: The political right definitely should not gloat at last night's exposure of Obama's mediocrity and fecklessness. Considering what is happening all over the world today with wars and rumors of wars (in Syria, Turkey, China, Japan, North and South Korea etc. etc.):

Someone at another site pointed out that the American public just saw the President Obama that Putin and all the other bad guys knew about all along. Now we know why they were kicking him around. But if he was weak then his recent public humiliation has made him even weaker now.

Nobody should gloat because he’s still the President until January. And in the meantime, every shark within miles is going to be homing in on the scent of blood. They will emboldened to try a stunt because they think they can get away with it.

The NYT has it right. Obama’s caught between looking weak by not striking back and lighting a fuse to a bomb that may blow up in his face. What can the President do? What all Presidents have done before. Ask for help both within the his own party and across the aisle.

I know what I think is the likely scenario that Obama and his handlers will choose and it is unlikely to be a sudden outbreak of bipartisaship for the good of the nation....I hope I am wrong.

THE VINDICTIVE TRUTH

Wretchard has a great post talking about "The Fifth Kind of Man":

The problem with an administration that relies upon spin is that it forgets how vindictive the truth can be. The truth bites back — and hard. But in an environment where politicized media and bureaucracy will tell its masters only what they want to hear the truth is concealed beneath the talking points until it is too late. In that regard, perhaps the Iranians should have the last word. A thirteenth-century Persian-Tajik poet, Ibn Yamin wrote that there were four types of men.

One who knows and knows that he knows… His horse of wisdom will reach the skies.
One who knows, but doesn’t know that he knows… He is fast asleep, so you should wake him up!
One who doesn’t know, but knows that he doesn’t know… His limping mule will eventually get him home.
One who doesn’t know and doesn’t know that he doesn’t know… He will be eternally lost in his hopeless oblivion!

And then there’s the fifth type of man. The man who doesn’t want to know because he thinks it doesn’t matter.

I differ a little from Wretchard on the last: it's not that he thinks it doesn't matter as much as it actually matters so much--and that is precisely why why he doesn't want to know about it.

The truth is indeed vindictive--but in a horribly passionless way. Likewise, reality, the space where truth resides, has a calm persistence and patience that is unmatched by even the most desperate attempts by the human species to avoid it.

Nevertheless, human ingenuity has discovered many ways of temporarily hiding from the truth; obscuring the truth; and when necessary, lying about the truth in order to avoid reality and its consequences.



I have written extensively on the pervasive psychological denial of the political left (see here, here , here, and here, for example). And, I frequently point out that denial is an "equal opportunity" defense mechanism engaged in by all human beings; it is an involuntary, built-in psychic response designed to protect an individual from precipitously having to face unwanted, unacceptable or threatening feelings, thoughts or behavior. The mind simply blocks out reality and truth--and sees what it wants to see or becomes blind to reality.

The consequences of denial can vary from extremely mild to extremely extreme. It depends entirely on what aspect of truth or reality is being denied.

Let's consider some of the more negative consequences of psychological denial:

• In the longer-term, denial requires a continued compromises with reality to maintain the pretense that "Everything is fine!" or "Nothing to see here, move along!" Eventually, delusional thinking, along with paranoia and its inevitable conspiracy theories begin to take the place of rational thought in those who deny reality for long periods of time. (see all the 9/11 conspiracy theorists for examples in our own country; or the more recent comments of former President Clinton--once considered a "moderate" democrat, who now fully adheres to the model that the Republicans have manufactured a culture of fear in order to fool the American public into thinking we are at war (read the transcript linked below). See here and here for some examples in the Muslim world, which is rife with conspiracies and which could not exist as a cohesive society without them).

• The denier must then place the blame for the unacceptable reality on someone else and that leads to increased conflict between those who are in denial and those who aren't. Efforts to maintain their denial consumes them and will lead them to escalate their anger, rage and attempts at external blame the denial becomes untenable and ever more obvious.

• The denier will begin distort language and logic to rationalize and justify their behavior(examples of this are too numerous to mention, but I have discussed it here , here and here) . Eventually, cognitive strategies and rational argument will be abandoned altogether by the denier, because those strategies are not sustainable and are unable to convince others; at which point the person in denial will simply refer to his feelings or emotions as the sole justification.

• The denier will feel justified in acting out against those who threaten the peacefulness of their fantasy (just ask Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the filmmaker behind "Innocence of Muslims"). Remember, for example, the attacks and attempts to silence authors like Mark Steyn because his book , America Alone, discusses the genocidal demographic trajectory of Europe as they refuse to acknowledge or deal with the reality of Islamic immigration.

Nevertheless, the degree of denial engaged in by the the Obama Administration and their supporters on the political left has been boundless and very creative.

Usually, I give the political left and its more clueless adherents the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that their unwillingness to face reality was unconscious; and was so pronounced and pervasive because they could not accept the truth that history and the real world had revealed about their beloved and bankrupt ideology. That ideology, whether it is called Marxism, communism or socialism is fundamentally anti-human .

What happens when psychological denial ceases to be unconscious and becomes a deliberate, willful, and consciously evil behavior-- in spite of all the accumulated evidence of its malignant impact on real people in the real world?

At that point we can safely assume that we are no longer dealing with a purely defensive structure in the psyche; we are dealing with aggressive, unadulterated sociopathy.

I believe that last statement accurately describes the Obama Administration.

The traditional definition of sociopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of social responsibility and failure to adapt to ethical and social standards of the community.

If we think about that definition for a moment, we can perhaps begin to understand what is going on in our world today; and the reason that a huge number of people have embraced a sociopathic lifestyle.

Under the pervasive influence of postmodern philosophy and rhetoric, the ethical and social standards of the community have, unfortunately, been slowly evolving and eroding.

In western culture, ethical and moral standards used to be anchored to the real world (i.e., to reality); but in the postmodern wilderness in which the political left and most of its most visible spokespeople--i.e., leaders in the Democratic Party-- wander aimlessly, ethics and morality are relative and "anchored" to feelings and whim; which inevitably unleashes the baser and more vile aspects of human nature.

The 20th century became the playground (and litter box) for the narcissist; and by the time the 21st century rolled around, malignant narcissism was not even considered deviant, it had gone mainstream. Since psychopathology continually evolves and worsens if it is not confronted and dealt with, what we have now in our culture, particularly the political system, is the endstage of psychological evolution under postmodernism: the sociopath who disguises his or her sociopathy by selflessness (it used to be marketed as "Hope and Change", now even that has been changed to "[Ignore the truth and reality of what my policies have brought about in the economy and the world, and let's just move] FOWARD!"

These selfless sociopaths are people who couldn't care less about the individual human being. Individual human beings are expendable; even vast numbers of them--as long as they stand in the way of the implementation of the sociopath's great ideas and compassionate execution of those ideas. They are the fodder that can be used to build "great" societies, utopian fantasies and collectivist wet-dreams.

It used to be that with the rise of civilization, political sociopaths--both selfiash and selfless-- were (thankfully) few and far between. Even so, when they appeared in history, they wreaked havoc and destroyed lives with great abandon for "the greater good". Needless to say, a central aspect of the 'greater good' was always the advancement of their own glorious self and their ideas.

We can thank primarily the political left and its useful idiots for the persistent, unyielding, and willful celebration of--and ultimately mainstreaming of--malignant narcissism. We have entered the age of postmodern sociopathy and nihilism.

What does it matter if the lives and freedoms of so many individuals are sacrificed to the murderous oppressors of the world? If you "kick out the wealthy" then you have the wonderful socialist paradise of Cuba; or the magnificent utopia of North Korea with all their misery, poverty, oppression and leftist enlightenment! We will all watch with wonder and awe as France implements the ultimate redistributionist fantasy of a 75% tax on the "wealthy". Is there anyone who can possibly believe that this will solve France's financial problems? Believe me, the next phase will be the demands for a 100% tax on those evil rich people who cause all the worlds problems with their wealth.

Under the "enlightened" and "progressive" left, wealth will be redistributed until there is nothing left to redistribute; at which point the human mind will be completely enslaved and even more scapegoats will be deivered to the altars of progressivism--but so what? As the eminent leftist and quintessential nihilist Joseph Stalin once remarked, "Death solves all problems - no man, no problem."

In the long run we are all dead anyway, right? Now there's a vindictive truth for you....

THE MORAL SAVAGES OF ISLAM AND THEIR COUNTERPARTS ON THE POLITICAL LEFT

Americans apparently are not permitted, even in our supposedly free society, to say anything nasty about Islam, Mohammed or Allah.

On the other hand, it goes without saying that Christianity, Jesus and God are fair game for attack.

Americans are not permitted to question how peaceful Islam is--even when hordes of its adherents appear to believe that it is not only "OK" to kill innocents in the name of their vicious god, it is a moral imperative to do so.

And, Americans, at least, no longer have to wait for CAIR or other "peaceful" Muslim advocacy groups (it's in quotes because the juxtaposition of "peaceful" and "Muslim" is oxymoronic) to file the appropriate complaint with the appropriate politically correct organization in the oh so politically correct Obama administration--We have a President and a Justice Department who will do it for them!

Can a UN Resolution denouncing blasphemy against Islam be far behind? And, why wouldn't Obama and his UN mouthpiece Susan Rice (who beclowned herself on all the networks recently) support such a resolution in solidarity with the "peaceful" nations of Islam who are demanding that this happen, even as they persecute Christians and Jews and any other religious beliefs in their own countries, cites and homes.

As the late Christopher Hitchens noted "The useless and meaningless term Islamophobia, now widely used as a bludgeon of moral blackmail, is "testimony to the effectiveness of all of the horrific violence and intimidation, including public beheadings" done in the name of Islam's god.

The truth is that "Islamophobia" is not a phobia at all-- it is a completely rational fear of an insane and irrational movement that threatens to swallow the world. Being afraid of the "religion of peace" after the innumerable acts of violence, terror and depravity committed in the name of its god across the globe is not an exaggerated response to its savagery; it is not at all inexplicable; and most certainly it is not illogical in the slightest.

Being afraid of ruthless moral savages who fanatically believe in Islam as they continually denounce and limit freedom of speech and thought; as well as spit on all the key values of Western civilization, is far from a phobia--rather, it is a natural response to the sad reality of Islam as it is practiced in much of the Middle East and around the world.

This is not to say that there are not some rational and reasonable Muslims who decry what is being done. I'm sure there are many. But they cannot or will not stand against the violence for long. They are simply too cowed and frightened by the thugs who we see on TV day in and day out who speak for Islam.

And, who wouldn't be? These same moral savages think nothing of killing those in their own religion if it suits their purposes: especially if they question or disagree with the brutality.

The leaders of the Islamic world have long desired to mandate a sort of meta-Islamophobia--i.e., an Islamophobicphobia, that is, to inculcate a horrific fear of even making the slightest criticizine Islam for fear of being thought Islamophobic and therefore beyond the pale..

There is much written both in the Middle East and in the West about the proposition that Islam is "under siege" and that hatred of Islam is a rising concern. Riots, let alone mere complaints against individuals who satirize and mock the religion are getting all too common. The delicate sensibilities of Muslims are so finely tuned for any possible affront to their religion, their sad little prophet, or their blood-thirsty god, that they appear to be unable to appreciate that killing people indiscriminantly in the name said god or prophet only demonstrates their own moral, cultural, and religious bankruptcy.

If Islam is "under siege" or becomes so, its practitioners have only themselves to blame. I am sure that I am among millions and millions of those who didn't give a single thought to Islam or about Mohammed prior to the last 11 years. I rather liked my life being Islam-free, Mohammed-free and mostly Allah-free.

But now that they have forced me to think about them, I can see that "live and let live is not one of their beliefs; rather, it is "submit or die."

I do not intend to do either.

Those those who deny the reality of the threat of Islam to freedom and civilization; or prentend that it doesn't exist are not only reluctant to admit that the wave of terror and irrational hatred sweeping the world is specifically associated with the religion of Islam; always seem to immediately blame the victims of the terror and the objects of the irrational hatred as the one's responsible for its existence.

Islam and its teachings are frequently given a free pass by both the political left and the always submissive media. Shouts of "God is Great" that precede each atrocity apparently have nothing to do with what is written in the Quran.

It is getting harder and harder to keep a straight face at the knee-jerk denial and sanctimonious utterings of the Obama Adminsitration and its minions, let alone organizations like CAIR and UN "human rights" committees, who encourage and enable the violence and terror in the name of some bizarre quest for acceptance from the savages.

Meanwhile, as institutionalized anti-semitism becomes all too acceptable and its putrid hate seeps like a toxic cloud into all the nations of the world, all reasonable peoples can see the Islamic noose that begins to tighten around Israel, surrounded on all sides by nations of moral savages. Meanwhile, our enlightened left, including many deluded American Jews, only seem to be able to see the actions of Israel as threatening to world peace.

The Obama Administration has sold Israel down the Euphrates River (or maybe the (De-Nile River). On the surface, it seems inexplicable and unreal; yet, the progressive, postmodern left feel oppressed by Christianity and Judaism/Israel for one reason and one reason alone: the ideology of the left and that of Islam are fundamentally similar.

Both intend to impose ideological sharia on the world, if they can get away with it. Both are willing to use the other to help them do it; and both reject reason, objective truth, and reality as a matter of ideological and philosophical principle.

Each responds to criticism and mockery in the same manner--one with the ubiquitous charge of "racism" and the other with the equally ridiculous charge of "Islamophobia"

In using these "dogwhistle" epithets to attack anyone with whom theiy ideologically disagree, they forget that it is only dogs who are structured to hear that kind of whistle to begin with.

Islamophobia?

Anyone who by now has not realized that most Muslims, by reason of their deafening silence alone, have given carte blanche to the fanatics in their midst, is either completely out of touch with reality, or living on another planet (e.g., planet Obama).

The leftist doctrines of Multiculturalism and political correctness, of course, are on their side in this bizarre Muslim sense of entitlement.....which is exactly why all of a sudden we are seeing multiculturalism being rejected in many parts of Europe for the leftist scam it is (see here and here for further discussion of how the left has aided and abetted Islamic fanatics by making it easy for them to undermine western values and institutions--hell, the left sees them as an important ally in that regard).

So, let me say for the record that I utterly reject being labeled as "Islamophobic". Rather, I have a healthy, rational fear of a religion that aggressively seeks either my submission or death and will fight with every means at my disposal to stop the spread of their toxic ideology.

I have a healthy fear of a religion that accepts the deliberate torture and murder of those they deem "blasphemous."

Anyone who accurately highlights the ongoing barbarism and moral depravity of this religion should be celebrated in the West--that is, they would be, if the countries and leadership of Western Civilization still had any moral decency or sense of morality at all.

But the moral compass of Western Civilization was long ago perverted by the postmodern political left and their moral relativism.

And another thing: the word "Islamophobia" is bandied around as if it were somehow a complementary concept for Muslims, similar to what "antisemitism" is for Jews.

This is objectively not the case.

There has been no wholesale exploitation or abuse of Muslims anywhere in the world--except by other Muslims (Saddam and the Taliban come to mind; as well as all the other oppressive regimes in the Middle East, like Libya, Iran, Lebanon, Syria etc.). There has been no genocide of Muslims--except by other Muslims . There have been no systematic outrages perpetrated on the people of Islam--except by other people of Islam. Palestinians suffer (and have suffered) more at the hands of their "sympathetic" Muslim brothers and sisters in other countries of the Middle East--none of whom can be bothered to allow them to live in their own countries except in "camps" (several generations of Palestinians have now lived in sordid and primitive conditions in Lebanon and elsewhere because of the "generosity" and "support" of their Muslim siblings).

And further, if you are someone who believes Israel has oppressed the Palestinians; consider just for a moment the fact that the poor Palestinians would much rather kill Jews and each other than work to better their own lot in life--even after multiple Israeli concessions for peace.

Let me be clear that I am not saying that real Islamophobic behavior cannot be the result of projection or paranoia on the part of some individuals or groups. For it is the case that ANY CONVENIENT GROUP MAY BE USED TO PROJECT ONE'S OWN UNACCEPTABLE FEELINGS ONTO. Historically, however, it has been the Jews who have been the recipients of such pathology.

The leaders of Islam appear to suffer from a bad case of "victim envy"; for all intents and purposes desirous of acquiring the label of victim even as they go around victimizing the rest of the world with their suicidal rage; and even as they plan the final solution for the demonized Jewish population.

Objectively, there is just no case at all to support the idea that other groups are systematically or institutionally "projecting" their own unacceptable feelings or acting out toward the Muslim population at large; nor are the scant number of individual cases of prejudice very compelling either; despite the unbelievable rhetorical flourishes of the political left and other Islamic radical apologists.

On the contrary, there is much evidence to suggest that the world is trying its best (perhaps trying too hard) to be decent and give as much leeway to Islamic anger as is possible; and is even bending over backwards to make sure Muslims understand that they are being treated equally, or even more equally in some cases, with all other religions and groups. How's that working out, do you suppose?

When "Islamophobia" is used as a bludgeon to accuse and attack anyone who makes the mildest criticism of Islam--no matter how well-meaning that criticism may be--the attack becomes yet another psychological projection by Muslims that deflects and hides their own sense of shame, humiliation and inferiority.

I seriously doubt that Islam or Arab culture would have any impact on the world today; and the rest of the world could comfortably watch as that culture rushing toward primitivism and obsolescence was eventually consigned to the dustbin of history.

In the end, both anti-Semitism and the accusations of Islamophobia are parallel symptoms of a single disease that is running rampant in Islamic countries and among those raised in a religion that thrives on hatred and violence, but somehow manages to believe in its heart that it is loving and peaceful and following the will of God.

No amount of leftist PC sunshine and lollipops can change the fact that Islamic culture enables and encourages the worst of human nature; as does the whole anti-human, anti-reality, postmodern progressive agenda.

I suppose it would be way too much to hope for that President Obama would courageously and aggressively defend freedom of speech and stand up for America's values instead of apologize for them when he speaks at the UN this week--but I can dream, can't I?

UPDATE: Pakistan says it is time for the US to "rethink" free speech. I would dearly like to have the President of the US tell them to go to hell. I certainly have no problem passing on that message to them.

UPDATE II: I agree with VDH: Please, Mr. President, no more apologies for free speech.

THE RELENTLESS PURSUIT OF THE TRIVIAL

From Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club, we get this insight:

There is in that obsession with the trivial — pursued relentlessly in the midst of the collapse of demographic, economic and military strength — something of the moral of the age. A civilization completely consumed by political correctness, which required counseling for the merest shock, which believed it would preside over the End of History, is now bankrupt, unable to defend itself and without a single darned light bulb in the hardware store. What lesson was it? Perhaps it is this: never mind if you lose your pants as long as you can save your face. Or as someone else put it, those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

This is, of course, not the kind of 'madness' that really debilitated psychiatric patients exhibit; it is the 'madness' that comes with persistent psychological denial of reality; the insanity that derives from frantic attempts to avoid dealing with a real, imminent threat to one's health, or safety, or life; and displacing one's attention to somthing unimportant, non-threatening, and trivial.

You can think of psychological displacement as a special form of denial. It allows the individual to feel as if they are in control by focusing on a less-threatening problem so as not to have to deal with the real threat.

What do you do when faced with the 'collapse of demographic, economic and military strength?' Ban lightbulbs because lightbulbs are the imminent threat you can deal with.

What do you do when faced with the threat of a nuclear Iran? Why, legalize illegal immigrants; or improve your golf skills; or, even work on your re-election campaign. In the end, you can always blame Bush or the Republicans or Congress.

The entire purpose of displacement is to gain control over the conflict you won't acknowledge. By focusing on something you have some control over, the psyche is much less threatened. You can even pretend, that if it weren't for X,Y, or Z, everything would be perfect hunky dory.

Anything is preferable to focus on instead of the real danger.

Displacement can be thought of as an slightly more mature type of projection. In projection, the individual remains oblivious to the fact that he owns and is responsible for the emotions that he imagines are in the person or group into which he is projecting. In other words, ownership of the idea and/or the emotional affect is banished from the self.

In displacement, the idea or emotion is deflected from one object to another, less threatening one, but the ownership of the negative emotion or idea (e.g. animosity, anger) is retained--and is often raised to a virtue. A common example is the person who is angry at a loved one, but settles for kicking the dog. The anger is evident in the action and is still owned by the person experiencing it, but the object of the anger has been displaced by the dog.

The relentless pursuit of the trivial is a way of avoiding the essential. It allows you to lie to yourself and maintain that oh so important self-esteem (i.e., "saving face") that is also relentlessly pursued in today's world..

If the world comes crashing down around you, well that happens in the future. And, in the long run we're all dead anyway.

SUPERMEGAHYPER DENIAL

It seems that all my posts recently have had the theme of psychological denial.

But clearly I am mistaken about this. It's not just simple denial by any means.

Like a bacteria that has metamorphed into a "superbug" which no antibiotic can kill, the supermegahyper denial that is rampaging around the world, infecting almost all countries appears to be unable to be stopped by any rational antidote.

The golden hour has passed and events are now out of our hands:

At the moment the United States seems to be talking from a position of impotence. As Lee Smith wrote in the Weekly Standard, “the Obama administration can’t do a damn thing.”[....]

Russia has been accused by Hillary Clinton of arming its allies with attack helicopters. “A shipment of attack helicopters is “on the way from Russia to Syria, which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday. But it is unclear what the administration, having given its warning, will do for an encore.

All it can do, for the present, is lead from behind, a strategy which is looking and less and less effective.

Like a set of dominoes poised to fall, Egypt is on the brink; Syria, fueled by Russia and Iran could ignite a war with Israel (via Hezbollah) to distract the world's attention from its own atrocities; Iran still pursues the means by which to destroy Israel and the US; and Israel--well, Israel's hand is about to be forced by the impotence of the U.S. and other democracies of the west.

Meanwhile a second set of economic dominoes in the west is also set up to imminently fall over: Greece and Spain are on the cusp; Italy is right behind them; Germany is becoming frustrated and feeling abused (and we all know where that has ended twice in the last century); and the U.S. is impotent to act and risks its own implosion as the Obamaniac elites keep steering its course for the nearest cliff.

But then, maybe I'm too optimistic about all this.

Wretchard thinks that none of this is inevitable. But, I think not only is it evitable, but it has probably reached a point of no return simply because events are moving way too fast; and the indecisiveness and lack of moral and psychological clarity is so pervasive, that the infection of supermegahyper denial is about to prove lethal.

The administration has checkmated in such an epic manner as to beggar the imagination. Ordinary stupidity could hardly have effected such a comprehensive disaster. Mere imbecility would have been insufficient to the task. Only an arrogance that mistook ignorance and incompetence for “smart diplomacy” could have achieved such a train wreck.

And the most astonishing thing is how they are proud of it. Just how poorly the West has been served by its leaders is the shown by the smug satisfaction with which they’ve destroyed its wealth; corrupted its culture and embarked on a fantasy energy policy. What threat? What problem?

I hope I'm wrong. But who is there to lead?

FOR THOSE IN DENIAL, THE EUROPEAN CRISIS EXPLAINED

UPDATE: Wow! That was fast:

MADRID (AP) — Euphoria over a lifeline of up to €100 billion ($125 billion) to rescue Spain’s hurting banks morphed into a financial markets rout in a matter of hours Monday, as investors digested the still-undefined plan and became concerned the country may be unable to repay the new loans.

Nils Pratley at the Guardian is impressed. “Bailouts in the eurozone used to generate relief rallies that lasted at least a week. The Spanish version couldn’t even manage a full morning.”

Read the entire post.

Key point: "The bitter truth is that the European collapse is simply the consequence of Leftist fantasy politics. It is what happens when people realize that the ‘paradise’ they’ve been building is nothing but a deconstructed, demographically collapsing, hollowed-out and bankrupt shell of lies."

DENIAL, DENIAL, AND STILL MORE DENIAL!

Psychological denial is a defense mechanism that is used by everyone at different times in their life to cope with an unacceptable reality. It becomes pathological when it persists for more than a brief time. Denial can either allows the user to come to grips with the pain by temporarily modulating it; or it can usher the user into fantasyland.

Here are some recent examples of the fantasyland variety:

President Obama:"The Private Sector is Doing Fine"

Nancy Pelosi: Catholic Bishops/Cardinals "don't speak for the Catholic Church."

Jon Stewart mocks some of those in denial and in need of grief therapyater the Wisconsin Recall election results:


Sometimes, the only way that the denial of reality can be maintained, and the fantasy upheld, is through self-delusion....



[Political Cartoons by Glenn McCoy ]

So let's talk about self-delusion for a moment.

Engaging in "self-delusion" is the act of deceiving one's self about some aspect of reality; i.e., it is a form of psychological denial.

As I have noted in previous posts, we humans have quite a number of psychological strategies with which we are able to deceive ourselves about the external world.

Just a few examples to show what I mean by this:

- by using projection some very violent and angry people are able to convince themselves that they are working for peace and harmony.

- by using delusional projection some religious fanatics who behead innocent people are able to convince themselves that they are pure and holy, while" infidels" like Jews are monsters who "eat babies" and decend from "pigs and monkeys"

- by using displacement, some people are able to convince themselves that there is a devious plan to imminently replace our secular government with a Christian theocracy; while they are singularly unconcerned about religious fanatics actively waging war on the U.S. and the rest of the world trying to institute an Islamic theocracy.

- by using fantasy some people are able to convince themselves that these particular religious fanatics are reasonable and sensible people, amenable to negotiation and moderation.

- by using denial some people are able to convince themselves that Obama's economic policies are creating jobs and improving the economy.

- by using repression some people would like to eliminate all personal feelings about 9/11 and wipe it from the American collective consciousness; thus supporting the building of a mosque at Ground Zero while we are still in a protracted war with Islamic fundamentalists.

When dealing with well-defended people like this, one of the refrains commonly heard when you point out their defense to them, is that it is not they who are in denial about reality--it is you! It is not they who are projecting, it is you! It is not they who fail to see the danger, it is you!

For them it is simply a matter of opinion whether or not a person is out of touch with reality; and their opinion is just as good as yours, thank you very much.

But let's examine that interesting perspective (usually they convey it with a sneer, as in: "That's just your opinion.")

Probably the first prerequisite for accusing someone of engaging in self-delusion is that one must accept that there is an objective reality, external and independent to one's self; one's beliefs or one's emotions/feelings. Without such a fundamental epistomological foundation, it is completely meaningless to accuse anyone of self-delusion, althought postmodern intellectuals do it all the time.

For the record, self-delusion is an equal opportunity political defense. Both sides of the political spectrum are able to delude themselves fairly easily when the occasion demands it. But I am always impressed at the pervasive self-delusion that is the hallmark of modern leftist thought. No amount of reality is able to touch it.

As they wallow in their preferred form of social subjectivism, it is perfectly "reasonable" (if that is the word) from their perspective to impute delusion to others--even if every time they do so, they effectively demonstrate the invalidity of their own philosophy. That is why it is so amusing to observe their appropriation of the term "reality-based community" -- when they don't believe in any reality except for their own emotions!

The truth that threatens their fantasyland is that there is a world that exists outside their heads and outside their emotions; and that the entire purpose of reason --which they reject in favor of feelings --is about understanding that world.

Social subjectivism posits that our minds are disconnected from reality to begin with. How then is it possible for them to accuse anyone of "self-delusion"? One simply has a differing POV that is by their definition as real and true as anyone else's.

After all, that is the basis of the multiculturalism and the "politically correct" relativism that is persistantly foisted on the public.

hYou see, progressives feel that they can get away with their interpretations simply because they don't have to deal with external reality --if they feel it, it must be true! QED. The actual worsening of the economy under their watch despite driving the country into unbelievable amounts of debt is not something they care to think about. Instead, Nobel Prize winning economic morons like Paul Krugman explain the failures away by saying that the stimulous wasn't big enough! He won't be satisfied until the entire economy is destroyed; and then I'm sure he will blame the ultimate scapegoat for his failure to think: human nature.

I can just see his column now: "Human Nature unable to live up to Progressive Reality".

Or, note the behavior of "peaceful" and "compassionate" and "toleratant" Occupy Wall Street crowd. Or the one's calling for Walker's death on twitter. ( I am assuming the usual meanings of the words "peaceful" and "compassionate" and "tolerant"--though they would argue about the meaning of "is").

This is pretty much the same way that a child who doesn't yet understand about causation or responsibility or even truth, is behaving when they angrily retort to someone who accuses them of something they don't want to take responsibility for ("you broke that lamp!" "No, you broke it!" "No, you did!") Those who do not believe in an external reality--or personal responsibility or truth --may freely accuse those with whom they disagree of the same kind of distortion and blindness.

How fortunate that most adults have developed cognitive capabilities that enable them to determine causation--even if a child (or the adult currently flushing our country into the toilet, for that matter) doesn't understand the concept. A series of questions are asked and answered-- Who threw the ball that broke the lamp? Whose fingerprints are on the ball? What direction did it come from? Who was in the place where the ball was thrown; were there witnesses?-- and, in the example of the broken lamp, truth is fleshed out and responsibility assigned.

For all children--and sadly, many adults these days-- "reason" is nothing more than a creative process, and is disconnected from cognition and/or perception. As I have mentioned in previous discussions, children in particular, tend to use the more "primitive" psychological defenses, because their minds are not yet mature enough for optimal cognitive functioning.

As they grow and mature both physically and mentally, they do not need to lose that creative process that utilizes their emotions as perceptual tools -- they only need to learn to subordinate it to their cognitive faculties and to appreciate external reality.

When both sides are convinced that the other side is deluding themselves, it becomes extremely important that SOME ADULT SOMEWHERE examine the external reality and follow a process of reason to assess the truth.

Much as the politcal left (who as a group are heavily invested in the whole postmodernistic touchy feely thingy) would like to believe that they have exclusive rights to the truth, they have actually dealt themselves out of any contest for discovering truth by insisting that truth is relative. If it IS relative, then they they must agree that I am as correct in what I think as they are. Tsk Tsk. Too bad. So sad.

OTOH, if truth is NOT relative, but exists outside of whatever one side or the other feels is true, then by all means, let's get down to the evidence which will prove which side is correct. I'm game.

Do you begin to see what a house of cards they have built for themselves? If truth is relative, then by their own standards, it is not possible for anyone to be self-deluded-- since self-delusion (they call it "emotional truth" ) is their only reality.

What is most laughable is that their entire way of dealing with the world is based on a fundamental self-delusion - the denial of external reality.

When you live in a world where objective reality is unacknowledged, is it any wonder that from your perspective no one can every prove that what you feel is true, isn't really true? That is why the same distortions and creative fabrications resurface time after time in political discussions these days. The entire "the economy is all Bush's fault" for example. No matter how many times this is debunked, (or, I suspect, no matter how many years into Obamanomics we are) it will be recycled by the reality-based, or rather, the reality- deprived community.

To them, Obama may be fading as a leftist messianic superstar, but only because he is not going far enough in shoving their policies down America's throat. Certainly not because those polices don't work and never have worked! Let's see what happens when America thoroughly rejects their ideology in November.... I predict that the left will not be abashed; nor will they even consider re-examining their political --let alone their philosophical premises. No, they will whine loudly; scream hysterically; become agressive and probably violent, and insist that their policies were sabotoged by the likes of you and me (i.e., racist bigots who are homophobic, Islamophobic, and sexist to boot); that we are the ones who will not face reality, and so on and so forth ad infinitum.

SUICIDE IS PAINLESS

I'm extremely busy over the next few days, so here is a post from over a year ago which remains very relevant, particularly with the Wisconsin recall election coming up on Tuesday. Amazing how nothing much has changed over the last year....

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
In "The Put-off, Postpone, and Procrastinate Generation" Victor Davis Hanson says that the "therapeutic generation of Americans loves to talk and worry about problems and then assumes that either someone else will solve them or they will go away on their own...."

But the problem with our Federal debt is that it will not disappear over time; in fact, it can only get worse.

The United States needs some Harry Truman-like plain speaking, instead of each administration putting off a national reckoning onto the next. Don't drill for oil and grow food — and the price for both goes up. Spend what you don't have, and later you will have to pay even more back. The generation that ran up the debt and was largely responsible for the Social Security crisis has a responsibility to make things right on its watch.

Such blunt talk is considered political suicide for candidates; in fact, anything less for the rest of us is national suicide.

The dilemma described above is an insoluble one for a politician whose only goal is re-election. Doing what's right in that case runs second to doing what's necessary to keep his job.

And the reality is that the public often wants to have its cake and eat it too--which is why polls are often so contradictory (and meaningless). With a rare amount of consistency, it seems that Americans really really want the debt to be decreased; but they also want taxes to be cut AND they refuse to part with their entitlements and pet projects.

Inconsistent? Certainly. But very human.

The question is why should they behave any differently? For decades, politicians of both parties have promised them the Moon, never telling them the potential cost in the long run. They have been led to believe that they can get "something for nothing" if only they elect candidate X. And, if they can't ignore reality and get something for nothing, it is because of the evil, money-grubbing capitalists whose only goal is to suck them dry.

Who hasn't heard a politician these days, especially from the Democratic Party, insist that the only real fiscal problem is that all those millionaires and billionaires and the rest of those "rich" people need to pay more to society?

The solution is always to "Tax the Rich!" and all will be well again.

But as Kevin Williamson argues, the only problem with that is there just aren't enough rich people to go around:

There are lots of liberal definitions of “rich.” When Pres. Barack Obama talks about the rich, he’s talking about people living in households with income of more than $250,000 or more, the rarefied caviar-shoveling stratum occupied by the likes of second-tier public-broadcasting executives, Boston cops, nurses, and the city manager of Lubbock, Texas (assuming somebody in her household earns the last $25,000 to carry her over the line). Club 250K isn’t all that exclusive, and most of its members aren’t the yachts-and-expensive-mistresses types.

Nonetheless, there aren’t that many of them. In fact, in 2006, the Census Bureau found only 2.2 million households earning more than $250,000. And most of those are closer to the Lubbock city manager than to Carlos Slim, income-wise. To jump from the 50th to the 51st percentile isn’t that tough; jumping from the 96th to the 97th takes a lot of schmundo. It’s lonely at the top.

But say we wanted to balance the budget by jacking up taxes on Club 250K. That’s a problem: The 2012 deficit is forecast to hit $1.1 trillion under Obama’s budget. (Thanks, Mr. President!) Spread that deficit over all the households in Club 250K and you have to jack up their taxes by an average of $500,000. Which you simply can’t do, since a lot of them don’t have $500,000 in income to seize: Most of them are making $250,000 to $450,000 and paying about half in taxes already. You can squeeze that goose all day, but that’s not going to make it push out a golden egg.

But it's the "golden egg" mentality that is driving the liberal mantra. Since liberals don't really understand where wealth comes from, you can watch them getting angrier and angrier when they are presented with facts like the one above. The only economic policy they know is to squeeze that goose. They have never considered that at some point the goose will be completely empty of eggs--and if you keep squeezing, it will certainly expire.

Margaret Thatcher, who was talking about the economic problems in her country in 1976and attributing it to the Labour Party policies, said:

I think they've made the biggest financial mess that any government's made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments do traditionally make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money.

Thatcher understood, too, that when Labour/Democrats/Liberals/Progressives/Marxists finally do run out of other people's money, they always fall back on the tried and true rationalization that it is simply MORE government spending; MORE taxing the rich; MORE central planning, and MORE control of people's everyday lives that's needed.

They NEVER imagine that the goose will stop laying the golden eggs for them to spen;, nor do they ever imagine that they will ever have to stop living life as a fairy tale and face reality.

Their primary concern is to maintain their power and control over others; and to that end, the political left have discovered that by ramping up the traditional Marxist "class warfare" rhetoric, they can deflect anger that might otherwise be directed towards their profligacy onto the usual convenient scapegoats.

We see the effectiveness of this tactic by merely perusing the posters carried by the Wisconsin union protesters; and also by listening to their leaders blame those who dare to be supportive of fiscal responsibility. The distortion and denial are incredible.

But, as they force, step by excruciating step, their states and finally the country off that fiscal cliff, they won't fully appreciate the suicidal path they are on until that final moment when their fall is broken by hitting the hard, unyielding surface of reality.

Plain speaking may indeed be political suicide; it's much easier to promise everyone what they want instead of showing real leadership and going against the polls; against the protests; and doing what is consistent with reality.

DECEIT, DELUSION, DENIAL AND THE MORAL DECAY OF THE WEST

This comment made by Wretchard on one of his posts a few weeks ago struck me forcefully and I have been thinking about it ever since. I think the reason I cannot get it out of my mind is because it encapsulates the sense of despair that I feel at the moral disintegration of western civilization and all that it once stood for. I am reproducing the entire comment:

The West because of its higher culture and acceptance of the Scientific Method has a significantly more sophisticated military technology than the Islamic World. However this enabling higher culture normally compels the West to observe niceties like the Geneva Convention and the Judeo-Christian concept of honor and decency. The Islamic world lacks sophisticated military technology and is compelled to use relatively ineffective military methods such as IEDs, suicide bombs, human shields, etc.

And who creates this split-level morality? Well there’s a paper describing the Taliban’s “tactical innovation” of using five year old soldiers.

The Taliban is teaching five year old boys to kill British troops. The children are being converted into soldiers at an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan. The terrorist group turns boys into fighters, human shields, and suicide bombers (Owen 2008). …

The Viet Cong used children as spies (Peer 1970), suicide bombers, and sappers …

The most significant finding is that Libya is the major hub in the CST network. Numerous groups have passed through the training camps, representing Africa, the Middle East, South America and Europe. Except for the absence of Asia, this correlates with the regional spread of child soldier using groups in armed conflicts from 1987-2007 …

I believe child soldier use is a tactical innovation (McAdam1982, 1983). The practice is a fairly new method that developed in response to large-scale social forces and the ground-level needs of guerilla fighters. This paper outlines the historical foundations of child soldier use, locates the point of origin, and provides a skeletal view of how the tactic has diffused via terrorist training camps.

So in our current world, if the Taliban use child soldiers, it’s a tactical innovation. But if American soldiers pick up a Koran without white gloves, it’s a war crime. What is wrong with this picture? What is wrong if you accept this picture?

No doubt teaching five year olds to kill British soldiers is a tactical innovation, objectively speaking. But it is also something that has to be seen for what it is: a moral abomination. Let me go a step further and call it the blackest sort of sin. For it is written, “Let the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

There are some who would find even the use of those words, spoken by Him, hateful as perhaps Dracula finds certain symbols repugnant. But that judges Dracula more than what repels him. We live in an era where right and wrong, good and evil have been inverted. We kill babies and call it choice. We spare murderers and call it enlightenment. We see how the Taliban corrupt children and admire them for their cleverness. There is, if you don’t mind my saying so, something in that attitude which condemns its adherents even more than the object of the observation.

We are sick, sick to our core and it is not just the Taliban or the Viet Cong or the Libyans or North Koreans who are loco in the coco. There is a madness, indeed, an evil abroad in Western capitals that masquerades as humanitarianism, personates high-mindedness and makes a mockery of any sort of decency. And they have the temerity to call themselves human rights guardians?

I do not think that these people have the moral high ground. Although some people are doubtless well meaning, many individuals in the “human rights industry” are nothing more than spokesmen and apologists for groups that would make the old time Nazis seem like Boy Scouts.

The original post at Belmont Club was about Former CIA counterterrorism chief Jose Rodriguez' claim that Nancy Pelosi lied when she said she had not been briefed about waterboarding.

Have a little sympathy for former Speaker Pelosi. Like every other politician she has to square a circle. On the one hand she has to tell her liberal constituency that violence accomplishes nothing. On the other hand she has to make sure that nobody disturbs the illusion of a safe, gun-free environment by taking over a shopping mall and holding every one in it hostage.

People must never be told that upholding a high moral standard may be costly; that you may have to risk danger by refusing to resort to certain measures. No. The candidate must describe a world in which you can have your own cake and eat it too. It’s a world in which B-17s didn’t have to fly straight into flack to accurately bomb a target and not hit civilian targets. It’s a world in which you don’t have to make a choice between invading Japan and killing 5 million civilians and bombing Hiroshima and killing 70,000 civilians.

That’s the perfect world.

And, isn't that exactly what the left claims it wants? A perfect world? A perfect, socially just, egalatarian, peaceful, "we are all brothers" world?

Unfortunately, the only way to get from this world, the real and imperfect world, is through deceit, delusion, and denial. Take your pick. Any one of the three will blur reality; make it more palatable; and, most importantly, make those who desperately desire utopia feel lots lots better.

The moral decay of the west is the direct consequence of the need to embrace the delusions and fantasies of the political left, both here in this country and around the world. Why? Because to embrace the delusion, one must abandon reality, truth, reason, and logic. Once must blind one's self to the unpleasant sights of the world and place hands over ears to escape the unpleasant sounds. One must pretend that everything is always AOK; and dismiss all evidence to the contrary. One must denounce and demonize the "naysayers" because they tell the truth. In short, one must mentally live in another dimension from the one we actually live in.

And the only way to succeed in believing in this dimension is to abandon the moral system that depends on reality and our perception of it. It goes sort of like this:

REALITY----->HUMAN PERCEPTION OF REALITY -----> HUMAN ACTION BASED ON REALITY

There is a hierarchical relationship implied here. First, there is REALITY, or existence. The study of the nature of existence is called Metaphysics. Next is our knowledge of REALITY through the mind and the senses, which while they may be imperfect sources of information at times, we must strive to optimize their function as if our lives depended on it (which they do). The study of knowlege and how we know about reality is called Epistemology. And finally, the last link in the chain is the actions we choose to take, based on our knowledge of what is real.

This last part is where Ethics, or a moral code, comes into play.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE CHOICES WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE KNOWLEDGE IF YOU CANNOT, OR WILL NOT, FACE REALITY.

The "logic" of the fantasy left (I have always thought if rather fascinating that they insist on calling themselves the "reality-based community"--as if the words make it so) goes like this:

REALITY----> HUMAN EMOTION<---->HUMAN ACTION BASED ON WHIM

Reality is messy. It needs to be eliminated--either through deception, delusion, or denial. The deceivers and liars know exactly what they are doing since they do it consciously and deliberately. The deluded deniers DON'T WANT TO KNOW what they are doing because they feel better that way.

Leszak Kolakowski, a Polish philosopher expelled from the Communist Party in 1968 for his heretical views makes the following keen observation about the morality of socialism (from My Correct Views on Everything, reviewed in The Weekly Standard) :

Socialism as a social or moral philosophy was based on the ideal of human brotherhood, which can never be implemented by institutional means. There has never been, and ther will never be, an institutional means of making people brothers. Fraternity under compulsion is the most malignant idea devised in modern times; it is the perfect path to totaltarian tyranny.

The social engineers of the left, motivated as they are by their creative utopian aspirations--expressed by the desire to impose (forcibly, if necessary) universal peace, social justice and brotherhood upon humanity--are completely oblivious to the malignant, and extremely immoral, side of their own natures. This is what enables them to masquerade as humanitarians, personify high-mindedness and make a mockery of any sort of decency.

Their anti-individualism, anti-capitalistic, anti-wealth, and fundamentally anti-human and anti-life agenda is made possible only if they are able to disconnect REALITY from the human mind and from human actions.

The postmodern political left is constitutionally unable to appreciate it, but both they and the greedy capitalist entrepreneurs of the right who they sdespise so vehemently, are driven by the same dark human emotions: envy, greed and a need to dominate others.

However, there is an extremely crucial difference.

The do-gooder leftist in all the various ideological incarnations--the antiwar crowd, the environmental crowd, the communists, socialists, and assorted collectivists and utopians--each offer the rationale that he does what he does for the "common good" and for "social justice", "peace" and "brotherhood". His high-minded, self-righteous rhetoric justifies (to him anyway) imposing his will and beliefs on others for their own good; and he will not hesitate to use whatever coercive capablity he has at hand to get others to do what he wants and what he says.

The evil capitalist, on the other hand, is overtly out to pursue his own selfish profi;, and understands he must use persuasion. That is, he must convince people that his ideas and the products of his mind are better than all the rest so that they will be willing to part with their hard-earned money to possess them. His desire for power over others is manifested in an indirect manner because people must wnat what he has to offer and believe that they will benefit from an interaction with him.

There is no parallel social limitations on the behavior of the do-gooder leftist. This tyrant wannabe does not feel the need to convince others of the veracity or even the effectiveness of his ideas; nor does he accept defeat when others are not interested or resist their implementation. He knows in his heart what is best for everyone, and he will use coercion if necessary. He will not allow options; nor will he permit others do do what they think is right for themselves. Their feelings or concerns are a matter of complete indifference to him. Only his own matter.

The leftist's desire for power is direct and absolute; and is an inescapable psychological consequence of his utopian ideology.

And there is no area of your life which will escape his intrusive psychopathology, because he justifies it by saying he is really doing it for your sake.

The clever deceiver on the left always manages to hide these darker motivations--the envy, greed, and desire for power--and pretend they don't even exist--even to himself. He tells himself he does not possess such dark motives; that his motives are pure and uncontaminated by the kind of self-serving goals those on the selfish, money-hungry right pursue. The banal platitudes and silly slogans he chants during his protest marches make him feel oh so good about himself; and experiencing too much knowledge and insight about his inner state would make him extremely uncomfortable; perhaps even causing him to question some of his basic assumptions about himself or his beliefs.

This is the dilemma faced by all utopians. Thus, if they do not consciously decide they are going to do evil; or, if they are not entirely cynical; they must escape into delusion or denial in order to continue to function.

They see themselves as so pure and righteous; so correct and virtuous; how is it possible that their beautiful utopian dreams always turn into such horrible human nightmares? How can they possibly explain all the unpleasantness and evil away, like they do.

Well, speaking as a psychiatrist, I can tell you that there is no limit to how much self-delusion is possible in our species. People who are grossly psychotic, like many that I see every day, at least have a biological short circuit in their hard wiring as an excuse. But even without the biological propensity, human being are quite capable of self delusion, fantasy, and disconnecting themselves from reality.

You can count on the "true believer" to close his eyes not only to his own internal reality, but also to the external reality that proves the uselessness of his beliefs in the real world.

Few on the left have ever acknowledged the nightmare of the Soviet gulag; or Lenin's purges; or China's crackdowns. Few have ever even accepted the incredible human cost their ideologies have taken on humanity; the death the suffering and misery. Even today, they actively support all the future Stalin's (like the thug Chavez) in their grabs for unparalleled power. Chavez, of course, follows the pure utopian aspirations of the typical leftist and is only allowing himself to become "dictator for life" because he wants to help his people--just like Saddam did; just like Qadaffi did; just like Assad is doin; just like the Mullahs are doing.

Uh-huh. Right.

We live in an era where right and wrong, good and evil have been inverted. We kill babies and call it choice. We spare murderers and call it enlightenment. We see how the Taliban corrupt children and admire them for their cleverness. There is, if you don’t mind my saying so, something in that attitude which condemns its adherents even more than the object of the observation.

While societies that operate under the rule of law have all the necessary checks and balances that prevent the capitalist from cheating or robbing his clients and hold him to account if he does; civilization has been fooled repeatedly throughout history by the virtuous, self-righteous, anti-capitalist robbers and cheaters of the left who simply disguise their robbery and fraud behind the stated purity of their motives.

The stink of the left's piety is nauseating. Just ask Cory Booker, who accidentally told the truth and now must pretend that he didn't--or perhaps he simply slipped back into Democratic denial.

Today's new and improved political left promises the redistribution of wealth, "fairness", social justice, peace and brotherhood. What they deliver will be what they have always delivered: stagnation, poverty and misery; injustice, decline and death.

That is what happens when reality is not part of your moral equation.

ESSENTIAL SOCIOPATHY OF THE LEFT ON DISPLAY

All around us today we are witness to the essential sociopathy of the "compassionate" and "loving" left. In the matter of Trayvon Martin, we have seen our own clueless President increase the hatred and fan the flames of racial divisiveness. Of course, he has not a word to say about his Justice Department's darling Black Panthers placing a monetary bounty on one of the characters in the ongoing national psychodrama. You would think that would be illegal (or, at the worse, uncivil; but you would be wrong--this is Obama's America we are now talking about; and in it, his political opponents are the ones who are always to blame.)

Let's move on to a more subtle expression of the sociopathic narcissism; i.e., the veiled threats that are being uttered directed toward the SCOTUS, who in the last several days have been annoyingly uncooperative in following the accepted narrative of the postmodern political left on the issue of Obamacare. How dare they question it!!

In a post, "Nice Court You Have There; It Would Be A Shame If Something Happened To It"; Wretchard writes:

By saying Obamacare is so self-evidently wonderful and legitimate that only someone crazy would disagree with it, Blumenthal makes you wonder why this matter is even before the Court in the first place. For the answer to that question, see “begging the question”.

What is less clear is whether Blumenthal, in reminding the court that the Executive Branch had the monopoly on physical power, was not engaged in a kind of subtle menace. After all, the Court’s power is not based on “credibility”. It is based on power vested in it by the Constitution. What would the administration say if someone argued that the president’s authority was based on “credibility” rather than his legal power as chief executive?

The left will seek to de-legitimize the Supreme Court, possibly the same way that the President did in his 2010 SOTU speech when they had the audacity to disagree with his position. How dare they rule contrary to his position? Remember, as Obama has reminded us with regard to Obamacare--He cares doncha know? Any who oppose his benevolent policies for the good of all are uncaring, racist, sexist, wealthy jerks.

And that's the essence of the argument. The left cares deeply about these things. We Republican and conservative and Libertarian troglodytes are throwbacks in human evolution, too stupid to appreciate the scientific workings of the minds of Progressives like of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid--let alone Barack Obama! (the solution is to re-engineer humans to conform to the progressive dream!)

Isn't it interesting that the progressive postmodern left always seems to FEEL that their emotions are...scientific? That just because they FEEL something is good that it is "reality-based" and necesarily and undebatably true? Isn't it interesting that they always think they can re-engineer humans to adapt to their silly schemes--make them better somehow?

If that's not an affront to reality, then I don't know what would be. It is also the hallmark of people in a psychological fantasy bubble, sometimes called psychological denial.

I have written extensively on the pervasive psychological denial of the political left (see here, here , here, and here, for example).

It is important to point out that denial is an "equal opportunity" defense mechanism engaged in by all human beings--progressive or conservative; Democrat or Republican. It is an involuntary, built-in psychic response designed to protect an individual from precipitously having to face unwanted, unacceptable or threatening feelings, thoughts or behavior. The mind simply blocks out reality and truth--and sees what it wants to see; and feels what it wants to feel.

Psychological defenses can be a symptom of a much larger psychological problem; or they can be a temporary and even healthy adaptation to reality.

Feelings can be useful pieces of data with which to understand reality, but they are certainly not the best tool for that purpose; and a reliance on them to the exclusion of using reason and critical thought is a strategy that cannot succeed for long-term survival. When assessing how appropriate one's feelings are in a given situation, it is often necessary for the contents of the unconscious to be explored and brought to the conscious level and considered. Unconscious internal conflicts--such as the desire to always please or displease your parents; or the need to feel superior and more compassionate than others, for example-- can easily mask the inappropriate aspects of the feelings, making them worthless as a means of understanding the external world.

Taking this kind of action as a method of checking and understanding one's own feelings is a process called "insight" or "self-awareness". Some people do this quite naturally and honestly. Some learn in therapy or when they are in crisis. But if insight is absent then one's feelings have the potential to do great harm --both to one's self and to others.

Some unconscious factors, or psychological defenses, that can make one's feelings untrustworthy are: 1) the person you are responding to has become symbolic of someone else in your life (displacement, fantasy, or perhaps distortion); 2) focusing on one particular aspect of a person, you ignore other, more objective data that are available to you about the person (denial); 3) you place your own unacceptable feelings onto the other person--e.g., I'm not an angry person, -- he's an angry person! (projection or full-blown paranoia).

The truth is that there are countless ways that unconscious processes within ourselves can distort our responses to others and to reality itself.

Growing up and attaining maturity requires that we take a moment to consider such factors playing a role in our emotions before we act on those emotions. If we come to know ourselves and understand our own weaknesses, vulnerabilities, limitations and secrets; then our emotional responses to people or to the world can be very valuable tools to help interpret the world. But they are only tools, and if not used wisely, they can do more harm than good. Feelings cannot be used in a court of law--for good reason. And they are not ultimate truth in the court of reality, either.

All too often, mistakes are made; feelings can simply be wishes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the reality. If we are lucky, we discover this before too much damage is done.

The key to gaining control over behavior that is motivated by unconscious defenses is to make them conscious. This requires that a person be able to reflect on his or her behavior or feelings and on the contents of one's mind; and with honesty and forthrightness develop some insight into why one feels, thinks, or acts a certain way. This is particularly important if the way one is thinking, feeling or acting is causing serious problems to one's self or to others.

The inability to reflect on one's own behavior or the contents of one's mind and motivations is exactly why so many political debates boil down to acrimonious accusations.

YOU'RE PROJECTING! NO! YOU ARE. YOU'RE IN DENIAL. NO, YOU ARE!

How can you decide if someone is "projecting" versus accurately responding to and interpreting objective reality? How do you determine if someone is "in denial" or responding to reality?

In other words, how do you tell if the use of a defense is a SYMPTOM of some underlying psychological problem versus whether it is ADAPTIVE AND HEALTHY and indicative of an acceptance of truth or reality?

In order to be adaptive, a defense:

• should regulate, rather than remove affect – that is, instead of totally anesthetizing a person, the defense would just reduce the pain (and therefore make it easier to cope; rather than to avoid coping altogether)

• should channel feelings instead of blocking them (i.e., allow a healthy expression of those feelings in a way that can discharge them in socially acceptable ways rather than keep them hidden and motivating behavior)

• should be oriented to the long-term; and not simply the short-term

• should be oriented toward present and future pain relief; and not focused past distress

• should be as specific as possible (i.e., be as a key is to a lock; not as a sledgehammer applied to a door)

• the use of the defense should attract people and not repel them (Vaillant points out that the use of the mature defenses --i.e., humor, altruism, sublimation etc.-- is perceived by others as attractive and even virtuous; while the immature defenses are perceived as irritating, repellant, and even evil).

Having laid out the tools, the reader can decide for him or herself if the current responses of the political left--either to the Trayvon Martin case; or to the "unexpected" questions of the Supreme Court Justices on Obama's Health Care Initiative--are symptomatic of a larger issue; or are a healthy adatation to reality.

Now, what happens when psychological denial ceases to be unconscious and becomes deliberate, willful, and consciously evil behavior-- in spite of all the accumulated evidence of its malignant impact on real people in the real world?

At that point we can safely assume that we are no longer dealing with a purely defensive structure in the psyche; we are dealing with aggressive, unadulterated sociopathy.

Let me go back to the beginnings of Obamacare.

Jay Nordlinger at National Review described a perfect example of this kind of deliberate, malevolent sociopathy:

Several readers have asked me to respond to Diane Watson. I do so wearily. She is the Democratic congresswoman from L.A. who said last week that President Obama’s health-care critics were racist — and who heaped praise upon a) Fidel Castro, b) Che Guevara, and c) Cuban health care. She said,

You need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, now, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. And you know the Cuban revolution that kicked out the wealthy — Che Guevara did that. And after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation, and they found . . . an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro.

It was clear, from her tone, that she regards Castro as a kind of Christ figure. (To listen to the congresswoman, go here.)

I’m afraid I can’t say anything more about these subjects than I have already said. Let me offer a piece from 2000: “In Castro’s Corner: A story of black and red.” And a piece from 2007: “The Myth of Cuban Health Care: Michael Moore gives it a powerful boost.” And, in this FAQ column, you will find suggestions about what to read concerning Che Guevara.I’m afraid that mythologizing about Guevara, Castro, and the Communist dictatorship will never end. Indeed, it will get worse after the Castros and Cuban Communism pass. I used to think — I’ve had arguments with Armando Valladares about this (he is the heroic Cuban dissident who wrote Against All Hope) — I used to think that Castro-lovers in the United States were merely ignorant: They knew not what they said or did. How could all these “liberal Democrats” support a police state? A totalitarian dictatorship?

But, some years ago, I stopped thinking that: I had to swallow that these people — certainly some dismaying percentage of them — actually like it: actually like the dictatorship and all the murderous oppression that goes with it. You can’t remain entirely ignorant or naïve after 50 years of this dictatorship. And that is a very, very bitter pill to swallow.
One more point: Many of the leaders of the Cuban democracy movement are black — “Afro-Cuban.” President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to one of them (the political prisoner Oscar Biscet). Many of Castro’s most ardent supporters in the United States are black: Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters, Randall Robinson, and so on. What must the black Cuban democrats think of these Castro champions?

Very, very little, I can tell you. (Emphasis mine)

The traditional medical definition of sociopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of social responsibility and failure to adapt to ethical and social standards of the community.

If we think about that definition for a moment, we can perhaps begin to understand what is going on in our world today; and the reason that a huge number of people have embraced a fundamentally sociopathic--and "progressive" lifestyle, all the while convincing themselves that they are "compassionate", "post-racial" and just.

Under the pervasive influence of postmodern philosophy and rhetoric, the ethical and social standards of the community have, unfortunately, been slowly evolving and eroding.

In western culture, ethical and moral standards used to be anchored to the real world (i.e., to reality); but in the postmodern wilderness in which the political left and most of its most visible spokespeople--i.e., leaders in the Democratic Party-- wander aimlessly, ethics and morality are relative and "anchored" to feelings and whim; which inevitably unleashes the baser and more vile aspects of human nature.

The 20th century became the playground (and litter box) for the narcissist; and by the time the 21st century rolled around, malignant narcissism was not even considered deviant, it had gone mainstream. Since psychopathology continually evolves and worsens if it is not confronted and dealt with, what we have now in our culture, particularly the political system, is the endstage of psychological evolution under postmodernism: the sociopath who disguises his or her sociopathy by selflessness (now marketed as "hope and change").

These selfless sociopaths are people who basically could not care less about an individual human being.

They think in terms of movements and achieving some grand scheme of "social justice"--which is far from real justice and the search for truth.

Individual human beings are expendable; it is the collective or State that matters; and, as long as they stand in the way of the implementation of the sociopath's great ideas and compassionate execution of those ideas they can be ignored, marginalized and even killed. To this type of mind, individuals are merely the fodder used to build "great" societies from the all the utopian fantasies and collectivist wet-dreams.

It used to be that with the rise of civilization, political sociopaths--selfless and selfless-- were (thankfully) few and far between. Even so, when they appeared in history, they wreaked havoc and destroyed lives with great abandon for "the greater good". Needless to say, a central aspect of the 'greater good' was always the advancement of their own glorious self and their ideas.

We can thank primarily the postmodern political left and its useful idiots for the persistent, unyielding, and willful celebration of--and ultimately mainstreaming of--malignant narcissism. We have entered the age of postmodern sociopathy and nihilism.

What does it matter if the lives and freedoms of so many individuals are sacrificed to the murderous oppressors of the world; or, for that matter, even the compassionate oppressors of the Democratic Party--who, after all, want only the best for you of?

If you "kick out the wealthy" then you have the wonderful socialist paradise of Cuba or the currently evolving one of California; or the magnificent utopia of North Korea with all their misery, poverty, oppression and progressive enlightenment!

Under the uber-enlightened and progressive reality-based left, wealth will be redistributed and the human mind enslaved--but so what? As the eminent leftist and quintessential nihilist Joseph Stalin once remarked, "Death solves all problems - no man, no problem."

In the long run we are all dead anyway, right?