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Anyone who, after being thoroughly vetted by the plutocracy, chooses to serve that crowd, and eventually be at the helm of an empire of privilege anchored in constant violence and deceit, is perforce something of a narcissistic psychopath. In this essay, Dr Brumback advances one of the most original approaches to the understanding of the Obama riddle.
By Gary Brumback
America was born in the womb of war and has been addicted to war ever since. Only two U.S. presidents have never taken America to War, William Henry Harrison and James A. Garfield. They died too soon in office to become “surrogate murderers” (all war, Albert Einstein said was an act of murder). The outgoing president, Barack Obama, is the only president to wage war every one of his eight years in office, and in 2016 alone Obama authorized the dropping of 26,171 bombs, the deploying of special operations forces to 135 of 195 countries, selling more weapons than any other US present, and kicking off a new arms race.
America was born in the womb of war and has been addicted to war ever since. Only two U.S. presidents have never taken America to War, William Henry Harrison and James A. Garfield. They died too soon in office to become “surrogate murderers” (all war, Albert Einstein said was an act of murder). The outgoing president, Barack Obama, is the only president to wage war every one of his eight years in office, and in 2016 alone Obama authorized the dropping of 26,171 bombs, the deploying of special operations forces to 135 of 195 countries, selling more weapons than any other US present, and kicking off a new arms race.
What are we to make of Obama and the rest of our nation’s leaders?
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]re they psychopaths even though they do not themselves commit cold blooded murder? Or does it mean, on the other hand that our presidents are simply cogs in a war machine under the control of the [capitalist-spawned] military/industrial complex? Or does it mean both and more?
What it all means is that America’s long standing war habit springs from two sources, inside and out. That is, if we want to understand, if not also go further and try to stop the addiction during any presidency, we must look within the president so to speak for his psychological make-up and outside the president for situations, or circumstances and conditions that influence the president’s decisions. Let us do that for former President Obama by putting him under a “psychoscope” and a “socioscope” and solve the following nonmathematical equation:
Obama + His Situations = His Behavior + Its Consequences
The left side of his equation has two sets of inputs, one “inside” him, figuratively speaking, and one “outside” him literally speaking. The inputs mostly explain a person’s behavior such as the repetitive behavior that a habit is, except there is a feedback loop to the person from the consequences of his or her behavior that may influence future behavior. Two loops, for example, that not only sustain but also strengthen the war habit are the immense profits from war making and the lack of accountability for war criminals.
That behavior never happens without both sets of inputs and will never be fully explained without both may seem obvious, yet it is often ignored, as in the case where poverty is blamed on the impoverished alone or when war is attributed only to the military/industrial complex.
Obama on the Inside We can speculate on what we might find by looking on the left most input of his equation and filling in some particulars:
His DNA. Based on findings in the field of genetics it is not a stretch to speculate that a particular gene of Obama’s may have predisposed him to committing international war crimes,
His Gender. There has never been a female U.S. president. While testosterone may play a tiny role in a male leader’s aggression, we live in a male dominated society, which means among other things that males are expected to dominate and to be aggressive when confronted with conflicts. [Women like Hillary Clinton, Thatcher, etc., may feel obligated to compensate for the male view that “women are weak and soft”, and end up causing as much trouble and destruction as a male in their attempt to prove themselves worthy members of the male club.—Eds.]
His Background. His parents were allegedly on the CIA payroll and that agency reportedly “financed his college education and gave him his first job afterwards.” Was he indebted to the CIA? As to whether he was afraid of the CIA given its history of assassinations is a conjecture I will return to when we get to his situational inputs.
His Unprincipled Moral Values. Any U.S. president who starts a war against another nation on a pretext or who orders drone strikes is morally unprincipled no matter how much moral rationalizing is done. He once told an interviewer: “—I think I’m pretty good at keeping my moral compass while recognizing that I am a product of original sin.” The subordinating clause of that statement is a perfect example of a moral rationalization as in, “well, we all sin in our own ways.”
His Narcissism. What national leader isn’t narcissistic? An extreme form of narcissism is a sense of grandiosity, as Obama seemed to display in this remark; “Here’s my bottom line, America must always lead on the stage. If we don’t, no one else will.”
His Psychopathy. It would not be unusual if Obama were psychopathic. Apparently it is “normal” if we can believe the findings from a study that relied on some 100 historical experts’ analyses of data on all U.S. presidents. The researchers say they found this personality trait in every U.S. president, and noted psychoanalyst Dr. Justin Frank seems to have found it also when analyzing the background and behavior of Obama.
Close-Mindedness. Close-mindedness is the negative end of a major personality trait, open-mindedness. Obama once told a reporter; “And every morning and every night I’m taking measure of my actions against the options and possibilities available to me—.” Now that statement suggests he’s open-minded, but he certainly was close minded about whether to end the drone strikes and reach out to the world with an olive branch. Moreover, we next look at his beliefs, which should convince us that he is totally close-minded.
Beliefs. Firmly held beliefs are like ideologies that have hardened into certainties. An ideologue sees what he believes rather than believes what he sees. A pronounced belief of every American president has been that of manifest destiny, the belief, no, the certainty that America is destined to be the leader of the world. In a strident speech at West Point Obama proudly asserted: “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” That belief reflects pure xenophobia. It is a hardened and dangerous ideology that leaves no quarters for the rest of the world.
Obama’s Badvantageous Situations. A badvantage is any situation that gives advantage to bad behavior. Any president of America probably is surrounded by more badvantages than any other living human being. Consider six particular badvantages that surrounded Obama, none of which is unique to him.
Seductive Positions. History is replete with leaders seduced by the powerful positions they held. Power is readily available to be exploited and abused. The U.S. presidency is certainly a seductive position, but its power, as with all seductive positions, is usually moderated to some extent by the relative strengths and weaknesses of the other badvantages and any countervailing or oppositional forces.
Organization. The position of US presidency, as seductive as it may be, is still part of an organization that has several relevant attributes of its own such as overwhelming size, complexity, intrigues and competing loyalties and resources. Obama had to cope with not only his executive branch, but also the legislative and judicial branches, a complex and inefficient triangulation designed by the Constitution’s framers.
Consider his branch. He had to contend with the CIA, for example, a tightly knit, secretive and large, mostly independent organization of its own. One revealing incident of the CIA’s constraints on him was when he blocked criminal prosecutions of officials in the previous administration, because, according to various sources, he was worried that “the CIA, NSA and military would revolt” and he reminded his confidants of “what had happened to Martin Luther King,” an implicit allusion to the alleged assassination arranged by the CIA. If Obama did not also mention the assassination of President Kennedy under similar circumstances it was probably too discomforting for him to have done so.
Culture. Culture is like an autobiography that says, “This is our history, who we are, what we believe, what we value, and how we operate.” Any U.S. president, like most people whether plebeians or potentates, operates within both an organizational and social culture and is influenced by it to varying degrees in varying situations. Within his own official surroundings and in society at large Obama was embedded in a sociopathic culture that cultivates and glamorizes war [and which takes entrenched privilege as an acceptable value].
Upside-Down Incentives. U.S. presidents and corporate CEOs are addicted to them. An upside down incentive, as you can probably guess, is one that rewards bad behavior and/or punishes good behavior. The most egregious upside down incentive is the case of U.S. warriors-in-chief and their regimes never having to worry about being held accountable for their war crimes, as Obama acknowledged near the end of his second term when he told an interviewer “—without Congress showing much interest in restraining actions [and] with authorizations that were written really broadly, you end up with a president who can carry on perpetual wars all over the world, and a lot of them covert, without any accountability or democratic debate.”
Global Enticements. Globalization is the contemporary euphemism for imperialism or “global gobbling.” The globe is one giant opportunity for market expansion, resource exploitation and political manipulation by the more powerful nations, which helps explain why U.S. regimes try to be the most powerful of all. The prospect of installing or protecting dictatorships to protect U.S. corporate investments on foreign soil and to exploit natural resources such as oil in the pretext of spreading and defending freedom is just too much of a temptation for CEOs and U.S. presidents alike to resist.
The Corpocracy. The corpocracy is the “Devil’s Marriage” between Corporate America and Government America, with the former solidly in the driver’s seat. America’s corpocracy is by far the biggest and umbrella badvantage. For all people in and closely associated (e.g. the mass media) with the corpocracy it is a gigantic, endless gravy train. Large corporations, including those in the defense and intelligence industries expect and get countless favors and the subservient government’s politicians, including U.S. presidents and Congress provide them in exchange for public office.
The core of the corpocracy is its power elite, numbering only a few thousand people but extremely mighty in the power wielded, having always controlled the corpocracy, the rest of America, and through militaristic imperialism seek to control the world’s resources. At America’s birth the founding plutocrats were the initial power elite. It has since grown over time to include the key people of most industries, especially war and related industries, and major financial institutions; influential politicians (e.g., the President and chairs of relevant Congressional committees); key people in the shadow government (e.g. the CIA); the US Supreme Court (never ruling a war unconstitutional); and influential advisors and ideologues such as those peopling The Defense Policy Board, the Brookings Institute, and the National Endowment for Democracy that recently called for the US to oust Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Obama’s Behavior and its Consequences. Should the lopsided influence of Obama’s situations on his behavior and its consequences that we will summarize next exonerate him? Absolutely not! No one lives in isolation, and accountability is absolutely essential for civilizations to exist.
Only Obama himself or someone who officially shadows him or keeps detailed notes in his presence could give a detailed report of his behavior, but that is not necessary for this illustration.
Some mundane but pertinent behavior would include campaigning, holding press conferences, presiding over Cabinet meetings, speaking with other heads of state, attending briefings (including the meetings to select who will be the next drone bombing victims), and continuously listening, thinking and deciding (the last three are mostly covert behaviors). Other behavior of Obama’s specifically involving the war habit in 2016 alone included authorizing the dropping of 26,171 bombs, the deploying of special operations forces to 135 of 195 countries, selling more weapons than any other US president, and kicking off a new arms race.
Some consequences of behavior follow soon afterwards, others later. An example of the earliest consequences would be Obama’s choice of drone targets in a briefing given to him. Authorized drone strikes would follow later and dropped bombs later still, followed by destruction of property, and maimed and dead victims followed predictably by acts of terrorism as retaliation. Any ultimate outcome such as an unlikely upheld peace treaty on the one hand or more likely Armageddon on the other hand is yet to happen. The real equation keeps repeating itself. After all, ending war does not benefit the corpocracy!
That Obama is the first US president to take America to war, either covert or direct, throughout every one of his eight years as president and to target individuals for drone attacks has clearly left a bloody trail of distant outcomes in the form of massive destruction and countless armed and unarmed casualties.
Understanding a US president’s behavior will obviously not change it. What will change America’s future from a warring to a peaceful nation is getting rid of the biggest badvantage of all, the omnipotent and omnipresent corpocracy—a natural offshoot of the capitalist matrix. Many attempts have been made. None has yet to succeed. Moreover, it is pretty self-evident that the habit will continue under President Trump, who promises to “—unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.” He has shown his closed-mindedness and beliefs, ignoring or not knowing that the U.S. during its unnecessary war in Afghanistan created ISIS and depends on it as an enemy [and proxy army in certain situaitons] to justify business as usual and the world’s largest military budget.
NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS • PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP CLICK HERE
Gary Brumback, PhD is a retired psychologist and Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. He is the author of The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch; and America’s Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying. His most recent book is Corporate Reckoning Ahead. Gary can be reached at: democracypower@bellsouth.net.
MAIN IMAGE: The Obamas, in one of their many photos portraying the American ideal of wholesome domestic bliss, a refurbished edition of Father Knows Best, epitomizing the triumph of identity politics, a delightful delusion for their enormous fan base of liberal sycophants.
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