Is the President Nuts and Does It Matter?

[Guest guest]

http://coldtype.net/Assets.04/Essays.04/Nuts.pdf

Is the President Nuts and, if so, Does it Matter?

By Joe Bageant

 

Supposedly, if you put live frogs in a kettle of cold

water on the

stove, then raise the temperature very slowly, the

frogs will

eventually boil to death without trying to escape. I

don’t know

if that is true, but it does seem the perfect, if

sometimes overused,

analogy for what we see going on around us in America.

My guess is that we frogs are about medium done for.

Having

neither cooked frogs nor lived in a fascist state, I

am not a practiced judge of these

things, but I’m quite sure the end result of either is

in no way desirable for frogs or

human beings.

I do notice, however, that some frogs are turning

quite red. Here in the States

there is now a trend of wearing red on Fridays in

silent protest of the Bush junta.

Reportedly, this is modeled after a 1940 practice by

citizens of Nazi-occupied

Norway, though it is hard to imagine why oppressed

Norwegians would do anything

that might make them stand out to their oppressors.

Still, urban legend or

not, it’s all over the Internet and one would suppose

quite a few people on the

“left-coast” are sporting red. By now, it’s probably

old hat out there.

Not so here in the Washington D.C. area, where we have

always thought twice

before expressing dissent with any administration,

given that the government

dominates employment and many other aspects of our

lives, either directly or

indirectly. If your employer does not sell something

to the government, your

spouse may well work in a federal agency, etc.

Political views do affect things at work,

and it is usually best to keep them to yourself. But

these days many of us feel something

stranger than normal Washington politics going on – an

unseen, mostly unspoken, but

surely-felt atmosphere of spooky fear.

Is it chilly in here,

or is that the leer of a mad man?

Still though, the Eastern Seaboard has always been

more repressed than the West. So if

you mention in polite company how spooky our current

political regime seems, most

people will look at you like you are crazy, or perhaps

even explode into a fanatical

defense of George W. Bush, in which case you know you

have pressed a neo-con’s button.

Only a minority here will openly discuss the chilling

parallels that informed people

see in the Bush junta with the rise of Nazi Germany.

This is partly because the more hysterical

liberals have abused that analogy to death since the

beginning of the administration,

before there was much evidence; so it has been

considered off limits in moderate,

intelligent circles.

This is slowly changing I believe, because it is now

becoming obvious that George W.

Bush is not merely dumb – he may well be nuts. Every

day his actions look more like a

genuinely disordered and dangerous mind at work. Not

exactly news to those of us who

long ago read the same observation on the Internet, or

in recently published books to

that effect. But what is news is that ordinary

nonpolitical white collar working puds, the

dreary commuter tribes, in the suburbs and outlying

towns are starting to whisper it

among themselves. People are beginning to more openly

address the question of

whether our commander in chief is a certifiable

loopjob – and if he is, just what kind of

nuts he may be – and to do so in language average

literate folks can understand without

covering the entire Jungian cosmology or diving into

Freud’s turgid depths. In calling

numerous psychiatrist friends, I learned it is

considered unethical for licensed psychiatrists

to comment publicly on the mental state of an American

president, and I can’t

say I disagree with that. But the mind of the guy who

now has one finger on the red

nuclear button and the other up his nose is a matter

that should be talked about and is being talked about

and I’ll be damned if I’m going to avoid it. So we

will have to punt

and hope for the best.

Let’s keep it simple: Stupidity alone cannot account

for George Bush’s behavior – especially

when his behavior so well matches known pathologies.

For example, if an ordinary

citizen believed he was being directed by God to

attack “the governments where the

Bible happened,” as he once described the Middle East,

or thought that ordering the

execution of a criminal was funny as hell, or saw

everyone who disagreed with him as

an agent of the Devil, he or she would be put on some

heavy meds at the very least. Hell,

I’ve been medicated for a lot less.

A fellow named Paul Levy in Florida has circulated an

email calling Bush’s condition

“malignant narcissism.” As an off-again-on-again

enthusiast of Jung and Freud, I was

naturally interested in this, and after dredging up

what I remember from psychology

classes, a few books (and yes, a long stint in therapy

myself) his observations seem at

least a little insightful. If nothing else, he has

given us some terms and contexts in which

to consider what is going on. Contexts we will

certainly never hear or see in the media.

According to Levy, Bush’s behavior would be normal

behavior for a malignant narcissist

who finds himself with the kind of power a US

president has. The narcissist would

conclude that he is divinely inspired by God and see

his command of the world’s mightiest

army and its wealthiest nation as proof God blesses

his efforts. In some ways that

makes him an average American. Thanks to our Puritan

beginnings, we have long

believed that power and wealth are manifestations of

God’s preference for an individual

or a nation, and unfortunately tend to act on this

mystical assumption. Whether we are

saving the world from communism by killing Southeast

Asians or covertly assassinating

the democratically-elected leftist president of a

Latin American nation, it is viewed as

liberating the planet from the evil boogers Americans

see everywhere, but which

emanate from our own national psyche. The world being

imperfect, America’s quest to

make it perfect it by destroying all it considers

impure can only lead to much world

destruction, of course. It also bears a nasty

resemblance to the Nazi obsession with

purification.

Another characteristic of malign narcissism is said to

be a near or absolute lack of com-passion. So when

George Bush laughed and mocked the last-minute

pleading of Carla

Faye Tucker, whom he sent to the death chamber in

Texas, (“Ohhh, pleeeeze don’t kill

me!” he mimicked in a scornful whine on a conservative

talk show) he had no idea saner

people do not find this funny. I am told it is

characteristic of malignant narcissists not to

feel any remorse whatsoever. We might also assume that

the deaths of American GIs

have little effect on him either, though he must

pretend so on camera.

Ass-scratchers + God

= strange times indeed

Bush doesn’t fit our image of the hysterical madman

exhorting a nation down a megalomaniacal

path toward horror. In fact, most Americans, quite

understandably, would

rather have a beer and watch a game with George Bush

than, say, with Al Gore.

Meaning that George Bush has what campaign strategists

call “ass-scratcher appeal”

with the average guy. He also seems to have a

mesmerizing effect on conservative

Americans that is totally inexplicable to the rest of

us. He can lie, then lie about the lie,

then all but admit he lied and they still come running

and falling like wheat before the

sickle.

Personally, I think it is the power of delusion

(having deluded some ex-wives, bosses

and the IRS a few times myself), Bush’s own and our

national one. In his personal delusion,

Bush is so convinced of his own words that he comes

off as very convincing to others.

He is very seductive to most Americans’ concept of

themselves as a nation. To them

he looks like the first president in a long time to

assert what is “right about America,”

and especially so following a president who was deemed

“slick” and kept a woman

under his desk (Which strikes some of us coarser types

as pretty damned slick if you can

get away with it.) Bush has charisma to those who

believe the world is a mean place

and that subtler considerations only get in the way.

Especially fearful conservatives,

always operating from the politics of scarcity,

fearful of losing what they have gained

materially, those being the core operating values of

standard conservatism.Neo-conservatives,

of course, are willing to kill you to get it in the

first place.

If Bush has given conservatives cause for joy, he has

given fundamentalist Christiansan absolute hard-on.

With tears of joy and praise, they have embraced him

as their longawaited

national savior, and if the concept of malign

narcissism is right, about the only

thing a narcissist finds more appealing than being

president is being the Messiah. So,

hand-in-hand Bush and these Christian soldiers,

clothed in the infallible rightness of

their agenda – an ultra-fundamentalist Christian

America with dominion over a world

hammered (bombed if need be) into a likeness of

itself, they stomp forward in close

hoplite ranks. Bush poses against backdrops that make

halos of the presidential seal,

appearing as Christ-like as possible. The adoring

throng does not fail to be properly

inspired, despite his congenital close-eyed squint.

Even without psychological theories

of narcissism, the whole idea of ecstatic Christian

masses spotting a halo around Bush’s

head in Newsweek seems a little nuts at face value,

though it must make Karl Rove pee

his pants with glee in that campaign headquarters

known as the White House.

Now comes the Hitler analogy, and I’ll be damned if I

am going to apologize for it: Just

as Hitler struck a chord deep in the German

unconscious, Bush is touching something

within the American unconscious. Whether he is a

manifestation of our national mental

state, or whether we are unwitting agents of his could

be argued. It certainly seems

symbiotic.We did elect him for a reason, and history

will probably record that reason as

not being a very pretty one, the similarities in our

national behavior being unnervingly

similar to those of pre-war Germany. Why do so many

assumedly decent, normal

Americans support insane actions such as the Iraq War,

strange off-shore wire cage prisons

in Cuba, the government’s own admission of a dozen

secret prisons around the

world, or stubborn opposition to the world tribunal

for war criminals and ethnic

cleansers? Doesn’t anyone find these things strange?

In fact, doesn’t anyone find it

strange that two Bushes were elected president so

closely together, the father being less

than gifted, and the son as useless as tits on a boar

hog? (Except at escaping his many

failed businesses with loads of cash, rather like the

gambler who shoots out the lights

and grabs the pot.) If that’s not strange I don’t know

what is. When Fidel Castro offered

to monitor the 2000 presidential election count in

Florida, we probably could not have

done any worse by taking him up on it. Yet most

Americans, including their media, did

not seem to find all this one bit odd, and pretended

that the Brownshirts torching black

votes on down in Florida (despite the Brownshirts

being orchestrated by yet a third

Bush!) was just another zany little election fracas.

Since then, the ACLU has won a lawsuit

proving that it was indeed a mugging going on in

Florida, and the courts have

ordered those tens of thousands of black voters

restored to the rolls. The Republican

dominated state’s reply has been an unspoken but clear

as hell, “fuck you!” Those black

voters are still off the rolls as I write.

I do not have to go as far as the Sunshine State to

feel the chill of suspicious eyes upon

me. Right here in Northern Virginia, the northernmost

point of the American South, I

get little moments of fear that make me wonder if I am

being singled out.Maybe I’m just

paranoid. The other day when the mailman delivered my

r copy of Socialist

Worker, he felt perfectly comfortable questioning me

rudely as to my national loyalty, as

if I were some sort of fair game and not deserving of

normal privacy or courtesy. A local

rightwing politico, pissed about my liberal activism

in housing, tells me she has friends

in a government agency from which she retired, and has

collected some pretty ugly facts

about my past (none of which can be anything close to

the alleged horrors in my divorce

files.) I received an anonymous phone call regarding

the same activism threatening a

trumped-up lawsuit: “We’ll break you, you liberal

sonofabitch. Don’t make us own your

house, boy!” In fact, last week the owner of a local

Internet forum announced he had

turned me in to the Homeland Security Administration

due to the unpatriotic nature of

my postings. Small things to be sure, but they add up.

If nothing else, they say something

about the political climate these days.

When push comes to shove

Someday historians may be tracking the spread of this

malign political virus just as we

now trace the rise of earlier fascist movements. And I

think they will conclude that it

began here in the American Sout – breeding ground of

all things politically dark and

deep-fried in hate – which gave us slavery, the Civil

War, Orville Faubus, the Klan, Trent

Lott, the fanatical Christian right; it’s the same

sweat-soaked crooked venal South that

that had no qualms about fixing a Florida election for

George Bush. As a matter of fact,

George W. Bush’s political career started in the South

when he was organizing Christian

support for his daddy. And it is through deal-making

with some of its most scheming

 

slimeballs (i.e., Pat Robertson delivering millions of

holy-roller votes in exchange for

government concessions worth tens of millions) that he

helped get daddy elected. I

believe that, like so many of our national carcinomas,

the present one began in the

South, too. It is as if yet another American

congenital defect manifests itself from down

in that unconscious realm of the national psyche, from

the land of the tobacco-chawing

sheriffs and snake-handling churches, to infect our

entire political organism. But that’s

another story.

Meanwhile, it is hard not to notice that the

administration polarized around Bush displays

the same meanness. They see the same spooks, enemies

and demons to be eliminated

in every corner of the world and at home. The whole

crew gives international law,

the Geneva Conventions and civil liberties the same

sneer. Are they as sick as he is? Or

are they just one big happy dysfunctional family in

which they play the role of enablers?

Or did they simply end up there because of the twisted

trajectory of their own career

passage through the bowels of the

military-industrial-political monolith? But when you

stand back, and look at where they all came from, look

at the entire interconnected

apparatus of the military industrial war machine, the

gutless complicity of big corporate

media, our numbed, engorged culture of destruction and

consumption and it all

becomes too much to bear.

Too much to bear.Well, if push comes to shove and

shove comes to worse, some of us

seem not about to bear it at all. One can get a dual

passport as a safety precaution, as

an escape option. Scarcely a week goes by that I do

not meet a person who confides that

he or she is considering just that, because of our

present political condition (let’s be honest

here in these lefty communications masquerading as

Internet essays. How many

readers have considered the idea?). I cannot verify it

with immigration application figures,

but I would suspect there is at least some increase in

the number of Americans

seeking to emigrate to places such as Great Britain or

New Zealand or Canada. A New

Zealand newspaper recently ran an editorial welcoming

liberal Americans, called them

asylum seekers and opining that New Zealand should

ease its strict immigration standards

for them because those fleeing tend to be educated,

creative people with high

ideals. They must be observing something from down

there. Speaking for myself, I cannot

decide about emigrating. Is it best to agree with Greg

Palast and Gore Vidal that it

is safer to shoot at the bastards from across the

waters? Fighting from within is beginning

to look like a lesser option every day. Or should one

take the stance of Marine Corps

hero Chesty Puller, who said: “The enemy is in front

of us. The enemy is behind us. He

is to our right and to our left.We can’t miss ‘em now,

boys!” That sounds good, but one

person never beats a mob.

A whiff of hopelessness hangs in the air. After all,

we live in a country in which nearly

a million citizens marched for women’s lives last

April in Washington D.C., yet barely

made the local news, and then only because of the

traffic congestion, not the issue.

We are talking about a country whose non-elected

leader called the largest global

demonstrations in human history – the worldwide

demonstrations against the thenimpending

war in Iraq – a “focus group.” Most Americans do not

even know that it took

place. Is it truly possible to be heard in such a

nation? If it is impossible for sane dissent,

(real dissent, not just the corporate-sponsored

stage-prop Democratic Party opposition),

to have a national voice, then all our frogs are

already cooked. In which case it has

ceased to matter that we may have another of history’s

full blown wackjobs as our

leader.

As you can see, at the moment I am in a grim quandary.

So are many others, I am sure.

But given the vicissitudes of the human spirit,we can

take comfort in that tomorrow is

yet another summer day, one that can be traversed on

the smooth plank of gin and tonic.

Pour’em!

Joe Bageant is a magazine editor and essayist who

writes from Winchester, Virginia. He may be

contacted at bageantjb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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