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Is Our President a Wackjob?
Ordinary people
are finally starting to ask, but does it really
matter?
Joe Bageant—06/2004 |
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 UPPOSEDLY, 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
never cooked frogs or 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| Is it chilly in here, or is that the leer
of a mad man? |
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| 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 will look at you like you are crazy, or
perhaps even explode into a fanatical defence 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 is has been considered off limits in moderate,
intelligent circles. |
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| 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.
So maybe 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 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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 to 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. |
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| Another characteristic of malign narcissism is said
to be a near or absolute lack of compassion. 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. |
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| Ass-scratchers + God = strange times indeed |
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| Bush doesn't fit our image of the hysterical madman
exhorting a nation down a megalomaniacal path toward
horror. In fact, most Americans, and 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. |
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| 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. |
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| If Bush has given conservatives cause for joy, he
has given fundamentalist Christians an absolute hard-on.
With tears of joy and praise, they have embraced him
as their long-awaited 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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 subscriber 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. |
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| When push comes to shove |
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| Someday historians may be tracking the spread of
this malign political virus like we now trace the rise
of earlier fascist movements. And I think they will
conclude that it began here in the American South,
that 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… 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. |
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| 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.it all becomes
too much to bear. |
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| 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. |
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| 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 then-impending
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. |
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| 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. |
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Pour'em!  |
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| Copyright © 2004
Joe Bageant |
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| Joe Bageant is
a magazine editor and essayist who writes from Winchester,
Virginia. He may be contacted at: bageantjb@netscape.net |
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