New article: Narcissism, the Public, and the President
January 10th, 2006
My article Narcissism, the Public, and the President is now available from OpEdNews and ZNet. It greatly expands upon my recent entry here: Wounded vets, narcissism, and the President.
Excerpt:
President Bush spoke last week to wounded soldiers at Brooke Army Medical Center and uttered these immortal words indicating a lack of true appreciation for the suffering of the gravely wounded, often permanently disabled soldiers he was speaking to:
“As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself — not here at the hospital, but in combat with a Cedar. I eventually won. The Cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the Colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, Colonel.”
At a time when the number of severely wounded soldiers is rising, this lack of appreciation is disturbing and portends badly for adequate resources being made available to care for damaged soldiers and veterans over the coming months, years, and decades.
This episode was far from the first time Bush uttered bizarre sounding comments in response to the injuries of others. Who can forget his remarkable message to the hundreds of thousands of people, many poor and black, whose lives were devastated by Hurricane Katrina:
“Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.”
While Bush’s comments to wounded GIs were uttered together with the usual platitudes expected on such occasions, these quotes illustrate Bush’s greatest strength and also his greatest weakness, his narcissism….
Entry Filed under: Iraq, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, War and Peace
2 Comments Add your own
1. Wes A. | January 10th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Great article. Some quick points for further consideration follow.
One might consider the way Bush “returns” or modulates public affect, or simply what he elicits in his adoring public — a sense of anger, rage, perceived injustice. He has certainly fanned the flames since 9-11.
And it might be useful to consider the relationship between president and public along the lines of an analogy between parts of the personality ….
Finally, if one were to evaluate the country as if it were a personality, might one call it envious? Certainly the paranoia is there (as in Iraqi WMD’s and the fantastic idea that they would magically appear on American soil, borne by Al Qaeda). And consider the frequent description of the enemy as “nihilist” or “islamo-fascist.” I can’t ignore the irony that a country rife with such moral laxity, such “freedom,” is bent on “spreading” it to extremely culturally conservative, traditional societies — the very paradigm of what nihilism is not! And all in the name of conservative moral values. Isn’t there envy there? Internally, conservatives reminisce about the good-old-days, when women knew their place, made dinner, and kept their legs closed; externally, the living examples of this nostalgia evoke fury — and of course, the fury and destructiveness of the narcissist is directed towards precisely the quality he would possess, at least in greater degree than anyone else. Sometimes I think it is the genuineness of Muslim faith that evokes the most rage in a fallen-Christian nation where some struggle to remember what faith really is.
2. su | January 15th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
The gop as it funcstions today is cult and Bush is the perfect cult leader. Cult leaders and narcissism go hand in hand, eh?
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