T Plus Two: What Has Not Changed

It was predictable. Indeed, it was inevitable.

I won’t chastise you should you choose not to watch the video linked above. You’ve probably had quite enough of Obama already. But if you were unaware of the remarks he made yesterday in describing his reaction to the Republicans’ trouncing of his Democrat allies, it’s worth a couple of minutes of your time.

Reflect on both the content and the tone. Is that a man who acknowledges that his unasked-for gambit in nominal support of his co-partisans –that “My policies are on the ballot...every one of them” – has been definitively answered? That those policies have been judged by the electorate and repudiated?

Don’t all answer at once, now.

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Many years ago, I asked a psychologist friend to distinguish between psychopath and sociopath, words I’d often heard used interchangeably. The distinction she drew was memorable. The psychopath, she said, is emotionless. His inability to feel renders him unable to sympathize or empathize. Others’ emotions, whether pleasant or painful, are a blank to him. By contrast, she described the sociopath as conscienceless: a creature who cannot see others as moral agents. To him, others are either tools, or obstructions, or irrelevant. In practice, they tend to behave similarly, despite the varying geneses of their behavior.

My friend was an authority on the subject, having worked extensively with prison populations. I’ve used her distinction to assess many a public figure since then. Many fall into one or the other category, and some belong to both.

Barack Hussein Obama has often been described as a narcissist. That sort of self-worship is consistent with sociopathy, as the sociopath starts out regarding others as objects to be manipulated. Beyond that surface assessment lies an important implication: what to expect from the sociopath when his self-love is challenged by external developments.

The sociopath will feel frustration when others refuse to be manipulated to his liking. He will sometimes lash out against them. We can see a clear case of this in Obama’s famous “What the fuck was that?” reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements during their shared photo-op a couple of years ago. Clearly Obama could not assault the prime minister of Israel while the cameras were on them; still, restraining the impulse seems to have cost him some effort.

The Republican wave of Tuesday certainly challenged Obama’s self-love, to say nothing of the backblast against his attempt to manipulate, not only the electorate, but his co-partisans running for federal legislative offices.

Expect The Won – The Lost? – to act out more than once in the weeks to come.

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Obama is unable to alter his orientation in any non-trivial way. He cannot and will not admit to error. Indeed, he appears unable to accept anything but acquiescence – preferably married to adulation – from those around him. So when Chris Matthews declaims as follows:

"The fact that this President is getting advice from people that say, 'You're always right,' is the problem," Matthews opined. "He's got too many sycophants around him telling him, 'All you have to keep doing is what you’re doing.'"

...it’s not just another case of Matthews attempting to exculpate his idol Obama; it’s a dim perception, as through a glass darkly, of one of the giveaway behaviors of a sociopath in a position of power: he will not tolerate attendants who advise him counter to his preferences. Any who unwisely attempt to do so will be “thrown under the bus,” leaving the inner circle a gaggle of yes-men and sycophants.

Yet Democrat mouthpieces habitually upbraid conservatives for immuring ourselves in a “right-wing echo chamber.” It is to laugh.

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The period between now and January 3 is likely to be dangerous. Obama will not sit idle in the aftermath of Tuesday’s drubbing. He’s likely to get, if not the cooperation, at least the protection, of the outgoing Democrat caucus on Capitol Hill. They, too are frustrated...and some of them are no less sociopathic than Obama.

We’ve already heard about Obama’s planned executive actions on immigration. I cannot doubt that he has other shots in the locker. Some will be attempts to seal policies into place before the GOP has a means by which to stop them; others will be bait, temptations to being impeachment proceedings that, given the Main Stream Media’s determination to protect him, would probably rebound against the Republicans.

The key insight here is that Obama is about Obama the Supreme and will tolerate nothing else. A man who can’t even allow verbally that he’s been chastised will not act in a fashion that expresses that understanding. Indeed, the next several weeks might well see behavior more extreme than Obama has yet exhibited. Israel in particular had better look to its defenses.

Stay tuned.