The destruction of Barack Obama
By Robert J. Burrowes
Some people have been surprised or
disappointed by certain decisions of President Barack Obama. His
war-making, his use of illegal drone strikes, his failure to close
Guantanamo, his failure to genuinely help those ordinary Americans who
voted him into office, and even his pursuit of whistleblowers like
Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have all raised concerns among those
with the audacity to hope that he would be different.
But there is no reason for surprise.
Obama told us all about himself in his autobiography 'Dreams From My
Father'. Most of us just chose not to listen and to then analyse the
significance of what he told us.
It takes someone with a particular psychological profile to kill and exploit people. See 'Why Violence?' Most
of us cannot kill: we respond to our conscience or feelings such as
empathy, sympathy, compassion or even the fear of our guilt or shame if
we know our actions will cause harm to others. What happened to Barack
Obama that makes him so violent? Let us analyse what he told us now.
In his book Obama describes his
childhood. This includes, for example, explicit reference to his violent
maternal grandfather as well as key behavioural descriptions of himself
in contexts that reveal his emotional state, even if this was, and
still is, suppressed below his own conscious awareness. In essence, the
book contains a largely delusional account of his early life, reflecting
his effort to leave his past behind without dealing with the effects of
the violence he suffered.
One incident he describes clearly
reveals his justified but unexpressed fury at his father for abandoning
him. Because this fury was suppressed, it left young Barack with a
gaping hole in his sense of self-worth: he wasn't worthy of his father's
time, attention and love. Moreover, because he was unable either to
prevent his abandonment by his father (because his love, as a baby, for
his father was insufficient to bond his father to him) or to express his
feelings (which would usually include fear, pain and sadness in
addition to his obvious anger) about this abandonment, he acquired a
deep sense of powerlessness and a large measure of self-hatred too.
However, given the extraordinary unpleasantness of these feelings and
without support and preferably encouragement to feel them, he
unconsciously suppressed his awareness of these as well. But they live
in him still.
His book makes it clear that it was his
mother who was primarily responsible for 'teaching' young Barack to
suppress his awareness of his feelings. She didn't comprehend her
child's need to feel the fear raised by his father's abandonment, to cry
about it and to get angry about it (perhaps by having a series of
'tantrums') because listening to his feelings frightened her: listening
might trigger equivalent feelings in herself (and, as a child, she had
been scared into suppressing her awareness of her feelings too). So she
scared the young Barack into not having these feelings by, for example,
contradicting his perceptions of his father and offering justifications
for his father's behaviour.
His mother didn't understand the
enormous healing power of crying when you feel sad, of consciously
feeling scared when something frightening happens to you and of
expressing one's legitimate anger when one has been 'done over'. Barack
had been abandoned! How would you feel? She didn't understand that
evolution intended us to have feelings partly to guide us and partly as a
'safety release valve' so that we can move on from trauma to lead a
productive and fulfilling life. Unfortunately, by suppressing his
awareness of his feelings (even though the feelings themselves cannot be
suppressed out of existence) throughout his childhood and in adult
life, they became deeply embedded in his unconscious and play the major
role in generating his now-warped behaviours without him even knowing
it.
Another incident his book describes
occurred after an older boy threw a rock at the young Barack; he
powerlessly complained to his stepfather 'It wasn't fair'. This incident
confirms that the boy had been terrorised into suppressing his
awareness of his anger: the anger that evolution intended would tell him
that this behaviour by his assailant was not just unfair - it was an
unprovoked, outrageous and violent assault; the anger that would enable
him to defend himself powerfully (primarily by showing his anger)
against such assaults, thus reducing the likelihood of their repetition;
and the anger that would also tell him how to change his behaviour in
future so that such assaults were less likely. Why is this important?
Because the young Barack had already
learned to suppress his justified fear of, and anger at, the abuse of
people who were supposed to love him (particularly his father and
mother) and of whom he was (unconsciously) terrified (such as his
maternal grandfather), he learned to project his own terror, self-hatred
and anger onto other people and groups of whom he is not actually
afraid ('terrorists' in foreign countries, prisoners at Guantanamo, US
citizens), and to use violence to control their behaviour instead. This
enables him to regain his desired, but delusionary, sense of 'having
control'.
Equally instructive is Obama's
stepfather's response to this incident. Rather than listen to the young
Barack's feelings about the attack, including its obvious injustice, so
that he could rebuild his sense of self-esteem, develop his sense of
personal power, and learn skills and develop capacities for dealing with
conflict nonviolently, his stepfather explicitly taught him to use
violence, by giving him boxing lessons, in 'self-defense'. As a result
of this and other experience, Obama has a delusional belief in the
effectiveness and morality of violence (perceived as 'self-defense')
whenever it is used by the United States while believing hypocritically
that it 'wasn't fair' when used by 'terrorists': he has no capacity to
perceive the dysfunctional and immoral outcomes of using violence in any
context.
Moreover, because the young Barack's
suppressed anger was also warped by the fear and pain he experienced as a
result of the violence he suffered as a child, he now acts vindictively
towards people who have the courage to tell the truth, such as Bradley
Manning and Edward Snowden. Because he lacks the courage to act on the
truth himself, and people such as Manning and Snowden expose the
contradiction between how he wants to be perceived (both by himself and
others), and how he actually is, he now inflicts unnecessary and/or
excessive violence on those who have the courage to do what his own fear
prevents him from doing. For Obama, the truth of Manning and Snowden
is, literally, terrifying and he will go to great lengths to silence it.
In another incident during his life in
Indonesia, Obama mentions his mother's generosity in giving money to
beggars: a generosity which the young Barack copied despite 'the few
coins' in his possession. However, his stepfather regarded this
behaviour as 'endearing but silly': he encouraged the boy to ignore
beggars and 'make sure you don't end up on the street yourself'. Given
Obama's later work as a community organiser, in which he apparently
displayed concern for those who were 'less fortunate', his subsequent
behaviour as president, in which he has overseen the continuing
impoverishment of working and middle class Americans, appears
inconsistent. How can we account for this?
The adult Obama lacks integrity: his
mind is not integrated in such a way that memories, thoughts, feelings
and conscience function seamlessly to drive his behaviour in a
consistent direction. And this is why he is such a useful tool of those
corporate elites who selected him to govern the United States. Like most
people who (unconsciously) feel unloved (an outcome of the fact that
loving his father didn't gain him love in return), he now has the
unconscious desire to please and to gain approval. And Obama wants this
approval from his corporate masters (not merely American voters); it's
not love but it's better than nothing. In turn, he has the pleasant face
and oratory which they can use to both mask and 'sell' their ruthless
exploitation of the people of America and elsewhere around the world,
including when he must lie outright to do so (as he did when he denied
that the NSA spies on US citizens).
Obama makes it clear that his mother
wanted him to have 'values'. What his mother, like most parents, did not
realize is that socially positive values are deeply anchored in certain
emotions and that these emotions and the values they generate can only
emerge as a result of childhood experience (not including lectures and
admonishments from adults). The reason that the adult Obama has no
conscience and feels little or no love, compassion, empathy and/or
sympathy for the victims of his government's violence is simply the
logical outcome of his own childhood which was largely devoid of genuine
love, compassion, empathy and sympathy.
This is another reason why the adult
Obama is so violent, both internationally and even domestically. As
Obama oversees the increasing militarization of US society and the
systematic dismantling of the social contract - the removal of
centuries-old constitutional protections and the ongoing encroachments
on human rights and civil liberties (including those which protected
American citizens from arbitrary detention or execution by their own
government), the dramatic expansion of poverty and homelessness, the
spying on fellow Americans, the ongoing consolidation of predatory
corporate governance - we are simply witnessing the logical outcome of
the violence he suffered as a child.
At a personal level, we must understand
why Barack Obama is violent and support him to find the courage to
travel the journey of emotional healing because, like all perpetrators
of violence, he was terrorised and brutalised as a child. At a political
level, those of us committed to ending human violence must nonviolently
resist his killing and his exploitation. There is a better world for
all of us but violence by anyone, for any purpose - even when referred
to as 'punishment' - cannot bring it forth.
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