POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Barack Obama’s Self Fashioning

All of us narratize our lives in different ways, and as Freud would say, we subject them to revision. As honest as we would like to be---assuming one has the balls to be so---a certain degree of revision inevitably sneaks into our stories about ourselves. It cannot be otherwise, as the impulse to tell stories, particularly about oneself, is never purely motivated. That's true even of someone such as Kafka, who asked his best friend to burn the manuscripts of some of his most important writing. One can read it off against the relation between the impresario and the "hunger artist" in the short story so denominated. An elaborate self-abnegation is a powerful symbolic gesture, at least to one.

Jack Cashill and more recently John Drew have investigated various claims in President Obama's autobiographies (setting aside for the moment the question of who wrote the latter one, or shaped the raw material into the form that it now takes), and have come to the conclusion that there are inconsistencies between the narrative(s) and the historical facts. One involves the fork-in-the-road anecdote of young Barack Obama seeing his reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator that takes him to his job at what he represents as a Wall Street firm that analyzes investments. According to people who were employed by the same firm at the time, the job wasn't exactly all that Obama cracks it up to be, though it gives him a chance symbolically to reject an opportunity to pursue personal weath as an investment banker, or some such, in favor of the rough and tumble of community organization, in which inevitably he would demonstrate his commitment to the common man, the one who doesn't have a glittering stock portfolio. That he seems not to have the same skill sets and knowledge base as the common man makes no difference to the narrative, whose purpose is suasive. The man himself appears unlikely ever to have learned to start a lawnmower, and as I've stated before, I wouldn't trust him to change the oil in my car, if I had one right now. The lesson is that Obama has sacrificed for us---never mind that he's not yet reallocated the Nobel Peace Prize money that he acquired on the basis of . . . well, being an inspiring figure, I guess, and arguing against American exceptionalism, despite that exceptionalism's having worked so well for him. In this respect, he's not unlike white male academicians who have endorsed the idea of affirmative action, having already been annointed with tenure themselves.

Via Canada Free Press, we now find that The Chicago Tribune has performed, belatedly, an act of journalism, by having two of their reporters interview forty or so of President Obama's life acquaintances, who indicate that various of his self-representations do not comport with their recollections. Obama's narcissism has become a commonplace on the right, and elsewhere where the Won is not worshipped. Under normal circumstances, I'd be chary of such amateur psychoanalysis, but in this case it's based on a wealth of opportunities for observation. He's unprecedented in various ways that lead one to the conclusion. For example, one can cite his Dork Temple in Germany (or even the idea of addressing the Germans as the Leader of the World prior to his election); his creation of an Obama seal; his rhetoric regarding a post-racial America, abluted in his election; his rhetoric about stopping the rise of the oceans due to the (now discredited) theories of Anthropogenic Global Warming; his continuous presence on television; his rejection of the troublesome presser; his inability to grasp his own mistakes, preferring to regard all of his troubles as stemming from predecessors in office; his attempts to cow the MSM; his playing of the race card (about which much is made in the articles mentioned); his manufactured cult of personality, generally, including his insistence that those with particular enmity against the United States would reciprocate his open hand, despite all contrary evidence; his lack of embarrassment over his continuous press apotheosis, and so forth practically ad infinitim. So, post hoc, it's not surprising to discover that Barack Obama's actual background typifies what one would expect to find in a narcissist's case.

It is certainly possible to compassionate the young Obama, and to understand where the psychic malignancy begins. And he has been enabled by his bi-racialism and the desire of others to believe his narratives as presented, because it flatters their own understanding of the world. It is also inevitable, as elsewhere I've argued, that should Barack Obama fail because his convenient and arrogant view of reality, of the way things are as opposed to the way that we would like them to be, which is aided and abetted by agencies such as the Nobel panel, he will be regarded as a martyr in some quarters, and will be enabled in retrospect by them after his is finally (and in my view thankfully) out of office, so that he will never have to come to grips with his personal failures, absent a miracle which almost never befalls such a person.

The contradictions between Barack's self narratization and the more dispassionate facts of his personal history as given by his friends (such as they were) and acquaintances and the occasional documentary lapsus, certainly feeds the speculations of those who disbelieve his accounts. Recently, Jack Cashill stretched that speculation a little too far, to my mind, and misunderestimated the importance of Frank Marshall Davis (another self fashioner and malignant narcissist) in Barack's development. Likewise, having spoken to John Drew, and had him on the B-Cast where he made some fascinating contributions to our understanding of Barack's ideological orientation while a student at Occidental College (confirming the supposition that Barry, as he was then known, was a "red diaper baby"), and while I both like him and have great respect for his intellect (and Cashill's), I feel that he may be going too far in the direction of self fashioning aca-hagiography in his most recent writing for NewsReal. He's a natural fit there, and he has great political insight, so I hope that he won't try to go back to that well too often.

I'm not saying it's unseemly. I think his pride in his academic achievements is merited. I'm just saying that someone who's a noob to such a large soapbox may not reckon how important it is never to let the would-be piper call the tune.

Not unrelated is this Ed Driscoll piece.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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