Juan Cole on Bush's narcissistic personality disorder [WITH UPDATE]

this is a pretty devastating analysis and looks to me to be spot on...

[W]hat strikes me about Bush's Monday appearance is how consistent it is with what I understand of the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. Let's look at it this way:

1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).

Bush is not content to be the most powerful man in the world. He thinks he is on a mission from God, and has decided that he is going to "reform" the Middle East, and turn Middle Easterners into something else. He is the Great Transformer of these other peoples' lives. The reason he has to stay in Iraq until the end of his presidency (it is all about him) is that he cannot admit that he did not succeed in being the great Transformer of the Middle East, that in fact he screwed up the Middle East royally.

2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.

Bush suffers from T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") syndrome. Lawrence, despite polite denials, clearly thought that he led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I...

3. Believes he is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions) 4. Requires excessive admiration 5. Has a sense of entitlement.

He is the Decider. He doesn't need Security Council resolutions to start wars. He doesn't need warrants for wire taps. He is entitled. He is the War President (never mind that he chose to go to war in Iraq and so made himself into the war president, and that the war presidency would be over with by now if he were any good at it.)

6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends. 7. Lacks empathy

Bush only "worries" that eventually there may be a civil war in Iraq. He doesn't admit that he made a whole country of 25 million people into guinea pigs, and that as a result 3,000 are dying a month in civil war violence of the most brutal kind.

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him 9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes.

Saying that he can understand that having over 2600 of our troops come home in body bags and over 8,000 come home seriously wounded, with limbs gone or brain or spinal damage, is a cause of "anxiety" to the American "psyche" is patronizing. He knows better about why this has to be. The inferior people are a little upset, but that is because they don't understand that he is the Transformer. What they're upset about is just the side effect of the Transformation. They don't believe. They can't see the Transformation before their eyes. They are inferior.

i agree with all of it... unfortunately, bush as president is just a stooge for those who stand in the shadows behind him... still, with all his visibility, he a pathetic excuse for a world leader...

[UPDATE]

after putting up the above post, i was reminded of similar posts i had made regarding the psychotic/dysfunctional tendencies of our president...

(from 5 june 2005...)

right after hitting "publish" on the previous "dry drunk" post, i ran across a piece by ron suskind from the october 17, 2004, nyt... it's been quoted extensively but one snippet in particular deserves to be repeated...

"[Bush] truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis."

[...]

"This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . . ''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' [Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush] went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence."

the "previous post" i refer to is this...

(also from 5 june 2005...)

as our president and his team are increasingly challenged to face reality, they, and bush in particular, react very much like an addict when faced with the harsh realities of the addiction... the level of defensiveness increases dramatically, the level of denial becomes shrill, and all the stops are pulled out to keep the delusion (usually some form of "everything's ok, don't worry, everything's ok") intact... generally speaking, the only thing that succeeds in breaking through the denial/delusion wall is, in 12-step terminology, "hitting the wall..."

so, what would "hitting the wall" look like for a president of the united states...? for nixon, it was the white house tapes... for clinton, it was the stain on a dress... i think for bush, because of the intensity of the delusion and the depth of the denial and because it is shared not only by the white house team, it is also mandated behavior for cabinet members, executive appointees, and congressional republicans, the impact of whatever wall is going to be hit must be correspondingly higher...

amazingly enough, they still haven't hit the wall...

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