Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Is Barack Obama a Sociopath? Ask Alice Palmer


Lisa has forwarded an interesting article by Rhonda Schwartz in the Chicago Sun Times:

"Lynn Sweet, the savvy Chicago political columnist who's been tracking Obama's rise, called into question Obama's use of composite characters and made-up names in his highly praised autobiography...

"I was dismayed," wrote Sweet, "at what I found when I read Dreams from My Father. Composite characters. Changed names...Except for public figures and his family, it is impossible to know who is real and who is not...As Sweet noted in her article, in the introduction of the book, Obama does disclose to his readers the use of composite characters " 'for the sake of compression'..."

"...When reached by ABC News today, a spokesman for Sen. Obama first tried to find out if the Chicago Sun-Times story was being "pitched" to ABC by a rival campaign, and after being told that was not the case, the spokesman declined to comment for the record. "It was a non-story then, and it's a non-story now. Let the book speak for itself," he said.

Read the whole article here.

When I first heard of Mr. Obama and saw him on television, my first impression was that he is a sociopath, and I blogged about this two months ago. I am not a psychologist, but I have had dealings with sociopaths in business and have looked up a few points. A sociopath is someone who lacks a conscience. Most typically, sociopaths are characterized by anti-social personality disorder, and prefer to live unconventionally. Most do not function at high levels in large organizations because their behavior raises flags before they advance very far. However, there are sociopaths who are intelligent, as is Mr. Obama, who can cloak their impulses and fool others. Politics does not provide as rigorous vetting as does a corporate job. As well, politicians ordinarily exhibit characteristics of sociopaths such as the ability to lie without remorse.

Ms. Sweet notes that Mr. Obama lied frequently in his book. Others have described Mr. Obama as manipulative and vicious with respect to opponents. Despite its functioning primarily as a publicity agent for B.O., CNN points out that Mr. Obama has repeatedly utilized election rules rather than the democratic process to win elections:

>"As a community organizer, he had helped register thousands of voters. But when it came time to run for office, he employed Chicago rules to invalidate the voting petition signatures of three of his challengers.

"The move denied each of them, including incumbent Alice Palmer, a longtime Chicago activist, a place on the ballot. It cleared the way for Obama to run unopposed on the Democratic ticket in a heavily Democrat district."

Besides the willingness to repeatedly lie, manipulate and behave viciously in order to achieve his goals, Mr. Obama has some additional sociopathic characteristics. Sociopaths are often charming and attractive. They are frequently able to induce others to trust them, to make investments or take risks others would not normally take. In Chuck Whitlock's fascinating book, Scam School, Whitlock gives example after example: a minister who convinces an elderly woman to give him her home, a man who marries women in order to extract a large sum and then disappears, a woman who murdered elderly male borders for their social security checks, a man who used a ponzi scheme to convince others to invest in spurious investments, and on and on. I have met people like this on serveral occasions. They appear to be creative, charming, often attractive, charismatic. Hitler might have been one. So might Obama. The use of a vacuous campaign slogan, "change", the ability to attract mindless, fanatic followers like Ray who posts on this blog, the ability to attract the (admittedly vapid) mainstream media, are all consistent with the hypothesis that Mr. Obama is a sociopath.


>Lisa writes:

Dear Mr. Langbert,

I tried to reply to ray but I forgot my pass word. I guess its best not to reply...he is a troll who tells discouraging things.

Whoopie!!! FEC Petition is up to 4,703 e-signatures! We don't need to tell Ray about this. He can stay under the bridge.

If Obama concealed his Barry Soetoro's persona from the public wouldn't he have re-write his autobiography?
His autobiography is based on fictional people including himself.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/chicago_suntime.html

Have a good day,

Sincerely,

Lisa Illinois

3 comments:

Ray said...

Lisa wrote:

I tried to reply to ray but I forgot my pass word. I guess its best not to reply...he is a troll who tells discouraging things

If we think a poster is a troll (and we don't ignore them) then we should occasionally point to offending words or sentences so that the poster can be made aware of what the problem is. It's quite possible that others could disagree and say that a poster is not trolling just because s/he has a different viewpoint.

Ray

Mitchell Langbert said...

Frankly, I'm not familiar with the word "troll" as it is being used here. I thought it means an elf-like but ugly man who lives under a bridge and harasses people. Please excuse my ignorance.

Ray said...

On the net, a troll is a person who makes outlandish, off-topic or inflammatory statements etc with the intention of creating a disturbance (or similar).