Obama Derangement Syndrome In Full Glorious Flower

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People sometimes ask me if I have trouble coming up with ideas for columns. The answer is, "sometimes."

But I know that all I have to do is fire up the trusty Web browser, head on over to Fox News or Drudge Report or any of a dozen lesser online right-wing loony bins, where I'll often find the latest outbreak of what's come to be called Obama Derangement Syndrome for our pointing and mocking pleasure.

Take, for example, a recent interview conducted in the Fox News Echo Chamber by Sean Hannity, who indulged in yet another one of those head-wagging rounds of the game "Ain't Obama Awful/Yes, He Sure Is" with syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

Hannity started with his usual prep-school-bully sneer, complaining about the president of the United States taking a "tropical vacation" during the so-called "fiscal cliff" crisis. By "tropical vacation," of course, Hannity meant "spending Christmas with his family in the American state where he was born." This is something I'm sure quite a few Americans did, Hannity included.

But remember, we're dealing with Fox News here, the Hot Zone for Obama Derangement Syndrome. No activity of this president, no matter how normal or benign, is beyond the ability of a raging ODS sufferer like Hannity to be outraged over.

On to Krauthammer, whom I've found hard to take seriously since a 2010 column in which he inveighed mightily against a value-added tax (VAT) which he predicted was coming. He urged his right-wing readers to "get ready to fight" against the VAT.

Funny thing is, no one in Congress or the administration had proposed any such thing, nor have they since, nor are they likely to. For an ODS sufferer, however, exhorting people to fight against legislation that doesn't exist is a classic symptom of the disease.

Another symptom is a deep paranoia combined with extreme cognitive dissonance, leading the sufferer to ascribe to his imagined antagonist both complete incompetence and fiendish craftiness.

Krauthammer credited Mr. Obama with no less an accomplishment than "shattering" the Republican Party and plunging it into civil war: "He's been using this, and I must say with great skill - and ruthless skill and success - to fracture and basically shatter the Republican opposition. ... His objective from the very beginning was to break the will of the Republicans in the House, and to create an internal civil war. And he's done that."

Wow. Not bad for a mere "community organizer" who was playing golf on vacation. It calls to mind the Honorable John McCain's complaint during his unsuccessful presidential campaign against Mr. Obama that the blame for rising gas prices could be laid at Obama's feet, even though he was, according to other McCain ads, only the inexperienced junior senator from Illinois.

As I observed at the time, you don't want to make someone that powerful angry. Lord knows what he could do if he was really paying attention.

So, what does Krauthammer think the president should do, now that he has crushed his enemies, seen them driven before him, and heard the lamentation of their women?

Simple. He should give up. Accept Mitt Romney's non-plan of closing undefined loopholes to raise revenue, rather than raising tax rates on the wealthy, which was what the president said he was going to do during the election - an election, lest Krauthammer has forgotten, that he won. If Obama doesn't capitulate entirely, Krauthammer predicted, he'll be blamed for the "fiscal cliff" and go down in history as a "failed president."

Of course, Krauthammer also confidently predicted that Romney was going to eke out a win rather than losing in a landslide, because, according to him, Obama already was a "failed president." He also ignored the polls which show that more people will blame Republican intransigence for any failure to reach an agreement than blame the Democrats.

Here we have two more symptoms of ODS: (1) the unshakeable conviction that the consequence of losing an election is that the victorious side is still required to give you everything you want; and (2) the inability to learn from experience.

People like Hannity and Krauthammer never recognize that the last time they made predictions like this, they were wrong and the polls were right, and that maybe this blithe self-assurance is not confidence but delusional thinking.

Can ODS be cured? In the case of people like Krauthammer and Hannity, we may never know, because it's one of the few mental illnesses that's actually profitable for some of its sufferers.

But at least it gives me something to write about.

Life Of Illusion (The Director's Cut)

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[Note: this is the unedited version. The one in the paper eliminates the first paragraphs because the editor was afraid the Party of Love might firebomb the newspaper office.] 

So now, at long last, the election is over, and President Barack Obama will have his second term. Before we get to our discussion of what happened and why, let me just take the time to say: HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

Ahem. On to the post-election analysis.

I’ve said before that Mitt Romney was destined to be the John Kerry of the Republican Party. Each man was a rich, entitled Massachusetts moderate trying to convince his party's skeptical base he was one of them, despite having once supported the thing that that base purported to despise most (the Iraq War in Kerry's case, the individual mandate in Romney's). Both Kerry and Romney ran against controversial incumbents, with a central message that amounted to “I’m not him.” And both fell short. But Mitt Romney fell much shorter than Kerry. Why? Perhaps because the “him” Romney was running against didn’t exist.

The imaginary Barack Obama that the Republicans were running against bore little or no resemblance to the actual man in the White House. Imaginary Obama was a scowling, far-left radical, a socialist, a fascist or a communist, depending on who was yelling into the mike at the time. Imaginary Obama was simultaneously an evil schemer who was plotting 24/7 to destroy America and a guy who was too dumb to get into college without affirmative action or to speak without a teleprompter. Imaginary Obama was a divisive, harshly partisan figure, hated by all, even his former supporters. Worst of all, he was an incompetent, a miserable failure at absolutely everything he touched.

The problem with this strategy is that the actual Barack Obama that non-delusional people could see was a smart, calm, moderate with good likability ratings who’d brought the unemployment numbers down at a steady if sometimes maddeningly slow pace, saved the auto industry, and brought Osama bin Laden to justice. People heard the Right dismissing every bit of good news, crying doom and gloom, and insisting “everything’s getting worse,” looked around, and went, “hmmm, it really isn’t.”

Then along came Sandy. The quick Presidential response to the hurricane and the grateful reaction of Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who only a few weeks before had been savaging Obama at the GOP convention, blew away any lingering doubts non-delusional voters may have had about both the President’s competence and his ability to work with Republicans.

As the polls showed the President pulling further and further ahead in crucial swing states, Republicans began pulling the blanket of delusion over their heads. Pundits like Dick Morris, Karl Rove, Michael Barone and even the usually sane George W. Will predicted a Romney landslide, with Will predicting 321 EVs for Romney.

 One expects this sort of thing from hacks like Morris, Barone and Rove, but Will really should have known better. The polls were “skewed,” they insisted, because they assumed that Democratic voter turnout would be the same in 2012 as it was in 2008. That wasn’t going to happen this year, they asserted with the all the misguided and uninformed bravado of a latter-day George Armstrong Custer.

Actually, had you asked earlier in the year, I might have said you had a point. There were a lot of disaffected Democrats, particularly on the Left. (Anyone who says liberals all think the same has clearly never been around any). But that was before the GOP, some of its prominent supporters, and its candidates began taking extreme radical positions on things like abortion, contraception, gay rights, and immigration, and saying things that frightened, offended or ticked off Latinos, LGBT people, African-Americans, and especially women. That fired up the very constituencies the GOP had told themselves would stay home.

So thanks, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, Todd Akin, Rick Santorum, John Koster, Richard Mourdock, etc.! You fired liberals up and damaged the GOP brand with moderates, probably for years. And right wingers, dwelling as they do in their tightly woven cocoons where only Fox News and talk radio can penetrate, never even saw it. They still don’t. But numbers really don’t lie.

Now that the Republican leadership has failed in their stated number one goal of making Barack Obama a “one term president,” what will they do? Will they actually start pushing bills other than futile grandstanding attempts to “repeal Obamacare”? Will they actually deal in good faith on the budget?

Well, we live in hope. But first they’re going to have to do is stop deluding themselves that everyone hates the President and the Democrats as much as they think they do and that they’ll be rewarded for obstructionism. Reality, it’s said, has a well-known liberal bias, but it’s still reality. 

How to Speak Wingnut

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Talking or conversing online with a member of the Rabid Right can often be a frustrating experience. It often seems like the two of you are talking past each other.

This is because while wingnuts speak something that appears to be English, they're not really speaking the same language as you. They use a sort of argot or cant, made up of dog-whistles and code words whose full and deeper meaning is only understood by them or people like them.

So here's a helpful guide in understanding wingnut speech, or, as I call it, Wingspeak:

What they say: "Obama was never properly vetted. We don't know anything about him."

What they mean: "We've dug and dug but none of us has ever been able to turn up a shred of credible evidence for all of the ridiculous stuff we've made up about Barack Obama."

What they say: "The press is covering up this story."

What they mean: "The press won't report our half-truths, distortions and outright lies as if they were facts."

What they say: "The press has a liberal bias."

What they mean: "The press keeps finding out true but damaging things about us."

What they say: "We need to cut spending."

What they mean: "We need to stop giving money to black and poor people so the government can pay for my retirement and health care."

What they say: "We need entitlement reform."

What they mean: "For every entitlement but the ones I get."

What they say: "Government can't create jobs."

What they mean: "Government shouldn't spend money to create jobs except for ones resulting from defense, road or bridge projects in my district."

What they say: "I know it isn't politically correct to say this, but..."

What they mean: "I am about to say something incredibly racist, sexist or just pig-ignorant, and I want to look like I'm daring and edgy instead of a brain-dead boob."

What they say: "You just call everyone who disagrees with you a racist!"

What they mean: "I say racist stuff all the time, but maybe if I play the aggrieved, falsely accused victim, I can get away with it."

What they say: "You just call people names because you haven't got any real arguments!"

What they mean: "I'm going to hope people ignore the fact that you just used actual evidence to clean my clock in this argument by self-righteously feigning indignation over the way you said it."

What they say: "Barack Obama isn't a real American."

What they mean: "Obama is black."

What they say: "Barack Obama doesn't love America."

What they mean: "Obama is black."

What they say: "Barack Obama wasn't born here, he was born in Kenya."

What they mean: "Obama is black."

What they say: "Barack Obama should release his college transcripts."

What they mean: "He couldn't have legitimately gotten into college and done as well as he did without getting special treatment, because he's, you know, black."

What they say: "Mitt Romney should release his tax returns only when President Obama releases his school records."

What they mean: "We're positive there's something in those tax returns that will destroy Romney's candidacy, so we'll come up with any flimsy non sequitur to try and excuse why he shouldn't release them. Also, Obama should release his school records because he's, you know, black."

What they say: "Obamacare is socialism!"

What they mean: "We don't really have any idea what's actually the Affordable Care Act, but we know this: We don't like socialism, we don't like Obama, and we don't like this plan, even though it was originally proposed by Republicans, because this time it was backed by a guy who's a Democrat and, you know, black, so we're going to call it something that sounds impressive and ominous, even though it clearly shows we know as much about socialism as we know about quantum physics."

What they say: "President Obama is engaging in Chicago-style gutter politics."

What they mean: "Obama's using the same hardball tactics against us that we've used to win every election we've succeeded in, and doing it better, since the stuff he's saying is actually true."

What they say: "The Obama campaign is getting desperate."

What they mean: "We're getting hurt badly by the latest round of revelations."

As a general rule of thumb, when they say, "How dare those awful liberals (fill in supposed outrage here)," what they mean is "You can't do that! Only we can do that!"

Hope this helps.

Osama bin Laden is Dead: What Now?

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A good person does not rejoice in the death of another human being. A good person doesn’t hear that another living, breathing soul, one created by the maker of all things, has been gunned down and feel happy about the news.

Guess I’m just a bad person, then.

When I heard the news that Osama bin Laden had been shot and killed by U.S. Navy SEALs, I didn’t exactly go out and dance in the street. It was late, I was tired, and it would have been kind of weird to do it all by myself. I know for sure it would have freaked out the dog.

But I did pour myself a large celebratory drink, sit down, and smile a smile of pure satisfaction.

Truth be told, my revenge fantasies since Sept. 11, 2001, have not involved Osama bin Laden being blown away. They’ve been of him sitting alone in a clear plastic cage, like Magneto in the X-men movie, surrounded by pictures and constantly playing videos of the people whose deaths he orchestrated and their families, constantly confronted with the human cost of what he’d done for the rest of a long, miserable life.

But I knew that would probably never happen. I don’t even know where you’d go to get a cell like that. So as second choices go, this one will do just fine.

I can’t help it. I still remember, as if it was yesterday: the shock, the fear, the anxiety of that pretty September day when I heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, followed by the news of the plane that crashed as its passengers tried to take it back from the terrorists to keep it from becoming another flying bomb.

We all felt it, and we’ve all felt that anxiety and that sense of creeping paranoia every day since. It’s made a lot of us a little bit nuts. It’s made a few of us really nuts. That one incident united us, then it divided us, and I don’t know how long it will be before we’re really whole again.

My children grew up in a world afraid of its own shadow because of that son of a bitch, and while his death will not spell the end of terrorism, I can’t help but be happy he’s been paid back for that.

So what now? Will the death of the man who’s been the dark and beardy face of terror bring us together just as the original attacks did, albeit all too briefly? Will the slaying of this particular dragon start a national healing process?

Well, maybe.

I was encouraged by the fact that even Dick Cheney, who’s previously made thoroughly obnoxious pronouncements that he didn’t think President Obama actually believed we were at war with terrorists, had nothing but praise for the “people who worked very very hard for a long time,” then went on to say, “It’s also a good day for the administration. President Obama and his national security team acted on the intelligence when it came in and they deserve a lot of credit too.”

Former President George W. Bush also was very gracious, acknowledging President Obama’s “courtesy call” to him before the announcement. So credit goes right back to them as well. In their honor there’ll be a two-week moratorium on calling Mr. Bush “Dubbya” and on “shooting in the face” jokes.

On the other hand, a person on Twitter who identified himself as the founder of the “NYC Tea Party” couldn’t bring himself to celebrate the moment without a bitter jab at the commander in chief who was announcing the success of the operation: “I can literally see Obama’s eyes moving back and forth reading the teleprompter. Cheapens this historic moment.”

Meanwhile, commenters at the right-wing site RedState were confident that the whole thing was orchestrated to take people’s minds off examining Obama’s birth certificate. Is that some tunnel vision or what?

So we’ll see. Haters are gonna hate, no matter what. This, however, is a time when the vast majority of Americans want to greet this as good news, as evidenced by the celebrations at the White House, Times Square and ground zero. Maybe this time, the haters, sore losers and conspiracy theorists will find themselves marginalized and, for once, shunned by the people who direct the media spotlight.

We live in hope.