Part of Psychoanalytic training involves the cultivation of an analytic attitude. This is composed of pan-curiosity (ie, a free floating curiosity about every aspect of the patient's life and mind) and a careful neutrality. The neutrality, an ideal which can be approached but never achieved, involves an almost Zen-like state of non-desire. In other words, the analyst enters the consultation room with no personal desires except to understand his patient. As such, for the purposes of our work, we strive to make no moral judgements; we do not give advice (which always entail moral judgments); our questions are always directed at enlarging the area of interest and enhancing our patient's (and our) understanding of himself. Often this neutrality is mistaken for lack of engagement. It is not unusual for a patient to feel that the Analyst is not listening or doesn't care or "never says anything".
In today's New York Times David Brooks describes Barack Obama in rather flattering terms:
He grew up with an absent father and a peripatetic mother. “I learned long ago to distrust my childhood,” he wrote in “Dreams From My Father.” This is supposed to produce a politician with gaping personal needs and hidden wounds.
But over the past two years, Obama has never shown evidence of that. Instead, he has shown the same untroubled self-confidence day after day.
There has never been a moment when, at least in public, he seems gripped by inner turmoil. It’s not willpower or self-discipline he shows as much as an organized unconscious. Through some deep, bottom-up process, he has developed strategies for equanimity, and now he’s become a homeostasis machine.
The Psychoanalyst cultivates an image of equanimity for a particular reason. We want the analysis to be primarily about the patient and by offering a (relatively) blank screen we enable the patient to project his inner conflicts upon the analyst. When an analyst allows (or is unaware of) his own biases, desires, or interests to leak into the office setting it often skews the analysis and leads to transference/countertransference stalemates.
It is clear that Barack Obama presents a consciously cultivated blank screen. We rarely know what he feels deeply about. In such a setting, his past associations are disturbing. Bill Ayers is not significant because he was a bomber 30 years ago but because he promulgates troubling ideas, such as the use of schools as propaganda vehicles to create a revolutionary consciousness starting in grade school. Tony Rezko is not important because he is corrupt but because Barack Obama seems to have been so comfortable involving himself in shady deals to his own benefit with an unknown quid pro quo. Obama's connections to ACORN are important because it is a group that has an agenda that appears to include inducing chaos in our electoral system in order to discredit the system. Joe the Plumber is important for another, even more fundamental reason.
On Saturday, Michale Barone, one of our more fair and respected political pundits, wrote an article detailing reasons to be concerned about The Coming Obama Thugocracy:
Attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals.
‘I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors,” Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. “I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people’s faces. They seem determined to shut people up.
...
Once upon a time, liberals prided themselves, with considerable reason, as the staunchest defenders of free speech. Union organizers in the 1930s and 1940s made the case that they should have access to employees to speak freely to them, and union leaders like George Meany and Walter Reuther were ardent defenders of the First Amendment.
Today’s liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.
Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don't like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.
When Joe the Plumber asked a perfectly reasonable question about Barack Obama's tax plans, Obama made a classic Kinsley gaffe (in which a politician accidentally tells the truth.) Obama has exercised impressive message discipline throughout this campaign, but in this case, just as when he described the rural folk who cling to their guns and religion, he apparently revealed how he actually felt. In response to Obama's error, his campaign and its supporters immediately embarked on a campaign to destroy Joe Wurzelbacher. Ed Morrissey summarizes the incident:
Indeed. And Joe Wurzelbacher didn’t give a speech or make a commercial. He asked a question. He stood on a rope line, and Obama picked him to ask it. The Tanning-Bed Media seems to feel that they have a duty to expose every last part of Wurzelbacher’s life, but that asking Obama to explain his political partnerships with Tony Rezko and William Ayers, and his long friendship and financial support of rabid demagogues Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, are not just out of bounds but downright racist.
So what have we learned from this episode?
1. Thou shalt not offend The One by asking him a question. Of any kind.
2. Anyone who questions The One will have to undergo a public pillorying of a kind unseen since the Red Scare, or perhaps the Inquisition.
3. The Tanning-Bed Media will happily participate in any inquisition, as long as it keeps them from investigating irrelevant issues like Obama’s ties to the Chicago Machine, William Ayers, ACORN, or his record on protecting infanticide.Don’t ask questions. Don’t check the records of people running for political office, but do check the records of those who dare violate Rule #1. No dissent will be tolerated. Our political and media masters have spoken.
Barack Obama is articulate and urbane; he also, to a large extent politically, remains a blank slate. He has been a conventional liberal whose positions have been expedient and in consonance with the farthest left part of his party. His presentation on the campaign trial has been moderate to a fault. The most worrisome aspects of his candidacy has been his tolerance of thuggishness among his supporters and his apparent support of profoundly anti-democratic policies (card check, re-institution of the "fairness doctrine" and possible extension to the blogosphere as desired by many of his supporters, suppression of uncomfortable speech via hate speech laws.) The attacks on Joe Wurzelbacher are extremely worrisome in this climate. He is merely a citizen exercising his right to ask a question of the man who would like to be President. If Barack Obama tolerates the efforts by his supporters to destroy Joe merely for asking a question and eliciting an answer that may harm their candidate, what confidence could we have that Barack Obama would not be equally tolerant of such tactics once he has the entire engine of government under the control of his followers.
During the last eight years we have seen and heard repeatedly that the Bush administration was suppressing free speech. No evidence of government attacks on free speech were ever cited. I have seen vanishingly little support for the free speech of those on the right from those who have been most exercised about the dangers of the Bush administration. If our presumed next President will not confront his supporters for their over-zealous (to be most charitable) defence of his interests when their actions threaten to cross the line to intimidation, all of us will soon have reason for great concern.
Dr. Sanity has more with JUST A LITTLE TASTE OF THE THUGOCRACY.
And don't miss The Anchoress's post and compilation: Going after Joe the Plumber & America - UPDATED
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