American Thinker: Why There's No There There for Obama and Pelosi

September 29, 2010



Why There's No There There for Obama and Pelosi


By Robin of Berkele
 
A young client, Jenny, came to see me this week in tears. She was outside her house when suddenly, a speeding Prius hit her cat. The driver slowed down, observed Jenny's horrified eyes, and then hightailed it out of there.


There's good news: the cat survived. But Jenny's belief in the goodness of people -- particularly hybrid-drivers -- did not.

I have my own tales to tell from my week in Berkeley. I was walking gingerly through a crosswalk (I have bad knees) when an impatient driver shot me the bird. His car was graced with a Coexist bumper sticker.

One more: I was meeting a friend at a cafe, and we needed another chair. A man, sitting alone and surfing the net, had his legs strewn on an extra chair. When I asked him nicely to borrow it, he refused. The guy was wearing a Free Tibet t-shirt.

I imagine that all of these people consider themselves noble and righteous. They support aggrieved nations, world unity, and a greener world. Apparently, this absolves them from having to actually be nice people. As long as they talk the talk, they don't have to walk the walk.


This phenomenon is not confined to Berkeley; each day we see the same hypocrisy on full display. Nancy Pelosi prays at mass, magnanimously spreads our (not her) wealth around, all the while cavalierly tarring opponents as Nazis. Obama views himself as gifted while he casually disses the Prime Minister of Israel. And most people on the Left suffer from Palin Derangement Syndrome, which allows for hideous, no-holds-barred utterances toward this good-hearted woman.

The examples are endless. Of course, conservatives can be hypocrites, too. But we on the right don't delude ourselves into believing that our voting patterns allow us to be dirty, rotten scoundrels.

Consequently, the Democratic Party is where we see people considering themselves virtuous while treating other living and breathing humans with utter disregard, if not downright abuse. Decades of moral relativism and secular humanism have transformed the Golden Rule for Progressives into this: I demand that you treat me well, and as long as I champion liberal issues, I'll treat you any damn way I want to.

How can people so easily let themselves off the hook? Is it denial? Yes, but that wouldn't fully explain things. Is it delusion, which means not only denying reality, but creating a completely new reality? Hmm...getting warmer here.

Are we seeing dissociation, where a person disconnects from himself and becomes, temporarily, a different personality? This phenomenon occurs only in the most disturbed. But I wouldn't rule this out among some of the more rabid and unglued.

But I think the best explanation for the behavior of Obama, Pelosi, et al. lay in a conversation that I had with an old flame, Peter, many years ago. We'd been dating for a few months when I was ready to have the conversation. I sat him down and told him I cared a lot about him. Did he see a future between us?

He looked at me as though I were from another galaxy. Then he uttered something that I have never forgotten. He said, "A relationship? I'm not capable of a relationship."

At first I shrugged it off to commitment-phobia. After all, Peter was an ardent progressive -- the first in line for any demonstration. He avidly read books by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.

But the more I got to know Peter, the more I realized that his self-appraisal was spot-on. While superficially engaging, there was a hollowness about him, a brokenness, even. He was unable to connect to me, to anyone, in a meaningful way. There just was no there there.

That conversation with Peter, though years ago, has always remained front and center in my mind. It has helped me to understand why some people look fully formed from the outside but are vacant inside.

The Peters of the world may not be withholding love or affection or even simple kindness. They may just be incapable of it. They are missing an essential ingredient to being a good and whole human being, and that is empathy, or putting oneself in another person's shoes.

Perhaps the reasons are genetic. Maybe it has to do with copious pot and alcohol use or overuse of prescription drugs. In places like Berkeley, it may be inbreeding. Mental illness, character defects, bad upbringing -- the culprits are endless.

In the realm of romance, the Peters (the Peter Pans?) are simply frustrating and disappointing. But when the empty shells of the world grab the reins of power, that is another story entirely; it can spell catastrophe.

And that's why we have been watching, spellbound, like my client Jenny, as a disaster movie unfolds before our horrified eyes. And this is why we must propel the intact and unbroken among us into office this November.

A frequent American Thinker contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a licensed psychotherapist in Berkeley. You can reach her through her website: www.robinofberkeley.com. Information in this article is designed for educational and entertainment purposes, not to offer diagnoses or treatment. Please note that Robin changes the names of persons on all of her articles for privacy purposes.

American Thinker: Why There's No There There for Obama and Pelosi