50 Days in Office:I am Scared and Angry

The mind of an empty nester is really quite fascinating. This morning, I am flipping between the joy of having 4 freshman college students visiting for spring break and the frustration of having a pathological narcissist serving as our President. But wait, shouldn't it be the other way around?...shouldn't the girls be frustrating me by acting wild, demanding and self-centered and the President acting prudent, responsibly and not spending my future grand kids money so freely? My world seems upside down or maybe, sideways.

Yesterday, my daughter and her friends invited me to tag-along on a visit to the town of Sedona. I love Sedona and always welcome showing this spectacular place with out-of-town guests. (Pictures to follow later on today...every one's still sleeping to grab their cameras and share the pictures) If America's youth is anything like this group of girls, then this country has absolutely nothing to worry about. They are:

Polite.

Positive.

Active.

Generous.

Caring.

These attributes may be due to excellent parenting. But they are also:

Fun.

Creative.

Curious.

Intelligent.

Open.

Good schooling, perhaps. I would like to think that they represent the majority of youth today. You know....the ones we never hear about on the news or on TV reality shows.

On the other hand, I read an email this morning discussing the findings from Sam Vaknin a psychologist who is one of the leading experts on narcissism (and author of 'Malignant Self Love'). He describes President Obama this way:

"I must confess I was impressed by Sen.Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident - a wholesome presidential package. I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words. Obama's speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such quasi "religious" impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment, makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming. Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact he is quite ignorant on most important subjects." ......."Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist." ....."or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD)".

The email explains, 'When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don't know it until it is too late. One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse'. "Obama's early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations," says Vaknin. "Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia, a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white)grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995".

Then it goes on to say, 'One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality. His admirers become his co-dependents Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and do not deserve their attention........If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The "present" vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him'.

To further ruin my day, it said, 'Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama's lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month.....A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly half a billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? Because, his brother cannot be used for his ascent to power.........A narcissist cares for no one but himself. This election is like no other in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world? I hate to sound alarmist, but one is a fool if one is not alarmed. Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others...They are simply self serving and selfish........Obama evidences symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or a Bill Clinton for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined. This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw. Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous......There is no insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as president'.

His head is not in the right place, if you ask me. No telling where his heart is. I want to believe that he truly wants to help this country and simply has a different approach than I would use. But then....my old mind wanders back to the college girls......

Our youth deserves better than we are setting them up for with these massive spending bills and slow-growth proposals. Whether it all gets passed by the stalwarts in Congress, we had better make it up to these kids some day in the future. Simply put, they deserve better.