Obama’s U.N. speech is astonishing. I read 9 paragraphs and had to stop to answer the question arising in my mind, which was “How do we describe a person whose thinking lacks objectivity in the way that Obama’s does?”
His comments are blind to their application to the U.S. and himself. This has been called hypocrisy, but Obama regarded this speech as important and worked on it for months. He believes what he said, although he also is using it as a political vehicle. When he says “On this basis, we see some major powers assert themselves in ways that contravene international law,” he isn’t referring to an obvious case, the U.S. When he mentions as a criticism that “information is strictly controlled,” he isn’t thinking of his own treatment of whistleblowers and journalists. When he criticizes rules of the past when he says “the belief that power is a zero-sum game; that might makes right; that strong states must impose their will on weaker ones; that the rights of individuals don’t matter; and that in a time of rapid change, order must be imposed by force,” he is not thinking of the severe infractions of U.S. administrations of the past 20 years including his own. He is blind to the application of his ideas to himself and the U.S. He lacks insight and objectivity.
How do we describe such a person?
I asked this question of Google and found a website with several answers.
The question that site discussed is “What quality does a person lack who cannot understand another’s point of view?” This is not a political site. It doesn’t refer to any one figure. It’s “a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts…” I wanted to know how I might reasonably and without bias describe Obama’s personality, having observed what I see as a blind region in his thinking concerning the U.S.
The answers that 9 different people came up with are very interesting. These are the kinds of words that cropped up:
solipsist
egocentric
lack of empathy
mind-blindness
lack of social intelligence
lack of insight
lack of decentering
inconsiderate/thoughtless
lack of objectivity
lack of wisdom
psychopath or sociopath
narcissism
unaware of or indifferent to other’s thought processes
unperceptive
I do not think that these or similar or other worse negative characteristics belong only to the 44th president of the U.S. I think they and others belong to MANY U.S. presidents. I think the system of electoral politics, preceded by the educational system and other social inputs, acts to select persons with peculiar or exaggerated or exceptional defects of character, mind and emotion to “lead” the nation.
6:22 pm on October 1, 2015
