An update on president nut-bar's mental state.
Trident
Capital Hill Blue
Has Bush gone over the edge?
September 5, 2006 06:06 AM
An increasing number of Republicans, ranging from former conservative
Congressman Joe Scarborough to former President George H.W. Bush, worry
that President George W. Bush's tenuous hold on reality is slipping
away and the leader of the free world may be sliding into a
full-fledged mental breakdown.
Scarborough sounded the warning recently when he devoted an episode of
his MSNBC talk show to the topic "Is Bush an Idiot?" Other published
reports say Bush's own father is worried about his son's mental state.
Psychiatrists who have observed Bush during his presidency share this
concern.
Writes Jeffrey Steinberg in Executive Intelligence Review:
The word is circulating in high-level Republican Party circles that
former President George H.W. Bush is profoundly worried about the
mental state of his son, the current President. According to the
sources, Bush 41 has been communicating with his own intimate circle,
including former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and former
Secretary of State James Baker III, along with former President Bill
Clinton, about G.W.'s over-the-top support for Israel's current
self-destructive assault on Lebanon. The ex-President has reportedly
conveyed to his close associates that he fears that G.W. is in a
messianic state and is "unreachable," even by such close advisors as
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Insight magazine, the online
publication of the Washington Times, buttressed this account, reporting
in early August that, for the first time, a rift has developed between
Rice and President Bush, over the President's one-sided support for
Israel, in the ongoing Israeli Defense Forces invasion of Lebanon.
Bush family insiders say the former President's concern over his son's
mental state was a primary reason why the President made a rare
appearance at the family home in Connecticut during August. Bush rarely
visits his father. In fact, NBC news anchor Brian Williams recently
reported that former President Bill Clinton, who defeated the elder
Bush after one term, visits his former rival more often.
White House aides point to the President's increasingly bizarre
behavior: an inpromptu "massage" of a foreign leader at the recent G8
conference, his penchant for farting in front of new West Wing aides
and his rambling, often incoherent answers to reporters' questions.
John Dean, the White House counsel who helped bring down another
deranged President: Richard M. Nixon, shares the concern.
In his book, Conservatives Without Conscience, Dean calls
Republican-controlled Washington a bullying, manipulative, prejudiced
leadership edging the nation toward a dark era.
"We have returned to the imperial presidency (that existed in the Nixon
era)," Dean says. "We have an unchecked presidency."
"Are we on the road to fascism?" he adds. "Clearly, we are not on that
road yet. But it would not take much more misguided authoritarian
leadership, or thoughtless following of such leaders, to find ourselves
there.
"I am not sure which is more frightening," he adds, "another major
terror attack or the response of authoritarian conservatives to that
attack."
Dr. Justin Frank, the prominent George Washington University
psychiatrist who wrote Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the
President, says Bush has lost touch with reality:
With every passing week, President Bush marches deeper and deeper into
a world of his own making. Central to Bush's world is an iron will
which demands that external reality be changed to conform to his
personal view of how things are.
As far as Bush is concerned, he is telling the truth; as Madeleine
Albright recently said to Columbia Magazine: "the most serious problem
is that George Bush now believes what he says." Like many of my
hospitalized patients, Bush has created a vast, detailed but vague
delusional system he feels compelled to maintain at all costs. This
system helps him manage the terrifying anxiety that threatens to make
his already endangered inner world more chaotic.
Psychoanalytic theory suggests that Bush's true enemy is an aspect of
himself -- the overwhelming anxiety he works so hard to manage. For
Bush, lying remains a central defense mechanism in managing his fears;
he lies foremost to himself, altering his perception of external or
internal reality to fulfill his psychic need to maintain order. His
anxiety is so great that he cannot shift his thinking to account for
new information --especially the fact that patriotic families of
patriotic soldiers demand that he speak with them.
Taking responsibility has always been hard for George W. Bush. And
taking responsibility for inflicting harm on others, a major step in
the development of maturity, is a step President Bush has yet to make.
Instead, he persists in lying to himself, surrounding himself with
people who agree with him. And now he is not safe even inside his own
closed circle.
Dr, Frank has studied Bush's actions and personality extensively and
believes the President needs extensive analysis and help.
"It is not too late for President Bush to have the second half of his
medical check-up: psychological testing," Dr. Frank says. "After his
recent press conference in which he kept talking about finishing the
job while attacking Democrats for wanting an exit strategy, Bush showed
even more telltale signs of a particular kind of mental disturbance
which medical professionals call thought disorder."
Writing in The Huffington Post, Dr. Frank continues:
I had always felt that his inability to respond to crisis, as seen in
his response to 9/11 and Katrina and Israel's bombing of Lebanon, was
because he suffered from something called affective flooding, where
overwhelming anxiety paralyzes any ability to think or even function.
Such a response is similar to denial but writ large. Those who observe
the president at such moments - thanks to smuggled film clips and his
historic April 2004 press conference when he was asked if he had made
any mistakes as president - see that he starts rapid blinking movements
before his eyes glaze over and become almost fixed in a blank, mindless
stare. This massive disconnection from inner self and outer world is
called "splitting."
But a recent press conference (August 21, 2006) showed that when he is
in control he is not flooded in this way. Rather, his splitting takes
the form of hatred of reality. I use the term hatred purposefully. When
he was pushed by a few increasingly frustrated reporters, he behaves
like the untreated alcoholic he is - summarily dismissing material
reality.
When offered a chance to re-think the Iraq war he becomes obstreperous,
using sarcasm to both mask and express his internal rage at being
challenged. When back in control he patronizes members of what he calls
the "Democrat" party, saying that they are "good people" and that he
doesn't question their patriotism. In control he is a poor man's
Cicero, saying what he's not going to say anyway. Reading between the
lines, he calls his critics quitters.
All of this behavior is in the service of defending himself against
reality - something he actively hates. At times, his attempts to ward
off reality make him appear stupid. He is not. Rather, internal and
external realities are too threatening for him to face. When asked
whether he had been surprised or frustrated by all the bad news from
Baghdad he didn't even understand the question. This is because the
very act of facing such questions threatens to destroy his tenaciously
held preconceptions. This he cannot risk; he employs various coping
mechanisms to attack such questions in any way he can. Instead of
acknowledging personal frustration he said that the war must be
frustrating for the national psyche. But his hatred of reality required
a more violent approach - the day after his conference he sent more of
those poor marines back into a world of horror.
His ability to dismiss reality is profound - more than the simple
method used by his mother Barbara, who said she wasn't going to watch
the TV news during the war because watching body bags would spoil her
"beautiful mind". No, he has a rugged inner strength - unless
confronted by surprise - that enables him to dismiss and destroy
personal perception.
His mental pulse needs to be taken, not just his physical one. I think
that what prevents his doctors from doing so is their fear of what
they'd find. Without such an examination, we are left with no medical
terms to describe his mental functioning, his private global war on
terror which extends to attacks on his own capacity to perceive
reality. I have not examined the President, so it is not proper for me
to offer a diagnosis. However, my observations lead me to believe that
he is psychotic
--
"In the future you may be here, but will your dreams?"
.
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