We all think of ourselves as rational people who make decisions based on an evaluation of facts. We think of ourselves as goal setters who seek to better ourselves and our situation in life by earning rewards and avoiding suffering if we can. Yet, the truth is that while those notions are superficially accurate and our actions are rationalized by the conscious mind, to varying degrees we’re run by subconscious drives that result from our past experiences. The more emotional the experience, the greater will its effect be on our future behavior. Consider, then, the case of Barrack Obama.
For all outward appearances, Barack Obama is an intelligent, articulate family man who is ambitious and wants to enact a political program that he and his followers think will improve this country. That’s ostensibly why he’s running for president. But an examination of Obama’s past experiences and his present associations suggests that there’s a subconscious dynamic at work that could be disastrous if Obama became president.
Obama was born of a white woman, a leftist anthropologist who was only attracted to men of color. His father, a Kenyan, abandoned his family when Obama was only two, and soon after, his mother married an Indonesian. So the very young Obama had the seeds of internal conflict sown by having a white, caring mother and a black uncaring father. After his mother divorced the Indonesian man she had married, she sent Barrack to live with relatives in Hawaii while she stayed in Indonesia with his sister. According to a friend of Barrack’s, his abandonment by his parents was the most difficult issue young Barrack had to deal with.
Given Obama’s biracial makeup, he had to choose a race with which to identify. Being half black, he knew he would be considered all black by a largely white American society. Obama’s troubled youth was spent trying to make a decision whether to identify with being white or black. He eventually decided to be a black man, yet it appears that subconsciously he may have wanted to be white since the issue led to inner conflict. From his perspective, American society would never allow him to be white like his mother, so there had to be some level of resentment at having to be black like the father who abandoned him. In his youth, Barrack became radically leftist in his political leanings and anti-American. It’s no wonder, then, that Obama could be an associate of unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Obama’s failure to disassociate himself from these people who hate America suggests that Obama doesn’t condemn a world view that places America at the center of the rich, white man’s capitalist exploitation and imperialism. And it is probably why he deliberately chose Reverend Jeremiah Wright to be his pastor.
Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not only his pastor, but also Obama’s spiritual advisor, close confidante and sounding board. Interestingly, Wright appears physically to be more white than Obama and like Obama, Wright probably felt he could never fit in as a white man and so was forced to become what he may have unconsciously decided was an inferior position in society. Now he revels in anger. Wright appears to have built up not only resentment, but actual hatred of white people. That Obama could identify with Wright isn’t surprising. Wright’s church, nominally Christian, seems more dedicated to worshipping at the altar of black victim-hood. Being a black victim is the true religion of the congregation, as reinforced and validated by a "man of God." The congregation’s sense of pride and self-worth rises in proportion to the portrayed evilness of their white oppressors, and they depend on Wright to help them feel good. At some level, Obama must have his own sense of victim-hood being reinforced at his church. And he must have the same world view as his pastor or he wouldn’t have attended for 20 years. Obama’s wife, Michelle, has demonstrated her, and probably Obama’s, agreement with their pastor’s view of white American society by, for example, her famous remarks about being proud of America for the first time in her adult life, and her offhanded comment that America is mean.
People who are abandoned by their parents sometimes develop feelings of worthlessness. For a child, adults are the ultimate authority and if your own parent abandons you, then it must be because you’re unlovable. The parent is right, and the child is wrong. People try to compensate for feelings of worthlessness or low self-esteem in a variety of ways, one of which is seeking public adulation. From grade school, it appears that his obsession was with becoming president of the United States. So it isn’t surprising that Obama has chosen public office as the route to achieving love and approval. It’s also not surprising that he campaigns on avoiding statements (and making votes) that could arouse controversy while espousing unity, post-partisan politics and social welfare. The man needs to be loved and accepted. It could also be that, perhaps subconsciously, Obama needs to reconcile his two racial sides by publicly reconciling the two racial sides of America.
Michelle Obama seems, if anything, to be more problematic than her husband. The product of a middle-class black family, she attended a private school on a scholarship and then was granted an ivy-league education at Princeton where she majored in sociology. From there she went to Harvard law school. Much has been made about Michelle’s senior thesis wherein she doubts that blacks could ever gain full acceptance on campus. That her thesis concerned the topic of black acceptance suggests that it is of major concern to her. Oddly, nobody seems to have noticed that in the dedication page of her thesis, she thanks her family and friends for always helping her feel better about her self. Michelle is undoubtedly a bright person, but she was also the beneficiary of affirmative action, and that could not only dampen her feelings of accomplishment, but exacerbate her doubts about being good enough. So sitting in the pew of Reverend Wright’s church could only feed her resentments about white America and it’s no wonder, then, that she connected emotionally with Barrack. They can share a similar view of themselves and their role in American society while feeding on each other’s sense of grievance.
So, if Obama has deep seated psychological baggage that he can’t really be accepted in white America, why run for president, especially after not even completing one term in the Senate? The outward motivation might be a simple ambition to unite an America divided by racial and political lines. But Obama as the purveyor of hope and unity would only make sense if Obama had disassociated himself from Reverend Wright and the radical bombers. But he hasn’t. Wright is now aiding Obama’s campaign. Can a man who stumps on the notion that we’re past race look to a black racist as his spiritual advisor? If Obama wanted to be president from a very early age, it’s possible that he saw the office as a way to gain love and power. Apparently, he never got over it.
More than anything, people want to validate their own inner feelings about themselves. My guess is that Obama was subconsciously driven to run for president in the expectation that he would get nowhere. His spiritual advisor, the Reverend Wright, claimed that no black man could ever become president of the United States, so was Obama trying to prove him wrong, despite listening for 20 years to Reverend Wright reinforcing the notion that blacks are perpetual victims of white America? I doubt it. Or was Obama trying to validate his feeling that he could never be accepted in white America? That would be a huge psychic payoff since it would prove that Obama was right all along about white America. That Obama has been so popular and successful in his presidential campaign apparently shocked his skeptical wife, who finally found something to be proud of in her country. It may have profoundly surprised him, too.
If Obama becomes president, the question is, would he govern as if nothing of his baggage, the hurt that the Reverend Wright reinforced in him, mattered? Or would he seek to validate the notion that he will always be inferior and unaccepted in the white world? Would that Obama be reluctant to defend America? Would that Obama want to seek retribution by victimizing white America? Would he self-destruct in scandals just to bring himself down and prove his unworthiness? In my view, Obama is at the least, a highly conflicted politician whose policies may be determined by which Obama, the outwardly successful black man or the subconsciously unworthy victim, is running his mind at any given time. I personally believe, however, that Obama will, as with most people, act according to his inner beliefs about himself. Without therapy, inner beliefs really don’t change. Would success as a black politician, adored even by white people, transform him? Or would he subconsciously sabotage not only his presidency, but America itself? That’s the danger of Obama.