Narcissism Is a Contagious Disease

Narcissism Is a Contagious Disease
Saturday, September 3, 2011
by Burt Prelutsky

Every time I see some Washington mucky-muck striding down a congressional corridor with a dozen lackeys in his or her wake, I find myself wishing it were actually a perp walk and, at its conclusion, the cops would be waiting to cart the poltroon off to prison.

It is also how I feel every time I see Obama walking to the Oval Office. You can just see that he’s thinking, “I’m so cool. They’re all so lucky to have me as their president.” Maybe it’s just me, but I just want to bitch-slap that smirk off his arrogant face.

It’s all narcissism. These people who have done nothing more than win an election actually believe they’re indispensable. I’m used to this form of mental derangement because I’ve worked in Hollywood. Out here, it’s not just the actors and actresses, writers and directors, who suffer from this personality disorder. It’s also the producers and agents, the P.R. flacks and managers. They all regard themselves as gods and goddesses descended from Mt. Olympus.

These people are all alike, whether they make laws or movies, and there’s no way that their acolytes can adore them half as much as they adore themselves.

Of course when it comes to sheer narcissism, no group can compare to homosexuals. That’s because by their very nature, like Narcissus in the myth, they are fatally drawn to reflections of themselves.

Getting back to Obama, I suspect that even on his death bed, he will be blaming George Bush for costing him the 2012 election. While it’s true that Bush did the economy no favors, the crash of 2008 had far more to do with the fact that Democrats such as Pelosi, Reid, Dodd and Barney Frank, took over the House and Senate after the 2006 elections. It was the Democrats, after all, who, in their endless trolling for the votes of blacks and Hispanics, insisted that the lending agencies stop demanding things like down payments and proof of income. If you wanted a home, by gum, the liberals would see that you got one. Of course when the inevitable crash came, I didn’t notice people like Henry Waxman, Sheila Jackson Lee and Barbara Boxer, inviting those who lost their homes to foreclosure to come live with them.

So, while Obama’s successor will be inheriting an even worse economy than he did, he will at least have a blueprint for recovery. He or she will merely have to be the un-Obama by cutting taxes; derailing ObamaCare; re-writing the tax code; passing a balanced budget amendment; following the example of Arizona and Alabama in dealing with illegal immigrants and their employers; drilling for oil; digging for coal; cutting federal regulations; and eliminating several federal departments, starting with Education, Health & Welfare and the NLRB, but including everything not specified in the Constitution.

The next president should also use his bully pulpit to express his displeasure with Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, AARP, the National Endowment of the Arts, the NAACP and the ACLU.

As far as the recent skirmish over raising the debt goes, I am not as upset as some conservatives are over the possible cutting of the Defense budget. For one thing, unless I’m the one selling $1.41 drainpipes for $75, $7.05 control switches for $900 and $183.30 circuit breakers for $4,500, I don’t want the Pentagon to continue shopping at Tiffany’s when they should be filling their cart at Lowe’s or Home Depot.

For another thing, I want to call back our troops from everywhere they’re not fighting and where neither they nor America is appreciated. In case you hadn’t noticed, we not only have 160,000 or so troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, we have them deployed in 150 other countries. There are 11 countries where we have over a thousand troops, including Belgium, Turkey, Bahrain, Djibouti and Turkey. We have 8,000 in Qatar; 10,000 in both Italy and Great Britain; 28,500 in South Korea; and 54,000 in Germany.

I say it’s high time we began letting countries defend themselves. If they want to hire us as bodyguards, that’s fine. But first, like every other mercenary, we negotiate the price for our services.

It’s also time we quit funding the U.N. and all those wretched Arab and Muslim nations that not only bite the hand that feeds them, but revile us as the Great Satan.

I’m not suggesting we de-militarize America. On the contrary, I think it’s high time we declared war on Iran. All of this pussy-footing around with that vile regime reminds me of the Spanish Civil War, when Germany and the Soviet Union took sides in a rehearsal for World War II. So far, the U.S. has gone into Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, when all along we’ve known who the real enemy has been ever since 1978, when Jimmy Carter rolled out the red carpet for the Ayatollah Khomeini.

It’s always Iran that’s lurking behind the curtain, pulling the strings; providing an endless stream of insurgents; supplying arms, training and explosives, to terrorists; and all the while our enemies in Tehran remain safe and secure.

While each second brings Iran closer to becoming a nuclear threat, we twiddle our thumbs. For decades, we’ve fought wars in which we seem happy to settle for breaking even, instead of winning. We ignore military strategists like Hannibal, Alexander and George Patton, instead promoting the Marquis of Queensbury.

In the past, we demolished our enemies and then set about helping them to rebuild their countries in our own decent image. As a result, Germany and Japan are two of our more steadfast allies. But ever since we started going to war against Muslims in defense of other Muslims, we have demanded that our soldiers fight with one arm, sometimes two arms, tied behind their back, lest they somehow insult Islam.

Any president who insists that mosques or so-called holy cities must remain untouchable during wars in that part of the world should be tried for treason. What else would you call putting our warriors in harm’s way just so we won’t be accused of insulting Muslims?

We should all keep in mind that it’s not the military’s job to build nations or re-build bridges and factories five minutes after knocking them down. If a commander-in-chief can’t grasp that simple fact, perhaps because it’s above his pay grade, he should resign and go back to doing what he did best, whether it was owning a baseball team or organizing a community.
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To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.