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OBAMA THE MANIPULATOR: ‘Strawman’ Arguments and Narcissism

“That’s what strikes me — there but for the grace of God”. Obama said that while visiting the El Reno federal prison in Oklahoma. He said it referring to the possibility that he too could have wound up imprisoned there as a young man.

Sound familiar?

Reminiscent of “if I had a son he’d look like Trayvon”? Or any number of other instances in which Obama has gone out of his way to insert himself into the topic being discussed? He has a unique habit of doing that. It’s not just that he inserts himself into the topic, he inserts himself as one of the aggrieved — as a victim of whatever is being discussed.

Naturally, such insertions are akin to his straw-man arguments offered to steer discussion away from substance and towards the absurd. Would Obama’s son have looked like Trayvon Martin? Who knows. Maybe. He might have looked like Michelle. Or Stanley Anne Dunham. Could Obama, awash in drug use as a young man, have been arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to time in a federal prison? Again, who knows. What quantities did he carry on his person? Was he just a user or did he deal as well? Strawman arguments.

No different than the straw-man arguments built to preclude real discussion of real issues. Immigration reform comes to mind — the straw-man constructed shifts discussion off topic and into a binary question of racism. Health care also comes to mind – the straw-man argument pretends that not a single alternative was ever offered against the Affordable Care Act so the discussion is shifted towards the false question of “is it fair that some don’t have access to health care?”. Again and again straw-man arguments are used by the administration and it’s followers to silence real debate, and distill discussion down into binary false arguments.

It goes deeper than that though. Obama’s insistence upon inserting himself into the issues of the day reveals the depth of his narcissism, and the juvenile quality of his intellect. Think back to high school – or even junior high/middle school. At some point impassioned young minds engaged in discussion of an issue. It might have been a planned discussion in class? Or it might have been a spontaneous outbursts when a group of kids
stumbled into disagreement. Inevitably one of the young and impassioned kids tried to place him or herself into the discussion to make their side of the debate stick.

Let’s say the topic being argued in 8th grade debate class was: “Are chicken farms fair, or should chickens be raised free range?”. A student favoring the latter might say: “There but for the grace of God I could have been a chicken and if so I’d have wanted to be a free range chicken and not one caged up in an egg-laying sweatshop”.

Or if the topic were pollution, a student awash in enviro-ideology might say something like: “When I was four there was a creek behind my grandparents house that smelled icky probably because of pollution.”

Obama is no different when he inserts himself into the issues of the day. In doing so, he reveals his own intellectual shortcomings — and his deep obsession with himself.

Image: http://blog.dnevnik.hr/kamaci/2009/08/1626613556/homemade-scarecrow-costume.html

Andrew Allen

Andrew Allen (@aandrewallen) grew up in the American southeast and for more than two decades has worked as an information technoloigies professional in various locations around the globe. A former far-left activist, Allen became a conservative in the late 1990s following a lengthy period spent questioning his own worldview. When not working IT-related issues or traveling, Andrew Allen spends his time discovering new ways to bring the pain by exposing the idiocy of liberals and their ideology.

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