The Pied Piper
I was afraid to say this before. I thought, "Don't say it, Kathy. People will say that you're finding a narcissist under every bush." But the attention-seeking, the incredible arrogance, the preposterously backwards-twisted irrrationales and backwards reactions to things, the utter devaluation of others' and their lives (even those serving him), the screaming mockery of his Jesus-look get up and phony halo - all of it. What does this Bin Laden do? Nothing but destroy people and things. The moment we saw the Twin Towers, we saw his signature - WANTON DESTRUCTION.
Col. Andrew Nichols Pratt in American Thinker, "What makes Bin Laden Tick?"
Dr. Jerrold Post, a renowned CIA analyst who has devoted his entire career to the field of political psychology, recently labeled Bin Laden as a 'malignant narcissist,' a personality overflowing with narcissist—excessive self—admiration. He exudes grandiose self—importance; possesses a messianic sense of mission; demonstrates an inability to empathize with others; and, most threatening to the West, rages internally at being upstaged by our Iraq focus.
Bin Laden's ego is his raison d'etre and will be his downfall.
I mean when are the saps he's sending to die gonna catch on? The West's crusaders caught on. So when are these reverse-crusaders gonna catch on?
Duh, and see that it has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with one pied piper's power and glory?
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8 Comments:
K: "I mean when are the saps he's sending to die gonna catch on?"
Do not hold your breath for that one. It gives humans a great sense of purpose to go bravely to the death for The Cause - and it doesn't matter what the cause is. I truly believe that our need to feed both personal power and personal connection to something larger than ourselves is far far too fundamental a human need than to ever "wake up" or "catch on" or any other having of an epiphany without many other mitigating factors. Letting go of a Tribal Identity, for starters. And that's not easy.
They're not dupes. They're complicit. Sad. Pathetic. Heroic. Determined. Complicit.
Another good one that gets you right between the eyes. Very interesting. Actually i didn't regard them as honest dupes, because I've seen what kind of dupes people are in that situation: they just pretend they don't know any better. But I never thought about it this way.
What's making me puke lately is the apologists for Bin-Laden and other ISLAMOFASCISTS - those who think we can negotiate with these malignant narcissists and phony religious zealots.
Complicity doesn't equal innocence.
Another masterful post, Kathy
It seems quite popular to declare bin Laden a narcissist. Recently, I read another article on the matter:
http://www.csbsju.edu/uspp/Research/BinLaden.html
Assuming that the analyses are correct, it's amusing to see what great lengths the supposed enemies of bin Laden will go to in order to provide him with exactly what he wants: attention.
"Complicity doesn't equal innocence."
No kidding! It's the opposite of innocence. The claim of "just following orders" doesn't even apply in the situation.
And - it doesn't matter what the brand is for the religious fundamentalist zealot - if you can claim that what you do is "God's" will, then you can justify anything. I am a traditionally religious person myself, and I am more wary of a religious fundamentalist than of any other sort of person.
And it's perfect cover for any narcissist or narcissist in the making. Be the charismatic leader, appeal to the less personally focused people who are just looking for something to do so that they can be part of A Cause, and poof! Like magic, the Narcissist (with a capital N!) has all the power of the human race at his fingertips. It happens in this country all the time too (ask anyone who has escaped a fundamentalist Mormon, Christian, or Muslim sect) -- we just don't have the historic, socio-ethnic, and economic ingredients for becoming what the Middle East is and has been.
@ anonymouse,
Cute. What attention? Playing Catch-22? Mentioning him ever, at all is giving him truckloads of attention?
You must be measuring attention in a thimble. Bin Laden gets very little attention. Not a lot as you claim.
Is it wrong to ever mention him? Must we go so far as to pretend he doesn't exist?
Bin Laden isn't getting as much attention as he did in the heyday of the 9/11 frenzy (rembember, the media even went after his relatives and just about everyone else with a surname resembling bin Laden). He's still getting a lot more attention than most of us, and perhaps more importantly, his Al-qaida brainchild is one of the first suspects every time there's an incident resembling a terror attack. There's little that can be done about it, of course, as long as bin Laden and Al-qaida are exciting - or more importantly, as long as they *sell*.
"Bin Laden isn't getting as much attention as he did in the heyday of the 9/11 frenzy (rembember, the media even went after his relatives and just about everyone else with a surname resembling bin Laden)."
You imply that he now gets only a little less attention than he did then. That is grossly in error! He gets almost no attention now. Even when he does one of his promotional films, hardly any notice is taken of it. Why, he threatened to attack the White House last fall, and it didn't even make the evening news.
What is the "frenzy" you speak about over 911? Are you saying that we made too big a deal of the attack on our country? I hope you're not minimizing that. What frenzy? Did we have brawls in Congress like they do elswhere? Did we have mobs in the streets venting hatred for our attackers like they do in the ME at the drop of any hat? Were 3,000 dead nothing to get shook up about? Just what is the frenzy you characterize so negatively?
Are you saying that the press should not have investigated Bin Laden and told us everything they could find out about him?
I too have eyes and ears, and I just don't see all the attention you claim Bin Laden is getting. You hardly ever hear his name mentioned. Other terrorist leaders get more attention than he. That must really grind the narcissist. As for Al-Quaeda being the first suspect in CERTAIN TYPES of terrorist attacks, so what? The trend has been that when an attack has certain markers of al-quada, it usually is al-quaeda. Must we unknow who dunnit just to avoid giving al-quaeda any attention?
Besides, the narcissist bin Laden doesn't give a whit about al-queda. HIS personal glory is what he's all about. So even the attention given to al-quaeda instead of him galls him.
They only people you hear mentioning Bin Laden is that element that wants to pretend that 911 was no big deal and that the war with Islamofascists isn't happening, so that they can demonize their political opponents for fighting it. They yak, yak, yak about Bin Laden, asking why we haven't caught him yet, every single day.
The rest of us hardly ever think of that holed up vermin.
Quit making mountains out of molehills and molehills out of mountains. This is not the Land of Pretend.
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