“Is Barack Obama delusional?” This question was asked mere days ago by Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly and about a month ago, in almost the same words, at ex-congressman Allen West’s website. In fact, critics are increasingly using the d-word to describe the president, a man whose policies, they say, reflect dislocation from reality. And new information from White House sources shed insight on why this very well may be the case: Obama simply refuses to read intelligence reports and memoranda that contradict his ideological prejudices.
So says ex-CBS News reporter and Emmy-award-winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, citing Obama administration officials “in the know.” Attkisson, host of the Sunday morning news program Full Measure and author of best-selling book Stonewalled, reports that Obama’s censorship of reality applies even to serious national-security matters.
As Breitbart writes, “Wednesday on Newsmax TV’s The Steve Malzberg Show , veteran journalist Sharyl Attkisson said her sources have told her that President Barack Obama does not want and will not read intelligence reports on groups ‘he does not consider terrorists,’ despite being on a U.S. list of designated terrorists.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWKSsxfjBH8
As Attkisson told Malzberg:
I have talked to people who have worked in the Obama administration who firmly believe he has made up his mind, uh — I would say closed his mind, they say — to their intelligence that they’ve tried to bring him about various groups that he does not consider terrorists, even if they are on the U.S. list of designated terrorists.
He has his own ideas, and there are those who’ve known him a long time who say this dates back to law school. He does not necessarily… listen to the people with whom he disagrees. He seems to dig in. That would be, I would suppose he would say, because he thinks he’s right.
… I don’t know the reason for it. I’ve only been told by those who have allegedly attempted to present him, or have been in the circle that has attempted to present him, with certain intelligence that they said he doesn’t want it. He said he doesn’t want it or he won’t read it, in some instances.
Republican Texas state Senator Konni Burton called these revelations “utterly frightening” in a tweet and Facebook message. This is true for many reasons, not the least of which relates to the current controversy over the acceptance of Muslim migrants.
Obama administration officials have claimed — even in the Paris massacre’s wake — that bringing Syrian and other Mideastern Muslim migrants into the United States as “refugees” poses no danger because they’ll be thoroughly “vetted.” Yet as has been reported, this cannot be true because Syria simply lacks the databases that could provide the information necessary for vetting. Moreover, says a New York City Syrian community leader who warns that ISIS is “already at work” in America, you can bribe officials in Syria and get official government documents stating you’re whoever you want to be.
Yet this new information about Obama adds another dimension to the matter. If he simply will not look at intelligence about “groups he does not consider terrorists,” it’s logical to suspect that migrants affiliated with those groups would not be flagged as terrorist threats via vetting even if adequate databases were available. And given that Muslim “refugees” have already been among almost 70 alleged ISIS-linked plotters arrested during the last year and a half, this is most troubling.
But not at all surprising. While addressing the censorship practiced by the University of Missouri protesters recently, Obama said he tells his daughters, “I don’t want you to think that a display of your strength is simply shutting other people up. And that part of your ability to bring about change is going to be by engagement and understanding the viewpoints and the arguments of the other side.” Nice words, but critics might say, “Physician, heal thyself.” Attkisson stated that Obama’s infamous closed-mindedness “dates back to law school,” and this is well known. A good example is a story related by economist and gun-rights advocate Dr. John Lott on Mark Levin’s October 2 radio show. As I reported last month:
Speaking about the time he and Obama were both in the University of Chicago’s employ, Lott mentioned that Obama didn’t attend the gatherings at which the staff exchanged ideas; he seemed wholly uninterested in what others had to say. The one exception, however, was an instance when he showed up and asked a fairly unintelligible question. Lott then saw Obama after the event and, trying to make friends and conversation, said (I’m paraphrasing), “You know, your question was interesting, but I think more people would have understood it if…” Lott never got to finish.
Because Obama, cold as ice, just turned his back.
Lott reports that when he would occasionally see Obama in the street at future times and extend a greeting, the reaction was the same. For the sin of having disagreed with the president-to-be, Lott was dead to him.
And now we hear that, true to form, Obama turns his back not just on intelligent people, but intelligence reports as well.
This reflects, many critics say, an arrogance that Obama has long exhibited. An example is a statement Obama made to his first political director, Patrick Gaspard, in 2008. As Gaspard related, the president said, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” It brings to mind claims that Obama is a narcissist, that he’s deified himself to an extent where he will not even consider anything contradicting his own feelings.
Diagnostic terms aside, however, Habitual Head-in-the-Sand Syndrome isn’t hard to understand. And this reminds me of an ideologue I met some years ago who, after I asked her if she’d consider news sources providing a different perspective, matter-of-factly answered “No.” She wasn’t upset, either. She was just exhibiting a common human failing: When people have strong emotional attachments to delusions — to departures from reality they desperately want to maintain — reality must be avoided at all costs. For just as one little pin can pop a balloon, one little truth can shatter a rationalization.
Of course, we’ve all experienced this desire to shut out an uncomfortable or displeasing reality, if only as immature children. That’s when we have to pinch ourselves, man up and remember that, to paraphrase Ayn Rand, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
Not doing so can be disastrous. People will often ask, befuddled by a given leader’s actions, if he’s stupid; others, convinced the individual is not, will suspect ulterior motives. Often forgotten is that brilliant people can do bone-headed things when blinded by ego.
Even geniuses are dunces in certain areas; the most erudite are ignoramuses in certain spheres. A wise leader understands that, as Thomas Carlyle put it, “Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him” and surrounds himself with those whose knowledge fills in his own gaps. I once had a high-school history teacher who insisted the Nazis “were stupid”; my father, who’d been a POW in Germany during WWII, maintained this wasn’t at all so. What is true is that they often did stupid things. Just consider one reason Germany lost the war. Adolf Hitler was an intelligent man, but like all evil people also prideful. And he insisted on formulating war strategy and tactics over his generals’ objections. The results were disastrous.
The Bible tells us, “Pride goeth before a fall.” This includes the fall of leaders — and of nations.
