The evil pathology now poisoning our White House and the values of our Constitutional Republic is malignant narcissism

Barack Obama and the People of the Lie

By Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr. (Bio and Archives)  Thursday, October 24, 2013,http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/58798

Christian Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck (1936 – 2005) wrote the definitive book on Barack Hussein Obama in 1983, although, of course, he never met him or mentioned him. The title of Peck’s book is “The People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil.” While Dr. Peck is more widely known for his best-selling “The Road Less Travelled,” his “The People of the Lie” remains one of the most important scientific contributions to the study of the origins of evil.
Dr. Peck connected evil people directly with the bane of malignant narcissism. To him, the evil are “the people of the lie,” deceiving others as they also build layer upon layer of self-deception (p. 66). I’ve seen this pathology close-up in the religious sphere. In the 1980s, untreated Viet Nam PTSD made me vulnerable to recruitment into a Pentecostal mind-control cult. No drinking, no drugs there, but ultimately the religious addiction became far worse. The preacher displayed malignant narcissism with delusions of grandeur on the Obama scale. He imagined that he had been chosen to usher in what he called “the final end-time revival before Christ’s return.”
From that experience, a careful study of Dr. Peck’s book, and a detailed analysis of the original Narcissus and Echo tale as related by Ovid, I recognized that pathological character type in Obama as soon as he appeared on the national scene. That understanding culminated in my May, 2009 piece “Narcissus and Echo: Obama and the Mainstream Media.” If Dr. Peck were alive today, I believe he would have referred to Obama and the Mainstream Media as an evil symbiosis, or in his own words as “a mutually parasitic and destructive coupling” (p. 137).
We need to take Dr. Peck’s “The People of the Lie” very seriously if we hope to overcome the evil in our midst. Below, I have taken the liberty to cite Dr. Peck as if he were writing about Obama as his prime example of malignant narcissism today. All the words are his save those in brackets, which are mine. Readers, please correct me where you believe I may be wrong:

The evil, [like Obama] always hide their motives with lies (p. 105).
The words “image,” “appearance,” and “outwardly” are crucial to understanding the morality of the evil. While [people like Obama] seem to lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their “goodness” is all on a level of pretense. It is, in effect, a lie. That is why they are “the people of the lie” . . .  Actually, the lie is designed not so much to deceive others as to deceive themselves. They cannot or will not tolerate the pain of self-reproach. The decorum with which people [like Obama] lead their lives is maintained as a mirror in which they can see themselves reflected righteously (p. 75).
[Obama’s] malignant narcissism is characterized by an unsubmitted will. All adults who are mentally healthy submit themselves one way or another to something higher than themselves, be it God or truth or love or some other ideal. They do what God wants them to do rather than what they would desire. “Thy will, not mine, be done,” the God-submitted person says. They believe in what is true rather than what they would like to be true. . . Not so the evil, however. In the conflict between their guilt and their will, it is the guilt that must go and the will that must win (p. 78).
[Obama’s] evil needs victims to sacrifice to its narcissism (p. 136).
[It is Obama’s will] to control others—to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredictability and originality, to keep them in line (p. 43).
There are only two states of being: submission to God and goodness or the refusal to submit to anything beyond one’s own will—which refusal automatically enslaves one to the forces of evil, [as we see in the case of Obama’s malignant narcissism] (p. 83).
It often happens, then, that the evil may be recognized by its very disguise. The lie can be perceived before the misdeed it is designed to hide—the cover-up before the fact. We see [Obama’s] smile that hides the hatred, the smooth and oily manner that masks the fury, the velvet glove that covers the fist. Because they are such experts at disguise, it is seldom possible to pinpoint the maliciousness of the evil. The disguise is usually impenetrable (p. 76).
Evil people, [like Obama], refusing to acknowledge their own failures, actually desire to project their evil onto others (p. 62).
Scapegoating works through a mechanism psychiatrists call projection. Since the evil, [like Obama], deep down feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault. . . They project their own evil onto the world. They never think of themselves as evil; on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others (p. 74).
All who are evil [like Obama] also take the law into their own hands, to destroy life or liveliness in defense of their narcissistic self-image (p. 79).
Instead of destroying others, [people like Obama], should be destroying the sickness within themselves. As life often threatens their self-image of perfection, they are often busily engaged in hating and destroying that life—usually in the name of righteousness (p. 74).
What possesses them, drives them? Basically, [as in Obama’s case] it is fear. They are terrified that the pretense will break down and they will be exposed to the world and to themselves. They are continually frightened that they will come face-to-face with their own evil (p. 124).
I have noted how difficult it is to examine evil people [like Obama] in depth, because it is their nature to avoid the light. Denying their imperfection, the evil flee both self-examination and any situation in which they might be closely examined by others (p. 150).
I have learned nothing in twenty years that would suggest that evil people [like Obama] can be rapidly influenced by any means other than raw power. They do not respond, at least in the short run, to either gentle kindness of any form of spiritual persuasion with which I am familiar (p. 68).

Dr. Peck also aptly wrote that “To name something correctly gives us a certain amount of power over it” (p. 68). Calling Obama a liberal democrat or a progressive misses the heart of the problem facing our nation. The evil pathology now poisoning our White House and the values of our Constitutional Republic is malignant narcissism. Our president is one of “The People of the Lie.” Let us not fear to say so. It is the truth.
Mr. Johnson is the author of “The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble” and “Noah in Ancient Greek Art.” He is also the inventor of the board game, “Obozo’s America: Why Bother Working for a Living?” His latest book is “Outing the Moronocracy: Ending the Rule of the Blind, the Stupid, and the Disgraceful in American Society.” His Web sites are obozosamerica.com, solvinglight.com, outingthemoronocracy.com, and atruergod.com.