Posted by
Icarus on Wednesday, November 05, 2008 10:58:55 PM
Is the President just more Stuff?
I am hearing and reading it everywhere today. President Elect Obama is "my President". Conservatives, Liberals, the squishy middle who didn't make up their mind until they started eating the brownies at the polling station. Everyone is on the "my President" mantra.
Excuse me if I ask the obvious: Just what is that supposed to mean?
My President?
Isn't it a bit narcissistic to think of the President of the United States of America as "mine". According to
Wikipedia (take it with a grain of salt), Christopher Lasch described the narcissistic culture as "as one in which every activity and relationship is defined by the hedonistic need to acquire the symbols of spiritual wealth ... It is a culture where liberalism only exists insofar as it serves a consumer society ..." Could this obsession with calling the President "mine" be a symptom of the desire to "aquire the symbol" of the Presidency? It cannot be denied how much we have invested in our consumerist society. Everyone has to have the latest this, that or the other thing. Has this infected out language such that we so easily describe the President as just another thing that we have aquired?
When did this talk of the POTUS as "mine" begin? I just finished watching the HBO series John Adams, and never once heard the words "my President". This has to be a modern creation, wherein our hyperactive consumer society describes not just things and stuff, but people, especially those in high office, as objects we can posses.
Let's be honest, when we are referring to the President as "my President", are we not saying that in some way we possess him (or some day, her)?
President Elect Barack Obama is not "my President". I did not vote for him. I did not want him to occupy the White House. I do not support any of the things he has said he will do. And, as a side note, I do not believe for one minute that those around Obama will allow him to transcend either race or ideology.
That being said, President Elect Obama will soon become the American President. I respect the office Obama holds. I would stand up were he to enter a room. I would shake his hand and say, "It is very nice to meet you, Mr. President." The fact that he happens to be black says a great deal about American progress (I do not believe that the Left, by which I mean Democrats, will in any way acknowledge this, because they have to much invested in fomenting racial antagonism. If they let go of this, they risk losing the minority votes.). He holds the highest political office in the greatest nation on God's green earth.
However, President Elect Obama is not "my President." To go that far is to slip into an excessive narcissism, which is never a psychologically healthy position.
Have we forever become the Culture of Narcissism?