I’m not a major fan of those who consult the entrails of goats, read tea leaves and listen to the voices in other people’s heads (primitive village shamans and modern p-sychs alike), but the most perceptive among them do notice interesting things about people, even if they then feel compelled to construct fantastic mythologies to explain their gut-level observations. One contemporary village shaman who, despite his mythology constructed to explain his insights, does seem to at least have some valid insights is Andrew G. Hodges. His latest book, The Obama Confession: Secret Fear. Secret Fury, is a good example, IMO… especially since it agrees with my own gut level observations and reactions to The Zero. A brief sample from the beginning of the book, taking off from where the author recalls an incident in his residency where a young leukemia patient had died:
…Reassuringly as possible, I told the parents, “Johnny passed away about 30 minutes ago. I know you’ve been through a lot, but now his suffering is over and he’s in a better place.” Seemingly undaunted by the news, the mother asked me if I would give Johnny something for his cough. I wondered if the words “passed away” had simply gone over her head. So I gently repeated myself, “I’m sorry, but Johnny just died thirty minutes ago.” Without the slightest pause, the mother now urgently replied, “But doctor, are you going to give him something for his cough?” She simply could not face the loss of her son. It had overwhelmed her. At that point the family members assured me they would handle the problem, and I left having experienced one of the most shocking events in my life. A night I will never forget.
Looking back, the story made it clear that there are two types of people: hearers and non-hearers, seers and non-seers, those who face emotional trauma and those who don’t— and nobody faces it perfectly. Emotional trauma leads to denial, the greater the trauma the more the denial. And in this mother’s story we see the power of denial up close and personal. Let’s be clear— it was denial of reality— a sad reality which failed to escape others in the room.
Shifting to America
America today is on the brink of a similar tragedy. Some people— like the mother living in massive denial— simply cannot face it, and instead they distract themselves with minor concerns. To those people America simply suffers a mild cough which can quickly be cured, while others plainly see America in dire straits, on the brink of real disaster, suffering a crisis that threatens our national life. It’s a shocking story, unlike anything in our history
Moving America’s Secure Boundaries
America finds itself in a crisis which can be directly traced to President Barack Obama’s drastic modifications of our nation’s longstanding foundations of government. He has changed these fundamental stabilizers to suit himself, yet he and his supporters remain in massive denial of that reality…
Hodges MD, Andrew G (2012-07-14). The Obama Confession: Secret Fear. Secret Fury. Village House Publishers.
Working from Obama’s own statements and actions, the author then goes on to reveal what any person who’s been paying attention and who has both better morals than a rabid mink and more active brain cells than are found in the average used Kleenex has already been thinking at least in the back of his mind.
Read the book. It’s free for Kindle today, so all it’ll cost you is an hour or maybe two of your time, unless you’re one of those folks who need to sue all your past teachers for not teaching you how to (and to) read and letting you get away with slacking off in class. If you’re one of those folks, then shame on you. Have someone read the thing to you. (Actually, if you’re one of those folks, you will not have read this post anyway, so I’m just being snarky toward absentees. *heh*)
Do note that despite the author’s proclamation of a method for determining Obama’s true mind, the books seems strangely short of any analytical approach, just plenty of pronouncements based on th author’s and others’ observations. That’s OK, since the observations seem to be astute, but just note that the shaman’s professed techniques are not openly displayed. (My suspicion is that, in the model described in his other books, the guy “sees” things and then constructs his model to explain how he perceived what he did, without any real evidence for his model. Scientology does that–poorly–as does traditional psychoanalysis, etc. Any valid observations are usually the result of inherent talented observational skills honed by experience, not some model, IMO.)
