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This article appears in the July 24, 2009 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
LAROUCHE'S APRIL 11 WEBCAST

President Obama's `Nacissus Syndrome'

Here are excerpts from Lyndon LaRouche's now-famous webcast. PDF version of these excerpts

Because of the sensitivity of certain questions which I'm going to address today, I have restricted myself in the opening to following a certain script, to avoid any possible misunderstanding. Because, it will be obvious to you, as I proceed, that some very sensitive questions about the state of mind of the President have come up, and they must be addressed, because we can not understand the situation or discuss it, without taking these issues of state of mind into account. And you have to be precise. I'm not saying the President is insane. I'm saying he has certain limitations which affect his ability to judge certain things.

Therefore, we have to understand the President's limitations: that he seems very bright, he seems very capable, but a lot of matters which he deals with, he hasn't got a clue of what he's talking about. And that's one of the big problems. That's why he's so susceptible to misrepresentation and being misled by people close to him, especially among certain groups. And therefore, in covering that aspect of my presentation, I've restricted myself very tightly, to make sure there's no wrong understanding of what I'm saying.

When our new President, Barack Obama, left the United States for his arrival in London for the G20 meeting, he not only abandoned our United States for a time, he also abandoned what had been the hopes of many of the nations and peoples of the world. Many in Europe, and elsewhere, came away from the experience of his recent travels abroad, with the sense of being enraged, by the experience of mixed incompetence, confusion, and even outright betrayal. Essentially, for the purpose of that excursion, he had abandoned the fundamental interest of defense of our United States, and with a particular expression of treasonous insanity which we had already experienced under two preceding terms in the White House.

Then he left us, for Europe and Turkey, for a mad dive, into what has since threatened to become a fast track into an anteroom of Hell.

When he departed for Europe, as if for the purpose of hugging and kissing the little Queen of Buckingham Palace, the situation inside our United States' new Presidency was already bad, as the action of that particular scoundrel Larry Summers had already forewarned us. Summers' and Geithner's lunatic schemes were not only the prelude to a global disaster which is now bringing us all to the brink of a planetwide New Dark Age for the all humanity. This present situation, and this present policy, must now be changed, suddenly and radically, for the better, not only suddenly, but very soon.

In the Grip of an Evil Cabal

Then, as we've been warned by Time magazine, we have a special problem: President Obama is presently in the grip of a thoroughly evil cabal, a most frankly Satanic pack of inherently criminal lunatics, to be found in high places in any real important part of the world, since Adolf Hitler departed our planet, nearly 64 years ago. Now, if we're to save this republic of ours, and not only that, but the entirety of this planet, from a virtual dive to Hell, we must free this President from the lunatic grip of that pack of fascist-like scoundrels, which has now been identified for us, by Time magazine. This pack of scoundrels, identified by Time, has represented the cabal which is currently exerting control over the political will of President Obama.

If this nation, and civilization generally, is to survive, the presently accelerating global breakdown crisis must be brought under control, and the control by this crowd over the President's mind must be severed, and the policy of the Presidency returned to the council of that set of leading cabinet and related officials, whom the citizenry have a right to expect to be responsible, and also fully sane advisors of that Presidency, as an institution. An institution which serves the historical past, present, and future interest of our United States, rather than this cabal of the likes of Larry Summers and Peter Orszag at OMB.

The word of instruction to these weird creatures who have been identified in a "Timely" fashion, the instruction which should have been offered to that pack, by the President himself, is simply: "Git! While you can still do it!" The welfare of not only our republic, but the civilization more generally, now depends upon the execution of that simple and timely purge of the rascally cult of depraved traditional enemies of our United States, since 1776—the followers of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham.

Barack Obama is the elected President of the United States, and I do not presently expect that aspect of our present situation should be changed.

However, there are certain other things that must change, and that suddenly. As more and more of many among you have learned, since the announcement I delivered in an international webcast on July 25, 2007: that we have been, not in a recession, not in a mere depression, but in a general global breakdown crisis of the economy of the entire planet. As long as the present structure of economy, in the United States, in Europe, and elsewhere continues, the world is going more and more deeply, into a general breakdown crisis, which will probably result in the elimination, within a generation or two, of two-thirds of the present level of the world's population: a reduction of the population of the planet from 6.5 to 6.7 billion people today, to less than 2 billion, in a short period of time. Entire cultures and entire languages and entire nations would disappear, if this current trend, in the Obama Administration, is allowed to continue. So the change must come, it must come soon, it must come suddenly, while we still have a Presidential team in place which is rational.

The elimination of these factors, such as Larry Summers, and this crowd identified by Time magazine, must occur immediately, because if it does not occur, the following will be true: The situation we face, in the United States and worldwide, is comparable in many respects to Rome under the dictatorship of the Emperor Nero. The character of the President under these conditions is of that form. He is not really aware of what he's doing. He has no comprehension of many of the technical issues, such as economic issues which he's treating—none whatsoever. He has no clear understanding of strategic interest. He's an intelligent person, in other respects. But he has no competence in these areas, for which he is largely responsible as President.

And therefore, only if you eliminate this crowd identified by Time magazine, as the controlling influences on him, and put him back into the dependency upon the advice of capable people in his cabinet and related positions, could the United States survive.

If, as in the case of the Emperor Nero, who is, historically, a similar precedent for this kind of problem, if you don't eliminate those factors, and let him run under the control of this crowd identified by Time magazine, he will eliminate—as Nero did!—all his own advisors from outside that particular team. At that point, with a deteriorating world situation, we can approach the condition of a non-recoverable situation on this planet: We can go into a New Dark Age of all humanity! And therefore, that change must occur, now....

The President's Nero Problem

And the point is, it's obvious: The United States and the world, the world economy today, is bankrupt, and not only bankrupt, it is disintegrating. The world system is in a breakdown crisis; the world as a whole, and the world is a whole.

That's the reality! Don't believe the lies. You know they're lying, so why do we believe this stuff? Why? Because you're afraid of the fascists; you're not willing to fight them. It's a problem in the institutions of government. They are afraid to fight these guys. That's the reason why I insist that the people in the lower 70% to 80% of family-income brackets, is the only location of serious guts in this part of the country right now, plus a few of us individuals. That's it!

The Congress has lost its guts! I mean look, frankly: Take "Tight Lips," the Speaker of the House: She has been in there since the beginning of 2007, and she's not worth anything! She's no good for anything! A completely useless blockhead, who gets in the way—you know, she can't move her mouth, so therefore, she can't consent to anything. She's a fake; she's a fraud! We all know she's a fraud, anybody in the Senate, anybody in the Congress, knows this woman is a fraud. And yet, there she sits! Lips sealed by medical science.

I mean, what are we? Are we fools? We don't know? We ask ourselves questions in order to shut ourselves up?

The point is, this is a question of guts. The question of guts, which I raised today, you know? The President of the United States is acting like something worse than a fool. He should not be let out without a leash. He shouldn't be going running around the world, because he's going to make a mess of things. You've got to get him under control. We don't want to throw him out, because we don't want to create a new element of instability in the system.

We want to put him under parental administration; not by his wife. We want him put in a situation where he's able to perform the functions of a President, even though he doesn't have the mind of a President, and this requires some adult supervision. Confine him to areas where he can't do damage with his ignorance, and put him in custody, as President. He's a President under custody. Let him do things. He's not unintelligent, he's just mentally disordered. He's got a serious mental problem.

Look, I said before, and I can say it again: He has a Nero problem. He's a contemporary Nero. Famous kind of problem. And if you leave him in there, you're going to find out the kind of effect he's going to play; he's going to play the role of a Nero. He may not have the specific problems that Nero had, some of them, but he has this idea—look: "The One"? The One? The miracle man? Who doesn't know how to find the key to the front door? Or the back door? He's not competent! We stuck him in there. The system stuck him in there; he's President. He's lawfully President. But you don't let him play with firecrackers!

Take that crowd which affects him and controls him, and take them, and get them out of government! And put him under the condition where he has to talk and make policy with people who are not corrupt, and who are competent! We have people in government, in key positions in government, who are perfectly capable of making competent policy for the United States. They may make mistakes, in the process, but they're competent. Put him in a position where he has no handles on which to operate with the Federal government except in concert with those competent people. Don't let him run loose! We've got to keep him there because we elected him. He's not unintelligent; he may be educable, but you have to control it.

You see, his instincts are wrong! And his self-adulation, his manic, euphoric self-adulation, is the mentality of the worst kind of dictator. Don't let him get in a position where he has that kind of power. Keep him under constraint, the legal constraint within the American Presidential system, as it works. Keep him in that constraint. If you don't, you're creating a monster. You don't want a Frankenstein monster. You don't want a Narcissus in the Presidency, and he's a case of Narcissus, just like Nero. And the program is basically like that of Nero.

He's a danger to all humanity if you don't keep him under control. He's a danger to himself, as well as everybody else. So, you ain't persecuting him, when you're protecting him from himself....

A True Narcissus Case

... Well, there are a lot of things you can say about that. You know, I said that essentially when you have the case of Larry Summers and Geithner, I described that as Mephistopheles and his Faust. It's essentially what it is. They're both fakers. You see, Larry Summers would say this, if you saw him speaking. That's what he does, he does funny things with gestures; he goes into a whole business of gestures intended to intimidate and distract the audience, while if you look at what he's saying, he's saying nothing; the whole thing is a fraud.

But, you've got to understand the other thing: When you criticize the President, you've got to see clearly, as it became very clear to me when I saw the evidence: This guy is a Narcissus case. Specifically, he maps in history, on the profile of the Emperor Nero, who was put into power by his mother, who he later killed. Who was educated by Seneca, who he tried to kill in several successive ways, before the job was finally done. And who understood nothing.

A true Narcissus case, like Nero, is not concerned with reality. He is concerned with his illusion. He lives really in a fantasy life, and the only way you can deal with him as President—and I've indicated what the problem is about removing him as President—is, you have to put him in an environment where the environment refuses to allow those games to be played.

You stick him in a position—see, he's not unintelligent. He's got the mechanism of intelligence, but he has no moral criteria. The Narcissus case, like an Emperor Nero, has no intrinsic moral character. The Narcissus has a self-image; and what he tries always to do, is to avoid collision with the self-image as he's crafted it. So, he wants to see himself as always powerful, a genius, everything else. He's a guy who's a quick study; he's a facile asset, a quick study. He's a chameleon. And you imagine, what does a chameleon think about himself when he's standing on a Scotch plaid?

And that's your problem with this type of person. This guy is a very specific type of personality. All the evidence is conclusive; you don't have to get into anything more than we know now. It's there. This is a Narcissus, which maps onto the image of a Narcissus type, such as the Emperor Nero. If you keep him in, the way he's being kept in now, he's going to be that type. That's where he's going; that's what his character is showing you.

If, on the other hand, you put him in the position where he's treated as a boy, who's allowed to play certain games and not others, then he will wait until he has his opportunity to strike, as Nero would strike.

So, to deal with the problem—you're worried too much about the wrong things. I understand the anger, but you have to worry about our institutions of the Presidency, which is what I worry about. As long as he's in control of his position, with that retinue on which he depends—remember, he depends on a very specific group of people, which is identified essentially by the Time magazine report. That's his personality! That's the truth!

You are who you eat. You are what you're fed to be. He's fed to be a Narcissus type, of this type. Don't feed him. Don't feed the disease, and he's forced then to attempt to assimilate himself into a position where he's credible. Remove the credibility of the other thing, because our problem is that we're not governed. This nation is not governed! There has been a total breakdown of the government under this jerk we had for two terms. Fortunately, we escaped the other great danger—a Gore! A Gore as President would be the worst possible affliction you can imagine. You've got a slimeball who's a Narcissus. That would be really something bad.

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