LAROUCHE'S APRIL 11 WEBCAST
President Obama's `Narcissus Syndrome'
Lyndon LaRouche's gave these webcast introductory remarks to an audience in Northern Virginia on April 11, 2009. The event was moderated by his national spokesperson Debra Freeman. The complete video is available here. LaRouche's "Seven Sequential Points" on science, economy, and humanity's future followed this strategic introduction. An extensive question-and-answer dialogue followed his main presentation.
[PDF transcript of LaRouche's complete webcast]
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 Rip van Winkles Are Awakening
Now, the other point here, is that on July 25, 2007, I made a forecast, whose premises have been confirmed over the subsequent period to the present date. I was right, and everybody else in the business was wrong. If the proposals I had made, on the 25th of July, 2007, and those supplementary proposals I made up through September of that same year, if those proposals, including the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act, had been adopted, we would not be in a crisis today!
Under the last year, or so, of the Bush Presidency, with the connivance of the leaders of the Congress, every step taken, voted up by the Congress, has been a disaster, which has brought us to the point of a general breakdown, an irreparable breakdown of the entire U.S. and world economy. Whereas, if what I had proposed, then, after July 25 of 2007, had been done, we would not be in such a crisis, in the world, today! So I have a certain authority in this matter, since all the others who disagreed with me, have demonstrated their incompetence and their bungling.
Since that time, the upper ranks of the main body of our official political class, have let the fortune of our republic be looted, by the same pack of international thieves gathered around scoundrels such as the alliance of the predators of London, with that great sucking machine, known as Goldman Sachs. And the leading political institutions of our republic have been suckers at every thieving turn of our Federal Reserve system, so far.
Presently, some leading figures in our Federal institutions are awakening to the fact, that the U.S. Congress and the relevant, other Federal representation, has been a dismal failure in every important issue, so far, since the beginning of 2006.
Now, it does appear that some among our Rip van Winkles of the Federal level of politics, in the Congress and elsewhere, are in the process of awakening. I think that many of you out there will agree, that the change must come from a kick in the butt to the Congress, by a new brand of leadership, now erupting from among the lower 80 percentile of our electorate, not from the top ranking 20%, and not from the majority of the present composition of the Federal Congress. The leadership must come, from the impetus of people on the state and local level, who are not tied to the Federal system significantly, otherwise. There are very few exceptions on the Federal level, who I would trust to make a competent policy for this nation, at this time, in the Congress or elsewhere.
However, there is a mood building among the ratio of the population which is in the lower 70 to 80% of family-income brackets, among whom are individuals who are not prestigious in terms of their influence on the national scene, but who are honest citizens and have a native intelligence, so that, in the proper process, the natural quality of leadership from within the population, will rise from the quality of leadership on the local and state level, to a quality of leadership on the national level. We can move farmers and workingmen, and similar kinds of people, from the state level, and the county level, to the national level, very quickly. And we will find we will have a better composition of government, and more likely survival of the nation, than under the composition of the present Congress, which has been misconditioned and mistrained.
When I speak of local leadership, I'm not talking about the California sex-freak as governor, nor the surgically tight-lipped Nancy Pelosi. Senator Dodd should retire gracefully. And that scurrilous Barney Frank must be replaced by an honest representative who can actually make intelligent statements.
We must agree to take these kinds of actions now, because this is our only hope of getting through this thing alive.
The 'Behaviorist Economists'
That much said, let me read a statement which I have; it's an excerpt from what my associates have pulled together and published, and I read it here, because it is relevant to this; it's precise, and therefore I won't make any mistakes in names and so forth.
"According to the Time account, confirmed by sources close to the Obama White House, the President has been surrounded by a collection of 'behaviorist economists,' who have cultivated a cult-like following through the publication of such daffy economic tracts as Freakonomics, Nudge, Predictable Irrationality, The Wisdom of Crowds, and Animal Spirits. These economists include longtime Obama advisors Cass Sunstein, Richard Thaler, Dan Ariely, and Daniel Kahneman, to the exclusion of some of the more well-known and relatively competent economists, originally brought in to the Obama White House, but who have now been cast aside, in favor of the Pavlovian/Skinnerian kooks.
"For these economists—these kooks—the key to economic behavior is the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Human will, especially human creativity, are purely secondary, and always lose out to the craven human impulses, according to these nuts. Unfortunately, the entire inner circle of White House economic advisors, from Larry Summers, to OMB director Peter Orszag, are full-fledged proponents of this insane doctrine of animal behaviorism. Indeed, one of the 'founders' and leading figures within the 'behavioral economics' camp today is Harvard economist, Larry Summers crony, and arch-hedge fund swindler Andrei Shleifer, the man whose double dealings in Russia, in the 1990s, led to criminal investigations and, ultimately, to the ouster of Larry Summers as president of Harvard. Shleifer's swindle, and Summers' coverup of the scam cost Harvard University more than $40 million in legal fees and fines. When Summers moved, as president of Harvard, to protect his protégé Shleifer, and prevent his ouster, things turned against Summers, and, in 2006, the entire scandal blew up, leading to Summers' ouster and a plethora of media exposés.
"Time revealed an even larger circle of White House economic gurus, who are all proponents of the Benthamite theories of bestial man. Orszag has been an unabashed behavioral geek.... His deputy, Jeff Liebman of Harvard, is a noted behavioral economist, as are White House economic advisor Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago, Assistant Treasury Secretary nominee Alan Krueger of Princeton, and several other key aides. Sunstein has been nominated to be Obama's regulatory czar. Even National Economic Council director Larry Summers has done work on behavioral finance. And Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainthan is organizing an outside network of behavioral experts to provide the Administration with policy ideas, according to Time.
"Time, with its own history of promotion of fascism and its virulent hatred of FDR, does not ignore the opportunities this collection of kooks surrounding the President offer, to destroy the Obama Presidency. 'Obama's efforts to change us,' Time gloated, 'carry a clear political risk. Republicans already portray him as a nanny-state scold, an elitist Big Brother lecturing us about inflating our tires and reading to our kids. We elected a President, not a life coach, and we might not like elected officials' challenging our right to be couch potatoes.... The idea of public officials, even well-meaning ones, trying to engineer our private behavior to produce change can seem a bit creepy.' "
All right. So, there are certain steps which have to be taken by us now. I've said this thing often. This is the situation, generally, summed up, which we face since the President left the United States on his trip to Europe and to Turkey. And since then, disaster has struck. And if we don't change the situation, this country's not going to make it.
That set of freaks, these scoundrels, which Time has listed, must be promptly eliminated from the Administration. If that is not done, given the President's profile, his psychological profile, his lack of knowledge in some areas, as well as some knowledge in some others—he's not unintelligent, but don't overestimate him: He does not know what he's talking about most of the time, when it comes to technical issues. He got through Harvard by being able to pass tests, but not to formulate answers.
If we get rid of this bunch of bums, this will leave the President with a core of legitimate cabinet members, still, and other leading advisors, who will, I'm confident, be capable of advising him competently. That is, they know how to think. They know how to think about issues like economy; they know to think about international policy; they know how to think about strategic policy, and so forth. They're there. The problem here, is this team, of these kooks, which are actually controlling the President. Take these kooks out! Throw them out! And bring in the cabinet team—who'll be missing a couple of people, like Larry Summers; send him out, too—but in general, in the cabinet and around it, we have people in positions of power and responsibility, in the Executive branch, who are perfectly qualified to advise the President, and will make sane decisions, if not always the right ones. And my proposal is, get rid of these kooks, and let the President be guided by more competent people, on these matters which he obviously does not understand himself.
