Justin Frank: Why Bush Believes His Lies

[ozymandius]

With every passing week, President Bush marches deeper and deeper into a world of his own making. His August move to Crawford and his refusal/inability to meet with Cindy Sheehan are only the latest steps in that long retreat from the real world. Central to Bush's world is an iron will which demands that external reality be changed to conform to his personal view of how things are.

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June 28th will be remembered as the "turning point" in America's perception of Bush's motives for the war in Iraq. August 15 will be remembered as the "tipping point" in America's perception of Bush's humanity. For on that day he became a Marie Antoinette clone -- using his own version of "Let them eat cake" -- when he said of his choosing strenuous exercise over talking to Cindy Sheehan, "I have to get on with my life."

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As a psychoanalyst who has been studying Bush's words and behavior in hopes of better understanding his mind, I'm heartened that so many critics have drawn the nation's attention to Bush's need to repeat points and phrases -- even after their inaccuracy has been established. Now critics see clearly his distaste for having to meet with the people whose lives he has forever changed.

But recognition only raises the deeper question: why, in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, does Bush persist in this way? How does it help him to continue repeating himself to a nation that increasingly believes he is lying on several fronts? How does his refusal to meet with Cindy Sheehan help him?

He gives answers.

[opihimoimoi]

1. A flawed brain disorder of somekind is obvious.

Re Cindy...better to LOOK cowardly than confirm duufusness/cowardnice

with a meeting.....

They got him tied up in the Bunker for his own good.

[Emendator]

4. Great article

Excellent find.

[tiptoe]

5. How 'bout variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (human mad cow)?

"Texas" has been a common factor in news re the second confirmed case of Mad Cow in the US...and a USDA official who did not perform duties in accord with regulation.

No mad cow tests at Texas firm in 2004 May 14, 2004 UPI by STEVE MITCHELL

The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not test any cows for mad cow disease in the past seven months at the same Texas facility where federal testing policies for the deadly disorder were violated last month, United Press International has learned.

The USDA also failed to test a single cow in 2002 at another Texas slaughterhouse that processes high-risk, downer cows, according to agency testing records obtained by UPI under the Freedom of Information Act. Downer cows are unable to stand or walk, which can be an indication of mad cow disease, as well as other disorders.
...
As UPI previously reported, USDA's mad cow testing records for the past two years show only three tests had been conducted at Lone Star in 2003 and none in 2002.

The low-level of testing irks consumer advocates because Lone Star, the 18th largest slaughterhouse in the country, processes high-risk, older dairy cattle, slaughtering approximately 172,000 per year.

These cows have a high likelihood of being infected compared to other cattle because they have the most chance of being given feed containing mad-cow-infected tissue and they are old enough for the disease to have run its two- to eight-year incubation course. The cow in Washington that tested positive last December was an older dairy cow, and the cow that tested positive in Canada in May of 2003 was an older cow...

It's an undiagnosable disease in humans...until autopsy.

Research studies have found up to 13% of Alzheimers cases are misdiagnosed cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease:

For humans, a new scare linked to beef
December 19, 2004 Atlanta Journal-Constitution by DAVID WAHLBERG

Despite what federal health officials have said, a fatal illness similar to human mad cow disease could also come from eating meat, according to new studies.

The studies, from Europe, follow other research suggesting the illness may be more widespread than officials say, possibly accounting for some misdiagnosed cases of Alzheimer's disease.

The unsettling claims resonate after last month's mad cow scare, when a cow that would have been the nation's second known to have the disease eventually tested negative, after two preliminary positive tests. And locally, the illness similar to human mad cow gained attention in September, when more than 500 patients at Emory University were told they may have been exposed by surgical instruments used on an infected patient.

Both human conditions are known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. A form called "variant" CJD, the known human version of mad cow, comes from infected cattle. Health officials say the other form, "sporadic" CJD, occurs spontaneously and does not occur in beef.

Both are fatal and have similar symptoms: loss of balance, memory and mental control. Variant CJD has killed about 150 people in Great Britain and a few in other countries since 1995. Sporadic CJD is thought to claim about 300 Americans a year.

The new European studies say beef could cause some cases of sporadic CJD...

Another puzzle complicating the CJD picture: autopsy studies. Some suggest that up to 13 percent of people diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease while alive may actually have CJD. Alzheimer's has similar symptoms, though the progression of the illness is usually longer.

A study in 1989 by Dr. Laura Manuelidis, chief of brain pathology at Yale University, found that six of 46 cases, or 13 percent, thought to be Alzheimer's were proved upon autopsy to be CJD. A similar study the same year at the University of Pittsburgh found that three of 54 patients, or 6 percent, diagnosed with dementia had CJD.
...

[opihimoimoi]

7. Cat Scans should be mandatory for candidates to high office.....

FOR Obvious Reasons....

Hitler had Syphilis and look what happened them and their cities and the Idiot dragged in other Nations too...65 000 000 killed/maimed/comped.....

Whilke Bush hasn't reached those numbers yet...doesn't mean it won't happen.

in addition, there seems to be a Force who wish for Gas prices to escalate to the point of poor nations unable to run their respective societies....meaning Famine....so much easier to kill large numbers of peeps.

These guys want disorder to get their ultimate control...sucking the last drops of OIL.

[kestrel91316]

2. Marie Antoinette clone? If the guillotine fits, wear it.

[tiptoe]

3. Bush does as Rove directs...

...just as Rove commandeered repeatedly to him "Stick to principle, stick to principle. Don't waver" when Bush questioned "Didn't we give a tax cut last year?" at a cabinet meeting attended by Paul O'Neill before he was fired and described by him in his book "The Price of Loyalty"

In the book, O’Neill says that the president did not make decisions in a methodical way: there was no free-flow of ideas or open debate.

At cabinet meetings, he says the president was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection," forcing top officials to act "on little more than hunches about what the president might think."

This is what O'Neill says happened at his first hour-long, one-on-one meeting with Mr. Bush: “I went in with a long list of things to talk about, and I thought to engage on and as the book says, I was surprised that it turned out me talking, and the president just listening … As I recall, it was mostly a monologue.”

He also says that President Bush was disengaged, at least on domestic issues, and that disturbed him. And he says that wasn't his experience when he worked as a top official under Presidents Nixon and Ford, or the way he ran things when he was chairman of Alcoa.

Bush Sought ‘Way’ To Invade Iraq?

[Uncle Joe]

6. Well we can at least thank the corpwhorate media

that made all this possible. Maybe if Cindy could get some cold beer, the appointed one will join her.

"There is a two-part answer to this question: First, as far as Bush is concerned, he is telling the truth; as Madeleine Albright recently said to Columbia Magazine: "the most serious problem is that George Bush now believes what he says." Like many of my hospitalized patients, Bush has created a vast, detailed but vague delusional system he feels compelled to maintain at all costs. This system helps him manage the terrifying anxiety that threatens to make his already endangered inner world more chaotic.

The second answer is made clear by his reaction to Cindy Sheehan: he believes his lies because he feels his survival depends on it. He cannot help her mourn; he cannot take responsibility for his destructiveness. If he could he would. His inner need to be right would not just be modified; his entire internal mental structure would be shattered.

Psychoanalytic theory suggests that Bush's true enemy is an aspect of himself -- the overwhelming anxiety he works so hard to manage. For Bush, lying remains a central defense mechanism in managing his fears; he lies foremost to himself, altering his perception of external or internal reality to fulfill his psychic need to maintain order. His anxiety is so great that he cannot shift his thinking to account for new information --especially the fact that patriotic families of patriotic soldiers demand that he speak with them.

Taking responsibility has always been hard for George W. Bush. And taking responsibility for inflicting harm on others, a major step in the development of maturity, is a step President Bush has yet to make. Instead, he persists in lying to himself, surrounding himself with people who agree with him. And now he is not safe even inside his own closed circle."