{"id":8241,"date":"2015-02-25T08:32:36","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T16:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8241"},"modified":"2015-02-25T08:32:36","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T16:32:36","slug":"obama-derangement-syndrome-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-derangement-syndrome-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Derangement Syndrome?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO- The Corner<\/a><\/p>\n

\"47\"Some, like Ezra Klein, have posited that Rudy Giuliani\u2019s suggestion that Obama may not be patriotic and Scott Walker\u2019s hesitation to assert that Obama is a Christian illustrate a sort of unhinged Obama Derangement Syndrome.<\/p>\n

Aside from the fact that Obama himself characterized President George W. Bush as \u201cunpatriotic\u201d (for overseeing deficits at about half the size of the debt that Obama will bestow on us in his tenure), and aside from Nancy Pelosi\u2019s and Harry Reid\u2019s chronic tendency to smear their conservative critics as \u201cun-American,\u201d there should be an easy standard to identify the point at which criticism becomes clinically deranged.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019d suggest that there is. Certainly, a pathology is at work when writers and artists wish, dream, or fantasize about the death of a sitting president and express such abject, irrational venom in a mainstream venue.<\/p>\n

In other words, we should monitor Alfred A. Knopf to ensure that it would not publish another novel like Checkpoint<\/em> fantasizing about killing then-President Bush, and object loudly if another filmmaker should produce a docudrama like Gabriel Range\u2019s Death of a President<\/em> indulging in the same fantasies, and watch for anything similar to Guardian<\/em> \u201csatirist\u201d Charles Brooker\u2019s 2004 op-ed wishing for another John Wilkes Booth or Lee Harvey Oswald to step forward.<\/p>\n

By the same token, if a contemporary writer were to publish anything along the lines of Jonathan Chait\u2019s infamous essay \u201cWhy I Hate George W. Bush\u201d in the New Republic<\/em> or a similar magazine, he would instantly qualify for a diagnosis of Obama Derangement Syndrome:<\/p>\n

I hate President George W. Bush<\/s> Barack Obama. There, I said it\u2026I hate the way he walks \u2014 shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks \u2014 blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudopopulist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing\u2013 a way to establish one\u2019s social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess (does anybody give their boss a nickname without his consent?). And, while most people who meet Bush<\/s> Obama claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more\u2026There seem to be quite a few of us Bush<\/s> Obama haters. I have friends who have a viscerally hostile reaction to the sound of his voice or describe his existence as a constant oppressive force in their daily psyche.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When conservatives adopt the now apparently mainstream vocabulary of disparagement that Obama, Reid, and Pelosi have institutionalized, it might be rude and unwise, but it could hardly constitute derangement.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if anyone of prominence on the Right should ever emulate the Left\u2019s hate speech and death wishes<\/em> toward a sitting president, that most surely would be deranged, and should be called out as such.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO- The Corner Some, like Ezra Klein, have posited that Rudy Giuliani\u2019s suggestion that Obama may not be patriotic and Scott Walker\u2019s hesitation to assert that Obama is a Christian illustrate a sort of unhinged Obama Derangement Syndrome. Aside from the fact that Obama himself characterized President George W. Bush […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[977,46],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-28V","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1295,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-derangement-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":8241,"position":0},"title":"Obama Derangement Syndrome?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I\u2019d say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you\u2019ve lost your mind. \u2014 John Edwards When does the legitimate \u201cI oppose Obama\u201d descend into the illegitimate \u201cI hate Obama\u201d? It is popular now to suggest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":151,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-racial-derangement-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":8241,"position":1},"title":"The New Racial Derangement Syndrome","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There is a different sort of racialist derangement spreading in the country \u2014 and it is getting ugly. Here is actor Jamie Foxx joking recently about his new movie role: \"I kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that?\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11994,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-trump-wages-war-on-progressive-culture-dems-respond-with-trump-derangement-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":8241,"position":2},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson: Trump wages war on progressive culture \u2013 Dems respond with Trump Derangement Syndrome","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Fox News President\u00a0Trump is\u00a0waging\u00a0a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a \"Kulturkampf.\" As a result, not even former President George W. Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8667,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-utterly-hypocritical-response-to-trumps-criticisms-of-his-record\/","url_meta":{"origin":8241,"position":3},"title":"Obama\u2019s Utterly Hypocritical Response to Trump\u2019s Criticisms of His Record","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO - The Corner President Obama just said this about Donald Trump\u2019s disparagement of the last seven years: \u201cIn the echo chamber that is presidential politics, everything is dark and everything is terrible.\u201d Presidential candidates \u201cdon\u2019t seem to offer many solutions for the disasters that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "NRO The Corner"","block_context":{"text":"NRO The Corner","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/nro-the-corner\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Obama-Budget-Plan-jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Obama-Budget-Plan-jpg-500x281.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10180,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/from-an-angry-reader\/","url_meta":{"origin":8241,"position":4},"title":"From an Angry Reader","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"DR HANSON. \u00a0TRUMP TRAITOR IS A RUSSIAN SPY. 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