Posted by
PsySciGuy on Monday, July 06, 2009 12:15:19 PM
Just why Obama quickly sided with Ousted President Manuel Zelaya at first seemed illogical. After all, it took how long for him to support the Iranians protesting rigged elections? Then an
AP article appeared quoting "a senior White House official" as saying "...the difficulty of the task (a new US-Russian arms treaty) might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and (sic) a 'provisional basis' until the Senate ratifies the treaty."
This sounds a lot like Zelaya's attempt to hold a referendum setting up a constituent assembly that would change the constitution barring him from re-election. A popular, elected president mistakes himself to be The Imperial Leader. The result is, as Alvaro Vargas Llosa
writes on July second in reference to Latin America, "The gravest threat to liberty comes from elected populists who are seeking to subject the institutions of the law to their megalomaniac whims."
Could Llosa be more prescient than observant? Could the United States become a Banana Republic? Does a bankrupt federal government lead to bankrupt leadership? Do demographics support such a possibility? And just what are the characteristics of megalomania? (Hint: Note the similarity in head carriage/jaw angle of Hitler, Mussolini, Ortega, and Obama).