Sunday, June 3, 2012

Barack Obama’s Self-Serving Propaganda and Policies Corrupt American Values and Manipulate American Servicemen and Servicewomen



In my last blog, I commented on the Newsweek April 16, 2012 cover story asking, “Is Obama Making It Worse? An exclusive Newsweek poll reveals the persistence of America’s stark racial divide.”  Unlike Newsweek’s excuses for the President’s negative influences, I concluded that the deepening black-white gulf has been an inevitable, malignant consequence of the Barack Obama personality disorder that underlies his policies.

Now, another, particularly egregious, example of how the dark-triad President attempts to enrich himself politically by playing on the needs of the vulnerable.

Like so many Americans, I was troubled to hear of the alarmingly high number of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans who have applied for service-related disability benefits.  But in order to understand the statistic, we first need to travel briefly back in time.

On July 7, 2010, James Dao wrote a New York Times article entitled, “V.A. Is Easing Rules to Cover Stress Disorder” that summarized the changes.  He enumerated the following salient aspects of the new rules:

eliminate a requirement that veterans document specific events like bomb blasts, firefights or mortar attacks that might have caused (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) P.T.S.D;”

grant compensation “if they can simply show that they served in a war zone and in a job consistent with the events that they say caused their conditions. They would not have to prove, for instance, that they came under fire, served in a front-line unit or saw a friend killed;”

provide benefits “for service members who had good reason to fear traumatic events, known as stressors, even if they did not actually experience them.”

In essence then, the new Obama rules invited anyone who ever has served in Iraq or Afghanistan to apply for disability benefits.  And what did the potential benefits include?   Free medical care, free mental health services, and anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month, probably for life.  Dao suggested that the program likely would cost “$5 billion over several years.”

Since I have conducted social security psychological disability evaluations for over twenty-five years, I had well-informed reasons to expect that the Obama-promulgated rule changes would precipitate a tsunami of disability applications, and that many, if not most, would be unwarranted.  Anyone with any experience with disability requests would have had concerns.  In fact, even Democrat Jim Webb of Virginia, a Vietnam veteran, felt compelled to caution his colleagues in the United States Senate about the need for more “practical, proper procedures.”
   
Of course, no one with a shred of compassion and/or gratitude can begrudge the military, especially war veterans, earned compensation for any real harm that they have suffered in service to us and our country.  I must admit, however, that I am shocked to hear that 45 % of Post 911 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are filing for disability benefits, alleging an average of 12 ailments.  Daniel Politi of Slate (May 27, 2012) advises that the number of current disability applicants literally is double the number from the 1990’s Gulf War.

Obviously, the Obama White House did not follow Jim Webb’s advice to include “practical, proper procedures” for implementing the new rule.  Rather, they saw disability benefits as offering an opportunity for political gamesmanship.  Millions of Americans had questioned Obama’s alliance to America during the 2008 election when he failed to place his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.  Belatedly realizing that political blunder, of course, he started striking the traditional pose—more to court votes than to express heart-felt patriotism.  On Memorial Day 2012, Barack said, "As long as I'm president, we will make sure you and your loved ones will receive the benefits you've earned and the respect you deserve."  Given Barack Obama’s history, should we regard that as a statement of affection or as a video clip for a re-election commercial?   Please note that Obama tried a similar tactic to rehabilitate his wife’s glaringly absent patriotism.  After being chastised for saying that she had not been proud of America until after her husband received the Democratic presidential nomination, Michelle Obama and her handlers blitzkrieged the media, advertising her as the guardian angel of military families.

Today, advocating for all manner of governmental benefits is a preferred Obama campaign strategy for winning votes.  But that is nothing new.  Barack and other demagoguing Democrats always have used “benefits” to manipulate the masses.  We sadly remember how their welfare society destroyed the work motivation and family integrity of poor people, especially of African Americans.  At this point in our national history, Obama is trying to seduce military types by attempting to buy them off, too.
                                                                                                     
The current economic context also is important.  In the midst of the “worst financial crisis since the Great Depression”—a crisis that Obama ignored while jamming through his budget-busting pet projects, such as Obamacare—veterans are particularly vulnerable.  According to the Air Force Times, June 1, 2012, “the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the unemployment rate for Iraq- and Afghanistan-era veterans jumped to 12.7 percent in May, up from 9.2 percent the previous month.”   In such dire times, after all their sacrifices, desperate service men and women cannot be faulted for viewing disability benefits as something that they need and deserve; the Obama economy has entrapped them into looking to the benefits in order to survive Obamaland. 

Our Great Leader’s self-serving, manipulative policies illustrate once again that the character of a president does count.  Barack Hussein Soetoro Obama, a man whose personality is an amalgam of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism, has no choice but to do what he has programmed himself to do: target a vulnerable potential constituency and exploit, exploit, exploit.

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