Betty Winston Bayé Explains "[POTUS Barack] Obama Derangement Syndrome Is Spreading". Yes, Indeed!

'Obama derangement syndrome' is spreading
By Betty Winston Bayé

Psychiatrists have not formally added “Obama derangement syndrome” to their list of conditions that ought to be covered by health insurance policies. But the syndrome seems to have evolved from mere political calculation to an obsession that has some very prominent people saying the craziest things.

During my 27 years in Kentucky, I've heard Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell often described as a brilliant political tactician, a leader. Yet, he displayed, or so I think, a touch of the syndrome when he recently said, “If the President says he's a Christian, I take him at his word.” (Hint. Hint. Translation: But if you my followers believe otherwise, that maybe Barack Obama is actually a secret Muslim, you won't have old Mitch to fight.)

McConnell, of course, is a lot smoother than Fox News personality Glenn Beck. He exhibited signs of Obama-induced derangement early on and has called the President everything from a racist to a slave master. But lately, Beck appears comfortable with the idea that the President really is a Christian. But it would be too much to expect Beck to leave it at that. Oh, no. He told the faithful throng at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington last month that the President's Christianity isn't the sort that “most” Americans would recognize. It's some sort of “liberation theology” all wrapped up in mumbo jumbo that in this world there are oppressors and the oppressed and what liberation theologians do is to work among and advocate for the poor and the marginalized. And that, Beck seems to believe, is antithetical to what Jesus did or would do.

More recently, a more erudite expression of the syndrome could be found in an article “How Obama Thinks,” by Dinesh D'Souza.

A conservative darling since his days as a college student outing closeted gays, D'Souza, who was born in India, currently is president of a college inside New York City's Empire State Building where students “are taught a compelling worldview rooted in the Bible.” His article might not have generated nearly as much buzz had not Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker of the House who now aspires to be president of the United States, cited it as the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”

Such an insight, for example, as this from D'Souza's article: “
Our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.”

And Gingrich came away apparently more assured than ever, he said, that President Obama “is fundamentally out of touch” with reality and how the world works, and “played a wonderful con” on American voters to get himself elected just so that he could be positioned to manifest in America his father's “Kenyan anti-colonial worldview.”

As if colonialism was the best thing that happened to the world. Americans ridded themselves of it in 1776. But never mind.

Anyhow, what D'Souza and Gingrich have written and said sounds like Obama derangement syndrome to me. Sounds like maybe they can believe that Barack Obama is the ultimate “anchor baby,” which a wily African implanted into the womb of a young, white American woman 49 years ago, fully anticipating, even though the father was pretty much invisible in his son's life, that the brown baby would grow up to lead America to its destruction.

Oh, and before I stop, I just received a letter from ex-Kluxer “Dr.” David Duke (I almost typed Donald Duck) that said, “David Duke for President? It's up to you!” If enough people will just send “$100, $1,000 or even” more, Duke said, he'd be “willing to risk life and limb, endure the barbs of the media” to mount “the most honest campaign for president since the time of our Founding Fathers.”

At a time when so many appear to be suffering with Obama derangement syndrome, why not David Duke for president? Heck, why not Donald Duck?

Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Her e-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.

Editor's comment: it is the year of the malcontents, I presume.