Some kids just never catch a break. 

Some get so warped by their early lives that the rest of their days are so haunted and taunted by the ghosts of their upbringing that they end up as twisted human beings hooked on drugs or with other addictions, their minds so disturbed by the experiences of their youth and childhood that they spend their dysfunctional lives harming themselves and everyone around them.

One particular childhood disorder has been described as, “Very similar to post traumatic stress disorder,” with symptoms ranging from, “Alienation from . . . environment, Extreme changes in state of mind and depression, Guilt, Fear and uncertainty, Eating disorders, Physical ailments and fatigue.”

Such are the effects of “Abandoned Child Syndrome, [ACS], the behavioral or psychological attributes that a child develops as a result of one or both parents disappearing from their lives.”  They literally lead lives of quiet desparation and become “aggressive, out of control, or hard to handle.” (http://www.indopedia.org/Abandoned_child_syndrome.html)

Other kids are subjected to a compounded trauma, suffering identity crises from which they may or may never recover.   They can never seem to figure who they really are and how or where they fit in within society.  As a result, they become angry, alienated, confused, and bitter.  Kids with this syndrome, as with those who suffer from ACS, often carry that anger, alienation, etc. into adulthood when they lash out in one way or another at those they feel caused their perceived plight.

Those are the progeny of interracial marriages, common law unions, civil unions, or simply the products of unprotected one-night stands in which their parents became so lost in lust–or drugs or booze or all three–that they threw all caution, and condoms, to the wind and produced a baby who would have to live his or life as compensation for parental lapses in judgement: http://www.afroromance.com/blog/effects-of-interracial-marriages-on-children.htm.

Sometimes, a child is afflicted with both liabilities, Abandoned Child Syndrome and what might be called the Tiger Woods/Mariah Carey/Derek Jeter Syndrome of Interracial Copulation.  Maybe we should refer to them as victims of ICS, Interracial Copulation Syndrome, since almost everyone today seems to have one syndrome or another and almost any syndrome provides fodder for defense attorneys who plead victimhood as the reason their client committed mayhem of some sort.

America’s new president, Barack Hussein Obama,  falls into the ACS and this ICS category as well.  He, like Mariah, prefers to accent his Black-ness over his White-ness.  Since Black seems to be the “in-race” in the twenty first century, their reasons seem obvious, Mariah for musical success and Barack for electoral success.  Neither Derek nor Tiger try to capitalize on their mixed race heritage, although Tiger Woods’ marriage to gorgeous, White Swedish model, Elin Nordegrin, suggests he may have cast his lot with his Caucasian genes.

Obviously, Mr. Obama’s syndromes–if, in fact, he suffers from them–and their consequences have far more import for the nation than Mariah’s.  Mariah, who is technically 25% Black and 75% Caucasian, has a beautiful voice and beautiful physiognomy which more than compensates for any antipathy she may harbor toward the part- African/part-Venezuelan father who abandoned his family or toward her White mother who raised her. 

Obama is neither beautiful nor, as far as I know, does he have a great singing voice, or prowess in bowling alleys, or speaking competence sans his teleprompter, but if he does indeed suffer from both ACS and ICS, those syndromes potentially have the capacity to cause immeasurable damage to the country.

Short of getting Obama on the couch for an extended psychoanalysis–without his trusty teleprompter– there is no certain way of diagnosing the effects on Obama’s psyche of his Muslim, Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.,   abandoning his child and his atheist bride.  Barack was barely 2 when they separated and age 4 when they divorced; his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Obama  of Wichita was 18 when she married 24 year old Barack Sr. and gave birth to Barack, and 21 when they divorced.  After living with his mother in Indonesia, she effectively abandoned him, too, to continue her education and he was raised by his maternal grandparents in Hawaii until she returned.  Shortly after, she re-abandoned her son who only saw his father once more before he died.

Can anyone have survived mentally whole and intact such a traumatic early childhood and teenage years?  Obama admits in Dreams from My Father that his inner turmoil led him into the world of drugs and alcohol, his “greatest moral failure,” he said, before getting his life on track, a track which culminated in his meteoric rise to the presidency. 

However, just as Tricky Dick Nixon and George W. Bush were subjected to repeated analyses as to their actions and motivations, fair being fair, reasonable conclusions may be drawn from Obama’s policies and actions before and since his election.  Some of those policies and actions clearly point to a severe case of combined ACS/CIS.

This is not to say that the president overtly exhibits the tell-tale symptoms that characterize ACS/CIS victims: alienation, depression, guilt, fear, uncertainty, eating disorders, fatigue, aggression, and lack of control.  Rather, he exhibits precisely opposite traits which may be indicative of overcompensating as a method of concealment.

Obama has successfully concealed those negatives and substituted more positive characteristics.  Motivated by what must have seemed to others a childhood fantasy, an ambition to become president of the United States, (since kindergarten, in fact), he must have known even then that America would’t elect a president who was alienated, depressed, guilty, fearful, etc. and that he would have to adopt  a more upbeat public personna.

Hence, we must consider more what Barack Obama does than what Barack merely says in attempting to diagnose his ACS and CIS syndromes.  Just as George Herbert Walker Bush invited people to read his lips, we must “read” Obama’s actions, and hope they reveal the true Obama more accurately than lip-reading Bush I’s statements on raising taxes.

Only when Obama is caught off guard and ad-libbing does he actually say things that are revelatory of his true thinking.  That helps explain his unprecedented, even bizarre, over-reliance on his teleprompter; it keeps him from speaking impromptu and facilitates covering up his ACS/CIS. 

How else can we explain a brilliant, glib, articulate man’s need for a mechanical device to help him speak, even at a press conference, if not his deep and abiding terror, and the terror of his handlers, at the thought of Obama slipping and thereby revealing what he honestly believes?

Next: Part Two: Obama’s Actions versus Obama’s Words.

(Hat tip to Monica Crowley who planted the seed for this pop-psychology analysis of Obama on her radio show on Saturday, 3-21-09.)

(http://genelalor.com/)

I love the title of the book!