The psychological biases of Barack Obama

[Cain]

For your consumption:

http://www.tnr.com/article/creation-myth (need registration to see the whole article)

In late October 1987, Barack Obama and Jerry Kellman took a weekend off from their jobs as community organizers in Chicago and traveled to a conference on social justice and the black church at Harvard...

At the time, Obama had just learned from his African half-sister what had happened to Barack Obama Sr., who abandoned him when he was two years old. After receiving his master's degree in economics from Harvard, the elder Obama had returned to Kenya, where he became a high-ranking government official. But, when he criticized Kenya's increasingly corrupt and authoritarian government, he lost his job and had to live from hand to mouth, depending on the goodwill of relatives while drinking heavily. Obama told Kellman that he feared ending up destitute and unhappy like his dad. "He wanted to marry and have children, and to have a stable income," Kellman recalls.

Meanwhile, from Obama's own biography:

"Men take advantage of weakness in other men," [Lolo told Obama]. "They're just like countries in that way. The strong man takes the weak man's land. He makes the weak man work in his fields. If the weak man's woman is pretty, the strong man will take her." He paused to take another sip of water, then asked, "Which would you rather be?"

I didn't answer, and Lolo squinted up at the sky. "Better to be strong," he said finally, rising to his feet. "If you can't be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who's strong. But always better to be strong yourself. Always." ...

Power. The word fixed in my mother's mind like a curse. In America, it had generally remained hidden from view until you dug beneath the surface of things; until you visited an Indian reservation or spoke to a black person whose trust you had earned. But here power was undisguised, indiscriminate, naked, always fresh in the memory. Power had taken Lolo and yanked him back into line just when he thought he'd escaped, making him feel its weight, letting him know that his life wasn't his own. That's how things were; you couldn't change it, you could just live by the rules, so simple once you learned them. And so Lolo had made his peace with power, learned the wisdom of forgetting...

She remembered what Lolo had told her once when her constant questioning had finally touched a nerve. "Guilt is a luxury only foreigners can afford," he had said. "Like saying whatever pops into your head." She didn't know what it was like to lose everything, to wake up and feel her belly eating itself. She didn't know how crowded and treacherous the path to security could be. Without absolute concentration, one could easily slip, tumble backward...

Ignoring the strange literary quirk of writing in his mother's voice, I think is quite revealing about how Obama was raised to see the world.

Do the right thing: end up in squalor, and poverty.  Bow to power, do what is asked of you but keep your head down...and all will be fine.

[Pæs]

That's really interesting.
It's a good thing to keep in mind when considering the guy's behaviour.

Someone should tell him about the Black Iron Prison.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That is very interesting. I have always thought that simplistic viewpoints like that have really negative consequences because they fail to take into account the purpose of society, which is to strengthen the weak for the good of the whole.