[written 12/10/10]

Eric Berne, M.D., decades ago wrote the very popular “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” self-help book based on his theory of “transactional analysis”. Berne maintained that people related to each other from three ego states, the child, adult and parent. He held that when these cross transactions at times reached dysfunctional levels, people would often resort to manipulative passive aggressive game-playing to achieve social power advantage.

Lambert [correntewire] recently blogged about Obama’s use of the “Look How Hard I’m Trying (I've Tried)” game. Obama often defends himself on the grounds that he is doing the best he can to promote progressive issues when he is actually doing the opposite -- an effective job of thwarting and curbing progressive, pro-citizen programs. Obama accuses the Republicans of blocking his faux-earnest efforts. He is finally getting seriously called on this game, after an assembly line of pre-emptive compromises during these crazy-making for progressives, first two years.

Another game from the Eric Berne thesaurus Obama employs is the “Why Don’t You ... Yes But” one in which a person pretends to solicit or be open to advice (i.e., Obama’s “putting everything on the table” pretense) but then the advisee frustrates the advisors by one-upping them with “but responses” that make it clear there is no alternative, after all. Obama adeptly plays this with the “we don’t have the votes against the Republicans” counterpoint. The “but we are hostages” scenario. Why can’t we institute a nationalized single payer health care system he is asked. It is an impossible goal corporate-beholding Obama insisted back from the get-go. “But we’d have to start from scratch ... ” he contended, when this was pure bullshit. While Medicare exists and all that was required was that that successful program be EXPANDED!

“Let’s You and Him Fight.” Obama’s lack of leadership for the citizenry, for his own fellow party members, is illuminated with this game. Obama leans back as if his role is of centrist and ultimate judge rather than leader of a party and a country. He lets frustrated citizens and reps of his party, the people of conscience who are paying attention to this anti-accountability, corrupt war-mongering, and Wall Street enabling administration and legacy parties, duke it out alone against the manipulative and disinforming Republican/corporate-friendly talking points. These talking points have so much access to the corporate media echo chambers, ricocheting onward endlessly and relentlessly. One example of such disinformation was how the Bush Tax Cuts for the rich would stimulate employment and enable “mom and pop” operations to survive. The truth is that the tax cuts would exponentially enhance the coffers of the top 1% and especially the top 1/10 of 1% of the country’s wealthy. Obama could have used his bully pulpit to advance and underscore this truth but he sandbagged once again. He offered no loud and clear counterpoint perspective to the “protect the wealthy at all costs” messaging. He let the people of conscience promoting morality and justice twist in the wind as he spouted his “I’ll ultimately play wise Solomon” bi-partisan bull shit.

Another game of Berne’s with a provocative title is “Let’s Pull a Fast One on Joey.” I don’t know if I am following Berne’s formula on this one, but it sure seems as though the passage of corporate friendly “Obamacare” with the Democrats’ hype that it was historical and would offer widespread security and protection for the majority of Americans was a big con. A “fast one”. In actuality Obamacare guarantees enormous profits for the medical industrial complex at the expense of the struggling, average citizens -- the “Joeys” -- in this con game scenario.

“Let Me Take Care of Your Little Brain.” This one Obama often plays with the citizenry. He knows best. He and his financial Clinton cabal, the folks that brought you the deregulation that brought down the economy, use “mystification.” They assert that THEY are the only ones capable of understanding and unravelling the complicated and threatening state of the economy. The mere citizens must sit back and trust that the not very transparent Rube Goldbergian financial configurations with taxpayer funding being sucked up by jingoism-protected bottom-dwelling government contracting, as well as opportunistic homeland security, Pentagon, intelligence apparatus (black ops a/k/a U.S. death squads) budgets as well as by Wall Street bonus babies are beyond our capacity to fathom in this anti-accountability administration. Our little brains apparently not sophisticated enough to handle the ins and outs of the amoral channelling of our own tax dollars.

“Now I’ve Got You, You S.O.B.” I look at this one in terms of Obama calling out those of us on the left as impractical purists. Interesting his public releasing of animated anger has always been at the base of his own party. He slickly substitutes the word “ideology”, with a strong condemning tone, for what is actually the left’s stance of “morality” and even “legality” (avoiding these words that have strong positive connotations) as he accuses us of being immature, stubborn and incapable of compromise. It is he who is exhibiting those characteristics. It was compromise that built this nation he asserts. I’d argue it was commitment to principle and justice that was the foundation for this nation. It was the unwillingness to compromise on the taxation without representation that inspired our founders.

Another game is called “Blemish”. This is a manifestation of what Eric Berne described as “I’m Okay, and You’re Not” dysfunctional ego messaging. Obama, in spite of massive poll numbers, 65% of the citizenry declaring we are going in the wrong direction, 65% against the Bush tax cuts for the rich, 65% who had been for single payer or “public option” health considerations when health care was being wrestled through, does not regard the majority of Americans as worth championing. Instead he grandiosely ignores and defies them. He has become more a “benign” (in his own mind) dictator rather than one who receives his mandate from the people. The people are not capable, they are blemished, to understand what needs to be done for their own good, apparently. Berne iirc at one point used a “prince” vs. “frog” metaphor in pointing out the dangers of narcissistic behavior. According to Berne’s imagery, Obama needs to give up being the “uncomfortable (and poor, unappreciated) prince”, to let go of that grandiosity that prevents his learning from reality (like expecting the Republicans to work with him for real compromise), and exercise humility and empathy with his fellow human beings. To become a “comfortable frog” who can more democratically lead the country.

“Ain’t it Awful” is a game in which Obama decries the position the Party is in, its helplessness against the Republicans, without actually doing anything serious about it. It thus becomes his excuse for failure and the cover up for his paralysis in fulfilling the very campaign promises he made so passionately and easily. He hides his own betrayal of the people, by focusing on the other party as enemy. The media helps him with this. He as complainer gets to enable the status quo and be an obstructionist to progressive goals, but uses the complaining to create the illusion of activity. No actual “response” ability is being shown by him.

We as protestors of Obama’s games also can fall into the “Ain’t It Awful” game trap, complaining loudly to each other, but not following up in action, in walking the walk, in using strategies that educate and protest about a President who has betrayed on his promises and about this ever-rotting status quo sucking us into perpetual war and corporate neo-feudal servitude!

[cross-posted at correntewire and sacramento for democracy]