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" Since we all seem to be celebrating -- or, at least, commemorating, which is probably all it really deserves -- the beginning of World War I, we should consider shell-shock, a condition that has probably afflicted soldiers in one way or another since the first Hittite whacked the first Hurrian with a blade. But it&amp;#039;s a condition that really got its name for what happened to the soldiers in the trenches, who spent their daily lives under constant bombardment, and the constant threat of chemical weapons, and who knew that, any morning, they might be asked to go up and over and back into the machine guns again, and this went on month-after-month, year-after year. By the end of the war, the British army doctors estimated that they had treated 80,000 cases of shell-shock in their army alone. But there was something else that startled them as well: shell-shock was a disease of the higher functions. It infected the imagination. It crippled reason. It had its worst effects on the more rational soldiers. As one study put it: The authors of one of the standard books on shell shock went so far as to point out that a soldier who suffered a neurosis had not lost his reason but was labouring under the weight of too much reason: his senses were &amp;#039;functioning with painful efficiency&amp;#039;. For the past four years, it seems to me, at least since the American people in their infinite wisdom elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic, the current administration has been functioning on many issues at a level approximating shell-shock. It is not that they haven&amp;#039;t been able to get anything done; it is remarkable that they&amp;#039;ve been able to disarm Syria&amp;#039;s chemical weapons without giving John McCain the big boom-boom that he so wanted. The economy is recovering, slowly and unevenly, and there was no second Great Depression. But, day to day, this administration has been under constant bombardment almost since the president took his hand off the Bible in 2009. It now lurches from one place to the next, hoping to find five minutes&amp;#039; respite from the assault on its policies, and on the very legitimacy of a twice-elected president. In this, I think, the president and his administration are very much in the place described by those researchers who studied those afflicted soldiers. This administration is slug-nutty because it is so rational. It is afflicted with the blind staggers because all of its senses are functioning &amp;quot;with painful efficiency.&amp;quot; It has figured out all too well -- and far too late -- the source of the bombardment that has been laid down upon it daily for the past six years. For all the fervor of his followers, and for all the tearful wonder that greeted the election of the nation&amp;#039;s first African American Chief Executive, this president believed in nothing more than he believed in the power of cool reason. His belief that his good faith would be answered in kind was damn near indomitable. I don&amp;#039;t believe it ever occurred to him that reason would be met with unreason, that logic would be met with illogic, and that facts would be met with fantasy. I don&amp;#039;t believe it ever fully occurred to him that action on the crisis of climate change would be met, not with a debate over the best way to limit carbon emissions while not demolishing the economy, but with a fervent denial that the crisis even exists. I don&amp;#039;t believe it ever fully occurred to him that adopting a health care reform that (at the very least) had gestated on the Republican side of things would be recast for the masses as one step short of the Nuremberg Laws. I don&amp;#039;t believe it ever fully occurred to him that, instead of engaging in substantive debate, he would be confronted with empowered unreason and weaponized ignorance, or that a substantial number of Americans would believe that he was born in Kenya, or deliberately let American diplomats die in Libya, or now is proposing his own impeachment to raise money for the midterm elections. I don&amp;#039;t believe it ever fully occurred to him that the Republicans would so loudly condemn their own ideas -- in health care, on cap-and-trade -- just because he tried to negotiate them, or that they would turn down a Grand Bargain on entitlements simply because he was the one who proposed it. I don&amp;#039;t believe that it ever fully occurred to him that empowered unreason and weaponized ignorance had such a substantial constituency in the country that he described in his breakthrough speech to the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004, a country that now seems as mythical and imaginary as Oz or Tir na Nog. From the start of his presidency, he has labored under the weight of too much reason, and now he is where he is, trying to get through every day while even the most basic prerogatives of his office are converted by the alchemy of unreason into weapons of tyranny. There were people out there, who voted in the worst Congress in the history of the Republic, who actually believed once that he was appointing actual Czars, absolute monarchs. All presidents got to make recess appointments; it was on his watch on which the Supreme Court denied his ability to do so as long as the political opposition could pretend the Senate was in session. He has signed fewer executive orders than most of his immediate predecessors and yet, every one that he signs, is another step down the long road to a beer hall in Munich. Small wonder, then, that his administration&amp;#039;s mind is not clear, that it seems to be fogged, and its synapses misfiring. People who want him to &amp;quot;lead&amp;quot; are assuming that there is a rational nation to be led. He believed that for a while himself, and maybe he even believes it today, somewhere in his heart and his soul, but he is laboring under the weight of too much reason to believe it in his mind. So everything seems to have gone to muddle. What is the actual policy on what&amp;#039;s going on along the southern border? I don&amp;#039;t know. What day is it? The only thing we know for sure is that, whatever the policy is, the barrage begins as soon as it is announced. Nothing gets done except the blaming, and most of that seems to land on him. Because he believed so much and so deeply that good faith would be answered in kind, he is now held responsible for the empowered unreason and weaponized ignorance that seems to be winning so much of the day. That speech, now 10 years ago, seems as distant and alien as the once peaceful fields of France must have seemed to the soldiers entrenched in them. This will not end well for the country. Siegfried Sassoon, a poet who fought in World War I and who wound up in the hospital with shell-shock, wrote about it when he was released. No doubt they&amp;#039;ll soon get well; the shock and strain Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk. Of course they&amp;#039;re &amp;#039;longing to go out again,&amp;#039;- These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. They&amp;#039;ll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,- Their dreams that drip with murder; and they&amp;#039;ll be proud Of glorious war that shatter&amp;#039;d all their pride... Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad. Broken and mad. That&amp;#039;s how the story ends, unless we are very, very careful. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21319/the-shellshocked-presidency/>