Narcissus Nation, or: What Dung Hills Hath We Wrought?

Some sociologists have called the US a nation of narcissists. If you remember your Freud (and who hasn't tried to forget it!), his theory of the infant naricissist is that once the child realizes that s/he is different from their mother, they try to become their own creator. The child begins to see everything attached to its body as somehow its child. Even feces...

are seen as somehow the child's "baby." That is, the child looks at its own doo-doo and sees its creation, its child. Unresolved, this stage lingers on into adulthood and can be seen in such efforts as seeing evrything in the world as somehow our own creations. That is, we begin to look for and find only what is like us, what is the same as us. Anything else that's different is seen as outside and disgusting, repulsive.

Some have seen religious implications of this psychological syndrome: just as the Bible talks about humans wanting to be like God, so they want to create the world in their own image.

All of which leads me to think of Bush's foreign policy: when he looks at the Mideast he expects to see Midland TX, but what he really does is create a dung heap.