PETER HECK, HOST: We are honored to be joined now by Dr. Stanton Peele, a psychologist, addiction specialist - in fact from what I understand is currently under the influence of several addictions right now himself. He knows what-of he speaks. Doesn't just talk about his work...he lives it.
He's the author of the book "Seven Tools to Beat Addiction" which I believe include Tack Hammer, Sledge Hammer, Pipe wrench, Universal Joint Puller, and a few others. Just smack it right out of people.
Anyway, I'm sorry I don't mean to make light of the very serious work that Dr. Peele does, and the obvious seriousness with which all Americans should take his political analysis. Dr. Peele, thanks very much for joining us here on the Peter Heck Show. Good afternoon.
STANTON PEELE, PSYCHOLOGIST: Good afternoon, Martin
HECK: It's Peter, but that's no biggie. Probably just your addiction, right? (pause) Ahem, anyway, I know you are a very busy man and I promised your staff that we wouldn't take up too much of your time because I know you are highly sought after right now for interviews after your shocking performance on MSNBC the other day calling out the Tea Party. The truth is, sir, that I don't want to spend even an ounce of your time talking about the Tea Party. I'm not interested in that or in them. What I want to talk to you about, as an addiction specialist, is the humanist, socialist left in this country. I want to get your take on the Obama movement at large...the neo-Marxists.
It seems like every couple decades our country has to go through this resurgence of the left. They prove themselves to be utter failures, say like the Carter years, but it isn't 20 or 30 years later before here comes another liberal like Obama touting the same failed policies, promising that if we just take a little bit more from people and make government a little bit bigger, central planning bureaucrats can come up with programs and regulations, and can manipulate us all into happiness, into a utopian dream world where we sing with the voices of the mountain and paint with the colors of the wind. And they believe it's the government that can do all that. No matter how many times it's proven to be a failure, they keep coming back to it. As an addiction specialist, how do you characterize that?
PEELE: Well, the way I think about it is they are pursuing goals that can't be achieved. It's sort of like a child who has some kind of fantasy, and they keep asking you to give them things to acquire that, but it's impossible to arrive at the goal that they want. The idyllic paths that they are pursuing probably never existed and certainly not something that we can reach right now.
HECK: Well yeah, I mean that's just it. There's never been a utopia. This is a fallen world. In fact, every time we shrink the individual and grow the state, we don't see a recipe for happiness, we see a recipe for misery. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Mao, all of them...not exactly paradises.
But yet, history, historical fact doesn't seem to deter them. Even our own past. You can point to Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury Secretary who said after all the New Deal spending, "we're in just as big of an economic mess now as we were when we started this unprecedented spending." We can point to the same thing with LBJ, with Carter...and yet it doesn't matter. Here comes Barack Obama and what are they saying?
Oh, just let us tax a little more, let us spend this money, let's increase our debt just a couple more trillion dollars and we'll be able to send another surge of money into the economy, we'll be able to place this money right where it needs to go to make the economy take off and it will be miraculous! No one will want for anything! We can all ride the backs of the rich and the big business tycoons and everyone will prosper...just take more from some and let us redistribute to others. What do you think when you see that argument...against all the evidence that we've accumulated for years?
PEELE: They are adamant about achieving something that's unachievable, which reminds us of a couple of things. It reminds us of delusion and psychosis. It reminds us of addiction because addicts are seeking something that they can't have. They want a state of happiness or nirvana that can't be achieved except through an artificial substance.
HECK: Wow, those are strong words. Psychosis, and delusion. But I get it. I get what you're saying. When you have tried spending other people's money, money that belongs to them and not to you, but you confiscate it arbitrarily or through confiscatory taxation and then you redistribute it, and it doesn't work...but yet you keep trying it, you're either deluded or you're psychotic.
Let me ask you though. We've seen the way this leftist power-hungry, all powerful state thing has worked out other places. The repression of dissent, the silencing of speech, the Gulags, the re-education camps. Do you think that the left's obsession with taking over people's lives, taking over their money, their education, their energy use, their college loans, their car emissions, their healthcare, their lightbulbs for crying out loud...let's say people resist this continued hostile takeover of their lives...do you think these leftist power-hungry statists could turn violent like we've seen in so many other places when the people resist them?
PEELE: And it reminds us also of the Norway situation, because when people are thwarted, when a child is thwarted in attaining something that can't be had, they often strike out, and I think Norway is one example of one kind of reaction to that kind of a frustration.
HECK: Geez. Scary. So as an addiction specialist, understanding how addicted the left is to spending other people's money and controlling - or attempting to control - other people's lives...where does it go from here? Obamanomics has failed miserably. We all see that. Everyone knows that.
The "Summer of Recovery" that they bragged about has turned into Obama's "Mission Accomplished" moment. Yesterday, the Dow plunges 500 points, jobless claims and unemployment are at all time highs. All these leftist economists kept saying, "Oh let's spend more money" meaning let's spend more of the taxpayer's money instead of giving it back to them. And it hasn't worked. Yet that seems to be all the left has to offer. It's all they're saying still. We hear Harry Reid and Barack Obama saying that this new Super Congress committee will be pushing through recommendations for tax increases. Obama has promised that he is going to jack up taxes on job creators. After all their failure they want to double down on it.
How long does this go on? How long does the addiction last? How long will we go through this?
PEELE: It won't bring them economic recovery, so then they'll have to turn their attention to some other supposed method for attaining that until they go through all of them. Perhaps they can push through all of them. Perhaps people become discontented. Perhaps they will become discontented. And then I think people are likely to get riled up, and it could become a very angry movement, could potentially become a violent movement.
HECK: Well, you watch some of the far left socialist rallies in Los Angeles, in the streets of American cities where these SEIU or Teachers' union thugs are out there beating up tea partiers and threatening the lives of governing officials like Governor Scott Walker, or using all the violent imagery that we're hearing from folks on the left - Maureen Dowd calling tea partiers "vampires and cannibals," Vice President Biden calling them terrorists, leftwing homosexual activist nut Dan Savage who is supported by President Obama and a host of Democrat lawmakers saying he wishes all Republicans were "f---ing dead," Montel Williams wanting Michele Bachmann to slit her throat, Chris Matthews wondering when someone will shove a CO2 pellet in Rush Limbaugh's head, Liberal radio host Mike Malloy begging Glenn Beck to kill himself, liberal cartoonist David Fitzsimmons fantasizing about Obama calling out the Navy SEALs to assassinate tea party congressmen, the list keeps going and going and going - all this violent talk from the left and you begin to worry if the line between their hate rhetoric and actually hate actions is growing thin.
And what you're saying is that is precisely possible. And again, you know your stuff. You know psychosis when you see it. You know delusion.
So what of the rest of us, Doctor? All of us who realize what a mess this left-wing socialist movement led by Obama really is...how do you see the general population right now? Looking at this movement - looking at the barren wasteland that they have made of the American economy, looking at the economic ruin they have wrought upon the job market, the housing market, the financial industry, the manufacturing world - scratching their heads and saying, "I thought we voted for change and hope?" People who haven't felt this depressed about the state of our country since Jimmy Carter was in the White House. How do you analyze the general population thinking back to the fake Greek pillars and the promises from this man who is now president that his ascension would see the rise of the oceans begin to recede and the planet begin to heal?
PEELE: I think right now they are mystified. They are thinking how did they succeed? It's like when you look at a child who throws a tantrum. How do they get to win this when it makes no sense what they are looking for? And, we're operating at a symbolic level here, and they control the symbolism now until at some point there's some dramatic horrible clash between all of this symbolism and what really we have to face in what is in our hands.
HECK: What is in our hands is a mess. And as you've explained so eloquently this afternoon Doctor, a mess that is made by deluded and psychotic people addicted to taking over people's lives and ruining them. I guess just like there comes a time when you have to rip that toy out of the hands of a spoiled child and send them to their room, the American voter has the duty to rip the reins of government from the hands of these statists like Obama and send them back to Chicago in 2012.
Well said today, Doctor Stanton Peele. Thank you so much for your time this afternoon.
PEELE: Thank you, Martin.
