To take one obvious example, Obama wanted all of us to “feel his pain” when he talked about how, as President, he had to receive the bodies of men killed by his incompetence. He didn’t feel that pain, but he felt he understood intellectually how someone who HAD felt that pain would act and react. He was acting, in other words, and that fact became clear when he callously called their unnecessary deaths “not optimal”.
Not optimal is Sales talk. It is executive talk, when you want to deemphasize something negative. It is bureaucratic talk. It is not HUMAN when you are talking about the violent murders of men who looked to you for protection, who you failed, and who even now you feel ZERO actual sympathy for.
Like all ideologues, Obama is plainly someone who has put his intelligence in the service of a philosophy that facilitates the murder of unwanted negative feelings, which for their part find expression in the violence and venom of his outlook, his desire to punish and hurt those he has framed as enemies, which is to say those who create virtually all the jobs in this country.
You can’t think well when your emotions are out of whack, and, again, you cannot UNDERSTAND the experience of others, except by comparison with your own; and if you have never experienced, say, war, then you are simply guessing.