Let's talk about me

This is mere speculation—the result of human drive to find cause in coincidence. But here are two items I encountered today. The President routinely fumbles language, but he expresses an extremely high opinion of his government. Perhaps his high self-esteem leads him to excessive confidence in his words? Language matters, and clumsy right-wing language is easily revealed as no more intelligent or successful than Humpty Dumpty:

"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy," said Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the organization that calls itself "al-Qaeda in Iraq." Zarqawi is the bogeyman that the U.S. government currently blames for almost everything that has gone wrong in Iraq, but he does speak essentially the same language as President George W. Bush. [...] Bush speeches are a treasure-trove of innocent fun. His speech-writers took the quote about having "lit a fire in the hearts of men" from Fyodor Dostoevsky, presumably not realizing that they were quoting a bunch of terrorists who featured in his novel The Devils [...]

This week, we find out that a person's level of self-esteem does not correlate to their academic success, job performance, quality of relationships, or tendencies toward violence or crime. It does correlate with overestimating themselves in these areas:

Self-esteem doesn't predict who will make a good leader, and some work [...] has found humility rather than self-esteem to be a key trait of successful leaders. [...] After all these years, I'm sorry to say, my recommendation is this: Forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline.