The highly narcissistic group is eager to have a leader with whom it can identify itself. The leader is then admired by the group which projects its narcissism onto him. In the very act of submission to the powerful leader, which is in depth an act of symbiosis and identification, the narcissism of the individual is transferred onto the leader. The greater the leader, the greater the follower. Personalities who as individuals are particularly narcissistic are the most qualified to fulfill this function. The narcissism of the leader who is convinced of his greatness, and who has no doubts, is precisely what attracts the narcissism of those who submit to him. The half-insane leader is often the most successful one until his lack of objective judgment, his rage reactions in consequence to any set-back, his need to keep up the image of omnipotence may provoke him to make mistakes which lead to his destruction. But there are always gifted half-psychotics at hand to satisfy the demands of a narcissistic mass.
So this happened after today’s meeting between this cool, classy and composed adult woman who is one of the few non-psychopathic leaders of the world left, and our so-called president:
Trump, totally in line with his character pathology, pretends not to see, hear, or understand Merkel’s and journalists’ requests; his sheepish facial expression, however, tells us that he is ignoring them on purpose. Because of course.
The man is so grandiosely arrogant that he believes he can bend reality to fit his perceptions and pathological needs — and, sadly, this dangerous delusion has worked for him so far. Mainly because people are too stunned and/or afraid to confront him about it.
Our preposterously obliging press is part of that cowed crowd. When reporting this incident, Timecaptured the video with a caption:
Angela Merkel Asked President Trump to Shake Hands. He Appeared to Ignore Her
They know — or one hopes they still do — that he did not “appear” to ignore her, but did ignore her in the most breathtakingly rude manner. It’s too bad the writers cannot bring themselves to state the obvious. Being too afraid, or maybe confused, to trust one’s eyes and speak the truth is what plays directly into the ethos of post-factual unreality purposely propagated by Trump/ism.
In the classical for any narcissist, and particularly a malignant one, fashion, Trump can “disappear” inconvenient facts and people from his own and everyone’s field of vision — or at least awareness. It’s a feat of magical thinking, typical for toddlers — and while it can be charming and amusing in toddlers, in adults not so much. In adults who run the world, it is downright dangerous.
This is not the first time we’ve witnessed this behavior in public in recent weeks: on multiple occasions, Trump has simply ignoredquestions posed to him, pretending he did not hear them. If there is anyone left who believes this behavior is normal or harmless, especially in a president, this person should take a long vacation somewhere warm and safe, to recover their senses and sensibility.
Watching the Merkel-antisocial toddler press conference shows so well the difference between a mature, psychologically intact adult, and a developmentally arrested, dangerous, and petulant toddler-man. His body language and facial expressions speak volumes of his fear and contempt — for Merkel, for the press, and for the entire world which dares to still insufficiently champion his greatness. But that’s going to change soon, if he can help it, as he always has. It’s up to us to make sure that this time he does not succeed. For the world’s and everyone’s sake.
Trump released his budget proposal that elicited praise from other psychopaths and gasps of horror from normal people, proving that Trump/ism remains as reliable a test of a person’s character as it ever was. It is frighteningly easy, for better and for worse, to tell who is conscience-deficient, and usually in what ways, by knowing where folks stand on matters Trump.
Here’s one useful visual of the proposed changes (not included in this “skinny budget” are health care programs and Social Security):
Unveiling of this proposal was followed yesterday by an appearance, during a press conference with Melissa Sean “Steely Smile” Spicer, of Mike Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who explained what’s what.
If you didn’t watch it, you may want to, since it is notable for several interesting occurrences. Among them was Mulvaney explaining that food programs for hungry children and seniors will be slashed because they do not bring desired results.
When asked by incredulous journalists just what exactly such results should be, Mulvaney repeatedly emphasised that denying food to poor seniors was “a compassionate thing to do” because it stopped wasting money. Same thing with depriving hungry kids of their government rations, although here he gave an explanation of the missing results. Turns out, as he said, that feeding poor kids does not appear to improve their academic performance. A waste of money then.
He may have a point there, I suppose. If Making America Great Again is about turning it into The Hunger Games (as suggested by yours truly on this very blog months ago, during our age of innocence), then it’s best to start the process of natural selection early.
Let the young ones from the slums learn to fend for themselves as soon as possible — they don’t need education anyway, that’s for the kids of rich people — so we can cull the herd to retain the strongest specimens, most able to serve as soldiers in the bloated military that Our Leader is preparing for his many war adventures. Let them eat bootstraps if that’s what it takes.
And those who have a misfortune to nevertheless survive being a cannon fodder and grow old(er) will be eliminated by the lack of health care. If that doesn’t work, we’ll starve them. See? The GOPers have it all worked out. That’s what Paul Ryan calls “mercy.” And he too may be on to something, for death sooner rather than later will seem merciful in the Great Again America prepared for us by Trump&Co.
Let’s face it: the GOP’s vision of MAGA is a version of eugenics designed to eliminate the weak and undesirable members of society to make more room and a much pleasant atmosphere for the wealthy.
Robert Reich calls Trump’s budget “bonkers” and in his post An Orgy of Unnecessary Cruelty describing Trump’s presidential actions to date, he asks, twice:
Why is Trump doing this? He has no compelling justification.
Not if you are a normal person. Because if you are a narcissistic psychopath who lacks a conscience and is driven by unbridled and sadistic (key word) grandiosity and a desire for power, which makes you see other people, at best, as objects of need- and wish-fulfillment (if you notice them at all), then this is exactly the kind of budget you’d create.
You’ve heard no doubt about this Holy Grail that wasn’t, which is a good example of how our narcissistic media enable the Narcissistic Psychopath in Chief and his march of destruction.
Tuesday evening social media went abuzz with BREAKING NEWS! of Rachel Maddow promising to show everyone Trump’s tax returns. This is her tweet announcing the event:
America, at least its tweeting portion, held its breath for a fraction of a second before unleashing a frenzy of outsized reactions, from announcing Twitler’s imminent demise to awarding Maddow Pulitzer AND The Presidential Medal of Honor (from our future president, should we have one).
On her program, Maddow had David Cay Johnston who explained that the two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax returns were sent to him by an unknown person, and then both of them pondered the significance of this pretty much insignificant document as though it had such.
It doesn’t. Seriously.
What’s more, it was likely released by Trump himself — by which I mean Bannon & Co — something that Johnston acknowledged. It came to public attention at the same time as a rehash of Paul Ryan’s disavowal of Trump from last fall. Both “revelations” just happened to coincide with the major s…tuffstorm that’s Obamacare replacement known as #DonTCare, the fallout from Trump’s insane wiretapping accusations leveled at Obama, and his deepening Russia scandal, among several other developments in the TrumpSwamp.
Trump was “outraged” over this breach of decorum and tweet-screamed — you guessed it, or maybe simply saw it — about nasty media with its fake news, which in this case was nearly justified. His son and some supporters thanked Maddow for proving that not only Trump’s willing (yeah!) to share his tax returns, but that they show what an upstanding gazillionaire he is. Oh, and at the same time Trump, via Breitbart, has managed to prepare the ground for his disavowal of Ryancare (a.k.a #DonTCare), to keep his own hands clean when it collapses.
Meanwhile, Trumpists attacked Maddow and Johnston, while anti-Trumpists rose to their defense, praising Maddow for her (kid you not) heroism. A predictable frenzy followed, as it always does when you throw a piece of meat to a pool of piranhas. It will probably continue for the rest of the week, if not longer.
All in all, a great feat of propaganda.
The winners here are Trump, of course (as usual so far), who may not know much but can, with a little help from his friends, effectively manipulate the masses, including (especially) the supposedly hostile to him media; but also Maddow and MSNBC, and possibly Johnston.
Our media and Trump are each other’s nemeses locked in a love-hate relationship. While they profess contempt for each other, they cannot really live apart. Their existence, these days particularly, depends on the other’s attention — Trump’s more on the media’s than the other way around, but still. They are also similar in some crucial respects. Like all narcissists, both prize image over substance and ratings over truth. Ratings equal money, and money is really what matters most to them and close to everyone else on our planet.
But to really matter, both actors in this depressing spectacle depend on a willing audience which always obliges because we, humans, love our narcissists more than we hate them. The 24/7 news cycle has created hordes of addicts consuming the manufactured dramas to fill voids in their lives, provide some excitement, and a fake (narcissistic) sense of importance, along with an illusion of belonging to something greater than themselves.
And as the narcissists on both sides sit back and glory in their soaring ratings and/or throw sludge at each other, cheered on by their armies of minions, we are left to ponder whether we will be able to afford our food AND medicines a year from now. That is those of us who still can, a number growing smaller each day, and one which, under Trump’s psychopathic budget, will soon shrink greatly — and tragically — as our national nightmare deepens.
“I’m sure the Twitter act was orgasmic!” wrote my psychiatrist friend in an email discussing Trump’s latest pivot from a narcissistic psychopath to a malignant narcissist (the distance is zero, in case you wonder).
Those impressed last week by Trump’s ability to read from a teleprompter for about an hour without mocking the disabled (though he came close by exploiting a grieving widow of a soldier who died as a result of his desire to appear commander-ish-in-chief) or grabbing whatever, may perhaps re-evaluate their cheery estimates of the man. Or perhaps not, because if there is one thing — among oh-so-many — we learn from Trump/ism it is that being a pundit means never having to say you’re wrong. Or sorry.
Here’s what happened (for those who were inexplicably not focused on our national nightmare): After his Tuesday speech, which no doubt created a much needed sense of victory in him, Trump and his cabinet members were faced with new accusations of improper contacts with the Russians during his campaign. Damn the fake media.
Dark circuses ensued.
Jeff Sessions suddenly realized these were not the Prussians he thought he talked to; Carter Page (who, you ask? I know — nobody knew) underwent what appeared to be some form of an existential crisis in public, leading him to question the nature of reality and his place in it; and everyone was reminded that we should have paid attention to Paul Manafort as his behavior begged us to. Sadly, attention is not among American strengths.
And at the center of this chain of matrioshka dolls was a solid Soviet apparatchik named Sergey Kislyak.
Our so-called president, meanwhile, went ballistic on his staff — exactly as predicted — blaming them for not stanching the truth as he demands of them (that’s their no.2 job; no.1 being soothing his tender ego — though the two are closely related). He stormed off to his “Southern White House,” another weekly trip costing taxpayers gadzillions of $$, leaving Steve Bannon crushed, to the extent a cheap imitation of Darth Vader is crushable.
BTW, those among Trump’s associates and external observers who believe that Bannon controls Trump should give up that illusion as well. It’s time. Really.
Then, in the quiet hours of early dawn, when most of America was still asleep, Trump unleashed a torrent of jaw-dropping tweets accusing President Obama of spying on him and, essentially, causing the whole TrumPrussianGate.
Here I will quote my psychiatrist friend, whose analysis is spot on (slightly edited for clarity):
(…) No narcissistic rage attack ever goes unanswered and MUST be answered in a fashion over and above how it impacts the narcissist — that is why such attacks lead to [violent] actions (all justified in their eyes) even as murder!
We both know that he lost sleep, became more vengeful and angry and could not go on until he acted. None of these actions ever make sense, but to hear them as I have they all make perfect sense to the narcissist. He turned to sources that have in the past provided succor to his vengefulness and without question grasped onto the Breitbart story, rushing in glee to Twitter, to blame Obama, whom he despises because he is so admired and is brighter than him. He is even more angry that his political colleagues insisted he admit that Obama is a citizen. I’m sure the Twitter act was orgasmic!
The rationalizations on the TV are so tragic.
Yes, they are. But they are a necessary part of our tyranny in progress, the part where we normalize it and pretend there’s really nothing to see here, move right along, straight into an abyss.
You may be, um, pleased (?) to learn that this weekend’s crisis was resolved by the resourceful White House staff helping Trump prepare a new travel ban for Muslims — because nothing soothes the pain of a malignant narcissist’s injured ego like inflicting suffering on the weak and innocent, a.k.a The Others. It is an act of “unwounding,” discussed by Dr. Lynne Meyer in Richard Greene’s post.
This time the ban sufficed; but, as his rage escalates, such mild (ha) moves won’t be enough. The sadistic drive to punish and destroy is a malignant narcissist’s modus operandi. And given his lack of inhibitions — a result of a missing conscience — we should expect to see more dramatic and hurtful attempts to satisfy that drive.
Currently reading Gary Lachman’s “Jung the Mystic” and nodding my head over the pages describing Jung’s secret mission, partially aided by the CIA, to diagnose Hitler as mentally ill and remove him from power. (Spoiler: He failed.)
It takes me over to his (Jung’s) “Civilization in Transition,” published in 1964*, which reads as though written today, proving that despite our so-called progress, our nature and our pressing developmental tasks continue to remain unchanged.
One relevant fragment (though it’s really hard to choose), pp. 242-243:
“The struggle between light and darkness has broken out everywhere. The rift runs through the whole globe, and the fire that set Germany ablaze is smouldering and glowing wherever we look. The conflagration that broke out in Germany was the outcome of psychic conditions that are universal. The real danger signal is not the fiery sign that hung over Germany, but the unleashing of atomic energy, which has given the human race the power to annihilate itself completely. The situation is about the same as if a small boy of six had been given a bag of dynamite for a birthday present. We are not one hundred percent convinced by his assurances that no calamity will happen. Will man be able to give up toying with the idea of another war? Can we at last get it into our heads that any government of impassioned patriots which signs the order for mobilization should immediately be executed en bloc?
How can we save the child from the dynamite which no one can take away from him? The good spirit of humanity is challenged as never before. The facts can no longer be hushed up or painted in rosy colours. Will this knowledge inspire us to a great inner transformation of mind, to a higher, maturer consciousness and sense of responsibility?
It is time, high time, that civilized man turned his mind to fundamental things. It is now a question of existence or nonexistence, and surely this should be subjected to the most searching investigation and discussion. For the danger that threatens us now is of such dimensions as to make this last European catastrophe like a curtain-raiser.”
*The original article, “Epilogue to ‘Essays on Contemporary Events,” was first published in 1946. This explains “the fire that set Germany ablaze is smouldering and glowing.”
Uber narcissists‘ (yes, double entendre, if you will) most unfortunate workplace adventures continue, as they are wont to do.
A female engineer employed by Tesla, run by a notorious narcissist Elon Musk, accused the company of:
(…) ignoring her complaints of “pervasive harassment”, paying her a lower salary than men doing the same work, promoting less qualified men over her and retaliating against her for raising concerns.
Again, this is typical for organizations run by character disordered — narcissistic and psychopathic — leaders. The workplace culture is shaped by the boss, and reflects his or her values and behavior.
(…) Bloomberg News published dashcam video of [Uber] CEO Travis Kalanick arguing with his own Uber driver over the company’s treatment of drivers, prompting a mea culpa from him on Tuesday night.
The video, reportedly taken 5 February, shows Kalanick riding in the back seat, wedged between two female friends, shimmying his shoulders to the strains of Maroon 5.
When the ride ended, driver Fawzi Kamel took the opportunity to share a common driver complaint: “You’re raising the standards, and you’re dropping the prices.”
The pair discussed the state of the ride-hail market for a few moments before Kamel drove his point home. “People are not trusting you any more,” he said. “I lost $97,000 because of you. I’m bankrupt because of you … You keep changing every day.”
Kalanick denied that the prices for Uber’s high-end service, Uber Black, have fallen that much, saying, “Bullshit.”
Then he got personal with Kamel.
“Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit,” he said. “They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!” Then he slammed the door.
After the video went public, Kalanick issued a note of not just an apology, but a profound apology — to his employees — saying that:
By now I’m sure you’ve seen the video where I treated an Uber driver disrespectfully. To say that I am ashamed is an extreme understatement. My job as your leader is to lead…and that starts with behaving in a way that makes us all proud. That is not what I did, and it cannot be explained away.
It’s clear this video is a reflection of me—and the criticism we’ve received is a stark reminder that I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up. This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it.
I want to profoundly apologize to Fawzi, as well as the driver and rider community, and to the Uber team.
—Travis
The apology is instructive in the workings of narcissism, of course, as it takes place only after the narcissist’s offense has been made public. Without that video, we wouldn’t necessarily be the wiser about Travis’s interactions with other people — although it’s easy to guess — especially those underneath him on the social ladder, and those are the ones that matter most.
It is also notable for its over-the-top-ness* and drama, both narcissistic giveaways suggestive of disingenuousness.
Travis does not need “leadership” help, but humanness help, first and foremost, and it remains to be seen whether he will get it as he promises. Depending on the extent of his narcissism, such help — if he finds it** — may or may not be effective. Proof, as always, will be in the pudding, i.e., the man’s changed character as manifested in his daily interactions with others, especially the powerless ones, his subordinates and/or his critics.
Meanwhile, PBS Newshour had a segment about Kalanick’s recent woes, titled, Why Snapchat and Uber are under intense scrutiny over values, reminding everyone that in the American society values matter only if they can be monetized — i.e., to the extent they affect profits.
Part of the exchange with an invited expert went as follows:
HARI SREENIVASAN: And this is also a company that is not public yet, but when it goes, if it goes, the valuations are staggering — $70 billion is currently where it’s at.
Does this call into question perhaps the temperament of this individual and whether he is the right person to run such a big global company?
MIKE ISAAC: Yes, I think that’s right.
I suppose we will have to wait just a bit longer for the PBS Newshour pundits to ask this question about the person running the most powerful (so far) nation on Earth. But, as no immediate monetary losses for the ruling class are involved — on the contrary — there is no need to rush.
Though maybe we shouldn’t wait too long, because, as Kalanick so presciently warned us, with the kind of spot-on projection that narcissists excel in,
Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!
Yeah, we’re gonna need that.
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*Anything in human interactions that falls in the over-the-top, bigger-than-life, too-good-to-be-true (duh) category is strongly suggestive of narcissism.
**It is likely he’ll seek “help” from other narcissistic business gurus and similar types, which will result in further entrenching his narcissism and just learning to manage his image better. This is what such “interventions” among the powerful narcissists amount to, ensuring that the systems they run remain essentially unchanged, save some cosmetic “improvements” on the margins. Image over substance is the motto of narcissists everywhere.
good marriage central* 