Narcissism

August 22, 2020

Pentwater, Michigan

     It's pretty hard to ignore what a doofus our president is.  His limited vocabulary and inarticulate ramblings and repetitions, employing the comparatively few words he does know, strike the reasonable listener each time they hear the guy talk (which for me is as seldom as possible).  But because he's the president and because before that he was in the world of high finance, he is sometimes also credited with a deeper overall knowledge of things than he has.  After all, we think, how could he have made, and lost, all those millions of dollars if he didn't have at least a little sense?
   
     And there's no punch line to follow that rhetorical question.  He does indeed have some sense, some knowledge that others don't have, and the ability to make things happen.  There's a certain grim charisma to the guy.  Whether he's the lackey of the right wing, or its leader, makes almost no difference--he is certainly carrying out the Republican agenda with, for them, admirable alacrity.  For anyone who doesn't already know it, the Republican agenda is, and has been for many years, the following:  to promote the interests of big business at pretty much any cost.  That's it!   But you say, it can't be that simple.  What about racism and white supremacy? what about pandering to the ignorant and superstitious religious people? what about keeping the attention of the country focused on illegal immigrants and slant-eyed foreigners?  Well, duh, as they say.  These things all promote capitalism, which needs to exploit the permanent underclasses and the profoundly ignorant among us in order to survive.  First of all, get us all worshiping and drooling over the doings of the wealthy (like Trump, Bloomberg, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc.), so that we not only expect them to be our saviors but also assume that their morality is superior to ours, and that therefore their ability to lead us is greater.  This isn't anything new in this country, of course.  Despite the "aw shucks" personae of several of our most prominent presidents, it was the patricians of the colonies--Washington and Jefferson, for instance--who led the revolution, and to whom was given the initial power.  Why?  Because they were wealthy, and thus inherently superior to the rest of us. 

     But there's that niggling psychological aspect to Trump's personality, which the left-of-center media keeps harping on, and which they say separates him from the garden variety rapacious and soulless Republican.  He's also a narcissist.  Democrats say so.  His bitter psychologist niece says so.  Various eminent psychiatrists say so.  And even some of his fellow Republicans are saying it, lest they be tainted by the Trump legacy after he's gone.

     So, is Trump a narcissist, in the clinical sense?  In the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, which is the American Psychiatric Association's attempt to create a sort of  Oxford English Dictionary of craziness, "narcissistic personality disorder" is defined to include 9 characteristics, of which a certified narcissist should possess at least 5.  Let's take a look at these criteria as they apply to Donald Trump:

          1.  A grandiose sense of self-importance;  (check)
          2.  A preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love;  (check)
          3.  A belief that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions;  (definitely the first part, but possibly not the second part, since he surrounds himself with idiots and ass-kissers, and his idea of a high-status person is Jeffrey Epstein and his idea of a high-status institution is a golf course)
          4.  A need for excessive admiration;  (check)
          5.  A sense of entitlement;  (check)
          6.  Interpersonally exploitive behavior;  (check)
          7.  A lack of empathy;  (check)
          8.  Envy of others or a belief that others are envious of him or her;  (check)
          9.  A demonstration of arrogant and haughty behaviors or attitudes.  (check)

So, the guy really aces this test.  He needed a 5, but he got at least an 8 1/2.  So why isn't he bragging about this score, like he bragged about passing his cognitive ability test?

     Why indeed.  Really, it's an easy and cheap shot to call Trump a narcissist and leave it at that, as if he is the only narcissist who treads the polished marble halls of our nation's capital, or who has ever occupied the White House.  So the guy's a narcissist, what of it?  First off, none of his faithful give a shit, because narcissism is a four-syllable word and they don't understand it.  And as for his handlers, the capitalists whom he serves, they couldn't care less either, because he gets things done for them--lowering taxes, deregulating every damned thing he can, and generally, to the best of his ability, making it easier for them to make a buck.

      I realize I'm pretty much preaching to choir.  But here, ladies and gentlemen, is a truth that we might not wish to hear.  Having a president who is a consummate, textbook narcissist just might be the very thing this country deserves.  Just as individuals can have narcissistic personalities, so, I believe, can nations be narcissistic.  As a nation, no matter who the president happens to be, we in the U.S. are convinced that we are the Greatest Country on Earth, and that our president is not only the Leader of the Free World, but the Most Powerful Person in the World.  Maybe that's because of all the nukes we have, but I suspect that it's at least as much from our being utterly convinced that we are, as countries go, the cat's meow.  Outside the warm context of our own feeling of self-worth, all this might sound a little like the pronouncements of the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, but we repeat these "truths" ad nauseam, even when we're criticizing the president or ourselves as a country, e.g., the United States should know better than to ignore climate change, because we are, after all, the Greatest Country on Earth; our president should be a better person, because he is the Leader of the Free World.  Even when we are forced to face our systemic police brutality and racism, we say, This is No Way for the Greatest Nation in the World to Behave.  And by the way, no matter who the president or would-be president is, "God Bless the United States of America."  Man am I sick of  hearing that benediction.  There was a time, even in my lifetime, when presidents didn't end every speech they made with those seven vapid words--words which, for all their supposed neutrality, scream out that we are God's Chosen People, despite how far off the track we may have strayed.   

     But just to be certain about our national narcissism, let's look at those nine DSM-5 criteria again, and apply them to the good old U. S. of A. as a country:

          1.  A grandiose sense of self-importance.  Well, if you have to think twice about that one, you haven't been paying any attention at all.

          2.  A preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.    If there's anything we fantasize about, in fact and fiction, it's our success and beauty as a country.                      3.  A belief that he or she (or in this case, it) is special and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions.  This defines us perfectly as a nation, and we make it a point to ally ourselves most closely with the other countries we deem to be powerful enough and most like ourselves in racial, economic, and imperialistic outlook.  To hell with wasting our time with little weak Third World countries--what would be the percentage in that?
          4.  A need for excessive admiration.  Let's face it, if we don't get our asses kissed by other countries, we're just not happy with them, and are liable to send in a few troops to teach them a lesson. 
          5.  A sense of entitlement.  Ahem, yes, to every damn thing there is, from food, fuel, fortunes, and fun to media, music, medicine, and munitions.
          6.  Interpersonally exploitive behavior.  Hmmm.  Have we ever tried to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, or tried to rape them of their natural resources? 
          7.  A lack of empathy.  Well, it's pretty hard to be empathetic with other countries when you're The Greatest Country on the Face of the Earth, and in the History of the Universe.  What's to empathize with?
          8.  Envy of others or a belief that others are envious of him or her (or it).  We absolutely know that the rest of the world just wishes it could be us.

          9.  A demonstration of arrogant and haughty behaviors or attitudes.  See all of the above.

     So wow!! For absolute narcissism the United States as a nation scores even higher than our current president does as a person!  And aren't we proud of ourselves and our precious every-man-for-himself, gun-toting-libertarian, pay-as-little-tax-as-we-can "perfect" democracy?  You bet we are.  Just look at all the people who want to get in!  If we were so bad, why would they want to?  Well maybe it's because we are simply less bad than some of our global neighbors.  But that doesn't make us better than all of them.  Unlike many other countries, we don't offer universal health care, free or cheap higher education, decent worker benefits or vacations or leave time.  Nor do we provide safety from guns and brutal police.  We're like that one house on the block where the parents are affluent and don't give a shit what their kids do as long as they do it in the house.  Of course the other kids want to come over, especially if their own parents have lots of rules, even ones that are good for them.  And in the case of the kids whose parents abuse them and don't give them enough to eat, or are constantly fighting, yes, our house might well be the better choice.  But it's not because we're a more responsible house, just a less restricted one.  In the long run, we don't really take care of our guests, we just let them in.  And when it's time for us to kick ass in our house, watch out!  
   
     Let's not ever forget that we weren't founded by real revolutionaries--not ones who wanted to completely transform society or create a utopia to replace a dictatorship.  We were founded by men who were tired of paying taxes--men who didn't mind owning other people, or at least condoning the practice in others, and who certainly didn't mind annihilating the people who were here before we came.  "A more perfect union" my ass.

     But, you might be saying, aren't all countries narcissistic?  Don't they all believe they are the greatest group of people ever assembled by God in one place?  Some are, but not all of them.  The Danish, for example, may love their little peninsula and their way of life, but they know they're not the absolute shit, on a worldwide level.  Togo, I'm pretty sure, has a healthy sense of its own comparative lack of importance on the world stage.  Vietnam wants to run itself and its people and secure its own borders from foreign invasion, but it doesn't want to rule the world.  Even the French, for all their arrogance and general lack of interest in anything non-French, aren't, strictly speaking, narcissistic.  They're very much in love with themselves, to be sure, but they don't give a shit whether the rest of the world loves them, because, after all, the opinions of anyone non-French don't count for much.

     Narcissism in individual human beings, like sociopathy, is incurable and irremediable, except by death.  A leopard can't change its spots, or a zebra its stripes.  Donald Trump will be exactly the way he is until he is no more.  But it's worth bearing in mind that countries can transform themselves, or be transformed by external circumstances, without necessarily dying.  With sufficient changes in leadership, and sometimes after receiving a pretty stiff dose of humiliation, countries can abruptly or gradually change.  Germany is a good example from recent history.  Even our mother country, Great Britain, is coming to understand that it's not the be-all and end-all it once thought it was.  This could happen to us, and in some measure it is beginning to, in a curiously ironic way, even while we're being piloted by the worst narcissist in the history of our national leadership.  After all, under Trump we've pretty much reverted to a kind of pre-20th century isolationism, internal capitalistic rapacity, and brutal social Darwinism.  But what might help us to get over ourselves even faster would be some genuine humility at the top, engendered by the humiliation we have experienced worldwide during the past four years.  We're going to have to bow our heads in order to re-enter the family of nations.  That would be a good thing.

     May it happen soon.