Tyranny as a Triumph of Narcissism

[tblue37]

Tyrannies are three-legged beasts. They encroach upon our world in a steady creep more often than overcome it in a violent takeover, which may be one reason why they are not always easy to spot before it is too late to do much about them. Their necessary components, those three wobbly legs, are: the tyrant, his supporters — the people — and the society at large that provides a ripe ground for the collusion between them. Political scientists call it “the toxic triangle” (Hughes 2017).

The force binding all three is narcissism. It animates the beast while, paradoxically and not, eating it alive, bringing its downfall in due time. This force and its influences that knit the beast into such a powerful and destructive entity remain invisible to us for reasons that are clearly hinted at, but somehow continue to evade our individual and collective comprehension. They make sure we don’t recognize the tyranny’s marching boots, which can be heard from miles and months away, until they show up on our doorstep, and that’s despite the fact that this very same process has repeated itself countless times in history.

We have known who tyrants are and how tyrannies form since antiquity: this knowledge has been supported by the ever-growing tragic evidence of the tyrannies’ effects on humanity. Yet, despite making promises to ourselves and each other to “Never forget,” we seem not to remember and not to know, always with devastating consequences. Our forgetting stems partly from miseducation (Giroux 2014) and partly from denial. It gives us clues to the kind of work — psychological, social, political, and economic — that we must do if we are to avoid self-destruction promised by tyrannies today.

Let’s take a look at tyranny’s components and their interactions.

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[Much more and very good: https://medium.com/@Elamika/tyranny-as-a-triumph-of-narcissism-76b6fec76d0d

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Excellent Information - Thanks!

More from Elizabeth Mika:

All tyrants share several essential features: they are predominantly men with a specific character defect, narcissistic psychopathy (a.k.a malignant narcissism). This defect manifests in a severely impaired or absent conscience and an insatiable drive for power and adulation that masks the conscience deficits. It forms the core of attraction between him and his followers, the essence of what is seen as his “charisma.” In his seminal paper on Antisocial Personality Disorder and Pathological Narcissism in Prolonged Conflicts and Wars of the 21st Century (2015), Frederick Burkle observes that narcissism augments and intensifies the pathological features of a psychopathic character structure, making those endowed with it especially dangerous, not in the least because of their ability to use manipulative charm and a pretense of human ideals to pursue their distinctly primitive goals. We talk about the chief feature of narcissistic psychopathy, the impairment of conscience, and its destructive consequences, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Narcissist (Mika & Burkle 2016).

Impulsive, sensation-seeking, and incapable of experiencing empathy and guilt, a narcissistic psychopath treats other people as objects of need- and wish-fulfillment. This makes it easy for him to use and abuse them, in his personal relationships and in large scale actions, without compunction. His lack of conscience renders him blind to higher human values, which allows him to disregard them entirely or treat them instrumentally as means to his ends, the same way he treats people.

This dangerous character defect, however, serves him well in the pursuit of power, money, and adulation. Not having inhibitions and scruples imposed by empathy and conscience, he can easily lie, cheat, manipulate, destroy, and kill if he wants to — or, when powerful enough, order others to do it for him.

The characteristics indicative of narcissistic psychopathy are observable already in childhood. Biographies of tyrants (Fromm 1973, Miller 1990, Newell 2016) note the early manifestations of vanity, sensation-seeking, and impulsivity often accompanied by poor self-control, aggression and callousness, manipulativeness, and a strong competitive drive and desire to dominate co-existent with a lack of empathy and conscience. Plato remarked on the “spirited” character of a future tyrant showing the above-mentioned symptoms already in his youth.

Trump at age 7 already was throwing rocks at a neighbor's toddler (Dennis?) in his playpen.

https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+threw+rocks+at+infant&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS1041US1041&oq=trump+threw+rocks+at+infant&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRiPAjIHCAIQIRiPAtIBCTUyMzVqMGoxNagCCLACAfEFVPt_YCNdumc&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[mopinko]

2. i'd just like to add-

when my eldest was small, the chgo trib did an excellent series on the growing science of prenatal brain development. tho we focus on early childhood, it is the prenatal period when the human brain is most vulnerable. the fetus constantly communicates w the mother. if the mother is stressed, iow, has high adrenaline levels, development shifts. the ‘higher functions’ of the brain- art, music, emotional regulation, etc, r sacrificed to the survival modes. even muscle development is affected, w a higher % of fast twitch muscles over fine motor development.
that stress cd b a violent environment, drug/alcohol use, or it cd b a more neutral force, like an ailing parent, a stressful job, or just hunger.

and this rly is the key to a more peaceful world. making sure every pregnant person is well fed is a great start. a minimum wage that is a living wage, so that a family unit functions well, taking domestic violence srsly wd change the world.
dems want and work for those things as a matter of justice. but we shd b focused on them as a road to real peace in the world.

[tblue37]

3. +1