Yesterday's shitshow of a presidential briefing was...quite something. I don't watch them, but rather I wait for the clips to percolate out through Twitter and other formats. The obvious question is how much of the profound wrongness of Trump's ideas and behavior are settling into the minds of Americans who are not otherwise in Cult 45.
The unacknowledged fact that too many of our pundits, media figures and politicians refuse to speak is that Trump is OBVIOUSLY a malignant narcissist. Goldwater Rule...whatever, you only need to look at the DSM-V definition, and it's like it was written specifically for Trump. The problem is that narcissists create fictional narratives about themselves that feed into their self-image.
As this rather brilliant interview explains, we have lived all of our lives through a "mediated" existence. We have the freedom to do what we want, watch what we want when we want, eat the food we want...that wasn't true for much of human history. The virus has snapped us back to the reality that we aren't able to control everything.
The virus doesn't care. This is true for all of us, but it lands with crushing force on a narcissist, who relies on the narrative that he's great and everyone (who matters) loves him. If you don't love Trump, you're fake news or nasty or not a real Murican. As the economy continues to crater and people continue to die, Trump will become more and more unhinged. The virus doesn't care about his approval rating with self-identifying Republicans. Certainly the results from Wisconsin should scare Republicans.
Decompensating narcissists can be extraordinarily destructive, especially when wedded to the powers of the presidency and the completely slavish loyalty of an entire political party.
Cool. We need that right now.
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