June 13, 2016--Narcissism

In an insightful column in Friday's New York Times, "The Unity Illusion," David Brooks gets it right.

He argues that there are two fundamental reasons why it is unlikely (he feels impossible) that Donald Trump will be able to, perhaps have a genuine interest in seeking unity with mainstream Republicans. Those, anyway, such as Paul Ryan, who are more or less true conservatives.

First, because Trump is not a conservative since conservatives, to Brooks, unlike Trump--

. . . believe that politics is a limited activity. Culture, psychology, and morality come first. What happens in the family, neighborhood, houses of worship and the heart is more fundamental and important than what happens in a legislature.

Ah, if only true, I would consider becoming a conservative Republican. But then I would have a problem with Republican-dominated legislatures interfering, when self-interested or pandering, in the private lives of women, minorities, low-income, and gay people. But this subject is for another time.

More interesting and persuasive is Brooks second point-- that

. . . Trump by his very essence, undermines cooperation, reciprocity, solidarity or any other component of unity.

This is because, psycho-history time, he is afflicted with a  personality disorder--alexithymia, clinical narcissism. This means that Trump is unable--

. . . to identify and describe emotions in the self. Suffers have no inner voice to understand their own feelings and reflect honestly on their own actions. 

Unable to to know themselves, or truly love themselves, they hunger for a never-ending supply of admiration from outside. They act at all times like they are performing before a crowd and cannot rest unless they are in the spotlight. 

To make decisions, these narcissists create a rigid set of external standards, often based on simple division--winners and losers, victory or humiliation. They are preoccupied with luxury, appearance or anything that signals wealth, beauty, power and success. . . . 

Incapable of understanding themselves, they are also incapable of having empathy for others. They simply do not know what it feels like to put themselves in another's shoes. Other people are simply to be put to use as suppliers of admiration or as victims to be crushed as part of some dominance display. 

This all derives from Christopher Lasch's 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism, which presciently argued that much of American culture was trending in this clinical direction. Nearly 30 years later we see all around us the living proof of that. Not just among nominated and elected officials.

September 4, 2014--Fear Itself

Reading Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, the first of Rick Perlstein's monumental trilogy of books about the contemporary conservative movement, there is this about Fred Koch, the Koch Brothers' sire, and his comrades in 1960 when they were working largely out of view to promote the conservative movement. Specifically about the role of fear in American politics:

. . . Conservatism was a conservatism of fear. They harped endlessly on the "communist income tax," how the economy would be decimated by inflation every time a worker got a raise. (Taft Republicans, joked The Nation, feared "only God and inflation.") Their scapegoats were unnamed subversives who were invisibly destroying the system from within: "I am at a lose to understand the current public attitude deflating the inflation psychology," Fred Koch wrote in a self-published pamphlet. "Perhaps it is propaganda, of which we have been fed much of late--pink propaganda, in as much as, in my opinion, Russia's first objective is to destroy our economy through inflation."  

Politically the philosophy lost when it won [my italics]: if you removed the fear of subversion by catching subversives, you ended the fear that brought you to power in the first place--although, of course, you could never catch all the subversives, for the conspiracy was a bottomless murk, a hall of mirrors, a menace that grew greater the more it was flushed out. 'The Communists have infiltrated both the Democrat and Republican Parties for many years," Koch wrote. "If we could only see behind the political scenes, I am sure we would be shocked."

Thinking about this early the other morning, I speculated that there are basically two underlying sources  from which political power derives--

Fear is one force. Real, imagined, and often, by politicians, manipulated. Recall that during the 2008 primary campaign Joe Biden, famously calling Rudy Giuliani out as a fear merchant, said that everything he says is made up of a "noun, verb, and 9/11."

When looking at the social psychological reasons why people, without coercion, will give up their freedom to authoritarian leaders, Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom, offers evidence that they do so because they either have real things to fear (economic collapse, external military threat, discrimination) or are fear-driven in their orientation. Like the Kochs they see threats all around even when they do not in fact exist.

Progressives, on the other hand, are willing to give up some of their autonomy--freedom, if you will--for the collective good. At least the collective good as they perceive it--that no one should go homeless or hungry or untreated if they are ill. Seeking the greatest good for the greatest number is what drives them politically.

As with conservatives, there is with them also the possibility, and often the reality, of self-delusion. And they have not always been reluctant to embrace their own manipulative methods. What one may claim to be the greatest good for others is not often put to the test--asking those for whom decisions are being made if they perceive them to be in their best interest.

So, in the first instance the instinct for a version of survival drives belief and behavior and in the latter case arrogance can take hold as those with power decide for the rest of us what is supposedly in our best interest.