As I walked across the park at Washington Square I could not help but notice the prominent equestrian statue of George Washington, our first president. A man who could have been king, but who told John Adams that just Mr. President would do, and who stepped down to allow the same John Adams to become our second president after two terms. For whatever flaws George Washington had, those actions set a high bar that has governed the peaceful transition of power for well over 200 years. Even very flawed presidents followed this principle, but that long history could conceivably be broken if the current occupant of the White House lost the election of 2020. Why? Because we have made the grave mistake of allowing a malignant narcissist into the room, and just like it is unwise in a horror novel to invite in a vampire, we will very much regret this. In fact most of us already do!
To begin with I am going to impart a bit of personal history that I have only touched on before to explain why I feel I can make the judgements that I do in this diary. I am not a psychologist, but my father appeared to be a narcissist (and was diagnosed as bipolar in his 70s. Note: I mean this as no criticism of other bipolar people, who are struggling with a difficult problem, and are not necessarily narcissistic) and the “election” of our current president brought back a lot of unpleasant memories. During my early years I had only vague memories of my father’s tendencies. Only that he would worry my mother when he swam far out into Lake Erie or climbed high up the tree in our front yard, but by my early teens it was obvious that dad had some serious problems. He was a payday drunk and ofter used the threat of suicide or abandonment to win an argument, sometimes disappearing for hours or days, often late at night. His narcissism was obvious when anyone talked to him. His stories always revolved around himself and his topping all others around him. According to him he invented a form of calculus that was so envied by his teachers in high school that they had him expelled. He was in the Texas Rangers and once captured some mean desperados in Mexico and brought them back to justice in the United States. He won a million dollars at the gambling tables in Las Vegas when he was in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCCs)- he actually was in the CCCs, but I doubt the gambling win. He broke his neck during a high dive and walked out of the hospital the same day. He saved a lost man in Tate’s Hell (an impenetrable tangle of forest near Tallahassee, Florida). He saved a man who was about to be bitten by a coral snake. He drove the fastest race cars and was engineer on the fastest railroad trains. He was asked to pilot a small plane and landed it safely with no training. He stared down a shark in the Atlantic. He gave advice to Franklin Roosevelt, who disastrously did not take it and plunged us into World War II. He starred in minstrel shows (he was a bit of a racist). In short he was the greatest and most intelligent man of his generation! Growing up with him scarred me for life. Sound familiar?
Later in my life I ran into two more apparent narcissists and, while they differed somewhat in methodology, they presented the same boring qualities. They were always the best at anything that they tried. One thought he was going to disprove Einstein and win the Nobel Prize. His theory seems to have been that since nature abhors a vacuum matter gets created by various heavenly bodies moving from one place to another, creating a vacuum behind them! The other (unfortunately a close relative of my wife) thought that her judgement was so obviously impeccable that she could prove scientifically that people of color were inferior. They both went far past healthy self-confidence into a belief in their own infallibility. If any of the three likely narcissists that I knew had any power they would have abused it, just as as our current “leader” does daily. They never seek treatment, for why would you want to be brought down amongst the “common” folk from being a god? I suspect that much of the trouble in the world is caused by such overconfident, but often untalented, people.
This brings us to the current problem of having a possible narcissist running the country. Before somebody points out that I am not qualified to pass such judgement because my degrees are in zoology, not psychology, I would say that at least some professionals in that field have come to the same conclusion, although others have a more restrictive definition (See: chicago.suntimes.com/…, and for balance www.psychologytoday.com/...), and that our leader presents us with numerous symptoms of at least a personality disorder daily! In many ways one would have to be completely mentally blind (as T***p voters apparently are) not to notice the symptoms. I don’t have to be an MD to diagnose an obviously broken leg, or perhaps in this case an obvious missing head.
Democracy, including representative democracies like our own, really requires participation or it crumbles under such egoists. The record of non-voting in the United States has been a scandal for many years, but people have a right not to vote. Not voting, however, may carry a high price, as we saw in the election of 2016. Our “leader” did not get in by himself, but was and has been aided by many people who are uninformed, willfully ignorant, racist, misogynist, criminal or just plain selfish. Greed for money and power, when added to prejudice, is a dangerous combination. T***p plays into all the worst instincts of those who vote for him, as well as those who would aid and abet him in his obviously unethical and likely criminal activities. Yet his tendencies were well known to anybody who had taken the time to research him thirty years ago at least.
His self-love is so well known as to be the subject of comedy skits worldwide (See:
He denigrates knowledge (as my father often did) and places himself in the center of everything and of course the subject of many heroic stories. He is a very stable genius, he has unmatched wisdom, he known more than the experts about a multitude of subjects and he never has to study (God, he sounds exactly like my father!) See: www.cnn.com/…, www.cnn.com/…, www.salon.com/… ad nauseam. Such a “leader” cannot possibly see the problems of lesser people or “losers”. His response to criticisms of his policy in Syria are a prime example.
It is often said that T***p overwhelms us deliberately as a political strategy and that he is thus a political genius. Maybe so, but I can’t help believing that it is a strategy only because we humans are easily confused by scattershot policy and that his mind changes are just a reflection of his inability to think critically. Our president is a sick puppy, but his narcissistic tendencies are dangerous in a position so powerful. As retired admiral McRaven points out (See: www.businessinsider.com/...) this man must be removed from office if our republic is to survive. Woe to the person who has to clean up this mess that he created, with the help of uninformed and non-voters, third party candidates, and Russian influence. Narcissist or not, he has damaged the republic greatly!