The Reason You Can't Make Up With Narcissists Has to Do With What Psychologists Refer to As "Splitting" (for both sides)

For a reference and a long explanation as to what splitting is, you can go to my own article on it  HERE. 

For a short explanation it is black and white thinking, "all or nothing" pronouncements, Jekyll and Hyde behavior, looking at people as all good or all bad and nothing in-between those two extremes, and "I have to have my own way or I want nothing to do with you at all" types of behavior. 

It is a very obvious trait for Borderlines, Narcissists and people with Antisocial Personality Disorder.  

It does not breed success in relationships, but with the exception of Borderlines, it is a "fixed" trait that you cannot change by complaining, reasoning, facts, asking them to stop it, expecting them to grow out of it, expecting them to "wake up some day", and all of the other ways that involve change. 

For this post, I wanted to discuss an article about "splitting" on political matters, particularly when it comes to fixed perspectives that seem threatening, but almost all relationships with narcissists have this dynamic going on. You can merely "disagree" on a statement, or perspective, and the narcissist casts you out as a "them", an alien, no longer an "us", no longer belonging to the family, or marriage, or friendship circle. 

Being on the receiving end of a narcissist's splitting is usually heartbreaking and shocking for most people, and a depressing set of circumstances once you realize that the splitting will never change. For narcissists, it's a preferred way of life for them, a preferred mental state where they protect themselves from giving up the on-going agenda of getting evermore domination, power, control and manipulating in every relationship that they are in.

To a lesser degree, it is also their way of protecting themselves from criticism too: unlike the rest of us, they rage and very often hurt us and punish us for having the experiences, perspectives and feelings that they don't want us to have, whether the punishments are about insulting us, or discarding us in favor of looking for a new relationship where they can control the other person more easily, or beating us up, or committing crimes against us. 

Being in the orbit of narcissists means most of us will most likely be splitting too, at least when it comes to them, especially when the narcissist goes into a rage, decides to punish us, when they refuse to listen to us or resolve an issue where both people will be satisfied with the outcome. This comes from Dr. Ramani Durvasula. 

How much you "split" depends on a lot of factors, whether the events that led up to the narcissist's rage or punishment were traumatic for you, whether you were or have been already traumatized, whether you are dealing with physical illnesses or injuries, whether the narcissist clearly wants to or has said that they want to hurt you, your own resilience versus your vulnerabilities. Even when we aren't in the middle of a crisis, narcissists can and do manufacture one, and use it to grab more power and traumatize us. They've studied us long enough to know what will hurt us, and if they are trying to get more power at that time, there's no doubt you will be splitting then too, i.e. perceiving them as "all bad." 

I'd bet anything if a person really, really hurt you (with abuse as part of the picture) and you had traumatic reactions to the pain they caused you (lack of sleep, hypervigilance, stomach issues and/or headaches, muscle aches, lots of grief or pain), and no resolution which takes into account your feelings at all, and where the narcissist is consistently unempathetic and chronically trying to get their own way, it would be very rare for you not to split. You will likely see them as "all bad".

The big difference between us and them is that we go through considerable pain before reaching that conclusion whereas they can do it over the most minor of disagreements, or about a fact in dispute, or because they are momentarily not feeling grandiose, or they may even have a mistaken belief about our intentions towards them. A lot of them are suspicious and paranoid, particularly malignant narcissists. It's why they have a desperate need to control others, judge others and dominate.

But the end result is the same. So we can say we understand them if we've gotten to the point where we find ourselves not able to listen to them any more, no longer able to enjoy their company, no longer feel warm and fuzzy towards them, and feel our lives would be better if they weren't in it (kind of like a discard, only for us it is after our patience has been completely broken). Again, the big difference is that they discard us because they are finding that controlling us "isn't working, isn't enough for their standards" ("never good enough" being one of the major plagues of their disorder). It's a lot different than the way we experience discarding, usually after years and years of patience, trying to resolve un-resolvable issues, feeling sick and traumatized around them, and so on.

We are putting a lot of effort into the relationship, and often caving in to things we really shouldn't be caving into, but that is what all narcissists require. Our efforts, of course, would be deeply appreciated if we weren't doing this with a narcissist. It doesn't take the narcissist much time to get to the point where  they believe a relationship isn't worth their energy or consideration. 

When both narcissist and target reach the conclusion that the relationship cannot be saved, where there is too much stonewalling, contempt, ongoing defensiveness and where the decisions of both parties is that the other is "all bad", it is what Gottman discovered to be one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, where the narcissist shows the contempt first (i.e. "splits" and sees you as "all bad") , which in turn sets up a chain reaction of a mutual "splitting", thereby turning away from each other and ending the relationship. 

Narcissists usually end relationships first: they "split", devalue the person they now view as "all bad", and then they "discard" the person from their life. For malignant narcissists it is "discard and destroy". 

What you go through instead is trauma, then you go through the five stages of grief, and finally acceptance. Once you reach the "acceptance stage" which can take 7 months to several years, you will most likely not be willing to go through it all again, so the relationship ends. 

Some narcissists try to keep this from happening, so they attempt to come back at some point before you get to the acceptance stage of grief where they try to talk you into going back to them, or how they've changed. If you've gone through the acceptance stage, I bet you can't get talked into anything by them, or even have the same capacity to hear anything they have to say the way you used to. If you see them, you get triggered instead (i.e. feel pain or anxiety, wherein you want to get away, or for them to leave you alone). 

I can even attest to the fact that I view all of the narcissists I've had in my life as "all bad" too, even "exceptionally evil", and I ranked very, very high on a part of the Five Factor Model test on Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas (meaning I'm a lot less likely to be splitting than most people, and I do like to give people a lot of chances: whether to calm down, get their emotions under control,  be at peace enough to look at other perspectives, to get out of a defensive mindset, to sit down and talk things out - and by the way, this is not possible for most narcissists, and in contrast, they usually rank very low on Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas unless they are entirely their own). 

The narcissists in my life hurt me so much, were extraordinarily punishing over the most inconsequential matters and resistances, and also lacked reason, empathy, ethics and any trace of fair-mindedness, and believed in assumptions as reality/truth. They were all misogynistic, even the female narcissists went against girls and younger women with a ruthless war-like mentality, slashing away at any sign of a young female's self esteem. All but one commit crimes. And I do not want any of them in my life at all. As the saying goes, "I've had it." 

I think for any of us, we "have had it" when, again, our patience has been tested to the limits, or when we are going through pain from another life event - an accident, or surgery, or chronic condition, or life-and-death event when we are most likely to see their lack of empathy and realize that it is much worse than we ever imagined ... and for Malignant Narcissists, they make it abundantly clear that they get off on our pain at such times.  

Before we get to the "had enough" stage, ranking so high on "Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas" also means that we are able to listen with a much more open mind, and unfortunately, give way too many chances to people that most others would have been intolerant of and dropped long before we did. This is to say that it took some extraordinary events in my life to finally say "no more" to all of the tactics and head games they played. 

And I also found that I wasn't interested in hearing what people without empathy or ethics have to say.

In my own life, I take some pride in the fact that my attitude of "I've had it!" only applied to people with heavy narcissistic or sociopathic traits, the people among us who only seem to have some human qualities (and the worst ones). Granted, I understand that they have a personality disorder, and can't exactly grow empathy or a personality of their own because it was destroyed in childhood or abandoned by them in childhood. They may not have a choice in splitting either. But they do have choices about whether to gaslight or not, whether to go into a rage or not when they feel they are being  criticized or overlooked, whether they criticize others to the extent that they break others' self esteem, and they have a choice as to how they treat women. They also have a choice of whether to give ultimatums, about whether to use others to bully someone else, whether to scare people, and whether to hurt other people as egregiously as so many of them do, especially people who are going through tragedies (so diabolical of them, and even 100 times more so if they do all of this to a child).

I personally can no longer tolerate their lack of ethics and empathy, or deal with their head games and arrogance, especially with what I've lived through, and if no one else can either, their well-being is up to a therapist, not me.

I actually enjoy the fact that I've been able to spend most of my time with empaths in the many years since. The rest of the human race is not like narcissists and sociopaths, and what a difference it makes. I even enjoy other people's  different perspectives, something that they could never do themselves, or tolerate from me. I'm usually eager to hear what people have to say. It feels as though you get to see whole other ways of living, or worlds, beyond your own. Not that I feel I have to adopt theirs as my own, just as the Milky Way does not have to become part of, or mirror, Andromeda. But it's comforting to me that we are not all the same, or think in the same ways, that we all have expertise in diverse areas of work and study, that we don't have to be our own doctor, or our own teacher, or our own compass, or our own police force, and that there are even so many different species inhabiting the same planet who offer even more diversity in the way of thought and perspectives.

"Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas" seems like a good mental state, and to some degree, I think it helps when attempting to live through, and heal from, the trauma that narcissists and sociopaths invariably inflict upon us. It would be hard to "move on" without overwhelming intellectual curiosities, enjoying new experiences and new people, and having a creative approach to life.

Anyway, here is the excerpt of the article:

I’m a Couples Therapist. We Can Address Our Political Divide. - by Orna Guralnik for The New York Times
excerpt of the article:
     ... As children, early in our psychological development, we all resort to a defense mechanism identified by the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein as “splitting.” To cope with negative or inexplicable experiences, we divide our perceptions of people into either all-good or all-bad.
     This splitting allows us to avoid dealing with feelings of vulnerability, shame, hate, ambivalence or anxiety by externalizing (or dumping) unwanted emotions onto others. We then feel free to categorize these others as entirely negative, while seeing ourselves as good.
     In political environments, this kind of splitting manifests in an “us versus them” mentality — where “our” side is virtuous and correct, and “their” side is wrong and flawed — which produces the kind of rigid, extreme, ideological warring we are caught up in now.
     The technologies that mediate our access to reality only exacerbate this dynamic. The algorithms used by social media prioritize sensationalist and divisive content, creating “bubbles” that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives, rather than fostering a balanced discourse.
     It’s important for us to recognize just how gratifying this process can be, both for individuals and larger groups. Splitting produces a kind of ecstatic righteousness. There’s an intoxicating thrill in hate — in feeling that you’re in the bosom of a like-minded brotherhood, free from complexity and uncertainty. In this state we’re prone to ignore information that contradicts our idealized version of ourselves; we become allergic to dissonance; and those with differing views are cast out or canceled.
     To protect this brittle and distorted version of reality, we resort to extreme defensiveness. We frame opposing arguments as a threat to our identity and values. In psychoanalytic terms we call this the paranoid-schizoid position. We all tend to drop into this state of mind when we’re under extreme threat. In certain circumstances, it can allow for powerful acts of courage, but it’s also a state in which nuance and complexity are intolerable, and it’s too easy to see difference as danger.
     What I find most striking when talking to people in my practice is how intensely afraid they are of what they describe as “the other side.” Much as Louisa and Isaac sometimes felt they no longer knew each other even after decades of marriage, many of us have become frightening strangers to each other across the political divide.
     So how do we make our way back from this paranoid-schizoid state? It can seem difficult to imagine — but I know that empathy, compromise and brutally honest self-awareness are the beginnings of reconciliation.
     In Kleinian psychoanalysis, the “depressive position” is the phase that comes after the paranoid-schizoid position, when one emerges into a more integrated and mature state. In the depressive position, individuals begin to see themselves and others as complex and multifaceted, capable of both positive and negative qualities.
     To make this shift, you have to grapple with feelings of guilt and responsibility as you become aware that your aggressive feelings can hurt others — and that these feelings can also coexist with love and respect for the same person. The depressive position represents emotional maturity, within which one can reconcile ambivalence, manage feelings of loss, take responsibility and repair harm in relationships.
     When I work with couples on coming back from great mistrust and animosity, the initial phase requires encouraging each of them to take a good second look at their partner — approaching the other with friendly eyes to gather new and honest information. I embolden them to seek an attitude of true curiosity: How did their partner come to feel the way they did? What motivated them? What matters to them? This entails a shift in rhetoric, away from a stance of suspicion, ridicule and derision toward friendly curiosity. Interest in difference is a place of potential growth and repair. ...

I would argue that emerging "into a more integrated and mature state" has to come with Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas, at least a little. 

As I've said before, this is not a transition that narcissists will make. They get to the paranoid-schizoid state and stay there. 

You might think, "How can that be? Some of them seem to have regrets. Some of them come back and say that they will change." 

They may say that, but they really don't change (another link). And the reason they don't is that their version of splitting doesn't change. It is cemented into how they relate to other people. They won't and don't listen to you right away after a difference of opinion, or an argument, or just because you're an adult and want to make autonomous decisions about your own life without their input. It happens way before most people will stop listening to other people. It can easily be said that it is an extreme form of confirmation bias where even the most unsubstantiated and ridiculous beliefs and prejudices are revered by them. 

Anyone who has ever been hoovered by a narcissist knows that even if they say they are going to change, they go back to splitting and not hearing your perspectives, and often it happens instantly, in seconds, and stays stuck there for months, years and decades.

Most people who have been in close personal relationships with narcissists, also know that narcissists go back to raging, or violence, or discarding if they feel criticized, no matter how sorry they appeared to be, and in a worse way than they were before. We know that the ambitions for power, control and dominance are still there for the narcissist, and probably more so since they failed at it so miserably the last time you were in their life. Believe me, they want that again from you, and it's a pipe dream on their part. They are also extremely jealous, envious people, and unless you burn out your bright light just for them, they are going to hurt you over and over again. It has to do with "what you have" that they feel they are lacking, or wanting, whether that is beauty, money, talent, attention, popularity, youth, a job, or you have family members or best friends who they believe are better than their family members or best friends, or just something they perceive as hierarchically superior to them.  

And because they split so easily they will feel that you are "all superior" and that they are "all inferior" at such times, which at the very least will make them extremely angry and you anxious. 

When narcissists feel inferior they most often triangulate, spread smear campaigns about you, rage, call you crazy or other names, or play the victim so that your time is spent giving attention to them and empathizing with them instead of spending your time on something that makes your light shine brighter. Narcissists really don't like hoovering or showing any signs of pretend-empathy or regret unless they feel they absolutely have to, for the sake of their reputations, or because they've driven everyone away, or for Malignant Narcissists, because they want to make sure they get back at you by hurting you so that you will remain inferior, a loser, to them in their eyes (as if whether you are hurt or not is a sign of inferiority - but to them it is ... just look at how they treat the disabled, the poor, children, women who they perceive to have no power). 

By the way, hoovering means trying to get you back to either reinstate you as narcissistic supply, or to get you back into the role they have assigned you, or to abuse you some more, or to enact a revenge by softening you up via manipulative flattering words. Hoovering is about trying to reinstate a toxic relationship with you and not respecting your boundaries, or the separation between you, your rights to say no, or ignoring your rights to make your own decisions about your own life. There is a creepiness to it, especially if they've trashed your self esteem and are suddenly acting as though it never happened and that you are the love of their life - common. 

Often when their hoovering attempts don't work, they become enraged again, so there are some entitlement aspects to hoovering. 

Some narcissists resort to stalking when hoovering doesn't work for them. 

Hoovering is also highly unethical as it most often comes with lies and fake promises, and can be dangerous. 

Hoovering is also unhealthy for you as it can stir up feelings of fear (again), feeling oppressed or spied on (again), feeling a sense of doom (again), feeling frightened and hypervigilant (again), and getting symptoms of traumatization. 

Most of all, hoovering is a sign of splitting. Let's say they called you a "senseless waste of a human being", "a b*tch", "insane and stupid", and they leave you for another woman. Then one day they show up at your door with flowers and tell you that you "are the love of my life", "the sweetheart of all sweethearts", that you must go back to them "because I had the great epiphany that I can't live without you, that it changed me to my core. You don't have to worry about me ever cheating again, babe". That's a sign of splitting, but it's also the sign of hoovering. 

If they were very nice to you until you "dared to criticize" them, whereby they abandoned you because of the criticism, that's splitting too. If they have the attitude that they have rights to do anything they want but that you don't have the same rights, that's also a sign of splitting. If they come back after months of being away after your separation, that's splitting with hoovering. 

Can you ever trust a hoover? I wouldn't - speaking about myself in my own life. And I'll leave it at that. 

Hoovering and splitting can also be a sign that they are insecure. Let us say that they dumped you and you found someone new. It eats them alive, and then they want to get back at you to see if you are still open to a relationship with them. If they find that they have the power and persuasive abilities to get you back even if you are in another relationship, it's all they really need to know, and they often abandon you again once they have the information they sought. Again, their own power and persuasion tactics are more important to a narcissist than being in a mutual relationship. It's like putting a check mark on a chalk board next to their conquests' names (for instance, checks on Melissa, Janet, Sue and Karen in terms of women who will take them back if they want to go back, or feel they need something from any of them). Again, even this is splitting with hoovering.

THE ARTICLE TALKS ABOUT A DEPRESSION PERIOD.
DO NARCISSISTS GO THROUGH THIS PERIOD TOO?

It's not very likely because of why they are in relationships in the first place: for dominance, power and control of another person. 

Instead of depression, they tend to become very paranoid instead. They can't live with the fact that they are not in control of you, and cannot believe it either. "Why was this person so easy to control before, but they aren't now?" - the answer is because the controlled person was leaning towards peace in their everyday life and was walking on eggshells to achieve that peace. Most everyone does it at one point or another with narcissists.

Also, for narcissists, the paranoia is also about their inward self, that they don't have "the magic to control and dominate" enough, or "the magic to persuade" enough, like they thought they did, or even "the deviousness to control and have people believe in the false narratives of what happened." Sometimes they are happy when the people closest to them say, "Oh, I believe you!", but again, beliefs are flimsy and often built on magical thinking, not reality, not facts, not proven, not vetted, not seen from all sides, often not within reason even, and resemble what the population has about politicians, or religious leaders, or cult leaders.

In terms of believing a politician will save our jobs, or incomes, or statuses, we often feel let down, right? When they talk about how great everything is under their leadership, we feel left out, and some of us vote for the other guy from the other party over it. The same goes for looking to religious leaders to perform miracles. Or cult leaders showing empathy they do not really have. 

Narcissists undergo the same "disappointments" where they know that people look at their "leadership", or advice, or persuasions, or their bullies, as just another ruse of self serving nonsense. 

While the average human being gets depressed and draws inward, and ruminates for a long time about what led up to the event of the paranoid/schizoid state, and how they are going to relate to the person they disagree with going forward, the narcissist gets paranoid and seeks immediate narcissistic supply from someone else instead. Obviously this doesn't help matters, however it is not obvious to them. And when they gather yes-men who have been fooled into a certain narrative, or go further and get their bullies to attack you, it makes matters unresolvable. It's more of an impulsive and thoughtless defensive reaction on the narcissist's part.

But in that impulsive state they are trying to protect themselves from being wrong by staying in that aggressive and paranoid-schizoid state. And you'll notice that the aggression escalates as they try to prove to their partner over, and over again that they are right and that their partner is wrong, and is so wrong that they deserve to be shamed and/or abused a lot. The hurling of constant insults is even abuse, but it tends to go beyond that. 

The other part of this is that narcissists aren't "invested" in relationships the way the rest of us tend to be. They are attached to us in very, very superficial ways, and since power, control and domination are all that they seek in relationships, breakups are superficial happenings because they weren't able to dominate you or tell you what to do as much as they thought they were going to be able to. You'll notice that when you talk to narcissists, they'll either be playing the victim and spouting on and on about how crazy you are, or they will describe the break-up in an off-handed, non-traumatic, "I don't care" way, even if it is their spouse or their child or their best friend. 

As I've said in this post, narcissists can feel disappointed that their relationships don't work out, but not as much as that their relationships didn't feel "good enough" to keep. 

That's an attachment style that most of us cannot relate to at all, but it is important to know that for narcissists it is par for the course. It means, for the most part, that if you want to be in a relationship with a narcissist, you won't be allowed by them to disagree, or at least outwardly disagree with them. But it's also a fact of life that at some point during our lives, we will disagree with them about something. 

Sometimes that disagreement is a life-and-death issue that they won't take seriously. The narcissist then produces an ultimatum where you have to agree to their point of view, no ifs, ands, or buts, or otherwise endure a shaming session and a discard from them instead. You can't afford to put your life in danger, so you accept the end of the relationship. 

While life-and-death issues aren't always the reason, it can be because you were ill and they abandoned you - typical. It can be because they got angry and told you that you were worthless to them, but then acted like it never happened - also common.  It can be because of one of their enablers is a sadist, or because you are their adult child and aren't willing to divorce a spouse or get rid of a boyfriend at their command, or let your child live with them, or any number of reasons where you finally hit a wall and cannot "give into them" any more. 

And let's face it, relationships with narcissists are always about giving into them. There isn't much else to it.  

But more importantly, it often means that relationships with narcissists break apart because they are at the paranoid-schizoid level, and never get to the mature level. 

And it is apparent that the issues don't necessarily have to do with divisions over politics either. You can break up with narcissists over just about anything, even the most confusing, confounding reasons, particularly ones not imbedded in reality. 

It seems nuts that a parent would forbid a child to get married, when for most families they accept that it is part of having a human life (pairing), or for spouses to break up over who does the laundry, but again, for narcissists, they are willing to break up over these kinds of issues and differences regularly. Again, it's because they view their own opinions and thoughts as superior, and that because of that, their attachments to others are superficial. As Dr. Les Carter says, narcissists don't invest in relationships, they manage relationships. I would say "they see themselves as a manager" of other people at all times, whether it is wanted or not. Or maybe that's too nice. Maybe they take a dump on others, metaphorically speaking, since they are so negative about others, especially behind their backs. 

Their type of "managing others" is also what is referred to as utilitarian love. The idea is that falling in love with a person is like falling in love with a toaster oven that works until it seems broken. And they give a person as much consideration as a toaster oven too. They do not go deep. Their love does not include depths of compassion, wanting to understand and learn, exploration, admiration for individuality, admiration for talent and beauty, admiration for the intelligence of others, none of that "openness to new experiences, perspectives and ideas" that make long lasting relationships.  

Once the narcissist splits off from you and sees your perspectives as "all bad", everything else about you becomes "all bad" for them too. It resembles someone only looking at your black and blue fingernail and deciding that the rest of you is all black and blue too - i.e. it is fantasy-making. 

Only submission and agreeing with their perspectives, no matter how fantastical and child-like they are, is seen as acceptable behavior to them. It's another reason why hoovering can be dangerous. Narcissists who want you back usually only want you back in the role they assigned you - and in one way or another dealing with their manipulations again. They know that you are not going to agree with them on absolutely everything, and for most of them, that's the pre-requisite for being in a relationship with you in the first place. It's what they mean when they say, "Loyalty is the most important thing to me" (but they require that the loyalty only be in others; it's not a quality they want in themselves at all). 

Since they know you disagreed with them, it's suspicious when they want you back.

So for the hoover, there will be consequences for not having the loyalty to agree to everything they say they want or need you to be. 

If you do not agree with the pre-requisites of being submissive and agreeing, grandiose narcissists will tend to say you are crazy and stupid and they will have the stance that you never mattered to them much anyway. 

     Covert vulnerable narcissists are likely to want you to pity them, to feel endlessly sorry for them, and they play the victim and even take the reason for the break up and twist it around into a lie. Let's just say the narcissist is a male and he is pressuring his wife to do all of the laundry in the household, that it's a "woman's job." She feels they both work, and both bring in the same amount of income and contribution. He goes ballistic on her, rips up her clothes that are in the laundry bin, pushes her when she tries to save her clothes, shoves her into a concrete wall when she tries again whereby she has a concussion and is taken to the hospital, and she leaves him after she is discharged and files for divorce. The typical covert narcissistic response is: "We broke up over laundry! Can you believe it? I'd never expect a woman to do all of the laundry all of the time, but she wouldn't lift a finger and left our relationship over it! Can you believe it? What other poor sucker is she going to reel in to do her laundry?" - very common, very projection-oriented, and also a sign that suddenly looking at a person as "all unreasonable about laundry" and creating a version where they are "all bad" comes with plenty of lies, omissions, and for paranoid narcissists, fantasies. 

     For malignant narcissists, they will be seeking ways to hurt you for not being as submissive as they want, or submissive enough. If they beat you up and if they are your marriage partner, they'll often try to convince everyone they know that you were having an affair (when you weren't - they want their audiences to see their violent actions as a crime of passion; i.e. as reasonable justification over jealousy, to not take the wounds they inflict seriously). 

     If they are your parent, and they are committing crimes such as theft against you, they'll try to convince others that you are so crazy and that you lose things constantly (again, the lie covers up their criminality against their own child). 

BUT AREN'T BORDERLINES THE ONES WHO "SPLIT"?

Splitting has been attributed to Borderlines as a stand-out trait. But it is something that can be treated in them. Borderlines do have empathy, and self reflection, and that is where they differ from narcissists. 

The lashing out also tends to be impulsively driven, but also just as impulsively regretted afterwards. 

As with narcissists, they tend to grow up in abusive abandoning families too, but their empathy, abilities to self reflect, and potential, weren't destroyed in childhood like narcissists tend to be. 

And many tend to have a reactive form of PTSD too, especially when it comes to abandonment where their emotions fly from one reaction to another, the "I hate you; please don't leave me" kind of responses that Borderlines are noted for. In reality, the response has been attributed by some clinicians as a really rapid PTSD trigger flipping from one trauma response to another (fight, flight, freeze, fawn and avoid). The trauma responses are often so overwhelming that they don't know what they feel in the end, as they flip in and out of one impulsive traumatic response after another, and then finally freeze when they know they have been abandoned for good.  

So Borderlines can find themselves wanting to get out of the paranoid-schizoid state, of at least knocking harder on that door to let them enter "the mature state" (if they are not active addicts, that is - many of them tend to be, as it is part of "the impulsivity part" of Borderline Personality Disorder). 

Narcissists plainly can't get there, nor are they interested in a more "mature space". It's the lack of empathy that keeps them from entering "the mature space", but it also has to do with the fact that they feel safer, stronger, more self-managed, more in control of others and the emotional climate in a room if they can stay stuck in their accusatory aggressive patterns. 

Borderlines tend to be creative visionaries, and I'd argue that they are too creative for maintaining ongoing accusatory aggressive stances (like they have more openness to new perspectives, ideas and experiences than narcissists have). 

Borderlines also don't have the illusion that they self-manage very well. In fact, most of them agree that their lives are a mess. 

In contrast, narcissists have the delusion that they self-manage exceptionally well, and that all of the people around them don't or can't. And narcissists tend to think that way even when their lives are full of broken relationships, broken commitments, broken promises, feeling like no one and nothing is good enough for them, unremitted raging, the kind of aggressions that most people would regret. Their lives are often also filled with regretful affairs, firings, lies, pretending, shallow narcissistic pastimes like gambling, getting drunk, endless trash-talking about other people, going on endless trips to get away from something or someone, going to prostitutes daily or weekly, and taunting, goading and bullying others. They would never see their lives as a mess, and if there are some messes in their lives, they attribute those messes to others, always.

If they rape a woman, it's always deemed to be the woman's fault, or they will deny having raped her in the first place. - those kinds of messes. 

And, of course, if they can't convince the woman that she needs to say "I brought this upon myself" (which they actually entertain because they believe that they are *that special and charismatic* or teflon-like), or press her to say that it "never happened", she is deemed to be "all bad, all nasty, the most 'ugly horseface I've ever met', would never want to rape her let alone look at her, unbelievably stupid and will face consequences for having accused me of such aggressive, criminal acts." - i.e. the immature, never-accountable, side of them comes out. 

Borderlines are less able to go to these kinds of extremes in splitting, accusing victims, or even trying to make their victims the guilty party. In other words, if they don't have morals, or empathy, or if they spend lots of time blaming victims for everything, they are not Borderlines. They are probably Narcissists, or Sociopaths or Psychopaths. It's a good distinction to make (and yes, some Narcissists can be mis-diagnosed as Borderlines, and vice versa). 

FURTHER READING
AND VIDEOS

Why Narcissists Can Forget Their Own Bad Behavior Using "splitting" to expel bad behavior from their memory. - by Erin Leonard Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Splitting (psychology) - from Wikipedia

Narcissistic Behaviour Post-Separation: Understanding Splitting in Psychoanalytic Theory - by Sarah Squires for Get Court Ready, Improving Outcomes for Children in Family Court

Splitting - from the administrators of Mindset Therapy 

Narcissists and Splitting - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula (clinical psychologist), You Tube video
Note: interesting comments on this video too

When A Narcissist Shifts From Promising To Devastating - by Dr. Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)

A Narcissist's Outside Angel, Inside Devil - by Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)
Note: interesting comments on this video too. 

Splitting and Narcissism - Google AI from a number of articles written on the subject

splitting and a narcissistic discard - Google AI from a number of articles written on the subject

When narcissists "devalue" and "discard" (Glossary of Narcissistic Relationships) - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula (clinical psychologist), You Tube video

Splitting in the narcissist relationship | Idealization and devaluation with the narcissist - by Mindset Therapy, PLLC (You Tube)

"SPLITTING" IN BORDERLINE AND NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER : WHAT IT DOES TO US IN CHILDHOOD - by Dr. Kim Sage, Licensed Psychologist (You Tube)

Another reason making up with narcissists doesn't work: An Angry Narcissist's Non-Negotiable Stonewalling - by psychologist, Les Carter, for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)

FOUND ON FACEBOOK

From "I Am a Queen" (poster from the Phillipines on Facebook)
I included it because there may be some truth to it?
 
Do narcissists plan to destroy their relationship from the beginning ?

The truth is that the narcissist never wanted a future with you. From day one, they saw you as something that was temporary. You were disposable.

When a person is in a relationship and they're thinking about their future with that person. They're going to take the necessary steps to ensure that everything turns out ok. It's like preparing for a storm. They're going to do everything they can to prevent destruction. To prevent anything from going wrong. But the narcissist never took any steps to protect your future with them. And although you could argue that there are storms in every relationship.

They never took any steps to make things right. When you look back at your relationship, you will see that the narcissist is the storm. They caused destruction in your life. They broke you down. They turned you into nothing but a shell of what you used to be. They destroyed you mentally and emotionally. They destroyed you financially. If they were considering a future with you, they would never have done any of that.

If they have a purpose for you in the future, they're going to treat you with dignity and respect. They're going to protect you from danger or harm. They're not going to abuse you. But that's exactly what these narcissists do. They abuse you to the point where there's no going back.

Where you're not going to serve any purpose for them in the future. Because those are their true intentions. They want to break you down. So that you're not going to be good for anyone after they're gone. They know that the relationship is going to end. They know that at some point you're going to leave them and move on to something else. Every narcissist knows this. They know that they're not meant to be loved. They know that you would not willingly desire to remain around them.

Should We Have Kings, Queens and Dictators Ruling the World Again? Plus a Look at the Headlines (for my series, The Narcissistic Nation)

While presidents come and go in America, and at most can only serve eight years according to The Constitution, what The Supreme Court ruled in July of this year was that presidents have absolute immunity to commit (what might be construed before the ruling was made) as criminal acts, as long as they are "official acts" (something that The Supreme Court never defined, and perhaps will make up as they go), as well as immunity to be investigated should there be inquiries into a president over the possibility of criminal acts. 

What a recipe for potential dictatorship whether sooner or later, yes? 

What the Supreme Court leaves open for the Senate and House of Representatives is that a president can be impeached by a simple majority in the House of Representatives, and a two thirds majority in the Senate, but otherwise gives itself power to decide what presidential acts fall under an official act versus an unofficial one. 

It is also an unprecedented ruling.

Impeachments are pretty difficult to enact, so it changes which bodies of government have more power, and it would seem that the Supreme Court has given itself more power in their ruling than the Senate and the House of Representatives now currently hold. The Supreme Court can also hold impeachments up as they deliberate whether the president is engaging in official acts (or not), especially if there is a national crisis where impeachment needs to be swiftly executed. In the meantime, the president may be committing crimes right and left, to the point where a bigger crisis looms. 

According to Jamie Raskin, a Constitutional scholar, professor and Constitutional lawyer, the new ruling was "made out of whole cloth" - his words - and not something that the founders of The Constitution would have wanted as it was a document written to keep the country from being ruled by kings, queens and dictators. More here.  

And according to Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor for 30 years, the ruling is "a path to dictatorship" - his words. More here.

Under the new Supreme Court ruling, President Richard Nixon would have gotten away with his crimes (ordering the break-in into the Democratic National Committee's main office to obtain information so that it would put him at an advantage to win the presidency). Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.

So it is something to be concerned about if you like your freedom, including the freedom to make decisions and choices about your own life, and to have some say over what government officials do and say on your behalf. If you like voting instead of being ruled, and you like talking about what you want to talk about as long as it isn't abusive, and you like reading a press that is not just propaganda, you may want to consider what being ruled by a king, queen or dictator will mean for your life and the generations that follow. 

Now for the definition of what a dictatorship is, I turned to Wikipedia for some excerpts: 

A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, and they are facilitated through an inner circle of elites that includes advisers, generals, and other high-ranking officials. The dictator maintains control by influencing and appeasing the inner circle and repressing any opposition, which may include rival political parties, armed resistance, or disloyal members of the dictator's inner circle. ... 

... Stability in a dictatorship is maintained through coercion and political repression, which involves the restriction of access to information, the tracking of the political opposition, and acts of violence. Dictatorships that fail to repress the opposition are susceptible to collapse through a coup or a revolution. ... 

... The opposition to a dictatorship represents all of the factions that are not part of the dictatorship and anyone that does not support the regime. Organized opposition is a threat to the stability of a dictatorship, as it seeks to undermine public support for the dictator and calls for regime change. A dictator may address the opposition by repressing it through force, modifying laws to restrict its power, or appeasing it with limited benefits.[10] The opposition can be an external group, or it can also include current and former members of the dictator's inner circle.[11]

Totalitarianism is a variation of dictatorship characterized by the presence of a single political party and more specifically, by a powerful leader who imposes personal and political prominence. Power is enforced through a steadfast collaboration between the government and a highly developed ideology. A totalitarian government has "total control of mass communications and social and economic organizations".[12] Political philosopher Hannah Arendt describes totalitarianism as a new and extreme form of dictatorship composed of "atomized, isolated individuals" in which ideology plays a leading role in defining how the entire society should be organized. ... 

The one thing about kings, queens and dictators that you can count on is that they get to run the country any way they want, whether you like it or not, and even when the high majority of the population doesn't want it. No one has a say in how it is run. Even if you like how the country is run, the primary dictator can die and another dictator you don't like can take over.

Most of them will send out an army or their secret police if you have any objections, voice objections, become part of a revolt, become part of a group who does not approve of what the government is doing.

Most protests are put down. Most dissenters and complainers are silenced by the government. Free speech is not allowed.

The message is: you aren't supposed to protest or have thoughts of opposition; you are supposed to be supplicating or sublimating, and being dictated to by the dictator.

Many people look at dictators as gods so they won't think of protesting. But those who don't and have concerns about what is happening, it's swept out as not being worthy of consideration. Every governmental action for and against the people is ordained as necessary by the dictator god. Your job is to worship the dictator to get better treatment, or so you might think.

Despotic dictators will do anything they want to do to you, including torture, and tell you how to live, and what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, and if you don't like it, they can put you in prison for making a fuss. And most of them won't care how it effects you or your family. 

They will let you know that they are the ultimate authority at every turn. They will raise taxes to support programs or a war you may disapprove of. They will make deals with other dictators whether you like the deals or not.

They will raise armies and draft individuals whether you think it's a war worth fighting or not. They will risk the lives of many sons whether you like it or not.

They can lie to you or tell you the truth, and you won't know the difference; it is up to what you believe, or to hold them in regard even if they are slipping up.

I don't usually write about these kinds of issues. Being ruled by a dictator, I would imagine, is not a way that you really feel part of national decision making. You may have or not have a voice at all. Maybe the rules are so stringent about what you can talk about that you dare not talk, especially about any government matters. You pay taxes, send your sons off to war, get information that may or may not be the truth, and that is about it. I would also imagine that you might purposely try to blot out of your mind the ambitions and policies your government makes (seemingly on your behalf), and that you squash any attitude you might be feeling about what the dictator decides for your country for the sake of your own survival.

The Constitution of The United States of America has been the opposite of all of this (until very recently): it was very anti-authoritarian, very much about compromise, and individual rights, including the right to protest and point out things the population didn't like. Free speech was considered a right and a freedom.

Sometimes politicians and judges distort the meaning of The Constitution, like religious sects distort the meanings in the Bible and Koran, but what it says is pretty clear, and we have mostly shown that we can follow The Constitution. It's text is also obviously a blueprint in how to avoid authoritarians and would-be kings who would take the decisions away from citizens and put it solely into their own hands. Again, these dictators, kings or queens may, or may not, care about the citizens of the country, and they may not be endowed with any empathy at all.

Who cares and doesn't care about citizens' concerns is always up for debate, and that is what elections are largely about.

The Supreme Court, for instance, also recently ruled that any politician can take money from anyone as a bribe. The president can promise large corporations tax breaks, unlimited access to lands, subsidies and other benefits in order to make money for themselves or their campaign. Is that good for you and your community, or is it bad for you and your community? Would you ask your elected officials to make a new law banning bribes, or do you not care, or do you like that idea so that you can bribe politicians to do what you want too? You have the right to voice an opinion on this at the time of this writing, and even gather people to protest any of these decisions - but this may not last by next year.

You won't have that ability if you are ruled by a dictator or a king. You probably won't even know about the bribes and deals being made.

However, as I've said, my blog is not focused on whether dictators, kings and queens are good for our country, or any country, per se. It would seem to me that most citizens would rather live in a democracy, and live in a country where politicians are beholden to all people of a nation, and not just keeping promises (bribes) with corporations and individuals with enormous amounts of money. 

However that choice is not up to me. It's up to a voting public, and what they want, and the senators and house representatives that are serving their state and counties.

This part of my blog is focused on issues having to do with the Cluster B personality disorders and how they relate to abuse, bullying, domination, power and control.

And occasionally that spills over into discussing politics and world events. For instance this post was devoted to discussing Putin's possible malignant narcissism (now often referred to as Dark Triad), and a little on why malignant narcissists start wars, how it might effect the war in Ukraine, and more to the point, how to avoid voting for malignant narcissists if you want to have peace in the world, and have a little tiny say in how the government is run. And it is tiny, but there may be a lot more voices that echo your own concerns, so not all issues are hopeless.

The population too, is a lot more powerful than any government or any dictator. It's largely why more revolutions are successful than not, especially if a population is being driven into poverty, famine, losing their standard of living, or losing family members to an endless war.

There are only so many rebellious citizens that a dictator can plow down and kill. If more arise, they can be killed too. But revolutions that reach a popular majority will be too hard to fight off. In those cases, soldiers themselves tend to be divided (many do not want to kill their own citizens for a bad policy of their dictator). The dictator, at that point, will be swamped by the population just like allies swamped Germans in Normandy. There were a lot of dead men on that beach, and in some parts of the beach more dead men than live ones, but they eventually swamped the Germans and removed them from the beach and drove them out of Normandy. Germany began to shrink back to its original size before the invasion.

That war was caused by a dictator. And if you read history, a lot of dictators like to start wars. The population goes along with it (for a time, while they are doing well).

But what can happen is that a government and its leaders are toppled and killed off, and there is chaos for awhile until a new form of government is in charge. And guess what kinds of governments citizens like after years of hardship and wars?

Democracies, on the whole.

I will say that I would be happy to be in a world that was peaceful all of the time, without wars, and where basic human needs were met across the planet (food, shelter and clothing). I remember reading about Native Americans and how they were horrified by how white settlers treated other white settlers, and to some degree, how whites treated their own children.

They saw white settlers practicing child abuse. Apparently Native Americans who saw their children as their own future, a future that they needed to take care of if their tribes were to keep existing, and their old people were to be taken care of and revered for their wisdom and experiences, meant that they had to treat the future well, with dignity and respect. Mostly they were horrified at seeing white people letting other white people starve, letting them be homeless, letting them lie in squalor and their own vomit if they were addicted, feeling arrogant and haughty when they left people in dire straights, and so on.

Apparently the lack of empathy was on display pretty early on, and that lack of empathy would carry white settlers to commit a genocide and land grab against the Native American people, or round them up in barely survivable concentration camps called reservations where they would be dependent on the white man. The white man would bring the buffalo (another link) and chestnut tree to very near extinction, making them more dependent. Both were a vital food source and shelter source for them. The Native Americans had good reason to be extremely concerned.

Lack of empathy is a very well known narcissistic and sociopathic trait, and it tends to manifest as early as childhood largely from growing up in home, school and neighborhood environments which are neglectful, violent, bullying or abusive. It doesn't mean that they are the target of abuse. Looking at bullying situations with thoughts like "bullying works" can be all that it takes to lead them down the path of being bullying for life.

In other words, it doesn't set up people to put their best motivations toward their fellow human beings from the very beginning. That lack of empathy becomes a brain matter too (another link and a link to an article I wrote that discusses the subject), something that they, and the people who relate to them, will have to deal with for the entire life of that narcissist or sociopath usually (a tiny minority of them can be rehabilitated, and it takes hitting rock bottom in every aspect of their lives, something that narcissists try to prevent at all costs with on-going prevention tactics including trying to get away with as much as they can without getting caught, blaming others for deeds they have done, lying, and relying on charm to get them through situations where they might be held accountable).

Many psychologists speak online about why narcissists, and especially malignant narcissists, should not be in positions of power. So why would they say that? 

THE REASON WHY CHARACTER MATTERS

So, let's take Putin as our example of character. He allegedly grew up in a bullying environment. He allegedly was the golden child of his parents. So assuming he had that going on in his early environment (and there is evidence that he did), and assuming he worked as a sort of enforcer, bully and spy for the K.G.B., personality would tend to dictate his motives more than his words, his charm, his persuasions, even his political record, his past record on economics, his past record on appreciation for Russian history, its arts, architecture and other cultural advances and contributions.

His main background is primarily about spying, maneuvering, manipulating and bullying, yes? Perhaps this has everything to do with why Dr. Grande made the speculation or guess that he was a Dark Triad, where Machiavellian characteristics are part of the Dark Triad. 

Putin's country was once bullied too (Russians were bullied and some of their major cities were destroyed by Nazis). We know that bullies grow up in environments that are bullying, where a lot of submission is going on where bullies try to make people be submissive to them, and where it looks like, to a child, that you have no choice other than to be submissive, or to be a bully. 

We don't know how his love life went other than that he is divorced. We don't know if he bullied his wife, but we do know that narcissists, which he very well may be, who grow up in environments where submission or bullying is the only choice you have, marriages tend not to work out because of the "be a bully or be a submissive doormat mindset" doesn't work in a marriage or in a family.

In other words, it doesn't matter if he produced economic greatness for the Russian people; it doesn't matter if that is the first thing on his resume or on his mind; it doesn't matter how much "business acumen he has" because eventually the country's main economic focus is now (or will be) the invasion of Ukraine, a disaster for many of its regular businesses and manufacturing plants. 

It doesn't matter if he is outwardly charming, and appears to say the right things at the right time.

What matters is whether he is a bully or not. 

It doesn't matter how much expertise he has on his resume. What matters most is his character because character determines how he treats other people, including how he conducts himself in his personal life, with his rivals, with his friends, with his business associates, with people he likes and more importantly doesn't like, his prejudices and what and how he conducts himself with those prejudices, and with people he is prejudiced against, and how he conducts himself as a leader. 

When some people get leadership positions, they become insufferably arrogant, and hopefully I can explain some of why, in this post and in its own eventual post. Arrogance leads to being blind to other people other than yourself and what you want. One sign of arrogance that we all know about is sticking your nose in the air when you talk to other people. Unless there is something medical going on with the throat or neck of the person, or there is something distracting going on in the background, looking over someone's head is a sign of arrogance and/or they really don't want to hear what you have to say, and don't care either. 

Note: singers sometimes put their nose in the air too, but the reason they do is so that they can reach the higher notes. 

The opposite, a desire for intimately wanting to know and understand your perspectives means looking directly into your eyes. Narcissists on the lighter end of the scale can sometimes do it temporarily. The acting stops temporarily. The judgements stop temporarily. The sighs and flippancy stop temporarily. The lecturing and posturing stop temporarily. Pulling their chin in stops temporarily, and they may even pull their head towards you and off a little to one side to hear what you have to say (however danger: psychopaths and narcissists with psychopathic traits will pull their head straight towards you in an intimidating way, like a staring contest, so be sure they aren't doing that).    

If you've grown up with abusive, arrogant, manipulative parents, it's likely you won't meet them eye to eye either, but I doubt very much you'll be going around with your nose in the air either. I would bet you have a posture that is self protective: arms held in, head down, legs pulled up a little if you are sitting down and your eyes moving side to side as exhaustion sets in (narcissists try to break your boundaries, your self esteem and resolve by lecturing at you constantly). So don't feel guilty that you don't always meet people's eyes; it doesn't mean you are a narcissist. What I'm describing here is doing it with most people and in most situations. 

THE REALITY OF KINGS, QUEENS AND DICTATORS IN POWER

People who want to be king, queen or dictator, usually have pronounced egos (the audacity of wanting to rule everything, right? The audacity of them wanting to push their agenda forward without any roadblocks, right? The audacity of insisting they don't want to be accountable or liable for anything, right?). 

And we can't count on good character from these kinds of leaders. They are in power for life, right?

Many kings and queens were and are tyrants. It's really the only way to hold on to life-long power.

There is also evidence that the more power they gain, and the longer they stay in power, that it literally goes to their head, such that they no longer think clearly about all of the issues facing them, the perspectives of others, and they become more entitled, expecting people to serve them in any way they want. And there is evidence that they tend to feel more and more entitled to be rude, insulting and even dangerous to people who do not do exactly what they want. 

They can tend to lose more power, and lose the ability to respond in critical typical leadership ways, as entitlement starts to take over their thinking process and wishes.

They also tend to lose empathy and get tired of people who are calling for an empathetic response. In other words, they become grumpy and do not want to deal with on-going crises, which unfortunately for them, is what leadership requires. That's another reason they can lose it, and why revolutions can start under their watch. 

It's very possible that the Constitution of the United States of America was written with this in mind. We have presidents who can only serve for eight years. Why only eight years? Possibly that is when the entitlements, the inability to feel empathetically, the inability to see issues clearly without resorting to unrealistic positive thinking ("Everything is great under my leadership!"), and the obsessions to keep entitlements, including wanting to be in power forever, at all costs, start to set in the brain. 

It keeps presidents who want more and more power from applying, and also holds them accountable for power grabs via insurrections, and makes the job more about serving the citizens in the short time they are allotted ... until recently when the Supreme Court tried to make it possible for presidents to commit crimes in office, especially crimes associated with power. 

The inclination to think of power first, and serving the people as you deem necessary to keep yourself in power, is more of a narcissistic trait, obviously, than an empathetic trait. It requires changing your moral and ethical resolves to stay in office and in power, or on the side of candidates who are authoritarian, aggressive, vengeful and who, through strong emotions, particularly rages, decide impulsively on whether or not to head to war - based on the rages.

None of us are prepared for our country to vote for a despotic tyrant. We aren't prepared for our country's leader to lash out irrationally and impulsively against us. We aren't prepared for our country's leader to go against their own citizens or to manipulate voting, or to start invasions and wars to obtain more land, or to go fascist and authoritarian in absolute ways.

There is also evidence that many of us aren't prepared for huge revolutions in our own country either.

And we are especially not prepared to feel threatened constantly by our own government. 

People who grow up in authoritarian dictatorships are used to this, but a population in a democracy is not. 

There is usually "a suspension of disbelief" in voting for a dictator, or authoritarian, where not enough research is put into a vote. 

Meanwhile despotic tyrants think that submission to being controlled equates to a population adoring them and their leadership, and that they have die-hard loyalists who will always come to their defense. Those thoughts are common and cause them to be blind to the issues swirling around them, or to underground revolutions gaining momentum. 

It's a little like a blind leader leading a blind populace.  

HOW TO AVOID KINGS, QUEENS AND DICTATORS
AND THE VIOLENT OUTCOMES THEY TYPICALLY HAVE DURING THEIR REIGN
(ISSUES TO CONSIDER) 

If you are from a democratic country and you want to avoid a leader who will more likely try to grab as much power and take away the freedoms of their own citizens, as much as the people will tolerate anyway (and they will tolerate more and more if fear takes over their psyches unless they plan to make a run for it). 

You will, most likely, see wars too. If you want to make sure the dictator-to-be never gets the country into invasion types of wars, or just unprovoked wars in general, these are the early signs to watch out for:

* Most important: Hypocrisy: 
     Any leader who wants stringent rules, regulations, strict laws and strict obedience on a population, but who shows signs that he believes these same rules, regulations and laws do not apply to himself or herself, is obviously showing hypocrisy. 
     They don't care if they are hypocritical as long as they sense that a population is paying much more attention to what the dictator says than what they do.  
     The leader will lobby for a loosening of laws when it comes to killing their enemies, starting coups,  invading countries and insisting that they remain in power longer than what the terms of their democracy require, assuming they haven't taken complete control yet. They don't care about the approval of any other government officials except those officials who they have personally elected, or surrounded themselves with, or that they have personally hand-picked to carry out their orders, especially malignant narcissists. In other words, taking away personal power and personal decision-making from the population, while gaining more power for themselves, including never being accountable for their actions, will be, if it isn't already, quite obvious. 
     They will cry, "Not fair!" if they are held to the same legal and lawful standards as the rest of the population, while at the same time they will be taking away freedoms from the population. 
     In general: look for any hypocrisies. The hypocrisies will always reveal entitlement, and those entitlements are necessary to look at in terms of how far a leader will go to obtain power and unaccountability for their actions. 
     For instance:
     - Not to be redundant, but do they reveal that they have a right to behave any way they want, but that others do not?
     - Do they bristle in political discussions when verbally attacked by a political opponent, but spend inordinate amounts of time verbally attacking their opponents? 
     - Do they run negative campaigns but expect other political opponents to stick to policy discussions?
     - Do they seem to feel entitled to start a war even when the population doesn't want it, or never thought it was necessary?
     - Do they expect others to follow orders, but feel exempt from following orders from others?
     - Do they expect to be treated with politeness, dignity and respect, but rarely treat others with politeness, dignity and respect unless they are getting something from them?
     - How much power do they want for themselves, and how much power do they want to take away from citizens?
     - How are tax breaks distributed? Does it almost always go to the people who financed their campaign? To wealthy friends? To people who have some sway in terms of getting their pet policies enacted? And how many tax breaks do they give to the middle class and poor in contrast? - This shows how they regard the rich and poor. It also shows how transactional they require relationships to be (a lot of transactional relationships as opposed to "love of people", or "helping people" is also a sign of narcissism too). 
     - Do they always expect others to cave into them and what they want just about always?
     - Are they compromise-resistant?
     - Are they discussion-resistant, and almost never listen to other perspectives?
     - Do they think in terms of conspiracy theories about others ("They want to take power and money away from me!" but are always trying to take money and power away from others?)
     - Do they always act as though the ends justify the means when it comes to what they want, but call people selfish who just want a little politeness and respect?
     - How much criminality is in their background?
     - How much suffering, unethical behaviors and breaking of laws do they feel comfortable committing to get what they want?
     - How do they treat women, children, the disabled, the downtrodden, the impoverished, wait-staff, bell boys, and pets? Do they show empathy, or a lack of regard for them? Do they laugh at them, show disgust, or show empathy? Do they visit parts of their country which show a lot of poverty or where disasters have taken place to meet people, and hear their needs, and make some promises to resolve their suffering? If it isn't good, that is how they will treat others who have less power than they do, always. In this case, past behavior is a definite sign of future behavior. 
     - Are they slave oriented at all? Do they justify slavery? Do they have a record of not paying people what they are owed ... and in addition, do they not pay a lot of people and say: "the work wasn't good enough!"
     - Do they expect a population to pay their taxes while being "tax cheats" themselves?
     - Do they talk of, or spend a lot of time setting up detention centers and concentration camps? And do they seem like they would rail and fuss themselves if they were in that position themselves?
     - Are they willing to lie to get what they want, but rail and fuss if someone lies to them?
     - Do the needs of the country seem to come second place to their own needs? And if someone else puts the country's needs first, do they insult them?
     - How do they treat the military? Are they polite, or demeaning or demoralizing? Are they willing to waste a lot of lives in order to achieve some sort conquest objective? Do they expect actions from soldiers that they would never expect from themselves? Are they a draft dodger? 
     - Does the "flattery part" of them seem drastically different from "the tough guy" part of them? In other words, do they seem like two different people, one nice, and the other cruel? Jekyll/Hyde personality traits are a sign of narcissism.
     - Do they say they want "absolute power", but would attack any other leader who said that from his own country? 
     - Do they act like a king or queen, that if they rage enough, people will come running to solve their problems? 
     - Do they seem to hate democracy, but wouldn't want to be in an authoritarian-led government themselves? 
     - Do they seem obsessed with getting people out of their way, or locked up, who are putting up roadblocks to their achieving absolute power, but would hate it if the situation was reversed? 
     - Do they expect all government officials, first and foremost, to be sycophants, to take orders from them, whereas if they were in that position, they'd most likely be rebelling against government officials doing that to them?
     - Do they seem to show some disdain for democracy and the rule of law in democracies, but would hate their own freedoms being taken away if the situation was reversed?
     - Do they show any personality traits like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Napoleon, Putin, Saddam Hussein, or other invasive dictators? If so, expect their leadership to go much the same way. 
     The result of all of this?
     Heavily narcissistic dictatorial leaders elicit strong responses from other people. People either seem to love them, pledge their utmost loyalty to them, excuse them constantly for their sins, and to see them as saviors ... or they see them as power hungry liars, and see hypocrisy in everything they do, have contempt for them, their tactics, and their proclamations are perceived as always fake. In some cases, they can't even bring themselves to consider anything in seriousness that they have to say.
     If 30 percent of a population is unwaveringly loyal to them, another 30 percent is likely to express disloyalty, contempt and disgust. They tend to be polarizing figures for this reason, thus the prospect of revolutions is a real threat to peace in a nation, and peace in and around the world. Other leaders cannot count on them or trust them to be consistent and emotionally stable, i.e. thoughtful instead of raging (unless they too pledge loyalty and unwavering support). 
     For all of their bravado, dictatorial leaders are more likely to lose wars, and lose respect than win them for the main reason that they conduct their wars in a much more brutal fashion, without allowing their military to retreat, without allowing their generals to run the war.

Most people do not like being bombed, killed, taken from, and trauma bonded to another nation. Their identities are usually wrapped up in the nation where they were born and the life they have within that nation, otherwise they would leave and live in the invading nation. 

Second most important: Hate speech.
     Hate speech is done to get a populace attacking someone other than the leader for the misery in their lives (whether that be economic policies, disasters, poverty, famine, or disenfranchising). For the despotic tyrant who is not exactly serving his population, but using them for his own power and control agendas, hate speech of other groups of people become a necessary part of their rule, or so they think.
     Often intellectuals are particularly hated in dictatorships unless they can provide services to a dictator.
     If the intellectuals are particularly broad-minded, which many intellectuals tend to be, these intellectuals tend to flee countries that take away freedoms. If they don't get out in time, they are often killed. Dictators have to kill "other perspectives" and that, and the individuals who verbalize other perspectives, are killed first.
     Here are some questions about hate speech (note, it is also important to pay attention to how other politicians are responding to it too):
     - Do they spend a lot more time insulting other politicians rather than talking about remedies and policies? And if they do talk about policies, is it about disenfranchising?
     - Do they appear to be more bigoted, than not? Are there racist slurs in their speech? 
     - Do they appear to be more xenophobic, than not?
     - Do they appear to be more sexist, than not?
     - Do they appear to be intolerant of a lot of people, or groups of people?
     - Do they merely put on an act of morality or religiosity, but everything in their past shows that they are really not moral or practice the tenets of the religion they are trying to appeal to, to get votes.  
     - Are they insulting others a lot? Do they insult groups of people?
     - Do they often resort to calling people names? 
     - Do they twist the names of others, or attach denigrating prefixes to their names to demoralize them?  
     - Do they appear to want to nullify or kill people from another political party or faction?
     - Do they appear to want to kill a part of a population who is becoming more resistant to their rule? 
     - Do they feel they have a right to behave any way they want to any group of people they want, but that others do not have those same rights unless they have the same opinions that the leader does about those same group of people?
     - Do other politicians who want to get power or to be associated with them appear to be afraid to say certain things? Do they skirt around certain issues, appear not to want to upset them in any way? - this shows that this kind of a leader can turn on these politicians at any moment, to hate them, to take away any power they might have, to shun or excommunicate them. Narcissists require absolute loyalty.
     If other politicians are giving them more and more unlimited amounts of power, it shows that they are afraid of being hated, and of the hate speech landing on them. They become more and more like brainwashed sycophants as time goes on, especially as this kind of leader gains more and more power. Eventually a whole government can become corrupted over not wanting to lose their positions and jobs, even if it might mean pleasing a leader they are more afraid of than admiring of.
   And a warning here: politicians who seem to have no backbone, who are willing to give up their ethics and morals to serve a dictator or would-be dictator tend to be narcissists. Narcissists are sickeningly fawning to anyone who they think has more power than they do. They will fawn away every moral and ethic they used to have (or more likely, pretended to have) in order that they will get into position to be the next dictator some day. And for the fawniest of fawners, that can come true for them. A dictator will reward the most loyal fawner.
     - And not be redundant again, are other politicians all of a sudden adopting all of this leader's perspectives when they had some perspectives that differed before? Do they appear to have given up all of their own perspectives, ethics, insights, personal qualities to be a sycophant? Do they look ashamed when the leader makes fun of anything different about their perspectives, or when they insult them, because it isn't what he wants? Does the leader engage in a lot of shaming to get them to comply with his vision at all times? 
     Do politicians either quit, or look depressed, or appear weak, when the rest of their political party is adopting all of the perspectives of the authoritarian dictator? 
     Shame is obviously a powerful weapon, and people who want to "hang on" to something like a career position related to power, often give into the shame first. The holdouts either cave in eventually, or quit altogether. 
     This is what narcissists, and especially malignant narcissists, strive for so that when they do something like attack another country because the other country is a democracy, or free, or has some quality they don't want or like on their border, war and violence start. 
     Violence can also happen from within as the populace becomes more poor and desperate. As many, many freedoms the populace used to have are taken away bit by bit, the more discontent they tend to be. While some people like extreme amounts of law and order, most people like freedoms more. Dictators, themselves, go about in the country and the world as if they cannot be bothered with following the law or being orderly themselves. If anything, they continually break laws and orderly conduct. They break the peace with compulsive unpredictable actions.  
     Hate speech and fear drive these kinds of politicians and eventually the citizenry to cave into being surveilled, losing their independent thinking, their lives, and their childrens' lives to violence, poverty and/or wars (either revolutions or wars with other nations, sometimes both at the same time). 
     Hate speech and shaming can also have a powerful effect on families: giving up their own children to fight and to be killed for narcissistic dictators in wars. Narcissistic dictators seem to need people to die in wars for them, for their so-called glory and terrible legacy that only another up-and-coming dictator would appreciate and want to emulate.  

Third most important: Arrogance and Entitlement. 
     Arrogance and entitlement for most narcissists translates to: "You must agree to, and have all of the perspectives that I have because I'm superior to you."
     And if this kind of leader/candidate is constantly insulting people who have different perspectives than they have, it shows that they have intolerance and contempt for people who think differently than they do. We also see this among cult leaders: you either believe everything the cult leader has to say, or "you are outside the cult" ... "You are either with us, or against us."  ... "You are either one of us, another superior being and entitled to special treatment as a result of this, or you are one of 'them', not worthy of considering or understanding at all." and so on. It's very insular. It's very close-minded. It's very black and white thinking. They expect the whole electorate to be blindly loyal to them, to follow all of their draconian laws, to be squelched of free speech, and to adopt a communal tradition of "think-alike" modes of perspectives.
     You'll notice that these nations do not have much going for them in terms of contributions to their people, or the world, because exploratory thought is harshly put down and reprimanded.
     These leaders don't want people around who think or believe anything differently from what they are told to believe and think. This is why they have very little tolerance for intellectuals, and anyone who shows openness to new experiences and perspectives. In many dictatorial nations, one of the first genocides is lobbed against intellectuals as Pol Pot did in Cambodia. Leaders find people who are intelligent, exploratory, and humble to be a direct threat to them and their attempts to brainwash. 
     We can see this in religions who practice forms of bigotry: "You are either in our religion, and religious sect, or you are against us" or at the milder end of the spectrum: "you simply don't exist for us". As we know, bigotry can lead to violence. 
     There is generally a lot of pressure to think and believe the way they want you to think and believe. A lot of us aren't great at discerning the motivations of others, but character is much more valid than anything else, and can wreak more havoc than people think. If you are from an abusive family, you know that they are model people to outsiders (as long as they can hold up a fake persona, something that both narcissists and sociopaths use, but that is even liable to show some cracks after awhile).
     As I've said many times before, character is the dominating feature for how things will pan out in the future, which is why I am writing this post, and if you talk to child abuse survivors, they've been living with sneak attacks, crazy-making, deeply flawed analysis of situations which sound more like projection than anything else, experiencing very unstable actions and reactions from their narcissistic parent, a lot of gaslighting, and a lot of abuse. Running countries with this set of traits is dangerous. 
     It is also not realistic for a leader of a whole nation to expect an entire population to think and feel the way a leader wants the populace to think and feel. We are not bees, thinking in the communal style that they do, nor are we born with roles. They are all a result of coercion, whether constant, or violent, or whether gentle and suggestive, starting in childhood. We are taught lessons about bullying and persuasion techniques too, and we are either going to use what we see, react with fear with what we see, or feel contempt and disgust for what we see, and a lot of us will reject it as intrusive, presumptive and unnecessary, and perhaps even feel that all of the differences among us are to be valued rather than held in check. 
     One of the problems with narcissistic leaders is that many of them feel they can read minds, which more often than not leads them to think they are better than others ("I can read minds and they can't"), but which more often than not leads them into developing conspiracy theories that countries, organizations, a population, or certain powerful individuals are out to conspire against them and take away their power, or the persuasive hold they have over a nation. Since power is "all important" to narcissistic leaders, they can act on the delusion that they can read conspiracies of other leaders of other countries (where pre-emptive invasions are likely, whether their own countrymen think it is necessary or not, and whether their own countrymen want the invasion to take place or not). 
     Arrogance keeps the narcissism in place (i.e. unchangeable, as well as entitlements to always get their own way). 
     Some signs of arrogance in leadership types of people:
     * "Only I can fix this problem." 
     * "Only I have the business acumen to solve this economic disaster."
     * "Only I can tell what is a national security problem for our nation."
     * "Only I know what is happening to this country and how to steer it."
     * "Only I know and understand who are our enemies and friends."
     * "I'm the smartest and most bold leader of the world. People are going to thank me for a long time for what I've done for this nation."
     * "Only I am the true patriot and know what is best for this country."
     * "Only I care about this country full time, all of the time, which makes me the best leader to run it." 

Fourth most important: Conspiracy Theories:
     A conspiracy theory is a belief or suspicion that a small or secret organization or person is responsible for a sinister circumstance or event where other probable explanations are not considered. 
     A conspiracy theory can also be considered a lie, where a little bit of truth is coupled with a bunch of lies to get people mobilized against a nation, a government, a certain part of the population, certain businesses (foreign and domestic), certain areas of a country where some opposition to the dictator (or wanna-be dictator) is happening, and usually minorities, or already disenfranchised groups of people.  
     Usually the following groups of people are vilified to keep a conspiracy theory alive that they are infiltrators to an otherwise peaceful and controllable nation. Some groups of people who are targeted:
     * People who speak a different language. 
     * Minorities and people who have different customs or orientations
     * People who are not in agreement with the leader
     * People who are opposed to the dictator's ambitions or ways of running a country
     * Protesters of government policies
     * People from an opposing party (often depicted as evil, gone astray, lawless, not real citizens, unethical, garbage, aberrant to normal human values, less than human, aberrant in terms of sanctifying and promoting life and family or a certain religion, selfish and self oriented, entitled, boorish and unpopular, awry, unruly, dishonest, plotting, "nasty" - a favorite phrase among narcissists, in the minority, unseemly, dangerous, shady, unworthy, disruptive, shameful, indecent, critical, ungrateful, people without merit, disruptive, protesters without grounds to protest, burdens on the country). Most dictatorships tend to adopt anti-intellectualism or anti free thinking, which in turn, can halt progress/modernism, and mean antiquated policies, machinery, infrastructure, national security, and regulation of people. 
     * The press, especially members of a free press where freedom of speech and deep investigative reporting are norms. Most dictators eventually run the press as an arm of the government, hoping to keep the population uninformed enough so that the dictator can run the country more to his liking and where he can control the financial strings and policies how he wants, without criticism
     * The poor and disabled (they are vilified for "taking" from the national coffers and as being a strain on the financial system)
     * The elderly (also accused of "taking" from the national coffers and as being a strain on the financial system)
     * The homeless (seen by dictators as people who find work to be an onerous blockade to unfettered freedom, and are a threat and an inconvenience to those who do work, especially those who work for the good of the country)
     * Addicts (often seen as criminals ... most dictatorships have very stringent drug laws where prison is the likely outcome for people who are using or addicted)
     * Women (often seen as weak, too empathetic, too sexually attractive, unless they are covered up or producing sons, or working in field the dictator approves of, but otherwise aberrant to contributing to society, or keeping working men focused on national objectives). Women in countries with dictatorships, on the whole, experience more domestic violence and lax domestic violence laws, and more prejudice and disenfranchisement than women from democracies, although long held traditions like long-held customs like matriarchal run-families can change that trajectory.  
     * People of a different race that the dictator wanna-be thinks can be singled out and scapegoated. 
     * People who might break laws are already seen as breaking the law
     * Visitors from other countries who are thought to be enemies, spies or are deemed to be rivals. 
     * People from inside the country who are deemed to rival the current leader - someone who may be gaining followers in an attempt to over-throw the dictatorship or get elected to replace the current system of government. These people are usually killed or they have to deal with a kangaroo court. 
     * Refugees (seen as an undeserved burden, and also introducing an aberration of customs and languages which are not common to the hosting country) 
     * People of neighboring countries where the style of government differs from their own (seen as harboring ideas and policies that are opposed to the dictator's style of government). Sometimes these countries are invaded if the style of government is seen as too divergent from their own, whereby that nation is made to adopt the dictator's style of government.
     One thing about narcissists is that they always have to have a scapegoat to keep the blame off of themselves, and to keep people from looking at the deeds of the dictator. The DARVO tactic, gaslighting, and accusing others of what they are doing themselves is the tell-tale sign.
     And what better way to do it than to drown out as many issues as possible with conspiracy theories about their chosen scapegoats, who tend to be minorities or disenfranchised somewhat by society already? And if you are part of the majority and narcissistic yourself, you look at all of this blaming of others as a whitling away of the competition, of giving you greater access to power yourself. 
     If you can disenfranchise women, or keep women out of higher paying jobs, you can disenfranchise half of the population. 
     If a dictator can galvanize enough people to go against any of his perceived enemies, then he can create more power for himself. 
     Ultimate power is about silencing most people except those who flatter and promote the leader, taking down protests, meddling in the press so much so that it becomes an arm of the government, meddling in a justice department or laws so much so that a tyrannical government or ruler can never be held accountable even for fake events or stories. Lack of empathy is rampant, especially for those who suffer under the ruler's laws. There are also scapegoating practices and policies. Law becomes arbitrary and dependent on how much of a scapegoat you are to the ruler or ruling class. Voting becomes obsolete, many jobs and professions become obsolete especially those with an intellectual bent to them except when it comes to the production of weapons, spying on the populace, or jobs that can drain other countries of resources or competition. People must accept their lot in life, or their role, to survive and to keep from being scapegoated (i.e. to be accepted and acceptable to the society under the dictator). 
     What to watch out for in terms of conspiracy theories:
     * There is usually a lot of criticism and insults directed towards an opposition leader or a certain segment of a population or nation. 
     * The dictator often portrays them as criminals, deviants, villains, less than human, a scourge on the nation. To get the most attention, a lot of opposing parties have to be portrayed as baby killers, or baby and child rapists - dictators have no trouble making up stories like this to create shock. Obviously this would get the ire up for most parents and grandparents, and that is the point. A secondary choice are pet killers and eaters, particularly of dogs, cats and certain kinds of caged birds. However, if the press investigates, they often find the facts not to be true, or there is a singular case where it was said to be a custom among a large group of people. However, some people will believe in the conspiracy theories of leaders (loyalists). 
     * Some facts may add up, but most don't. 
     * There seems to be an agenda in vilifying someone or a group of people. There isn't fair-mindedness or open perspectives. Attention is achieved by constantly criticizing a group of people, and seeing another person's perspective is usually completely denounced. Most dictators don't entertain other people's perspectives at all - the focus is always on an agenda of getting more power and control, and eventually invading other nations (as a way to fight off competition, or a bogus "national security measure", or simply to "take" - where entitlement comes in). There is a pretty fair chance of a dictator starting a war, or terrorizing their own citizens, or threatening other nations, of breaking treaties, because the focus is always on the negatives of other nations, other people, other leaders, other influential people (where terrorizing an intellectual class comes in - dictators are primarily anti-intellectual). 
     * As stated above, campaigns, laws and policies are largely focused on the negatives of other nations, groups of people, and particularly on vilifying. I have talked about "trash-talking" in many other posts about narcissism and narcissists; it's the same thing, only on a grander scale. 
     What conspiracy theories can sound like:
     * "These people are a pestilence upon our land. They carry every disease known to mankind." 
     * "These refugees are being kicked out of their country for good reasons. They can't follow laws. And when you can't follow laws, you have to sleep in a tent. That's your punishment for not being loyal to your government and to your leader. I don't care if they are suffering. They are going into other nations to take others' jobs, to get very little pay so that the countrymen will be a minority,. It's an invasion. I say "Stay in your tents and spread disease! We don't need to have the pandemic in our country! And if the rest of you don't follow me, you will all live in a tent too!"
     * "I will incite more fear and vengeance into people that aren't with us than ever before. You know that they eat rats, and then become like rats themselves."
     * "We have to remember that we're racially superior. We're smarter, more able, healthier. Since we have the strength and know-how, we can invade other nations and survive their resistance. Those of us who don't want to, and who aren't up to it, can sit in jail. Disloyalty will always have its consequences." 
     * "I'm not afraid of hate. I can look any person who resembles a tarantula in the eye and know I can take them down."
     * "You know that the people in that crazy other party eat babies and dogs, don't you? Anyone like that should be rejected and pay immediately, and we have the detention homes to make sure they pay."
     * "My only objective is to please you, to promise you that you'll be happier and richer than you were before!" and then while in office they renig on all of the promises (this is called future faking, very common for narcissists). 
     * "Baby haters will pay. We can't have a nation where babies aren't respected and aren't allowed to be born. Women who don't want babies are leeches, and a strain on the system and they should be summarily shunned." 
     * A tell-tale sign: groups of people are given animal names, or referred to as diseases or poisons.    
     
Things to remember:

* Many malignant narcissists who reach power spend most of their time seeking retribution, vengeance and trying to disable or kill people who oppose them. Poisonings, shootings, bombings, hangings, firing squads, torture chambers and torture instruments, "planned accidents", and long prison sentences become constant every day events. They can often get their followers to enact these murders, or disabilities. The whole point is to hurt others who are not followers, and who don't bend to the persuasive speech of the leader. 

* Many leaders with malignant narcissism spend untold amounts of money spying on people who may disagree with them, who may hate that they are in power, who may be thinking of ways to escape their country, who may be organizing a protest, who may be trying to get stories out to a media, who may be indulging in free speech when free speech is banned, who may be complaining in private about how the country is becoming more impoverished, where food and other goods are becoming more scarce. 
     Then there is a lot of time put into how to punish all of these kinds of people - who should be imprisoned, who should die by a firing squad, who should be banned and so on. This takes a lot of attention away from "how to run a country". Malignant narcissists are obsessed with loyalty and agreement with their thoughts on all matters, ambitions and policies. 

* Powerful dictatorships tend to become very militaristic (which means a country's wealth is put toward militaristic goals and weapons). 

* If the leader is younger, they also spend endless amounts of time in sexual conquests, affairs, orgies for some of them, and sexual escapades, and opulent private parties. The number of bed-hosts they want brought to their chambers becomes endless. They are generally not loyal to their marriage partners, seeing them only in terms of being  people who will do their bidding for them, who will put up with just about anything to get crumbs of affection and praise. 

* Narcissists are generally paranoid. If they feel there is a lot of opposition to their power and control agendas, they will be spending most of their time riling people up to attack their opponents, making plans to take the opposition down and making them pay a price for opposing. And because narcissists are so paranoid, they usually start wars with other nations they feel are a threat. 

* Once a country goes towards being an invader of other countries, the objectives of an invasion mean that empathy has to be sacrificed at all times to achieve invasion objectives. You can't care about a person and invade their country or their neighborhood, or their hospital, or their house at the same time.

* Sometimes a population becomes happier and richer under dictatorships, but generally not as much as democracies. There are several factors that contribute to it. There is a squelching of free thinking and intellectualism in most dictatorships because leaders find these people not to be blindly loyal enough, to be too free thinking, too intelligent to brainwash, and a threat to mind control. Dictators spend most of their time gaining more power, relieving their paranoias through aggression, threatening others, vilifying and spreading false gossip about leaders who even slightly oppose them, having affairs, gaining unlimited amounts of wealth, secretly planning revenges and maneuvers, secretly planning ways to lie to their followers, finding excuses and ways to start a war, trying to pass laws which are very restrictive on a population but which give them more and more unlimited powers and freedom to treat people any way they want, looking for loyalists who will do what they say, trying first to vilify the press and then get rid of the press altogether. The objectives are not to make the lives of the population better, but to "pacify" the population enough so that there won't be uprisings. 

* Often the only way to take dictatorships down is a rebellion. Most people won't take that chance out of fear of the consequences (and those consequences are often repeated continuously, and threats, arrests and long prison sentences are given to some people to send a message to the rest of the population).

* Remember that when narcissistic dictators are in charge and they are "ruining" your country, any kind of rebellion can mean a death sentence for you. 

* People who are in long term relationships with narcissists become traumatized and trauma bonded. If you are in a dictatorship and focused on all the ways you are stifled, taken for granted and limited, and how much poverty you are enduring, and receive some sort of erroneous governmental punishment to make you an example of what you "shouldn't think or say", you are going to have the same trauma reactions of either fawn, or flee, or fight, or freeze that domestic violence survivors have. All of these trauma responses have health and mental health consequences. And acting out any of these trauma responses also has consequences under a dictatorship, even fawning, as you will be tested over and over again to do what you are told under any and every circumstance, to break your ethics, and take the rap for the unethical things the dictator orders you to do.

* Would-be dictators who are malignant narcissists generally run campaigns that are full of negativity:
-- fear ("If you don't vote for me, you'll be sorry, and the country will go down")
-- lies, insults and smear campaigns against those people who they deem to be their competition or enemies, and against groups of people they deem to be too weak to fight back (i.e. scapegoats)
-- promoting and espousing a system that is rigged against them unless they, the would-be dictator, gets the power to fix it. 
-- playing on a population's economic fears
-- anger (lots of displays of anger and rage)
-- focusing attention on how wrong it is for others to criticize them, and how people will pay for criticizing them
-- bullying 
-- prejudice: xenophobia, racism, religious bigotry, sexism, misogyny, etc. 

* Malignant narcissists get narcissistic supply (get a hit of dopamine) by hurting other people, or groups of people. They also get narcissistic supply by being outrageous, breaking the norms or niceties of the overall culture, and seeing what they can get away with (to see if people will still flatter them and be loyal to them). If they feel they are taking power away from certain people, they can feel very satisfied, and even laugh when they see destruction of homes, and the torture and pain of others. 

However, all of this cannot happen in a vacuum. There has to be an incredible list of enablers, co-bullies, co-conspirators, the brainwashed, wealthy people or companies who think they can gain more wealth and power by associating with a dictator, people who are authoritarians themselves and want authoritarians in power, people who want a strong parental-type figure to solve their problems, people who feel so weak they are willing to put up with anything to have someone solve their problems, people who feel so impoverished and disenfranchised that they are willing to bypass disbelief to "try out a dictator", people who want others to have the same lifestyle and beliefs that they have and believe a dictator will bring that about, or people who see dictatorship as an extension of their religion and belief system. 

In this Psychology Today article entitled Why Do People Follow Tyrants? (History repeats itself because of human nature.) written by Jean Kim, M.D., and reviewed by Abigail Fagan, talks about the kinds of people who want dictators and who support would-be dictators. 

Very few people want or enjoy trauma bonding over the long run however, so there will always be forces to democratize or re-democratize.

Dictators love trauma bonding however, especially if they are the ones who hold power. They feel they are owed it (again, entitlement taking over everything they think about). As I've said before, they will most often become more emboldened to invade. It's just the way dictators work, how they think, and what they want for themselves, first and foremost, and the legacy they want to leave behind, as sick as that legacy might seem to those of us with more empathy in the brain, and who want a peaceful outcome for our country. 

Some people will try to live in a compartmentalized state where they will put up with it. Sometimes poverty, famine, losing sons to war, losing credibility in the world at large, feeling isolated, used, alone and victimized will create forces to over-throw a dictatorship, but it can be a long process, over generations, or the government is too powerful and has too many loyal soldiers and weapons at its disposal to take down a rebellion or protest that the country will always remain a dictatorship.

And that's the problem. Once a dictatorship is allowed to rule, it's very hard, if not impossible, to unwind it in your lifetime. 

My own belief is that trauma bonding slows evolution in terms of becoming a more peaceful, tolerant planet. It also stunts intelligence. We have a choice to give into destruction or build a utopia.

ArtII.S3.5.1 Presidential Immunity to Suits and Official Conduct - Constitution Annotated (U.S. government website_

Lofgren Statement on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Presidential Immunity Decision - for Lofgren (U.S. government website)

Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (Amazon books) - by Heather Cox Richardson
This is in the comments section of the Amazon page:
     The author, Richardson, writes: “Democracies die more often through the ballot box than at gunpoint. But why would voters give away their power to autocrats who inevitably destroy their livelihoods and sometimes execute their neighbors?... The key to the rise of authoritarians, they explained, is their use of language and false history.[ 3] Authoritarians rise when economic, social, political, or religious change makes members of a formerly powerful group feel as if they have been left behind. Their frustration makes them vulnerable to leaders who promise to make them dominant again. A strongman downplays the real conditions that have created their problems and tells them that the only reason they have been dispossessed is that enemies have cheated them of power… Once people internalize their leader’s propaganda, it doesn’t matter when pieces of it are proven to be lies, because it has become central to their identity. As a strongman becomes more and more destructive, followers’ loyalty only increases. Having begun to treat their perceived enemies badly, they need to believe their victims deserve it. Turning against the leader who inspired such behavior would mean admitting they had been wrong and that they, not their enemies, are evil. This, they cannot do.”

The Supreme Court Has Grown Too Powerful. Congress Must Intervene. - by Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan for The New York Times (Mr. Bowie and Ms. Renan are professors at Harvard Law School. They are the authors of the forthcoming book “Supremacy: How Rule by the Court Replaced Government by the People.”) 

The Supreme Court Gives the President the Power of a King (The immunity decision has enormous implications for Trump’s trial — and the future of the presidency.) - by Michael Waldman for The Brennan Center

If You Care About the Supreme Court, Care About the Senate - by Jesse Wegman for The New York Times

Jamie Raskin: How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Case - by Jamie Raskin for The New York Times
excerpt:
     ... The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland can invoke two powerful textual authorities for this motion: the Constitution of the United States, specifically the due process clause, and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality, 28 U.S.C. Section 455. The Constitution has come into play in several recent Supreme Court decisions striking down rulings by stubborn judges in lower courts whose political impartiality has been reasonably questioned but who threw caution to the wind to hear a case anyway. This statute requires potentially biased judges throughout the federal system to recuse themselves at the start of the process to avoid judicial unfairness and embarrassing controversies and reversals. ... 

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Trump’s Immunity Claim, Setting Arguments for April (The former president’s trial on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election will remain on hold while the justices consider the matter.) - by Adam Liptak for The New York Times
excerpt:
     The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to decide whether former President Donald J. Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, further delaying his criminal trial as it considers the matter.
     The justices scheduled arguments for the week of April 22 and said proceedings in the trial court would remain frozen, handing at least an interim victory to Mr. Trump. His litigation strategy in all of the criminal prosecutions against him has consisted, in large part, of trying to slow things down.
     The Supreme Court’s response to Mr. Trump put the justices in the unusual position of deciding another aspect of the former president’s fate: whether and how quickly Mr. Trump could go to trial. That, in turn, could affect his election prospects and, should he be re-elected, his ability to scuttle the prosecution.
     The timing of the argument was a sort of compromise. Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump, had asked the court to move more quickly, requesting that the justices hear the case in March.

Justice Breyer, Off the Bench, Sounds an Alarm Over the Supreme Court’s Direction (In an interview in his chambers and in a new book, the justice, who retired in 2022, discussed Dobbs, originalism and the decline of trust in the court.) - by Adam Liptak for The New York Times
excerpt:
     ... “Recently,” he wrote, “major cases have come before the court while several new justices have spent only two or three years at the court. Major changes take time, and there are many years left for the newly appointed justices to decide whether they want to build the law using only textualism and originalism.”
     He added that “they may well be concerned about the decline in trust in the court — as shown by public opinion polls.”
     Textualism is a way of interpreting statutes that focuses on their words, leading to decisions that turn on grammar and punctuation. Originalism seeks to interpret the Constitution as it was understood at the time it was adopted, even though, Justice Breyer said in the interview, “half the country wasn’t represented in the political process that led to the document.”
     There are three large problems with originalism, he wrote in the book.
     “First, it requires judges to be historians — a role for which they may not be qualified — constantly searching historical sources for the ‘answer’ where there often isn’t one there,” he wrote. “Second, it leaves no room for judges to consider the practical consequences of the constitutional rules they propound. And third, it does not take into account the ways in which our values as a society evolve over time as we learn from the mistakes of our past.”
     Justice Breyer did not accuse the justices who use those methods of being political in the partisan sense or of acting in bad faith. But he said their approach represented an abdication of the judicial role, one in which they ought to consider a problem from every angle. ... 

The Supreme Court Is Getting Very Annoyed With the Fifth Circuit’s Dogged Lawlessness (The justices are running out of ways to politely turn away the Fifth Circuit’s ambitious attempts to push a conservative policy agenda.) - by G.S. Hans for Balls and Strikes

The Supreme Court Protected More Autocrats Than Just Donald Trump (The decision in Trump v. United States is the product of Republican justices who want another Republican president in office.) - by Madiba K. Dennie for Balls and Strikes

The MAGA Supreme Court Is All the Way Here (John Roberts has long presented himself as the Supreme Court’s principled institutionalist. His opinion in Trump v. United States should be the end of that fantasy.) - by Jay Willis for Balls and Strikes

Why the Heck Isn’t She Running Away With This? - by David Brooks for The New York Times
excerpt:
     ... Two big things baffle me about this election. The first is: Why are the polls so immobile? In mid-June the race between President Biden and Donald Trump was neck and neck. Since then, we’ve had a blizzard of big events, and still the race is basically where it was in June. It started out tied and has only gotten closer.
     We supposedly live in a country in which a plurality of voters are independents. You’d think they’d behave, well, independently and get swayed by events. But no. In our era the polling numbers barely move.
     The second thing that baffles me is: Why has politics been 50-50 for over a decade? We’ve had big shifts in the electorate, college-educated voters going left and non-college-educated voters going right. But still, the two parties are almost exactly evenly matched.
     This is not historically normal. Usually we have one majority party that has a big vision for the country, and then we have a minority party that tries to poke holes in that vision. (In the 1930s the Democrats dominated with the New Deal, and the Republicans complained. In the 1980s the Reagan revolution dominated, and the Democrats tried to adjust.) ... 

Project 2025 - from Wikipedia (the most comprehensive article on the project without having to read more than 900 pages of documents. 

Project 2025: What is it and who's behind it? Here's an explainer (The 922-page plan outlines a sweeping road map for a new GOP administration that includes plans for dismantling aspects of the federal government and ousting thousands of civil servants in favor of Trump loyalists who will carry out a hard-right agenda without complaint)  - by the Associated Press and the NBC News Chicago staff

What is Project 2025? What to know about the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration - by Melissa Quinn, Jacob Rosen with Jaala Brown contributing to the report for CBS News

What is Project 2025? (It’s a blueprint for what a second Trump administration could look like, dreamed up by his allies and former aides.) - by Amber Phillips for the Washington Post
excerpt:
     If Donald Trump struggled somewhat in his first administration to move the country dramatically to the right, he’ll be ready to go in a second term.
     That’s the aim behind Project 2025, a comprehensive plan by former and likely future leaders of a Trump administration to remake America in a conservative mold while dramatically expanding presidential power and allowing Trump to use it to go after his critics.
     The plan is gaining attention just as Trump is trying to moderate his stated positions to win the election, so he’s criticized some of what’s in it as “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” and insisted that neither he nor his campaign had anything to do with Project 2025.
     Still, what’s in this document is a pretty good indicator of what a second Trump presidency could look like. Here’s what Project 2025 is and how it could reshape America.

Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found at least 140 people who worked for him are involved - by Steve Contorno for CNN
     
Project 2025 would fundamentally change public education, experts say - by Lexi Lonas for The Hill 

Here's how Donald Trump and his allies plan to reshape the government if he regains the White House. 2024 If Trump Wins - by Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman for The New York Times   

Republicans Are No Longer a Political Party (It’s become yet another subsidiary of Trump Inc.) - by David A. Graham for the Atlantic
excerpts:
     ... Meanwhile, in Washington, Trump appointed Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, to senior-adviser roles in the White House, barely skirting anti-nepotism rules for the executive branch, even though neither of them had any experience in government. But Trump erred, in his own view, by failing to appoint sufficiently sycophantic aides to other roles. Too many of his appointees were determined to defend the processes of government and the rule of law, infuriating him. He and his allies have vowed not to make the same mistakes again. ... 
     ... In Manhattan this week, a judge is expected to rule in a civil fraud trial that could fine Trump hundreds of millions of dollars, cancel the Trump Organization’s license to operate in New York State, and strip it of marquee properties. Weisselberg is reportedly in talks to plead guilty to perjury in the case, atop a prior felony guilty plea. The Trump administration was, if anything, worse run. It was four years of constant chaos, punctuated by two separate impeachments and concluding with an attempt to steal a presidential election. (Trump is in court over that, too.) None of this is a good omen for the RNC’s future as a Trump subsidiary. ... 

Mitch McConnell Surrenders to Trump (The longtime Senate Republican leader gambled that he could outlast the former president—and lost.)  - by David A. Graham for The Atlantic
except:
     Dour, somber Mitch McConnell was gleeful, if such a thing can be imagined. Surveying the aftermath of the January 6 riot, the longtime Kentucky senator concluded that Donald Trump was finished. “I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow finally, totally discredited himself,” he told a reporter. “He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”
     That was a little more than three years ago. Today, McConnell surrendered to Trump. The Republican leader announced that he will step down from his leadership post in November, meaning that if Trump wins the presidential election, as he currently seems favored to do, he’ll have a Senate Republican leader in place more ready to work with him. ... 
     ... McConnell and Trump always had an uneasy relationship. McConnell was an exemplar of the old Republican Party—committed to business-friendly and socially conservative policies. He never particularly liked Trump, but they found ways to work together. Trump even appointed McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as secretary of transportation. The greatest achievements of McConnell’s leadership and Trump’s presidency were the same: the installation of a six-judge conservative majority on the Supreme Court and an influx of conservative judges on lower federal courts. ... 

Voters Are Deeply Skeptical About the Health of American Democracy (Nearly half say it does not do a good job representing the people, and three-quarters say it is under threat, according to a Times/Siena poll.) - by Nick Corasaniti, Ruth Igielnik and Camille Baker for The New York Times
excerpt:
     ... Nearly half of all voters are skeptical that the American experiment in self-governance is working, with 45 percent believing that the nation’s democracy does not do a good job representing ordinary people, according to a new New York Times/Siena College poll.
     Three-quarters of voters in the United States say democracy is under threat, though their perception of the forces imperiling it vary widely based on partisan leanings. And a majority of voters believe that the country is plagued by corruption, with 62 percent saying that the government is mostly working to benefit itself and elites rather than the common good. ...
     ... Coupled with stubborn inflation, divisive culture wars and geopolitical crises, voters are expressing exasperation with American politics and a government that they believe has failed to serve them at the most basic level. ...

Should I Break Up With My Trump-Loving Partner? It’s a great relationship in nearly every other way - by James Parker for The Atlantic
excerpt:
   ... the older I get, the more I think that a person’s opinions—political or otherwise—are the least important thing about them. The opinion-making portion of the brain is so vulnerable, so goofy, so effortlessly colonized by alien spores … It’s a write-off, really. How they live, how they make you feel—that’s the salient part. ...

Beware Prophecies of Civil War (The idea that such a catastrophe is unavoidable in America is inflammatory and corrosive.) - by Fintan O’Toole for The Atlantic
excerpts:
     In January 1972, when I was a 13-year-old boy in Dublin, my father came home from work and told us to prepare for civil war. He was not a bloodthirsty zealot, nor was he given to hysterical outbursts. He was calm and rueful, but also grimly certain: Civil war was coming to Ireland, whether we wanted it or not. He and my brother, who was 16, and I, when I got older, would all be up in Northern Ireland with guns, fighting for the Catholics against the Protestants. ... 
     ... Yet my father’s fears were not fulfilled. There was a horrible, 30-year conflict that brought death to thousands and varying degrees of misery to millions. There was terrible cruelty and abysmal atrocity. There were decades of despair in which it seemed impossible that a polity that had imploded could ever be rebuilt. But the conflict never did rise to the level of civil war. 
     However, the belief that there was going to be a civil war in Ireland made everything worse. Once that idea takes hold, it has a force of its own. The demagogues warn that the other side is mobilizing. They are coming for us. Not only do we have to defend ourselves, but we have to deny them the advantage of making the first move. The logic of the preemptive strike sets in: Do it to them before they do it to you. The other side, of course, is thinking the same thing. That year, 1972, was one of the most murderous in Northern Ireland precisely because this doomsday mentality was shared by ordinary, rational people like my father. Premonitions of civil war served not as portents to be heeded, but as a warrant for carnage. ... 

Four Lessons From Nine Years of Being ‘Never Trump’ - by David French for The New York Times
     David French is a life long Republican and a writer for the right wing publication, the National Review. I thought his article was interesting because it goes into why "Never Trump" Republican voters switched to being for "Trump no matter what". 
     What he found was that a lot of Republicans stick together, even with different ideologies and morals, and that hate is a driving force (they hate Democrats so much more). Trump is who the Republican nominee is, so they'll be loyal to the Republican party and its agenda in order to keep Democrats out. 
     He also found that being accepted and acceptable by the community of Republicans was more important than not voting, and not voting for a (to them) lowly Democrat. He also found that ideology does not play as big a role as being part of the community of Republicans. 
     The rage that many Republicans feel towards the main stream media is also a factor in why they have decided to only listen to views like their own, to news channels that are committed to Republican agendas and ideals. Many Republicans feel they cannot trust news sources which explore "the other side". - This is quite obvious to me when I see political posts from my Republican friends (so many posts are about how "Democrats will try to steal the election again" - as if it is a fact). The contrary Democrat view is "Trump will try to steal the election again, and will try another insurrection." So the two parties are opposed as to who is trying to steal an election.

Note: For me it is difficult to belong to either party because 1. I like to research (and I usually research all sides as I did in this article about the controversies over vaccines and mask-wearing) and 2. I don't like the fighting, the accusing, the vilifying, the threatening of doomsday scenes, and trying to make either party out to be "the big green evil monster party". I don't want to be part of fighting and infighting and being affiliated with a party puts me in one camp, and I don't want to be in one camp, or in the middle of the arguments. I'm sick of it.
     This means I am an Independent.