PETITION: the first petition I have seen of its kind: Protection for Victims of Narcissistic Sociopath Abuse (such as the laws the UK has, and is being proposed for the USA): story hereandhereorsign the actual petition here
Note:After seeing my images on social media unattributed, I find it necessary to post some rules about sharing my images
The gist of the discussion in that article (or answer) is that narcissists can't handle differences they have with other people, and look at those differences as an attack. They are unable to feel good if there are disagreements or differences of opinion with another person, especially if they are unable to sway or control the opinions, thoughts or experiences of others. Narcissists can't accept others as separate human beings who are not out to serve them and what they want at all times, or out to get their self esteem stroked by the narcissist. Most people are independent thinkers, in other words, and accept that there will be different opinions and thought processes from one person to the next. Most people, except the most brainwashed among us, are not out to accept the narcissist's way of thinking and opinions on all matters as our own. Malignant narcissists feel they are losing control of others (and power, control and domination is what is most important to them in all relationships), and that it is an afront to their arrogance and delusions of superiority. In order to reject the opinions, thought processes, and experiences of others, they reason they have to reject the person. Malignant narcissists go further than that and feel they have to punish the person, and this is where vindictive narcissism comes in. Narcissists cannot handle this common and normal way of relating (i.e. disagreeing, having different opinions, having ambitions separate from pleasing them, having different thought processes, having different experiences than a narcissist thinks they are having, and they see all of it as a personal attack on them and their delusional superiority and respond in a vindictive, vengeful manner).
This is a problem for the rest of us, obviously.
Better articles on vindictive narcissism are these two articles:
The articles say the same things, except in a more lengthy way, and also tell you how to deal with vindictive narcissism (protect yourself, find a way to back out of the relationship, put up strong boundaries).
Since narcissists have trouble regulating their emotions, and vindictiveness is the first thing they feel, and what they want to act on, they go into it headlong, and at first it is impulsively driven. This is why they are more likely to be dangerous just before you leave the relationship with them, or just after, or when you are resisting their punishments or power and control agendas. Revenge can quickly take over their mental and emotional state and even their entire life in some cases, where they become absolutely obsessed until and unless their plans of certain punishments become a reality.
Even if the other person caves or apologizes for upsetting the narcissist, the narcissist's lack of empathy and suspicious nature will mean that they will not necessarily accept the different qualities others have from them, and can find it impossible to forgive the other person, whereby the vindictiveness permanently remains and never quite satisfies the narcissist. In these cases, revenge becomes on-going.
Some things I have come across via the internet are survivors of child abuse who left their family of origin to get married. They were part of a cult-like narcissistic family system where they were either deemed "for" the family in the way of being always present and always submissive to what their parents wanted in terms of providing for the family and being present in all family affairs, or "totally against" the family if they sought their own way of life in another part of the country, or overseas, or via getting married to start their own family.
Sometimes things happen, like their spouse dies, or there is a divorce. The family invites the member back with open, seemingly loving arms, and then the family destroys all property, including pictures and memorabilia of their time away from the family without the permission of that returned family member. It is done to wipe out their past. In some cases that caused that member to leave again (the more common outcome), or conversely to feel trapped with nowhere to go. Some of the trapped members had suicidal thoughts.
Many of these families believe that hurting a member in this way will teach that member never to leave again and to go along with constant commands and demands of the authoritarians in the family, but it simply does not work and here is why. This has some bearing on whether narcissists, over the long term, get satisfaction out of revenge, or if it is just another "it's never enough" thought process (a common stuck obsession about all kinds of issues around domination and control agendas that narcissists are famous for, and feeling they don't get enough of).
Another situation comes from a domestic violence group I belong to where seeing young women with bloody lips, black and blue eyes, and their faces smashed up while they are sitting in a hospital bed is a somewhat common occurrence. In a lot of these cases, these women never saw this kind of violence coming, even though they knew they were being watched constantly, controlled to the point of the ridiculous, and emotionally abused. They were trying to figure out how to deal with the rages and emotional abuse of their men in our group, ways to calm the situations they were in, and did not think, in their wildest dreams, that they would be hit. Some of them had warning signs like their possessions being destroyed, or the man was putting his fist through a wall, or stalking, but almost all of them did not think that would ever translate into violence against them.
The thing is, abuse escalates, and with enough emotional abuse, it can tip over into physical abuse (I find this the case particularly if a woman has PTSD and is disassociating: going blank, freezing, an involuntary response). It's unfortunate that it escalates so fast after the man finds that emotional abuse isn't hurtful, threatening or scary enough.
Even subtle signs like being pushed or led in a demanding, controlling manner often precludes getting hit.
Anyway, many of these stories entail a man beating his woman as a way to get her to submit to what he wants. In some of these instances what he wants is a total fantasy, such as his woman confessing to an affair she has not had, or to an attraction to a man she barely noticed, or does not know. She is being beaten for being disloyal when she hasn't been disloyal. What a lot of these men don't understand is that it is virtually impossible to be disloyal when these women are isolated in such extreme ways, and when their victim is spending most of her time trying to calm his rages and reassure him, and when he attempts to make his micro-managements of her the center of her attention all of the time.
Hitting her is supposed to keep her from being disloyal, but most often it creates a situation where she wants to get away, and yes, be disloyal even if just to speak out about what has been done to her, or to live without him in her life. Hospital workers will also be helping her have that agenda and teaching her about how abuse escalates - and this includes "no matter how she acts, and no matter which of her soothing techniques she decides is most effective." None of them are effective when it comes to physical abuse.
One reason narcissistic jealous and suspicious boyfriends, lovers, and husbands suspect their women of cheating is often because of projection. Most narcissists cheat (around 75 percent of them). And if they aren't cheating, they usually have some other clandestine activity they are pursuing whether it is getting drugs for a drug addiction, or a gambling addiction, or a porn addiction, or a peep show addiction, or other kind of activity where secrets are kept.
The suspicions can also be a result of growing up in an environment of people who were hostile and exploitative. They might have been spared that treatment themselves, but they saw it being done to others. Lack of loyalty is triggering to them as many of them take it to mean hostility and exploitation, producing rage as the outlet, and for narcissists with malignant characteristics, violence. They tell themselves they will not be abandoned, or exploited, or treated as though their voice doesn't have any bearing, even when they've adopted all of those qualities themselves. They get around to believing that threats and being menacing is the only way to prevent it happening to them.
They conduct themselves in relationships as though everything is a threat to them and their fragile egos.
But who wants to be around someone who is hurting you all of the time anyway, even if they are using it as an insurance policy against being fooled, cheated on, and exploited, and who is a danger to your life? And domestic violence is always dangerous to your life - violence has a way of getting out of control, particularly if the other person is trying to protect themselves from blows - more likely than not as the body does what it does to protect itself; it is why when you fall your arms go out first, automatically, to cushion the fall and to keep your face and head protected.
The same goes to protecting your face and head from being hit: your arms and hands will automatically act as a shield to protect you from the blows.
Invariably most of these men were always begging their woman to come back after she was released from the hospital. If she refused, the stalking alternated between "sick love puppy who cannot live without her" to threatening, destructive and sometimes violent, or criminal, reactions, in other words, the perpetrators had a very pronounced Jekyll/Hyde manifestation(called "splitting" - and in extreme ways).
For those women who go back, they find that their loyalty is deemed to never be enough by their man. These women find themselves constantly insulted (where they are told they never do enough for the man, they aren't pretty enough, they aren't smart enough, they aren't sane enough, they are nasty and not nice, that they are worthless and useless, and so on). As I said, "never-enough-ness" is a dominant narcissistic trait, as are fantasies about what another person is feeling, thinking and experiencing. And to make matters even more scary, they tend to think they can read other people's minds (where arrogance and feeling they are superior to everyone else comes into play, another delusion you have to deal with as they can be insistent that you are feeling and thinking things you are not feeling and thinking).
There is also always a tone of disrespect too, as though you are too unable to make autonomous decisions, or too disabled to do anything or say anything other than to follow their orders. You are required to either parentify them, or infantilize them(and you never know which one they want at any given time, which can bring on more violence: "Who do you take me to be? A child that constantly needs to be reassured!?" and "Who do you take me to be? Your parent who has to tell you what to do all of the time?!" - it's positively crazy-making, but so common).
It is where co-dependency and trauma bonding start and never end as long as you stay in a relationship with a narcissist.
And by the way, if domestic violence is going on where one partner is initiating hitting his (or her) other partner, it's usually a sign of malignant narcissism. In child abuse cases where there is physical abuse and harm, as well as punishments that are essentially about neglect and rejection of a child, these cases are perpetrated by malignant narcissists too. Malignant narcissists generally never get better, and often get so much worse, and because of the antisocial personality disorder mixed in with the narcissism, they are dangerous enough to seek protection and boundaries from, or get away from altogether (where going to a domestic abuse center can help you plan an un-violent escape).
You also cannot talk a malignant narcissist out of their delusionary judgements about what you really feel and think, and who you are. They are too suspicious and adamant that they know how to read your mind, and the reading is always going to entail how you are their enemy, even if it is just one time you did not agree with them, or do what they wanted. They simply can't trust you again, and they will want to retaliate against you at some time or other, whether a lot or a little. How they retaliate is often dependent on how enraged they are. Which is why you have to be careful of the hoover (the hoover is about sweet-talking you back into the relationship with them).
Another way to tell if you are dealing with a malignant narcissist where you are trying to put up boundaries, or separate from them, they won't just be running smear campaigns, which all narcissists do. They will also be indulging in some kind of crime too, or at the very least breaking or giving away property that is yours, or things you have given them.
If they have any covert narcissistic qualities, they will be trying to convince everyone they know that they are the victim. They can even say they were a victim of infidelity even when they dreamt it up - very common and very nauseating.
I think it should be obvious why you can't really have any kind of meaningful relationship or discourse with a malignant narcissist. It will always be threatening, and always be about the narcissist hurting you, trying to get more submission out of you, and getting off on your pain. It is also very likely that they are fooling other people into believing their fake victim stories and getting duper's delightfrom them.
As the article from the link suggests, duper's delight actually has an addictive quality to it, and the person delighting in duping others most often ends up lying just about anything and everything. It tends to create a full time liar or exaggerator of the truth, and who can be really pleased, at peace with themselves, and truly happy being a full time liar? The feelings of alienation, being alone, and trying not to get caught, would be negatives most people aren't willing to gamble on in their own relationships. It's permanently isolating and extremely shameful.
In contrast, it's nothing like the fulfillment empaths have living in the truth and sharing their inner-most thoughts and feelings with one another, and real trust, not the fake kind of trust narcissists try to promote about themselves.
Given the choice between lying to others all of the time and getting duper's delight from fooling others, versus experiencing a really trusting relationship with a lot of sharing, full time trust, and a lot of co-operation, which would you prefer?
And it is a preference. Malignant narcissists prefer duper's delight because most of them trust no one. It's why the covert malignant narcissists who are most likely to go after duper's delight in their relationships, never share much of anything in their relationships. It says so much about them and how untrustworthy they are themselves, and it certainly says a lot about their total lack of ethics.
I think most of us can see that they miss out on a lot of meaning, life, truth, fulfillment and even those feelings of "having enough" by going down that road.
And once the "mask falls" and they get caught with so many lies, and getting off on the pain of others, it's more than a little disgusting. All of the shame they've been running away from in their relationships starts up again, and they are even faced with self-shame. Most people who uncover an ugly truth like duper's delight will want no part in any kind of real relationship with the narcissist again.
So, none of this ends up in a good place, whether you are the narcissist, or the victim, although victims are better equipped at finding good relationships than narcissists will ever experience.
SO DO NARCISSISTS GET SATISFACTION FOR REVENGE, VINDICTIVENESS, AND RETALIATIONS?
It's pretty clear they do, otherwise they wouldn't keep doing it. But like duper's delight, it's never going to be fulfilling over the long term because who wants to be around a narcissist who wants to hurt you just because you didn't follow an order, or agree with them, or because you have a different opinion that can't be swayed by them? Who wants an ongoing relationship with a narcissist who only wants submission from other people? Who wants an ongoing relationship with a narcissist who wants constant revenge on you or someone else, and who gets a kind of junky attention from it, and who rationalizes the necessity of revenges to make themselves feel almighty and powerful?
Like duper's delight, most people will be disgusted by it, will find it to be evil.
It gets more people running away from them than towards them, certainly. No one really likes being in relationships where the other person doesn't have any empathy, or ethics, gets off on lying, gets off on plans of retaliations and crimes that show their selfishness in bright details, entitlements, hoovers, tricking others, and boorishly tries to take advantage of others.
It puts most of us on edge because it's a threat to our well-being.
It's been said many times that relationships with narcissists traumatize most of us. If two narcissists are in a relationship together, the narcissist that is closer to the malignant brand of narcissism or psychopathy can traumatize the narcissist with less psychopathy. So one way or another, there is trauma to go around.
I was watching Richard Grannon's channel once, and he said he had clients that were lamenting: "The narcissist always comes out on top!" And Richard said he never knew of a single narcissist who came out on top. They eventually all become disappointed wrecks of human beings.
We only need to turn to well known malignant narcissists to see how they fared. Hitler ended up poisoning himself as troops surrounded his bunker. Mussolini was executed. Napoleon was banished. King Henry the Eighth died at the age of 55 and any number of his ailments could have caused his demise from an infected leg wound that never healed and possibly was septic (it was infected for eleven years), to gout and possibly a pulmonary embolism. His body was severely obese to the point where he could no longer walk, and he left a country in financial crisis.
And how is Putin doing with his invasion plans?
None of these men felt or feel their dreams had been fulfilled by the end of their life, or had a sense of a life well lived.
A lot of it is caused by the "never-enough-ness" grumblings that plague most narcissists. They didn't get enough power and control over people; people weren't submissive enough for them; people weren't loyal enough for them; people weren't nice enough to them (and some of them were even "nasty", something that perpetrators repeatedly call women who disappoint them); they didn't hurt so-and-so enough; they weren't catapulted into positions of power enough, people weren't bright enough to not realize they were geniuses; people weren't trusting of them enough to let them take over; people never praised them enough; people weren't grateful enough for all the things they did do and were too focused on what they didn't do; people couldn't see they were superior to everyone else because they were not self effacing enough; no relationship was good enough for them; their children didn't become anything special enough for them; their spouse didn't make enough money or wasn't generous enough to them; their children and spouses weren't smart or successful enough for them; their lovers never appreciated them enough; their children were never "good enough" children; no one could ever read their mind in a good enough way and certainly not as good as they could read others' minds (this is, of course, a delusion); no one ever saw enough of the brilliant talent they had; and home health care workers never did enough for them when they become old.
All of this leads them to be hyper critical of others, demanding, commanding and never satisfied. They especially try to instill the thought into their children that these children are not enough as people. What this really translates into is that children are not pleasing and submissive enough for a narcissist; they aren't endowed with enough narcissistic supply for a narcissist; they aren't making their parenting look good enough for their narcissistic parent; their children aren't easy enough not to go ballistic on, i.e. go into rages and punishments all of the time; their children aren't praising them enough; their children aren't doing what they are told enough; their children seem more ugly than other children, that they aren't beautiful enough to admire. Children who are too heavily dominated by the narcissistic parent (without their other parent pushing back on their ambition to destroy a child's self esteem) can carry the burden that they are not enough their whole entire lives.
They can especially get the sense that they don't work hard enough, where one of the traits of being a scapegoat is that they become work-a-holics.
Dr. Ramani Durvasula and Jerry Wise often talk at length in their writings and videos about how narcissists crush their children's self esteem, and that only being a puppet with no boundaries is the only way they will ever receive affection, or be seen, or respected by their narcissistic parent ... until the next round of devaluation and narcissistic exaggerated disappointments which turn into shaming the child (and for malignant narcissists violence or punishments meant to hurt). The child takes in that they are "not enough" and the destruction to his self esteem, his budding personality, his ambitions and accomplishments therefor aren't enough (and if his parent is violent towards their child, physical destruction of the child too).
If an adult child shows that they are internally endowed with self esteem which can come from being away from the narcissist for a length of time, or pursuing an interest or education away from the family system, the narcissist can double down on terrorizing. No narcissist can deal with, or stand, any child of theirs with self esteem, including enough intelligence to know why their parent is trying to wreck their self esteem.
All of it creates endless amounts of emotional dysregulation and rage in the parent, and for malignant narcissists, revenge and retaliation too.
And the reason why narcissists are rarely satisfied with their own children is because relationship satisfaction does not come from trying to get power, control and domination over others, and traumatizing them. Which begs the question: Maybe they are not enlightened enough to realize that?
I doubt that most narcissists are even aware that most people who have any significant relationship with them experience trauma. If they knew the people in their lives experienced enough trauma, maybe they would stop, but they don't.
I think most people know these days that trauma responses aren't healthy. The fawn, fight, freeze, flee trauma responses aren't healthy for the people who are experiencing them. If these trauma responses are further stuffed ("I'm going to pretend these situations never happened, and I'm going to live my life as though this and that never hurt me"), it's likely to be stored in the body and manifest as disease. It's been well documented that spousal abuse and particularly child abuse, and having a parent or spouse with Narcissistic Personality Disorder often means a compromised immunity and often a clipped longevity.
excerpt: Develop a more targeted and nuanced approach to treating trauma
woman trapped in childhood trauma. There’s been a breakthrough in the way we treat trauma. For years, clients have presented with defensive adaptations to trauma that don’t fit within the fight-flight-freeze model you learned in grad school. And without the tools to identify and address these (often subtle) adaptations, many clients were left stuck, stagnant, and suffering. But recently, the top minds in our field have developed strategies to help us take a more targeted and nuanced approach with these “emerging” trauma responses . . . . . . and become more effective in our ability to help clients overcome unresolved trauma.
Those other trauma responses are: * Attach/Cry for Help * Collapse and Submit * Please and Appease
All of these trauma responses are either going to mean dissociation, separation from the narcissist emotionally, or psychologically, or physically, and possibly through something I thought up, a Lie and Appease response (which is really just another version of the Please and Appease trauma response, but with added lies to keep the narcissist pleased even if internally you are not agreeing with everything they want, everything they demand, and everything they say - in other words you are pretending to go along until you can find a way to escape obligation).
The reason why it would be traumatic is because lying brings with it some fear of being caught, and a lot of fear can cause anxiety, but most of all, stress.
Again, nothing is going to free you of stress in a relationship with a narcissist.
Most of us bend towards healthy relationships, empathetic people, ethical people, people we can trust, people who are ultra-mature, and narcissists do not provide any of this. Again, if they aren't ripping you apart to your face (the general way they do this), then they are ripping you apart behind your back. It's going to be one or the other.
They can't be pleased and most of them make that known to you whether in the many criticisms and disrespectful comments they dole out, or subtly by not listening to what you have to say, being distracted when you talk, or looking bothered by your presence. It's not a happy place to be, and even for a lot of us, it's not a good enough relationship because we can't really say we trust them, or that we are happy with their level of empathy, or that we feel healthy, alive, appreciated, fulfilled and joyful in their presence and in relating to them. The never-enough-ness begins to mirror theirs and we waste years of our lives waiting for trustworthiness that doesn't exist in them, empathy that does not exist in them, being heard in an understanding "got it" kind of way that does not exist in them, appreciation for who we are which does not exist in them, feeling and being healthy in the relationship which does not exist because on-going trauma is not a space where good health can preside.
Finding others who can match our level of empathy and respect can get rid of the never-enough-ness in us.
It won't for the narcissist (because finding others who match their empathy, and respect means relating to another never-enough-ness highly critical narcissist, and the whole "match" will seem like a whole lot of misunderstandings, arguments, duo rages, and no one willing to submit).
Note on 9/20/22: I have edited this post since publishing (spelling errors and grammatical mistakes) ... more minor editing on 9/21/22 & 9/23/22
I haven't been publishing posts since March of this year, which is unprecedented for me considering I have so many in the wings almost ready to go. In the meantime, I do have a message for my readers below, and some news about comments I have been receiving.
I have been answering some of these comments, and a couple of them do provide some new information I haven't published yet, if you are interested. Feel free to add your thoughts and experience to be part of the conversation, especially if you are a survivor of abuse (polite discourse only).
Some of the posts getting comments include (but are not limited to):
In the meantime, I also have some words to say (very shortened version) of what I believe is necessary to know when suffering through abuse:
- abuse escalates - abuse can and does reach dangerous levels - abuse can, and often does produce the debilitating symptoms of PTSD, which manifest as physical symptoms, not just emotional/mental ones, so it is very unhealthy in a myriad of ways. Some of those symptoms are listed in a section below. - the majority of abusers are not out to change their behaviors; they are out to inflict more pain and get away with their behaviors. Important to know ... - abusers with Cluster B personality disorders try to get their way by raging, threatening, and using abusive tactics (many of those tactics are listed on the right side of this blog) - abusers often target the most vulnerable
Here is a slightly longer version of the above:
Can people in the Cluster B spectrum change their behavior?
Not really, however:
Borderlines without narcissistic traits have the ability to change the most, but it can mean baby steps, a lot of hard work, and a very long journey. Narcissistic traits that bleed over into some borderlines include: * arrogance (particularly "I'm right all of the time and you are wrong all of the time") * putting their children into roles (one child is deemed to be "all bad", and one is deemed to be "all good") * being overly sweet to friends, acquaintances, and strangers, but being cruel, abusive and bullying in the home or to their partner or kids (which is a form of gaslighting). If they have the above narcissistic traits, they aren't very likely to change. Borderlines can have narcissistic traits, but many of them don't. They can have empathy, and that sets them apart from narcissists. Narcissists will always have very little empathy, and psychopaths have none, or close to none. Many borderlines aren't particularly arrogant, many don't gaslight, or split their children into unchanging roles. Or they may show arrogance and grandiosity in the evening, but then feel horrified by their own actions (particularly if they rage in a haughty style) by midnight, and then experience an emotional crash and feel the opposite way: very low self esteem, self pity, suicidal.
The reasons why people with narcissistic traits - particularly arrogance and lack of empathy - don't change, is precisely because of the arrogance, and lack of empathy, especially the kind of arrogance where they feel they are right all of the time, and that your job is to listen to them and do what they tell you to do. When people have lack of empathy with that brand of arrogance (which is really a propped-up grandiosity - an image they try to maintain at all cost), it adds up to them not wanting to hear how much they have hurt you or others, and not caring if they hurt you or others. Lack of empathy with arrogance is partly a brain issue, and it is also a personality trait, neither of which can be changed very easily or very much (I will go into this in depth in another post).
Note: narcissists will say that you hurt them if you criticize them, or if they perceive criticism from you, and they will expect your empathy to flow in a never ending direction towards them afterwards, and very often when you give them apologies and empathy, they feel it is not good enough (because what they really want is to control you and use it as an excuse to hurt you when they feel they are losing power). However they are most likely hypocrites because narcissists make an art out of criticizing others, even insulting people, manipulating facts that other people tell them in such a way that is not only nasty but the facts are twisted into half truths. Narcissists are usually much more constant, harsh and cruel than you could ever think of being: if you are their partner or kid a lot of them tell you repeatedly that you are crazy or stupid. They often expect you to live with low self esteem and to keep enduring getting your self esteem battered, while they expect you to prop up a "perfect image" of them, another hypocrisy. The reason they get hurt by criticisms but expect you to take much worse forms of it from them is that your criticism of them is a wound to their self-appointed authority over you, their grandiosity, their fantasies that they are superior to you (in other words, they insist that they come first, and they will rage at you until you follow their script of how they want this to happen). So this doesn't really count as a legitimate "hurt" in terms of this discussion.
Knowing that narcissistic abusers are extremely unlikely to change, means the decision rests with you as to whether you can engage with or want to engage with a person who lacks empathy, is terrible at listening (refuses to acknowledge any hurt or pain they may have caused you), is most likely to lecture, particularly "behavior lectures". If you want them to address the pain you are living under, they will do anything to deflect the fact that they are a culprit. They cannot stand to do anything except to be in the dominant position (cannot compromise, or address your concerns). They tend to trick you, play head games, play with your self esteem, sabotage you with negative comments behind your back, blackmail you. They escalate abuse because they never are satisfied with the amount of power and control they already have over you.
Some of them are downright spiteful (the more dangerous abusers).
People with empathy are the only people among us who can truly change, and the more empathy we have, the more ability we have to change. Still, most of us aren't going to change drastically: personalities tend to be more fixed than mutable, and in the best case scenario, can only change 30 percent at most.
When we are in abusive relationships that aren't changing and are getting worse, and when our focus is mainly on what to do with abusive relationships or a toxic family, we sacrifice living in a world of consistent empathy and consistent love. Abusers withdraw their love to punish you, so they are not capable of real love, and the investment of time and energy for you is always going to add up to pain. When we stay engaged in abusive relationships most of the time, we sacrifice the possibility of relationships where mutual trust, mutual empathy can be expressed (most abusers will insist that the empathy go one way: towards them). In staying in abusive relationships, we are not available for the best forms of mutual belonging, of safety, mutual understanding and mutual intimacy, the elements that make us feel whole with the world. We also can't heal properly from the trauma the abuse brought to us. We are not as likely to experience the best form of working together in harmony. We aren't likely to experience mutual understanding, mutual compromise, mutual compassion and reasonable solutions.
One of the reasons why we feel stuck is that abusers often use smear campaign tactics with gaslighting ("they are crazy and should be institutionalized ... you shouldn't even talk to them" - one example) - it is an attempt at isolating their victims from better relationships and a better life.
Raging is common for most Cluster Bs:
Simplistically said:
- how rages for many borderlines play out: rage, feel guilty, beat themselves up, lots of self pity - rages for narcissists: rage, feel like it might ruin their reputation, get paranoid, pretend to be a victim - rages for malignant narcissists and sociopaths: rage, feel like their victims brought it upon themselves for being so gullible and easy to brainwash, feel like it might touch upon their reputation but feel they are too clever and that they can weasel out of anything, thinks of ways of turning the tables so that they appear to be the victim to others and their victims appear to be the perpetrators, either wish they had been more clever in punishing their victims or make "revenge plans" to better hurt or sabotage their victims - rages for psychopaths: rage, feel no remorse for what they have done, pat themselves on the back for "a job well done", feel invincible, go on to do it again. Doesn't feel fear, paranoia, doesn't care about anyone's feelings, or that they will get caught. No one means anything to them. Most laws don't mean anything to them. The worst of them believe that other people are to be used and abused to get what they want.
Again, can you live with, or do you want to put up with rages?
Habitually rageful people tend not to have empathy (and especially when they are in the act of raging, or feel that raging at you is good for them in terms of getting what they want out of you). Habitually rageful people also tend to amp up the rages rather than cool them down.
Rages can be overt: screaming, yelling, loud, insults, swearing, out of control, telling you what to do, where to get off, telling you to go away, pushing and shoving, slapping, hitting, pounding their fists at the wall, throwing things or smashing up things, telling you that they can't stand you or don't love you any more.
And rages can be covert: spiteful, attempting to hurt your reputation with common friends or at work (smear campaigns), "scapegoating" rages (rages over spilled milk, a look on your face, forgetting to take out the garbage, rages over remarks you made that were never meant to hurt them), the silent treatment and stonewalling (a selfish maneuver meant to pressure you to give into them and a sign that they have no empathy), hurts you through personal property (stealing, throwing things out, giving your things away, taking your picture off the wall, cleaning out your bank account, sending the message they don't care about you, they don't care about respecting your property or the rule of law, or your contributions), hurts you through triangulation ("I have a lover and I don't care how it makes you feel!" when they are married to you, or "I never loved you. Your sibling is the only one I ever loved" when they are your parent).
Again, is this something you can live with, or want to live with? Is there a better way to live in the world than living under a constant cycle of escalating rages, threats, put-downs, lots of instability, and scapegoating? Is this the best use of your potential? That should be the focus.
Again, changes in the worst part of the human race are extremely unlikely (and the probability that they will get worse is predictable - look at tyrannical vindictive authoritarian leaders for how they conduct themselves). Look to the traits I have listed on the right hand side and see if you truly want to deal with these traits going forward?
Some other traits I have not listed in this post or on the side (and where I will be covering them in the future) are: - jealousy (the urge to trip you up to make themselves appear "superior" and to feel less jealous) - confirmation bias (opinions and stances that never change, especially about the people in their lives, no matter whether their views are fantasies, or what you do for them, or what apologies and overtures you make) - sadism and cruelty - coercive control - punishments - trying to kill your self esteem - threats - brainwashing - infantilization and parentification: (update 11/22/22 - this post has been finished) - talking at you as though you are a child who needs to learn lessons from them when you are an adult, or expecting you to take care of them as though you are their parent when you are their child (the role of the handmaid child). - demands, commands and micromanaging what you do, how you speak, how you react to their control and domination tactics - hoovering, sweet-talk, and otherwise drawing you into another round of conflicts and abuse (can include revenge for "not abusing you enough the first time") - physical abuse (not all abusers are physically abusive, but those who are, tend to be dangerous, especially if verbal and emotional abuses have been escalating) - scapegoating (the urge to use you for blame out of convenience for what is "going wrong" in their lives ... it is also where they display the most hypocrisy - also mostly dangerous)
I would bet that you will feel like you are being slowly killed by all of these tactics and traits of theirs rather than changing them. Note: they can often change them temporarily and "for show" if you are doing what they want you to do and giving in to them, but otherwise they won't. But always remember it is "temporary". True change is a long hard process. The "temporary" niceties, or temporary relief from abuse, doesn't change who they are or what they will do. Some of them terrorize you more when you give in.
I encourage anyone who is going through abuse to contact a domestic violence counselor or center to assess the dangers. The counselors may suggest a safety plan, a slow or fast withdrawal process depending on the risks, support groups, legal or financial help, shelters, medical or emotional treatment for what you endured or are still enduring.
Why it matters
The more rage or punishment cycles you endure from abusers, the less longevity you will have, the more upset you will be, and eventually debilitating physical symptoms will likely appear.
Being constantly exposed to rages, discards and abuse mean that the stress hormones will be constantly firing off, especially if you are also being threatened in addition to the rages and abuse. Constant stress means symptoms physically, mentally and emotionally.
Physical symptoms: - stomach aches and other stomach issues which never go away, and cannot be explained by a gastroenterologist (in "fight or flight mode", the blood needed for digestion goes away from the gut and into our limbs; the heart also beats faster). In PTSD, this response can be going on all of the time, thus chronic stomach aches or nausea, sensitivities to foods, bloated gut, and other symptoms. - lack of sleep, light sleep, and nightmares when you do sleep (if you are really sleep deprived, only sleep 3 hrs. a night, you can have hallucinations). - heart issues (racing heart, heart pain, heart disease) - constant overall muscle pain (especially in legs, neck, shoulders and arms) - constant headaches - constant state of panic - auto-immune diseases - extreme weight gain or loss - shaking, trembling, the feeling that your nerves are going haywire, problem getting your words out (speech impediments, not remembering words, "trying to find words" to finish your sentence and panicking because you can't retrieve the word from your memory, nervous speech, stammering, often accompanied by heart palpitations) - prognosis for longevity: not good
All of these are symptoms of PTSD and you can have them in varying degrees, or you can have some of them but not all of them. Symptoms can fade in and out or be constant. If you have most of these symptoms, and they are becoming disabling, you have most likely been over-exposed to traumatic events or Cluster B people.
Mental and emotional symptoms: - when rare feelings of calmness come over you, it is extremely difficult to maintain - easily triggered (symptoms re-emerging) over sights, sounds and especially when you are around your abusers or people who remind you of your abusers. Swearing, hyper critical behaviors, insults, loud angry voices, violence on T.V., commanding or demanding people or attitudes, arm-twisting, punishing people, manipulations or manipulative people, people who want to dominate you, also are usually triggering. Re-emerging symptoms often mean 5 - 7 day periods where you will want to isolate from others. If your abusers are still in your life in some minimal way, you can limit what they talk to you about so that you don't get triggered again, and if they can't respect that, which they probably won't, then you can always make the choice to remove them from your life completely and forever. "Completely" means not allowing them to contact you or control you in any way: making sure they are not allowed to see you at your most vulnerable moments: in the hospital or urgent care (nothing like mean abusive people in those environments!), when you or your loved ones have been diagnosed with a chronic or terminal illness, when you are going through PTSD symptoms, when you are alone without support, when you are going through a divorce or break-up, when you are financially devastated or you and your loved ones have had an accident. It means separating from them as much as you can. You'll have a great desire to separate once the symptoms get to a certain point anyway.
Other Mental and Emotional symptoms of PTSD: - inability to focus or concentrate - inability to complete simple tasks without crying or other emotions - inability to find resolutions to issues in your life - feelings of doom - feeling that you no longer have feelings (numbness): happens after an intense emotional separation from an abuser - feeling that your life or ability to cope is falling apart - chronic depression - "everything seems to make you cry" - generalized anxiety disorder - social anxiety disorder - separation anxiety disorder especially from someone who you feel safe with, where you feel if they left you alone that your abusers would find you or a vulnerability in you, and attack you some more. - other anxiety disorders (less common in PTSD than the ones listed above, but still possible) - For victims of child abuse: If you have a parent who practices idealize-devalue-discard or love bomb-devalue-destroy (the "destroy" is more indicative of physical abusers), you will go through a process of three phases. I list them here: feeling terrorized that you will be abandoned (first phase) then the terror of being abandoned plus the terror that they will try to reconnect or engage with you again (second phase) - this is a very uncomfortable kind of cognitive dissonance, which can vacillate between guilt and feeling justified, between sadness (of losing your old life) and joy (for being in a new life without abuse), between wanting justice and not wanting to make any "waves", between wanting to understand what happened and feeling like you don't want to understand anything and prefer a life of ignorance, between thinking you can deal with them to realizing you can't and the dangers. It often comes down to more opposite feelings and anxiety than you can seem to handle. and finally the concern of being abandoned has dropped, but the terror that they will try to contact you, get back into your life, or try to hurt you again remains (third phase) - can last a long time or even forever, and produce a lot of anxiety because you have figured out by then that they have no empathy for you. Their attempting contact is more likely to have the same effect on you as a known criminal wanting to make a visit. The threat they will return can produce many sleepless nights. Note: if you have "stalker parents" it is really important to get domestic violence services and police involved. It is nothing to take lightly. Also note: the reason why children and adult children go through these three very common almost predictable phases is because biologically we are programmed to trust our parents to take care of us, keep us safe, be consistently engaged with us in a loving and supportive way, until we reach adulthood, and if they aren't this way, they are scary, the opposite of what we expect parents to be, monster-like, beings who will hurt us and are not to be trusted. By the time we reach adulthood, we are programmed to expect them to respect our decisions and autonomy, to accept how we relate to our own children and other family members, to accept who we want in our lives and who we don't want in our lives, to respect that we have our own lives now and that they need to give up the reins of control and lecturing and treat us as co-adults. If we don't get that, we tend to think, "Something is wrong here. This doesn't seem to be 'the way it is supposed to be.'" If we don't have consistent love, respect, safety, stability, and reasonableness as children or adults, or our parents are cruel to us, or if we are abandoned heartlessly with narcissistic discards, the mere presence of our parents can send off a litany of debilitating PTSD symptoms that are too hard to live with again. Most abused children prefer to heal and leave the past behind. - For victims of marriage and partner abuse: Cognitive dissonance is still probable, but the phases above are not as predictable as they are for child abuse survivors (I'll cover the intricacies of why in another post). Since partnerships mean different things to different people, depending on the disparate ways we are brought up these days, plus our individual expectations of how people should act in a partnership, even biology fails to tell us what we should expect out of a marriage or partnership. If we go into a partnership assuming we are both "equal adults" in terms of responsibilities and decision-making, living with a partner who refuses to live that way can mean catastrophe for the partner who wants those things. Because of constantly changing gender roles, a huge upswing in child abuse since the Industrial Revolution which effects generations of people and their attitudes, a country of citizens who seem to prefer more individualism out of life than family, a country of citizens who are seeking "personal fulfillment" out of partner relationships instead of the creation of a healthy intertwined family, a country of citizens who prefer desk jobs over manual labor where they are working with members of the opposite sex, the advent of birth control taking away prior norms like men ingratiating themselves to a whole family of potential in-laws to get their daughter's hand in marriage, the advent of much smaller families and the new generation preferring not to have children at all, the advent of school children potentially becoming a victim of school shootings putting undue stress on people who want to have families, the rise of psychopaths in western societies with the USA coming in third, the advent of atheism wiping out traditional expectations of certain morals and rules of marriage - a lot of these very profound changes have not caught up to our current level of evolution and biological proclivities. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to whether there are any rules at all, including whether you have to be true to your partner, or even consider him or her beyond what you want for your own individual needs and desires. So divorce rates are sky high.
But to get back to PTSD ...
The symptoms of PTSD that I covered above aren't something you can control or deal with on your own most of the time: counseling from mental health professionals is usually sought to get you on a healthier track (domestic violence counseling, and trauma counseling at the very least). Note: keeping abusers out of your life or on "very minimal contact" with absolutely no drama or emotionally-laid discussions is the very first step to healing. Without that step, you will keep going down the rabbit hole of worsening symptoms for you, and more raging from them. Without treatment for symptoms, and with an abuser still in your life, PTSD is likely to get much, much worse.
If you tell your abuser(s) that you have PTSD, and they are not making any signs that they want to help you, or provide you with peace, comfort, safety, stability or compassion, which they won't be (pretty much guaranteed), consider that these people are not good for you in any way.
Consider also that you weren't born to carry these symptoms, or to take on the constant rages of others, or the constant domination by people who are hypocritical, ethically and morally bankrupt, and cruel. Consider that you are a vital part of the planet and its healing: even healing what ails the human race (abuse, violence, corruption, war and ecological heartlessness). Perhaps you are a vital part of what the human race needs in order to heal: transforming a past of dark deeds by humans into an evolution that is more compassionate, more peaceful and harmonious, more about healthy co-operative relationships. Perhaps if we treated our kids with the respect and love that we would have wanted, and in ways that honor co-operation (as opposed to what abusers do to extract co-operation from you to fulfill their own needs: coercive control and abusing the most vulnerable among us). Start change with the changeable.
October plans
I hope to be back by October with the posts I have been working on since March.
Some quotes I found on the "War at Home" Facebook page:
all rights reserved (note: you can click on the picture to see the whole image and click off of it to read the post)
(note: this post is part of my series, The Narcissistic Nation ... However, unlike other posts in the series, it's not about a spread of narcissism in a nation, but rather about one narcissist effecting many nations ...)
As with most of my posts, a further reading section follows. In this particular case, I feature some articles about Putin's childhood which has a lot to do with his personal makeup and how he rules, and invades other countries, and how he feels about the impact he is making on the lives and fates of others.
There are a lot of psychiatrists and psychologists who say that Vladimir Putin has all of the signs of Malignant Narcissism (see further reading section below), something he shares in common with Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Stalin and King Henry the VIII.
If there was ever a case for why the world should not have a malignant narcissist as a leader of a country, and why other nations' leaders cannot seem to communicate effectively and resolve issues with compromise, reasonableness, less violence and terror, these men (the malignant narcissist leaders) would explain why. As Jerrold M. Post states in his books, it is important to know the signs of malignant narcissists before such leaders are voted into office - or handed power by any government. They should not even be given power in a business or your personal life.
I explain a little why we should all be on the lookout for characteristics of malignant narcissism, because they can make any person be victims of their heartlessness, exploitation and cruelty, all in that order.
Whether you are married to a malignant narcissist, or you are the scapegoat child of the malignant narcissist, or he invades your nation, and blows up your house, or his soldiers cause you injuries, or kill your children, the end result for most of us is a lot of trauma, and some of us, particularly women, will also develop PTSD (since women are more prone to PTSD than men). None of us have the biology and mind to endure what the malignant narcissist does to us unless it is fleeting, except for primary psychopaths who are not particularly common and have a different kind of autonomic nervous system than the rest of us.
Primary psychopaths can actually rush into battle without fears, anxiety or trepidations. It makes sense that we had some psychopaths among us in our ancient hunter-gatherer tribes, to go head-long into battle with another competing tribe without a backward glance, and why they might become leaders. But in contemporary times, nuclear weapons, it is a disaster.
However, having said that, most primary psychopaths do not become leaders of countries. The sociopath (otherwise known as the secondary psychopath) has a lot of qualities like the primary psychopath, but still has the same kind of autonomic nervous system that most of the population has, however, because of their upbringing, learned to subvert anxiety and trepidations in order to conquer trauma symptoms and survive trauma by becoming aggressive. In other words, they became bullies in childhood, and carried their bully mentality into adulthood.
Most despotic dangerous leaders who show lack of empathy for the suffering of others, who start wars that are invasion-oriented, who make plans to start other invasions once they have successfully completed one invasion, whose main ambition is to subvert whole populations to their will, who seek to alter the press and insist on their own narrative, who threaten other nations and the leaders of other nations with retaliatory measures if they interfere with the invasions, who punish those who protest and rebel, almost always are malignant narcissists.
We know enough about Putin's childhood to know that he fits the mold: he became a bully in response to being repeatedly and severely bullied himself (in the "further reading" section below I have cited some articles about Putin's childhood). Most likely Putin has the secondary form of psychopathy, with the traits of narcissism. The advent of narcissism with psychopathy probably happened because he was made to feel entitled to special treatment in addition to being a bully-victim (also something that is prevalent in his biography as a youngster - plus, he was an only child, and never really learned how to get along with others or had any skills of "compromise").
It has been suggested by Todd Grande (in the video below) that he may actually be a dark triad. The dark triad consists of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism.
Machiavellianism, as written in Wikipedia is "a personality trait centered on manipulativeness, callousness, and indifference to morality". It can also display with "a high level of deceitfulness and an unempathetic temperament", something that we see with psychopathy. In fact, Machiavellianism goes hand in hand with psychopathy a lot, but it is more common to see it together with narcissism plus psychopathy, especially if the person happens to be a leader of a nation.
When people are reacting to the wars, threats, lack of empathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy that malignant narcissists are perpetrating against a nation, the populace is reacting in the same way that people react in a close personal relationship to someone with the disorder: fawn or fight or flee or freeze or ignore, or all five at different times.
Most people want to have the freedom to make decisions about their own lives. They do not want to be sublimating to a leader or someone out to hurt them and take away their autonomous decision-making. They don't want to be fed a lot of lies and told to believe them. They don't want to be puppets to an evil regime. They don't want their children to be puppets of an evil regime. They don't want to support evil. So most people will be fighting, fleeing, ignoring or freezing. Fawning happens when you either feel out-powered (i.e. you feel there is no other choice than to join the bad guys in deeds and attitude, and at least pretend to go along with them) or if you feel like you are one of them, or feel you belong more with them than your own people (i.e. you are another bully, and bullies will fawn and plot with each other).
You can see that people are willing to do a lot not to be a puppet to a bullying regime. In this case, victims and potential victims are leaving their homes behind, in the millions, often traveling for days on foot, often with only a suitcase and their children. Fleeing is the best thing to do for children, by the way, and most people care about their children (except malignant narcissists - they only care about children insofar as it serves them and their agendas, and the agenda for power, control and domination will be clear that is all they care about).
Fighting is the other option: you fight and are willing to die to keep the malignant narcissist in check, to slow down the invasion, to keep troops from advancing on loved ones who are trying to flee. You do so because your country-men don't want to be puppets to a controlling regime with a leader hell-bent on either destroying you, overtaking you, bombing what's left of your country to get you to submit to their will, and taking away your freedoms. It's no wonder we are in awe of people willing to fight against the behemoth empire that keeps wanting to swallow other countries and territories up.
Then there is freezing and ignoring. Ignoring is a way to live in a traumatic situation. You ignore the bombs dropping and try to put your mind to other things. But it can also mean that other nations ignore so that they won't be bullied too (however, we know that bullies don't stop and suddenly want to talk peace and reason). So in a way, it is an anesthetizing mindset where you don't try to stop the bullying, but you don't egg it on either. You try to remain neutral to it. It is a lost child way of dealing with threats, the trauma around you, the pain and suffering of those around you. You freeze and stop speaking if the bully gets too close, hoping the bully will turn elsewhere. It is also a kind of gray rock method.
The problem is for society, and the world, and for evolution. We need to evolve past warring and invasions. We need to stop following or worshipping malignant narcissists, and to end putting them in power (even when they want power so badly). If you think about it, invaded nations means that so many people will either be spending their time, resources and energy either defending themselves or attacking the people who are invading them. It is akin to protecting your home from burglars, thieves and murderers who are trying to break in. In other words, victims won't be putting their energy into medicine, remedies for climate change, remedies for poverty, getting educated, and putting their time into their children as much as they would be if they were living in peace. They are caught up in battles, and in a way, both sides lose: they lose lives, they lose money, they lose a lot of what they have built.
In the meantime, the malignant narcissist leader is not all that effected by the destruction, not nearly as effected as those who are in actual life-and-death battles. The morale to fight for a lying, malignant narcissist out to obtain more power at all cost is lost on some soldiers too.
So being vigilant about making sure malignant narcissists do not get into positions of power is paramount if we want to live in peace, reduce wars and invasions, have prosperity, survive, and evolve into a co-operative, empathetic species and good stewards of the earth. I will even go so far as to say that malignant narcissists are a danger to all forms of peace, and even our very existence.
If you think about it, who really wants power any way? When I talk to most people, they are content in their lives, working hard to support themselves and their families, self reflecting, exploring their ideas of how to make something better: a better medicine, an energy that is more efficient and less polluting, or a painting more beautiful, or raising children who will be good for the world and to their neighbors. We are living our lives, expanding our consciousness, expanding our understanding, learning a great deal, raising children or seeing a project through to fruition. That's a normal life.
But malignant narcissists don't live like this. Nor do they want to live like this. And they don't care if other people want to live like this. They want to be exceptional in terms of the attention they garner (whether it is good or bad attention). They are gipped with an intense addiction to power, control and domination, such as they must seek more and more of it, so that they don't go through a narcissistic collapse, even when they have a lot of power already. This is where the aggression to take over other people's lives, to make them puppets, or to invade comes into play.
People who are traumatized are not realizing these goals either. They are dealing with a brain that is on fire with "fight-or-flight" reactions, with high levels of cortisol and anxiety, especially if they have been exposed to malignant narcissists in any profound way. And a war is a profound way that effects a lot of people, generations of people, millions and millions of people, even the whole world. I don't know about you, but after seeing the evening news daily on the Ukrainian humanitarian situation, I have nightmares every night.
Malignant narcissists don't have nightmares in the same way the rest of us do. They worry about themselves; they worry about their ambitions for more power and control being thwarted in some way (sanctions, getting push-back by other nations that are just as powerful as they are). They do not worry about other people, and the suffering of others. They aren't crying over the children being injured, killed and being left homeless because their houses or apartments were bombed or obliterated through their commands. They don't care that the people they are hurting, invested a lot in their homes that are now destroyed, invested in a peaceful existence and hard work, invested in the freedom to make their own lives and the choices about their own lives. They are thinking about how well they are doing in taking over other people, their land, their homes, their minds. They are thinking about how well their victims are giving in to them and whether their victims are getting closer to total submission to the Great God of Violence and Threats "You do what I tell you to do or I will kill you or make you homeless!" is the constant message of the malignant narcissist, and of most invasions.
Can we really afford dictators who are malignant narcissists, and who care so little about how they effect other people in a world that is teeming with nuclear weapons?
If a highly intelligent being from a peaceful planet looked at our situation, they would think we were mostly all nuts, nuts for having malignant narcissists run nations, nuts for making weapons that could destroy the whole planet (which could end up in the hands of malignant narcissists, the most likely to fire them off and use them for murdering a whole nation, or for suicide purposes), nuts for allowing anyone to start a war or an invasion which is traumatizing millions of people, nuts for thinking that if we stay out of this one war, then "that will be the end of it", when it is so obvious that malignant narcissists can't stop with one territory, one country ... their minds work in such a way that they will always feel the impulse to have power and control over another nation, or region, and then another after that, and another after that, not stopping until they die. All of it adds up to violent traumatizing invasions.
Then they are likely to leave it all to another narcissist or psychopath, most likely someone who went along with all of the evil they wanted to inflict on other people. And the cycle starts again ...
Power, control and domination is ALL that they live for, and the way they think they can get it is through threats, terrorizing, violence, abuse, being anaesthetized to the pain of others, selfishness to the point of not caring about others, blackmail, lies, self-aggrandizement, controlling the narrative, false flag operations (i.e. smear campaigns) and blame-shifting their horrific deeds onto others.
Putin probably has the attitude that Ukraine brought it on themselves by daring to be a free country, by daring to be a democracy when they are right on Russia's border, by daring to talk openly about politics amongst themselves like Western countries do without threats to their lives and livelihoods, by daring to think it could join NATO and snub Putin, authoritarianism and Russia.
If you are a child abuse survivor of a malignant narcissist, you grow up with these attitudes, that you must be grateful for authoritarianism, grateful for not being free or able to tell the truth without the malignant god-of-war breathing his wrath down your throat. Threats abound for your entire lifetime unless you just give up on your parent. We know this is the way malignant narcissists relate to nations, and we know this is the way they relate to quite a few of their family members too.
The sight of fear, terror and trauma is something a lot of them like to see because to many of them it means that they are "winning the war" and they start savoring the sublimation, the "giving in" to them and their demands, the surrender when they see this. They aren't thinking like the rest of us would think: "Those poor children having to endure so much violence! Those mothers who had to leave their bombed out homes that they worked so hard to afford! All of those refugees who had to walk 200 miles with their children and a small suitcase to the Polish border, never knowing if they would ever be able to return home again to see their husbands and fathers, to live in camps: that is so awful! I must be the most horrible monster to have driven them to that kind of desperate life!" No, they are thinking, "Good! The war is working!" That's how evil and blind they are.
So the next time you think a despotic tyrant is a "monster", replace that with "malignant narcissist". Then as you say it to others, it will spread to the point where people will know what to look for, who not to vote for, who to start sanctioning waybefore they get to the point where they are threatening the entire world.
HOW TO TELL IF A CANDIDATE AN AUTOCRAT A LEADER MAY BE A MALIGNANT NARCISSIST
In this section I discuss what to look for, so that you are not enamored with a leader who "seems to speak your language" and "seems to address your concerns", but who may actually be the opposite from what they are portraying.
And that's what is so difficult when it comes to these leaders: we often don't know because they are putting on a facade, an acting trip. But here are the slip-ups they are most likely to make:
love bombing: Despotic tyrants will sound initially like they deeply care about other people's concerns. They will keep it up as long as they can, but at some point it will be obvious it is a façade used to win votes, to obtain power over others, to stay in power and get more and more of it, usually by unfair means.
"All of your dreams will come true, and the nation will prosper and become the envy of the world, if you only vote for me, and put all of your confidence in me" is the message most of them portray. However, as you'll see, it is a sign of future faking(i.e. promises they never plan to fulfill, but which they think people want to hear enough to put them in power: extremely common for all types of narcissists).
finds scapegoats to blame: Hitler used Jews as his scapegoats. Saddam Hussein used Kurds as his scapegoats. Stalin had different scapegoats from time to time, including engineers, Trotsky-ites, and Ukrainians. He killed more people than Hitler (around three million). Pol Pot used the intelligentsia as his scapegoats. Putin appears to be using Ukrainians as his scapegoats too, claiming they are Nazis and that they are installing biological weapons labs. He also appears to use NATO nations to blame for his behavior too.
Scapegoating is necessary for despotic tyrants to take the blame off off of themselves and stick someone else with it. They aren't going to be saying, "I invaded your country (or territory) because all I can think about is having control and domination over you." No, they will be lying about "reasons" to kill and torture people of a nation, and making sure news outlets repeat the narrative that they want. People either "believe" the narrative or "don't believe" the narrative, and at any rate become confused as to what "the real story" is.
Scapegoats keep him from being attacked personally, or by government insiders.
They aggrandize themselves while putting their competition down (often using insults, false narratives and creating confusion). They will also use exaggerations to explain others. Mudslinging, smear campaigns and exaggerations are used in political advertisements these days, even in Democratic countries like the USA. Negative ads about the opponent are to get people to doubt the professionalism and direction of the opponent while aggrandizing the person or political party running the ad. So narcissism is always part of politics, a bit.
However, malignant narcissists are constantly doing it, even when they are not currently running for an office. They "divide and conquer", choosing "the side" most loyal to them, most ego-satisfying to them, and most likely to be brainwashed by their words. Their words are "believed" to be the gospel truth.
They also pepper their speeches with praise for their loyalists and insult, threaten, punish and run on-going smear campaigns against those who they see as belonging to the opposite party (or their opponent).
Since malignant narcissists see so much in black-and-white terms, they see their opponents as "the enemy" and as ruthless as they are.
When their enemies win favor with the populace, they will whine and rant that it isn't possible because they are so popular. They will insist that it's underhanded "dirty tricks", only the pure spiteful rivalry of their opponents, that put them out of power.
Malignant narcissists spend most of their time triangulating other people and putting others down.
Create suspicion of the press, attempt to control the press, attempt to control the narrative the press reports and if the press doesn't behave the way they want, discounts the press, their reporters, insisting that reporters are having agendas to report false stories, and to see them in a terrible light: We see this with all of the despotic tyrants I have named: Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, etc. Eventually it ends up so that the despotic tyrant ends up controlling the press and controlling what is being said.
Controlling the press also means constant scapegoating - blaming other people, or another party, for what goes wrong in a nation.
The point also is to slant stories so that they look favorably on the despotic tyrant and disfavor-ably on the scapegoats.
Create nepotism: The reason why despotic tyrants like nepotism is because they already know how to control these people. They deem these people to be their best loyalists, people who will help them do their dirty work and to help normalize the abuse, threats, invasions and murders they commit.
In return, these relatives and friends get the best houses or palaces, the best clothes, the best yachts, the best servants, planes, limousines, etc.
The point of having these people serve the tyrant is to portray the following message: "We get along with him. We are loyal to him. Why can't you? He's a good man and he deserves the utmost praise!" They are getting a lot of gifts in return for normalizing.
Compulsively competitive: Everything is a competition to a malignant narcissist: of who is smarter, who is more capable, who can win at popularity contests, who is healthier, who can strategize better, who is richer and can exploit resources, who can fool others better, who can dominate the minds of others the most (one of the reasons they start wars is to get attention), etc.
Just about everything that comes out of their mouths has strategy and manipulations behind it. Covert malignant narcissists also keep their plans and thoughts "close to the vest".
They are always playing games with your mind or perceptions to "win" something.
Most of us aren't all that competitive. We want things to be just and fair, and that's about it.
Two faced: This is one of the hallmarks of narcissism (all forms of it). "What you see is NOT what you get."
It is definitely something to watch out for.
They are nice to people, but then verbally tear them apart, scoff at them, and insult them behind their backs. Most often they refer to them as stupid or crazy in some manner. They treat other world leaders like this too, except other narcissists (for a time - what they will focus on is different however: that their fellow narcissist did not strategize well enough).
Don't make the mistake that they won't be two-faced to you too, even if they tell you they won't, even when you are their partner or kid. They do it to everyone they know, at one time or another. And they rule this way too: appearing to be willing to compromise (through diplomatic "talks") when what they are really doing is trying to find weaknesses to invade or be the world's leading power, a dictatorial power.
Find henchmen and sychophants who will condone the attitude that everything that they want is also good for the country: Despotic tyrants typically have boot-lickers who will tell them what they want to hear. If they don't think he is a genius at all times, or if someone suggests using caution, the tyrant simply rages and lets them go.
Most sycophants aren't all that smart, or they have to hide their intelligence to be safe.
If you are smart, you'll want to be somewhere else where your intelligence can be best expressed. Being a sycophant isn't a fun job, or the best use of human potential. This has something to do with their downfall and why they eventually act on fantasies and paranoia.
The problem is that the despotic tyrant cannot get a good realistic perspective on much of anything, especially if he is only surrounded by people who flatter him. Flatterers are also not going to be enlightened about the reactions of other people or nations; their job is to say "yes" to everything the tyrant wants. So they tend not to be experts, only loyalists, yes-men, parrots.
Hitler, for instance, thought he was better at war strategy than his generals (because of his arrogance, which most tyrants have in spades). It was why he lost so many soldiers (Hitler insisted that soldiers should never to retreat, only advance - when his generals thought the opposite: that it was necessary at times to retreat, recover, regroup to continue an offensive). "Not retreating" is very much a tyrant kind of move too.
Malignant narcissists especially have no idea how people who have been invaded feel. To make them even less able to understand, they also don't care how other people feel (their disorder will always mean lack of empathy). They have no idea that these people won't simply capitulate under pressure. Anger and resentment will burn in the souls of the invaded, and it is likely to be multi-generational unless the invading country itself adopts the invaded country's ideals, a love of democracy, a love of hearing the perspectives of the invaded nation, and a love of its religion.
If Russia doesn't adopt these things, and is not lenient about perspectives and ways of life, then if Ukraine becomes part of Russia (or the "old Soviet Union"), there is likely to be continual unrest and violence.
A dictator is never going to successfully wipe out how and why his victims disagree with him.
Again, the dictator wants sycophants, even from his victims. So unrealistic and out of touch with the reality of how people react! Would you be a sycophant to anyone who killed your family, bombed your house, left you homeless, without a job, food, water and shelter? But, believe it or not, malignant narcissists think it is possible, and even sanely justified (it's okay to laugh now).
This is just another reason why they shouldn't be running anything, let alone a country.
Addicted to flattery: Malignant narcissists are addicted to flattery. It means they will reject, or destroy, or ostracize people who do not agree with them or go along with everything they want.
Malignant narcissists are plagued with black and white thinking, so they typically see people as "complete friend" or "complete enemy". Plus they are so out of touch with how people think and feel anyway that they can't see much beyond whether they are friend or enemy. Their minds are not focused on understanding others; they are focused on "how to manipulate others" to get what they want. While they may be good at predatory moves and manipulations, they are not good at understanding why people rebel.
If they are a leader of a country, they will typically rage at people who do not flatter them. Most malignant narcissists who are leaders rage at people who they feel aren't flattering them "enough" anyway, but once they reach leadership positions, they get much worse.
They hate cartoonists, satirists and comedians who poke fun at them. They will make every effort to shut them down so that only a flattering image is presented in the media. However, they have no problem making fun of other people. A lot.
Profound lack of empathy: You can tell how un-empathetic they are by how much they criticize other people, and how many people they criticize, and whether what they say is peppered with insults and false narratives - that's the first sign.
A lot of blame-shifting is another sign as to how un-empathetic they will be, especially if they refer to their exes as crazy.
A love of dictators, authoritarians and keeping company with other hurtful or bullying people is another sign.
You don't want to wait until they start a war, start an insurrection, scapegoat large groups of people or another nation, and try to control what the press is reporting before you realize that they have no empathy. By then, it's too late.
If they have all of the rest of the qualities of malignant narcissism as it pertains to leadership (and the list on this page), then that is also the sign that they will have no empathy, and no remorse for hurting other people, or destroying the homes, children, and communities of others.
Envy and paranoia can eat them alive to the point where they feel they must attack those that they feel are provoking them to feel that way: For despotic tyrants, they hate to see other nations which are democracies thrive. It makes them feel that their "authoritarian nation" pales in comparison. They squelch free speech, make their citizens poor so they can make themselves and their oligarch bootlickers rich; they punish rebels who speak out about their policies or hypocrisies.
So they want nations that aren't like theirs to suffer through: * internal fighting * distrust in their government * the presence of an oligarch (rich who are "favored" by the government, who don't have to pay taxes, who get sweetheart deals if they break the law) * the election of authoritarian dictators who are like them and disenfranchise a lot of their population
In other words, they want most nations to mirror them (so that they, and their citizens) don't feel like they are lacking something (freedom, free choice, free speech). They also like mirrors because it is like condoning: "We are just the same; not a threat to you at all".
Paranoia eats them alive when they feel they have enemies from without and from within. To get rid of their paranoia, they often attack those who they feel "could be" an enemy. It's a pre-emptive strike to make sure that they stay or achieve an all-powerful position on the world stage.
Envy works the same way. And malignant narcissists feel envy so strongly that it practically eats them alive. They have to contrive popularity among their people to relieve it. They have to attack others who they are envious of so that they feel better. They have to try to recreate envy and jealousy in others, so they set up competitions (triangulation). They have to feel that they are so important that they have to set up a "tough guy" veneer. They have to feel that other people envy them, so they flaunt wealth and prestige.
And what does all of this create? More envy and jealousy because these are contrived desperate actions on their part to get other people to respect them, like them, want their company, and want their leadership. These are not organic happenings.
One of the reasons why tyrants don't become as powerful and respected as empathetic leaders is because they spend so much time at triangulation games and pumping up their image as geniuses and not very much time on policies that make sense for their populations. Most of their ideas for the nation come from others (and then they claim them as their own).
Erroneous blaming, perspecticide and false flag operations: Malignant narcissists are very belief oriented, as well as fantasy oriented, and as I've said above, very, very paranoid too. Bad combination.
A nation that is becoming more democratic, and in this case, less of a puppet of the Russian government and dictator, will be seen as a terrible threat.
Despotic narcissistic tyrants require absolute loyalty and puppetry (even though they are incredibly disloyal themselves and are allergic to being dominated) in order to feel safe and not attack.
So they will erroneously blame a leader or country of something in order to justify an attack. In this case, Putin said that Ukraine needed to be "de-Nazified". Russian media (controlled by Putin's government) also claimed that Ukraine was harboring biological weapons - all likely projection to justify Russia's use of them on the Ukrainian population down the road.
In other words, malignant narcissists find ways to claim that their victims are dangerous aggressors and threaten them when there is absolutely no proof, and no justification.
They attack based on beliefs and fantasies. Malignant narcissists attack in such a way to make the most devastating impact, in ways that will hurt them the most. Zelensky's vision was about trying to make his country prosperand to take it into the modern era, away from corruption and away from appeasing Russia. And Putin found that very, very threatening. Perhaps it would be a NATO country.
So he felt he had to attack it in such a way that the population would never think to try that again, thus the bombing of civilians. He tried to make the argument that Ukraine belonged to Russia because it was once a part of the Soviet Union - so it was a baseless claim) and that it should be grateful, prostrating and capitulating to Russia and to its leader. That's a narcissistic fantasy and it is not something that can be brought about easily.
So it is a pre-emptive attack. Pre-emptive attacks are very much an Antisocial Personality Disorder trait (malignant narcissists usually have pronounced Antisocial Personality traits).
Watching civilians fleeing, dying, being injured, crying at losing their babies, taking away their homes, making them desperate for food and clean water, bombing their schools and hospitals is a sadistic act. Sadism is very much an Antisocial Personality Disorder trait too. Sadism makes these leaders feel a lot better, and full of power. It's a depraved kind of power, but to them, it gives them a temporary rush of dopamine. They like all of the attention too ... until they get tried for war crimes. However, nuclear weapons are his shield against that.
This will give any despotic tyrant the ability to feel they can display as much heartlessness and sadism as they want: it's an endless hit of a sick kind of pleasure, and the power that they want keeps coming to them. They have the power to effect lives, get nations to capitulate, get nations to want to talk to him (where he can say "no" and derive the power and pleasure to say "no" without having to show a sign of empathy).
Now when these kinds of people are running for leadership positions, you won't necessarily see this right away. So the things to watch out for are these qualities: * Makes grand, conspiratorial accusations against other leaders, other political parties, other nations. * Dis-information campaigns are a part of life * Malignant narcissists demand you agree with them, even if it's about a lie. If you don't, expect narcissistic rage, and punishments. Or being fired. Definitely attempts at brainwashing. * Erroneously blames others for why he is losing power or clout * Makes it clear he hates the press (unless it is run exclusively by him) - important sign. * Creates confusion as to his real intentions * Makes other branches of government seem like enemies of the people * Makes the argument that a "strong-man" (who threatens other leaders with ease) needs to lead the country. * Always seems to be on the attack with something or someone. * Shows a profound lack of empathy for refugees of any kind unless he deems them to be 100 percent loyal to him * Shows a profound lack of empathy for what other nations are enduring, and will only provide assistance or help if there is something "in it" for him.
Remember that unwarranted attacks are almost always about the ambition to gain more power, control and domination.
Punishing if another nation, or section of the same country, appears to go out of the role: Roles are all-important to authoritarian dictators. If he assigns a role to a nation, he expects the role to be fulfilled always. If they don't fulfill the role, he gets nervous, starts to panic and feels that they are too unstable (they might go against him).
Despotic tyrants are usually authoritarians, so they cannot handle or condone other nations around them who aren't the same, thus assigning roles, which person to put in power in which government.
Having a democratic country on their border which has fair elections, whose people debate politics and the political agendas of their leaders openly in the streets, whose leaders have high approval ratings among its people, and a nation who is prospering under those conditions is totally outrageous and abhorrent to a dictator. It creates too much of a lure for "his" own people to defect. So they have to be wiped out if he is going to maintain control.
It means that "his" citizens are required to walk on eggshells about political discussions (or they will be imprisoned), and they are required to look no further than their economic status (poorer than the nation "next door").
The only way that the tyrant will accept leaving a smaller nation next door alone is if its citizens are as oppressed and as unhappy as his own citizens. The only way that the tyrant will accept leaving a smaller nation next door alone, is if they have a similar kind of dictator, "friendly" to them.
Any small, easily invaded country, will have to be punished for going out of the role of being filled with unhappy citizens. The role also requires that the citizens be at least as unhappy and oppressed as the main dictators citizens, if not more so. He wants the envy to flow his way, to his country, not to their own country.
If they go out of role, they must be punished and obliterated enough to be an unhappy people living in a devastating place; i.e. the dictator feels they must be kept "down" and derided until they can go back to their role.
The problem with "being kept down" is that the invading country loses its status in terms of trade (becoming economically depleted and demonized), and the invaded country becomes shattered (with not much to take over). Building it all back up to become a super power again becomes a huge challenge.
Can be sadistic in their punishments of any rebels: Obviously dictators cannot tolerate anyone who questions what they do or points out flaws.
When narcissists are criticized they rage (they don't consider the allegations at all). Remember they are flattery freaks: they can only hear flattery. Rebellions challenge their feelings of grandiosity, superiority, and their huge egos, so they have to put rebellion down.
In the USA, we have a style of government that does not allow unmitigated rage, ego and cruel and unusual punishment by a president to happen very easily, if at all. The Congress keeps it all in check.
"Dictator rage" can turn into sadism. You keep hurting your "supposed" or "potential enemy" (the one causing the rebellion) in order to get him to "finally shut up." That is so you can keep ruling in the same way with the same amount of flattery going your way.
In democracies, presidents-who-act-like-tyrants will be insulting, claiming "false allegations" or "false news", and running smear campaigns on their potential opponents instead. So the sadism is more likely to remain verbal rather than turn into anything physical (imprisonment and torture, unless they can, through ambiguity, convince others to do the violence, imprisonments and tortures).
Sadism is almost always a sign of Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Constant demands that people capitulate to their leadership: Most grown-ups don't need leaders or leadership as much as despotic tyrants seem to think we need them. If society is run the way it is supposed to run with laws (like driving on the right side of the road, and putting your trash in receptacles made for trash, and not murdering people over a drug habit), then society can run fairly smoothly.
Where populations have issues with their government tends to be with distribution of wealth, how much to tax various kinds of workers, and how much the government should provide for old people and the disabled who can no longer work, what kind of infrastructure to invest in. Where extenuating circumstances happen is with big climate changes, monetary policies, cataclysmic changes, wars we should or should not be involved with, what the government should or should not invest in.
For the most part, citizens do not like to be watched, they don't like it when government makes decisions about how we should make an income and how we should live, in general they don't like government over-stepping and controlling us. But most populations do not like oligarchs either, people or corporations who receive special treatment, tax advantages, and status with their government (lower taxes, subsidized, bailed out when they get into financial trouble, treated to special parties and dinners by the country's leaders).
In other words, most people like being in-between these two extremes. In the USA, this translates into balancing power between Democrats and Republicans, voting them in and out, and switching parties who rule by voting for Democrats for a couple of years until they overstep and then Republicans for a few years until they overstep.
In very general terms, when Democrats are overstepping invasive government policies and economics, and getting too close to Socialism with high taxes to pay for "programs", then a Republican is likely to be voted in to stop the trajectory. When Republicans are playing favorites with their citizens/corporations by creating an oligarch and Fascist-like tax policies where businesses are inexorably linked to government and its decisions, then a Democrat is likely to be voted in to stop the trajectory. It's been like this for a hundred years, with the mid 1940s to early 1970s bending more towards liberalism, and the mid 1980s into the 2000s bending more towards conservatism. We can all argue which is better, but the truth is, from voting statistics, most Americans like it somewhere in between (which explains why Independents make up more of the voting populace than purely Democrat or Republican voters).
Since this is more of a "natural selection", the former Soviet Union or its present Russian off-spring isn't practicing what most people want, and their leaders know it. Which is why Russia, its leaders and oligarchs, must constantly be toying with the media, investing in lies and half-truths, convincing the population they need an overwhelming authoritarian dictator (a type of infantilizing), so that they can brainwash their people by omitting certain forms of news or bending it in such a way to make the leaders and oligarchs "right": "You want us, you want the leaders that are provided to you by Russia. The U.S. and NATO are evil."
I think many Russians survive without thinking about politics or talking about it. They try to ignore it, a kind of "freeze response" to not deal with walking on eggshells of dictatorial dangerous narcissistic leaders, their henchmen and their attitudes about dissent.
Plays the victim when they go out of power, or when they are tried for crimes (including war crimes): Always. They will blame others (especially those they deem as enemies).
They will try to make the argument if they are losing power, that their power was taken from them in conspiratorial ways, or they say they were let down by loyalists.
If they bomb another country and then get bombed in return, to stop their invasions, they will say that they never deserved it, that they are a victim.
They believe the law doesn't apply to them: Almost all despotic tyrants break laws (including international laws), rules, and forms of decency to get what they want.
When they get caught, they usually say things like: "Everybody does it", "I know how to work the system. It's too bad you haven't figured out how to do that," "Everything I do is legal. It's how other people see it that makes it seem illegal", "I'll just sue the people who are trying to make me accountable. They don't have a leg to stand on."
It's all about deflecting, excusing, lying and blaming. Quite disgusting, but some people who think despotic tyrants are saviors may go along with it all and deem the opposing forces to be conspirators hell-bent on taking their favorite leader down.
They also think of themselves as too entitled and special to have to adhere to laws and rules.
However, if other people break laws (or even make mistakes), they are extremely punishing.
Hypersensitive to criticism Despotic tyrants can't stand to be criticized, but they dish out criticism constantly. They rage when they are criticized. This is what makes it hard to discuss important matters with them. They refuse to listen to any criticisms about how they are conducting affairs internationally or domestically, or how their invasion of other countries isn't going the way they planned. It is a hit to their grandiose sense of self.
They believe they are beyond criticism, but that other people are not.
One sign of that belief is that they will punish others for not agreeing with them on how they view things. They make it known that your job is to agree with them, always.
Malignant narcissists (as opposed to run-of-the-mill narcissists) are vengeful and spiteful towards anyone who criticizes them (or that they believe is criticizing them, i.e. paranoia about being criticized).
Reckless and impulsive: They are reckless in their ambitions to be "top dog". They often don't think repercussions through. They can be trigger happy, starting divisions, wars and grievances in an impulsive way against populations or other leaders. Co-operation is in short supply (they prefer to threaten and punish instead).
Nuclear weapons are of particular concern in the hands of malignant narcissists. They can use them in a murder-suicide way, especially when they feel backed against a wall, that their ambitions are being thwarted, or that their people, soldiers and henchmen are going against them.
Despotic tyrants also entertain coups, territorial take-overs, revenges against other nations, and certainly their mind is always on how to gain more power and dominance.
Hypocrites: They feel that they get to break laws, but they expect everyone else to adhere to laws at all times.
They feel that they are privileged enough to hurt other people, but become over-sensitive and cowards if someone so much as criticizes them for one of their lapses.
They feel they have a right to dominate and dictate, but would never tolerate being dominated and dictated to themselves.
They feel they have a right to attack or invade other nations or governments, but feel their country is sovereign.
They feel they have a right to own nukes, but will sanction other nations that have nukes.
And so on ...
Everything is personal for them: In a malignant narcissist's world view, there is no such thing as a mistake (they believe it is always intentional), there is no such thing as an unintentional oversight (they believe it is always intentional), joking around and having fun (they believe it is being done to make fun of them and about trying to damage their ego).
When people want to take away their power, they especially take it personally, becoming vengeful, making up conspiracy theories, wanting to assassinate people (or leaders) who are challenging their rights to power. This is just one of many reasons why malignant narcissists should not be a leader of a nation. It's too dangerous for the rest of us, and they will not listen to reason, or how their actions will effect their children, spouse, comrades, government, the people of their nation. They actually do not care how their actions effect others. They are too arrogant and feel they are "too right" to care.
THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR IN THE HANDS OF AUTHORITARIAN LEADERS WHO ARE MALIGNANT NARCISSISTS
I would say the possibility of nuclear weapons being used again is pretty certain and it will be these kinds of leaders who will use them at some point ... unless the world's population can keep malignant narcissists out of being the heads of countries.
The problem for populations in keeping them out is that these narcissists want powerful positions so badly that they will do just about anything to obtain them (including a lot of lying, sweet talk, "can-do" statements and promises, or conversely, threats, attacks, blackmail, false narratives and smear campaigns).
Some thoughts and reality checks about nuclear war comes from this article:
We Need to Relearn What We’d Hoped to Forget (Here we are again, trying to make our way around nuclear terms and concepts as war rages in the middle of Europe.) - by Tom Nichols for The Atlantic states: ... In 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles came up with the idea of threatening to use America’s “great capacity to retaliate, instantly, by means and at places of our choosing,” to deter Communist aggression. Instead of facing down the Communists in every theater in the world, we would “massively retaliate” with our nuclear arsenal for any Soviet misbehavior. This, of course, was impossible. Although we were committed to our own defense and that of our allies, we weren’t seriously going to respond to any provocation with the nuclear destruction of Leningrad or Vladivostok ... ... Flexible Response But what if the Soviets went ahead and marched into Europe instead of launching nuclear weapons? A madman’s threat to start blowing up Soviet cities in response—that is, to engage in massive retaliation—was ghastly and immoral. And from the point of view of deterrence, it was even worse: It wasn’t credible. The answer to this dilemma in the 1960s was a NATO policy—one still in effect—called flexible response. During the Cold War, NATO was outgunned. It could not win a major conventional war in Europe against the U.S.S.R. Instead, the U.S. and NATO promised high risks of escalation. If you invade us, we told the Soviets, we’ll hold you off as long as we can with any number of conventional options. But we reserve the right to escalate the conflict—and even to use nuclear weapons first, if that’s what it takes to save ourselves and our allies ... ... The “triad” and Mutual Assured Destruction The 1960s brought nuclear arms into the missile age, and bombs that once would been delivered by loading them on aircraft for hours of risky flight over hostile territory—think of the B-52 crew in Dr. Strangelove—would now reach their targets in minutes. Bombers and submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) would form a triad that could survive a first strike from the enemy and then hit back. This ability is now commonly called a “secure second-strike capability.” These technological advances were wedded to massive stocks of nuclear warheads, and soon even the most bellicose hawk could do the math: A full nuclear exchange meant the complete destruction of both sides (and most of the world). Even the most elegant war plans would result in millions killed instantly, and billions more dying later from radiation or famine. There would be no “winner” in such a war. The enemy’s obliteration and ours was inevitable: mutual assured destruction, or MAD. This reality led the Americans in the late 1960s to propose MAD to the Soviets as a policy. Let us recognize, we said to the Kremlin, that there is no counting on victory here. That means we, and you, will not try to develop defenses, a position the Americans held until President Ronald Reagan initiated a strategic-defense program in 1983. We will not make provocative investments in civil defense. We will proceed in every conflict between us—conflicts that are inevitable in our competition—with the duty to do everything possible to avoid a global nuclear war. The Soviets, at first, wanted no part of this suicide pact. They believed in defenses, and claimed that even after a nuclear war, the superior nature of Soviet social and economic organization—no, really, they said this—would allow them to recover first; they would one day preside over the final burial of capitalism ...
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT WAR
It takes intelligence, ingenuity, creativity, patience, time, an understanding of architecture, knowledge about engineering feats that have happened in history, and a love of civic beauty to build beautiful buildings. War can take it all down in a number of seconds.
Which uses our higher mind?
It takes a lot of emotional investment, money, hard work, empathy, creativity, patience and love to raise a child. War can destroy your child in a number of seconds.
Which uses our higher selves?
It takes a lot of benefit of the doubt, compromise, understanding different points of view, appealing to people's better nature, trust, time, attention, and tireless resolve to build a relationship. An impulsive destructive reaction (narcissistic abuse, abuse of power, stonewalling, refusing to consider the effect on others, war crimes, bombing civilians) can take a workable relationship down in a number of seconds, and make it unworkable. In other words, talking in the usual reasonable way to a leader who is hell-bent on committing war crimes won't be productive. When one leader is in a relationship to out-compete, to lie, to ignore another leader of a country and the concerns of other world leaders, and appears to be fine with the destruction of other nations, and appears to be fine being sanctioned by other nations, it makes any future relationship impossible. The tyrants relationship with other world leaders will be rife with distrust. Basically talks have to end because all that there is left in the tyrant is the ambition to destroy others to gain more power and domination.
Which uses our better selves? Which produces morale in most of us?
Most of us know the answers to these questions and most of us use our better selves.
Malignant narcissists never will. They will always be trying to hurt others, censor others, using false flag operations and smear campaigns, gutting other people's property or nations by terrorist means, in order to gain more power, control and wealth.
Which is why they should never be granted leadership positions, ever, but especially leadership of a country.
"Does Putin Have Dark Triad Traits? | Vladimir Putin Case Analysis" by Dr. Todd Grande:
"Putin Has Fallen Into The 'Dictator Trap', Says Professor (Professor Brian Klaas discusses how Vladimir Putin has fallen into a 'dictator trap' and why dictators eventually make mistakes when they believe in their fake realities.)" - MSNBC:
An excerpt: ... The risks of miscalculation are compounded, psychology research has shown, by the fact that power literally goes to your head, including in a key way that may be relevant in explaining Putin’s costly gambit in Ukraine. The longer someone is in power, the more they begin to get a sense of what is known as “illusory control,” a mistaken belief that they can control outcomes much more than they actually can. That delusion is particularly dangerous in dictatorships ...
Putin's Road to War: Julia Ioffe (interview) | FRONTLINE - Frontline, PBS excerpt: "In an interview for the FRONTLINE documentary “Putin’s Road to War,” journalist Julia Ioffe discusses Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — and why she believes the Russian leader is now “more dangerous than he’s ever been at any point in the last 22 years.” “What he has opened up with this invasion is unthinkable,” Ioffe tells FRONTLINE. “And because he is losing and because the sanctions and the Ukrainians are humiliating him, because he is backed into a corner, he is the most dangerous he has ever been, because it is now existential for him.” Julia Ioffe is an American journalist who was born in Russia. She is a writer for and founding partner of the media company Puck. She previously reported on politics and world affairs for The Atlantic. This interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Mike Wiser on March 3, 2022. It has been edited for clarity and length."
Some other videos are featured in the "further reading section" below. The above are ones that I thought were most important to the discussion, in terms of the present crisis.
Since the original publication, more videos:
Putin has features of a psychopath: Expert | The Donlon Report - News Nation (interview with Dr. Ziv Cohen, a board-certified forensic (criminal) and clinical psychiatrist who has consulted on over 50 murder cases, including over a dozen cases for the US Department of Justice. Dr. Cohen is also a clinical assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and adjunct faculty at Columbia University.)
Is Putin a Psychopath? | Jon Ronson and Brian Klaas on Power - How To Academy Mindset Brian Klaas is also featured in the video above in the MSNBC video describing the "Dictator Trap". excerpt for description of this video: ... Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? How do you tell if your leader is a psychopath? Are we drawn to following bad people? To find out, Brian Klaas met presidents, philanthropists, cultists and dictators. He tells his story to Jon Ronson. Dr Brian Klaas is an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London and a columnist for the Washington Post. Klaas is also a frequent television commentator and political consultant. He was previously based at the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford. He is also the host of the Power Corrupts podcast. He has advised governments, US political campaigns, NATO, the European Union, multi-billion dollar investors, international NGOs, and international politicians. On YouTube, Brian has been featured on CNN (strongmen leaders), MSNBC (Corruption in the republican party, dictators, authoritarianism), David Pakman Show, TEDx Talks, BBC Newsnight, Skeptic and Forward with Andrew Yang. ...
excerpt: ... It’s not really surprising that people with personality disorders are drawn to political power – narcissists crave attention and affirmation, and feel that they are superior to others and have the right to dominate them. They also lack empathy, which means that they are able to ruthlessly exploit and abuse people for the sake of power. Psychopaths feel a similar sense of superiority and lack of empathy, but without the same impulse for attention and adoration. But pathocracy isn’t just about individuals. As Lobaczewski pointed out, pathological leaders tend to attract other people with psychological disorders. At the same time, empathetic and fair-minded people gradually fall away. They are either ostracised or step aside voluntarily, appalled by the growing pathology around them. As a result, over time pathocracies become more entrenched and extreme. You can see this process in the Nazi takeover of the German government in the 1930s, when Germany moved from democracy to pathocracy in less than two years. Democracy is an essential way of protecting people from pathological politicians, with principles and institutions that limit their power (the Bill of Rights in the US, which guarantees certain rights to citizens is a good example). This is why pathocrats hate democracy. Once they attain power they do their best to dismantle and discredit democratic institutions, including the freedom and legitimacy of the press. This is the first thing that Hitler did when he became German chancellor, and it is what autocrats such as Trump, Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán have been attempting to do.
Power Causes Brain Damage (How leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people—that were essential to their rise) - by Jerry Useem for The Atlantic excerpt: ... The historian Henry Adams was being metaphorical, not medical, when he described power as “a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.” But that’s not far from where Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, ended up after years of lab and field experiments. Subjects under the influence of power, he found in studies spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—becoming more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view.
Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at McMaster University, in Ontario, recently described something similar. Unlike Keltner, who studies behaviors, Obhi studies brains. And when he put the heads of the powerful and the not-so-powerful under a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation machine, he found that power, in fact, impairs a specific neural process, “mirroring,” that may be a cornerstone of empathy. Which gives a neurological basis to what Keltner has termed the “power paradox”: Once we have power, we lose some of the capacities we needed to gain it in the first place. ...
Vladimir Putin, Narcissist? (How the psychology of narcissism might offer insight on the Russian leader) - by Joseph Burgo for The Atlantic (2014 article) excerpt: ... During a recent segment on the PBC NewsHour, for example, New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that U.S. attitudes toward Putin have “hardened to an amazing degree” and the current administration now views him as a “narcissistic autocrat.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, has accused Putin of “narcissistic megalomania.” The Financial Times referred to the Sochi Olympics as “Putin’s narcissistic self-tribute.” ... ... Narcissism is a severe psychological disorder that always takes root in childhood, where family life is marked by trauma and emotional chaos. When his earliest experiences drastically depart from what is normal or expectable, a child grows up with a painful feeling of internal defect. He comes to feel that there is something damaged and shameful about himself, an “ugliness” that must be concealed. He may grow up feeling that he is a “loser.” And so he develops a defensive identity to hide his unconscious shame and to “prove” that he is a winner instead. The Russian leader comes from a background similar to what one might find in a narcissist’s history ... ... In her recent biography of Putin, Masha Gessen paints a grim picture of the Leningrad complex in which the family lived, typical of the city during the post-war period. Crumbling stairwells and courtyards strewn with trash. Cramped, filthy, and crowded rooms. Families piled one on top of the other, sharing and fighting over a communal kitchen in the hallway. Post-siege Leningrad was “a mean, hungry, impoverished place that bred mean, hungry, ferocious children.” ... ... Though they doted on their child, the parents were desperately trying to survive, childcare was virtually non-existent, and Putin passed an increasingly large part of his time in the communal courtyard below, a space dominated by drunken thugs, cursing, and fistfights. In the personal mythology he has created, Putin takes special pride in having become one of those thugs. According to Oleg Blotsky's Vladimir Putin: The Road to Power, childhood friends support this view. In exploring the past of prominent figures who seem to display features of narcissistic personality disorder, I have found that many of them were childhood bullies who may also have been bullied by others. The bully is a special type of narcissist who offloads or projects his sense of defect into the victims he persecutes. I’m not a loser, you are. I don’t feel vulnerable and afraid, you do. Though younger and smaller than many of them, Putin fought back against the courtyard thugs and became something of a bully himself. With an explosive temper and thin skin, Putin regularly took offense, instantly lashing out with violence. According to Gessen, one childhood friend recalls that if anyone dared to insult Putin, he “would immediately jump on the guy, scratch him, bite him, rip his hair out by the clump—do anything at all never to allow anyone to humiliate him in any way.”
The bullying narcissist is in flight from himself. His entire personality expresses an ongoing, relentless battle to ward off unconscious shame and a sense of internal defect, which accounts for his inability to take criticism or tolerate the smallest of slights. To deny the unconscious sense of being small, defective, and vulnerable, he projects a self-image that conveys his superiority. He establishes his own power and prestige by humiliating other people and filling them with the shame he has disavowed. For the bully, social interaction is all about proving himself a winner by making other people feel that they are the losers. Though his history suggests, certainly, the possibility for narcissism to take root, it’s impossible actually to diagnose the man at a distance. But while a courtyard thug may inspire fear, the notion of a narcissistic bully with a large army and an arsenal of nuclear weapons is terrifying.
How Vladimir Putin’s childhood is affecting us all - by Jane Ellen Stevens for Aces Too High ( ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Positive & adverse childhood experiences, Trauma) excerpt: ... By inference, when you look at Putin’s early years, the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) pile up—lack of food, inadequate housing, bullying, neglect, parental depression, etc. And he obviously inherited a bunch of ACEs from his parents, including wartime trauma personified by Nazi forces that threatened their existence and their homeland. But what’s also evident is what he didn’t seem to get: appropriate attachment—the strong and requisite bond between a parent and a child that leads to a healthy life and without which children can die or be damaged ... ... A friend sent me an essay that psychologist Alice Miller wrote called, “The Ignorance or How we produce the Evil”. It’s remarkable, and I encourage everyone to read it. She said that although evil exists, people aren’t born evil. How they live their lives depends on what happens after they’re born (and also before, as epigenetics is teaching us). Children who are given love, respect, understanding, kindness, and warmth will naturally develop different characteristics from those who experience neglect, contempt, violence or abuse, and never have anyone they can turn to for kindness and affection. Such absence of trust and love is a common denominator in the formative years of all the dictators I have studied.
EMMA KENNY Vladimir Putin is egocentric, narcissistic & exhibits key traits of a psychopath - by Emma Kenny, psychologist for the U.S. Sun MY NOTE: when psychologist refer to psychopaths, the phrase can be referred to as primary and secondary psychopathy (sometimes people with secondary psychopathy are referred to as "sociopaths" - these are people who tend to have grown up in harsh bullying environments, usually are "spoiled" in some way in terms of entitlement, and can have a number of A.C.E.s - adverse childhood experiences).
Russian President Vladimir Putin has features of a psychopath: expert - by Rebecca Rosenberg for Yahoo.com (interviewing Dr. Ziv Cohen, a Cornell University forensic psychiatrist excerpt: He said Putin scores high in the three categories associated with the mental disorder of psychopathy: aggression, narcissism and lack of empathy, which have been on full display in autocratic leader's invasion of Ukraine.
If You Don’t Understand Malignant Narcissism, You Don’t Understand Vladimir Putin Any Better Than You Understood Donald Trump (The invasion of Ukraine was not about NATO, nor about the failure of the West to make concessions easing Russian fears about its own security, or about the inadequacy of economic and diplomatic sanctions. It was about Russian president Vladimir Putin and his insatiable ego.) - by David Plymyer for his own website. David is a former social worker, retired lawyer and an Army Vet. He is now a writer (Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and other publications). excerpt: The “central flaw” in the West’s strategy arose from the failure of its leaders to see Putin for what he is. At times, he behaves like a shrewd rational, actor, but he is a megalomaniacal, malignant narcissist obsessed with restoring at least part of Russia’s past grandeur and power. Failure to understand that obsession led to a miscalculation by Western leaders. His perception of reality is shaped primarily by his own aberrant personality, not by a dispassionate or objective view of the world. No concession or economic sanction was going to dissuade him from trying to reincorporate Ukraine into “greater Russia.” ... ... For malignant narcissists like Putin and Trump, the insatiable needs of their egos drive them to constantly assert dominance over others. The cycle never ends, as they must continue to reassure themselves of their own worth by preying on weakness and bending others to their will. Nothing is more important than redressing perceived grievances. They magnify those grievances in their minds and become obsessed with getting even. The irrational bitterness that he feels from having Ukraine “taken” from Russia is what drove Putin to invade Ukraine. Looking for other “triggers” demonstrates a misunderstanding of his psychopathology.
"He's Not The Superman We Think Of" - Fiona Hill On Vladimir Putin - The Late Show with Stephen Colbert The show's introduction: "Fiona Hill advised three American presidents on Russian policy and has spent time in close proximity to Vladimir Putin, so she is uniquely qualified to talk about the man's strengths, his weak spots, and the things we misunderstand about him. Her book about Vladimir Putin, "There Is Nothing For You Here," is available now."
Paper Reveals Putin's Cheeky Childhood - ABC News excerpt: One instructor's comment said, "before class [Putin] threw chalkboard erasers at the children." Others read: "Didn't do his math homework." "Behaved badly during singing class." "Talks in class." ... ... Putin's grades didn't reveal anything exceptional, either. On the Soviet five-point scale, he scored threes in arithmetic and natural science, and a two in drawing. The only subject in which he scored a five was history. He also got a five for behavior, despite his altercations in gym class.
We Are All Living in Vladimir Putin’s World Now - by Ivan Krastev for The New York Times Now we know that sanctions can’t stop tanks. Europe’s cherished conviction that economic interdependence is the best guarantee for peace has turned out to be wrong. Europeans made a mistake by universalizing their post-World War II experience to countries like Russia. Capitalism is not enough to temper authoritarianism. Trade with dictators does not make your country more secure, and keeping the money of corrupt leaders in your banks does not civilize them; it corrupts you. And Europe’s embrace of Russian hydrocarbons only made the continent more insecure and vulnerable. ~ Ivan Krastev
Rash Putin Razes Ukraine- Maureen Dowd for The New York Times Excerpt: As Julia Ioffe wrote in Puck, Putin stewed in his begrudging juices for decades and then rang down a new Iron Curtain: “Even as his forces were shelling the entirety of Ukraine — north to south, east to west — Putin made clear that his invasion wasn’t really about Ukraine. It was about the United States, about history and settling old scores, and rewriting the terms of surrender, 30 years later, that ended the Cold War.” ~ Maureen Dowd
When the United States, in its hour of hubris, went to war to remake the Middle East in 2003, Vladimir Putin was a critic of American ambition, a defender of international institutions and multilateralism and national sovereignty. This posture was cynical and self-interested in the extreme. But it was also vindicated by events, as our failures in Iraq and then Afghanistan demonstrated the challenges of conquest, the perils of occupation, the laws of unintended consequences in war. And Putin’s Russia, which benefited immensely from our follies, proceeded with its own resurgence on a path of cunning gradualism, small-scale land grabs amid frozen conflicts, the expansion of influence in careful, manageable bites. But now it’s Putin making the world-historical gamble, embracing a more sinister version of the unconstrained vision that once led George W. Bush astray. And it’s worth asking why a leader who once seemed attuned to the perils of hubris would take this gamble now. I assume that Putin is being sincere when he rails against Russia’s encirclement by NATO and insists that Western influence threatens the historic link between Ukraine and Russia. And he clearly sees a window of opportunity in the pandemic’s chaos, America’s imperial overstretch and an internally divided West. ~ Ross Douthat
Why Vladimir Putin Invokes Nazis to Justify His Invasion of Ukraine - by Anton Troianovski for The New York Times excerpt: ... The language of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been dominated by the word “Nazi” — a puzzling assertion about a country whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish and who last fall signed a law combating anti-Semitism. ... ... The “Nazi” slur’s sudden emergence shows how Mr. Putin is trying to use stereotypes, distorted reality and his country’s lingering World War II trauma to justify his invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin is casting the war as a continuation of Russia’s fight against evil in what is known in the country as the Great Patriotic War, apparently counting on lingering Russian pride in the victory over Nazi Germany to carry over into support for Mr. Putin’s attack. ...
Letter: Trump, Putin have much in common - by Pauley Ahmed for Lincoln Journal Star excerpt: After being in the mental health field for 30 years and observing interactions between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I would have to say this: Birds of a feather flock together. Americans who are still interested in and supportive of Trump may want to take a look in the mirror. Does dictatorship appeal to you? Do you like mentally unstable people leading your life? The reason Trump goes out of his way to buddy up to dictators is he sees himself in that way. All powerful and god like. He is an aspiring dictator himself. Personally I enjoy living in a democracy where I have freedom to believe what I feel is right. I don’t want a crazy man telling me how to live.
The PM is set to call on his counterparts worldwide to make a 'renewed and concerted effort' to tackle Mr Putin - by Carl Bennett for GBN, Britain's News Channel excerpt: It is not enough for the international community to simply express support for Kyiv without action, Boris Johnson has said, as he unveils a six-point plan which he hopes will ensure Russia fails in its “horrific” invasion of Ukraine. The Prime Minister said that “it is not future historians but the people of Ukraine who will be our judge” over how the world reacts to Vladimir Putin’s “hideous, barbarous assault”. Ahead of a swathe of meetings in coming days, Mr Johnson said: “Putin must fail and must be seen to fail in this act of aggression. “It is not enough to express our support for the rules-based international order – we must defend it against a sustained attempt to rewrite the rules by military force.”
Biden once told Putin, 'I don't think you have a soul.' He responded, 'We understand one another.' - by Talia Lakritz for Yahoo News excerpt: "You said you know he doesn't have a soul," Stephanopoulos said in an interview with Biden recorded in March 2021. "I did say that to him, yes," Biden said. "And his response was 'We understand one another.' I wasn't being a wise guy, I was alone with him in his office. That's how it came about. It was when President Bush had said, 'I've looked in his eyes and saw his soul.' I said, 'I looked in your eyes and I don't think you have a soul,' and [he] looked back at me, he said, 'We understand each other.'" "So you know Vladimir Putin," Stephanopoulos said. "You think he's a killer? "Mm-hmm. I do," Biden said.
Republicans, Once Harsh Ukraine Critics, Pivot to Strong Support (In a matter of weeks, the center of gravity on Ukraine has sharply shifted among Republicans, muffling doubts about U.S. involvement and dismissing questions about the recent past.) - by Jonathan Weisman for The New York Times excerpt: WASHINGTON — In the final years of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, Republicans portrayed Ukraine as an Eastern European Wild West run by nefarious oligarchs and unlawful politicians, a bad actor that sought to tamper in American elections and channel millions of dollars to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son. “We’re talking Ukraine,” thundered Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, in 2019, describing the country as “one of the three most corrupt countries on the planet.” The setting was a hearing for Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, over his efforts to pressure Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, into digging up political dirt on Mr. Biden. Now such voices are fading, as the bulk of the Republican Party tries to get on the right side of history amid a brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. Republicans are among the most vociferous champions for the United States to amp up its military response, and are competing to issue the strongest expressions of solidarity with Ukraine’s leaders. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi has taken up Mr. Zelensky’s call for a western-enforced no-fly zone. Senator Rick Scott of Florida said deploying U.S. ground troops to Ukraine should not be “off the table.” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina encouraged the assassination of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to save a nation that many in his party had previously portrayed as hardly worth saving.
And they recognize, this is not a war. It’s not a battle between two militaries. This is a brutal invasion of a free democratic people by an authoritarian thug, and there’s no justification for it. And its brutality and vile nature is able to be seen by people all over the world. ~ Mitt Romney
I must admit, I listen to some in my party who are arguing for authoritarianism and I think, Well, Biden’s in charge now. Do you want him to be an authoritarian? Do you want him to close down Fox? Do you want him to take away your rights for free speech? Or do you only want authoritarianism if you’re in charge? Maybe recognize that the other party has the majority in the country right now. They have the majority; we don’t. Be careful what you wish for. Because if we installed authoritarianism in our country today, it would not be a happy day for those of you who are arguing for it.
Past U.S. policy toward Russia looms over how Biden confronts Putin on Ukraine - by Franco Ordonez for NPR excerpt: Early in his State of the Union address, the president addressed a challenge that many of those who have previously faced the Russian leader say is at the crux of Biden's current problems with Vladimir Putin. "Throughout our history we've learned this lesson — when dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos," Biden said. "They keep moving. And, the costs and threats to America and the world keep rising." Republican critics say the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan emboldened Putin, who had put troops on the border well before the Afghan debacle, to attack Ukraine. But government advisers and former U.S. officials from Republican and Democratic administrations say the bigger problem is how the United States and allies have handled past Russian incursions since the mid-2000s — and whether it was possible to stop Putin from doing what he has signaled he will do for more than a decade ... ... Russia has claimed that NATO's eastward expansion was a reneging of commitments made to it during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Fifteen years ago, Putin delivered a fiery speech to the Munich Security Conference seething about the alliance adding members. "It represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust," he told world leaders. "And we have the right to ask: Against whom is this expansion intended?" That speech set the stage for what came next: A year later, in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia. In 2014, it annexed Ukraine's Crimea, and later backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The United States and allies repeatedly condemned Russia's actions and imposed harsh economic sanctions on Moscow. But little changed.
excerpt: ... Finland and Sweden are rethinking their long-standing positions of military neutrality, with a majority of voters now favoring membership of the 30-member alliance, according to new opinion polls ... ... Already, Russian warplanes have reportedly been intruding into Swedish airspace.
excerpt: ... A statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry Friday voiced concern about what it described as efforts by the United States and some of its allies to “drag” Finland and Sweden into NATO and warned that Moscow would be forced to take retaliatory measures if they join the alliance. Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Saturday that “we’ve heard this before.” “We don’t think that it calls for a military threat,” Haavisto said in an interview with the Finnish public broadcaster YLE ...
... In Sweden, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson addressed Moscow’s statement in a joint news conference Friday with Sweden’s military commander Micael Byden. “I want to be extremely clear. It is Sweden that itself and independently decides on our security policy line,” Andersson said.
China's Xi calls for 'maximum restraint' in Ukraine - Reuters excerpt: BEIJING, March 8 (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday called for "maximum restraint" in Ukraine and said China is "pained to see the flames of war reignited in Europe," state media reported, in his strongest statement to date on the conflict.
How the Soviet Union's Fall Pushed Putin to Try and Recapture Russia's Global Importance (While serving in the KGB in East Berlin, Putin was shocked and humiliated to experience the collapse of Soviet power firsthand.) - by Shaun Walker for The History channel excerpt: ... A few days before he became president, in late 1999, Putin wrote an article in the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, outlining his task as he saw it. “For the first time in the past 200 to 300 years, Russia faces the real danger that it could be relegated to the second, or even the third tier of global powers,” Putin warned. He called on Russians to unite to make sure that the country remained what he called a “first-tier” nation ... ... Even his then-wife Ludmila, in a rare 2005 interview to Russian newspapers, painted a picture of a taciturn and authoritarian master of the house. She said he could only be asked questions (never about work) when he came home late at night and drank a glass of kefir before bed. And Ludmila said she gave up cooking because her husband never praised her food. “He has put me to the test throughout our life together. I constantly feel that he is watching me and checking that I make the right decisions,” she said. The couple announced a divorce in 2013 ...
excerpt: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin underlined that Delhi will for now stick to a path of strategic ambivalence on the Ukraine crisis. This is a pragmatic choice, one that reflects the complexities of a realist world and Delhi’s own positions on territorial integrity and sovereignty, its own concerns about its unresolved borders, its difficult relationship with its two northern neighbours. Russia remains India’s biggest and time-tested supplier of military hardware. At the height of the crisis with China in Ladakh, it was to Moscow that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh travelled to ensure that there would be no cut-back in military supplies. And since then, Russia has boosted India’s defence capability against China with the S-400 air defence system. Moscow is also a reliable ally in the UN Security Council. India-Russia ties have ensured that Delhi has not been entirely left out of the conversation on Afghanistan, and in Central Asia, while also providing some leverage with the US. At the same time, the US, the European Union, and UK are all vital partners, and India’s relations with each of them, and the Western world in general, go far beyond the sum of their parts. Moreover, in the UNSC, India has counted on France’s unstinted backing on many issues. It has relied on western support as it deals with an aggressive China on the Line of Actual Control. Prime Minister Modi’s appeal to President Putin on Wednesday night for a “cessation of violence” and for all sides to return to the dialogue table was certainly a notch up from India’s earlier explicitly neutral stance, and carried a hint of the compulsions to get off the fence, though still largely maintaining a balance.
excerpt: When Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, I rushed to a protest organized by Ukrainians in Oxford, England. I, along with fellow Syrians, brought the Syrian revolution flag to the protests to demand an end to the invasion. At the time, I struggled to put into words why I felt so strongly about Ukraine. Before long, I found out about the forceful Syrian participation in protests across Europe and the United States against the invasion. Pictures of the Syrian revolution flag appeared alongside Ukrainian flags waved at the demonstrations, showcasing identification with the values of freedom and democracy that Moscow is attacking yet again. Those very values were obliterated when Russia intervened in Syria in 2015 to prop up the authoritarian and brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad. With the help of Moscow, the Assad regime forcibly displaced millions of Syrians; committed crimes against humanity and war crimes by bombing hospitals and schools in Idlib and Aleppo provinces; was largely responsible for killing at least half a million through indiscriminate shelling, massacres, crimes of torture, and sexual violence; led mass disinformation campaigns to depict the Syrian regime’s war against the Syrian people as a “war on terror”; and covered up the use of chemical weapons against civilians.
Syrians are well aware of the stark differences between Syria and Ukraine, and their solidarity with Ukraine doesn’t only come from a shared experience with Russian military occupation. This solidarity, or better yet, “identification,” with Ukraine, as Syrian political commentator Yassin Swehat calls it, comes from the increasing recognition that Ukraine’s plight arises from the world’s indifference to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Syria. Thus, Syrian solidarity with Ukraine comes from a belief that the invasion of Ukraine could have been averted had the world stopped Putin in Syria.
As the world shuns Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Iran strengthens its ties with Moscow - by Nicole Grajewski for Atlantic Council excerpt: Hours after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin called his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi to inform him about Russia’s “special military operation.” During the call, Raisi expressed Iran’s understanding of Russia’s security concerns and affirmed the country’s contention that “NATO expansion is a serious threat to the security and stability of independent nations.” To an extent, Iran’s support for Russian actions reflects the improvement in bilateral ties, which have grown considerably at the political and military levels over the past decade. Russian and Iranian cooperation in the Syrian Civil War—though not without problems—when combined with their mutual antipathy towards the West, has led to greater coordination on overlapping goals and interests. Iran’s response to the Russian invasion of a sovereign state stands out in its particularly pronounced pro-Russian stance—a contrast to Moscow’s traditional allies, such as Kazakhstan. Official statements from the Iranian Foreign Ministry have indicated Tehran’s preference for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, while directly or indirectly blaming the United States for provoking or exacerbating the fighting. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh called for a ceasefire and “immediate negotiations for a political resolution of the crisis” consistent with “respect for international law and human rights.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian attributed the current crisis to “NATO’s provocative actions,” adding that Iran doesn’t see “resorting to war as a solution” and underlined the necessity of establishing a ceasefire for a diplomatic solution. Tehran will likely remain hesitant to support Moscow’s direct challenge to Ukrainian territorial integrity by recognizing the Russian-backed separatist republics in the East. Iran’s abstention during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) vote on March 2 illustrates this balance between Tehran’s relations with Moscow and its hesitancy to endorse separatist claims. Still, the intervention holds considerable implications for the trajectory of the Russia-Iran relationship, as both face similar challenges from the West and economic sanctions.
How the Arab World Is Responding to the War in Ukraine - by H.A. Hellyer for Time Magazine (H.A. Hellyer, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in DC, is senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and fellow at the University of Cambridge.) excerpt:
The first United Nations Security Council resolution against the invasion of Ukraine was proposed on Feb. 25, and the United Arab Emirates, a key U.S. ally, abstained, later issuing public statements that some interpreted as considering Russia’s stated grievances legitimate. Three days later, the Arab League, which brings together 22 Arab states, issued a statement that failed to condemn Russia’s invasion and offered little support to the Ukrainians. A couple of days later, however, the situation had changed. When U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning Russia passed overwhelmingly its backers include the UAE, as well as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two of the most powerful Arab states. Clearly, Western—particularly American—pressure had done its work. But considering the alignment of the near totality of the Arab political elite with DC, and with the West in general, why had such pressure even been required? Especially over such a clear-cut case of the breaking of a state’s sovereignty, which even the most dictatorial of autocrats in the region are keen to uphold? Several factors are at play here. There’s only one Arab leadership that is genuinely pro-Putin: the Assad regime in Syria. Every other Arab state is generally prioritizes its Western ties, and none is trying to pivot to Moscow. But this does not mean Arab states are hostile to the Kremlin. They generally see in Russia a substantial global power that continues have relevance in their region—and sometimes intervenes in ways that are helpful to their interests. Moscow is also a useful capital to publicly ‘flirt’ with when relations are strained with Western capitals (particularly D.C.).
The War Next Door - by Farah Stockman, Photographs by Davide Monteleone for The New York Times excerpt: USTRZYKI DOLNE, Poland — Polish people know the pain of being invaded. This is what an opera singer told me as she handed out hot stew to Ukrainian refugees in a tent near the mountainous border between Ukraine and Poland on a chilly night in early March. She had planned to go skiing. She came here instead. “We were in the same situation in 1939,” said Susan Grey, the opera singer, referring to the Polish people during World War II. “We didn’t have such an opportunity to be welcomed. We didn’t have a place to go.” It feels as if the entire country of Poland has joined the effort to welcome Ukrainian refugees ...
excerpt: ...From sharing food to taking up arms, Ukrainians across the country are united in repelling the invaders — and protecting our homeland. President Vladimir Putin was apparently confident that Russia would defeat Ukraine in two or three days. But he picked the wrong nation to mess with ... ... Some stories, like that of 8-year-old Alisa Zhuk from Kyiv, are especially touching. The little girl is selling her drawings for $20 and up, donating all proceeds to the army — to make sure that Ukrainian soldiers have enough food and clothes, she said.
excerpt: ... The coming weeks, months, and years are likely to be as fascinating as they are terrifying. In a sense, we knew that a great confrontation was coming, even if we hadn’t quite envisioned its precise contours. At the start of his presidency, Joe Biden declared that the battle between democracies and autocracies would be the defining struggle of our time. This was grandiose rhetoric, but was it more than that? What does it actually mean to fight such a battle? In any number of ways, Russia’s aggression has underscored why Biden was right and why authoritarians—and the authoritarian idea itself—are such a threat to peace and stability ...
I’ve Dealt With Foreign Cyberattacks. America Isn’t Ready for What’s Coming. - by Glenn S. Gerstell (Gerstell is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the former general counsel of the National Security Agency and Central Security Service.) for The New York Times excerpt: As Russian missiles rain on Ukraine, there’s another battle brewing — in the cybersphere. Destructive malware has flooded hundreds of Ukrainian websites and computers since Vladimir Putin announced his invasion. It would be a mistake to assume such attacks will remain limited to Ukrainian targets. Last week President Biden warned Mr. Putin against Russian cyberattacks on the United States’ critical infrastructure.
excerpt: ... What makes this situation even more dangerous is that Ukraine is (legitimately and sensibly) being armed and supplied by the very military alliance Russia most fears, NATO. Meanwhile, Russia is being squeezed by an ever-tightening economic blockade designed to force its defeat. On top of all this are credible claims that if this campaign ends in humiliating defeat for Russia, it will prove terminal for not only the country’s national prestige and power, but Putin’s regime itself. ... When a gambler has already lost so much that he will go bankrupt unless he can turn it around, the logical thing for him to do is to continue upping the stakes. This is the desperate opponent the West may now face. Worse: This is the opponent whose bloodstained debts the West may have to to write off.
Putin Warns the West: Russia Will Emerge Stronger - Rueters
This Is Why Putin Can’t Back Down - by David Brooks for The New York Times excerpt: I don’t know about you, but I’ve found the writings of conventional international relations experts to be not very helpful in understanding what this whole crisis is about. But I’ve found the writing of experts in social psychology to be enormously helpful. That’s because Vladimir Putin is not a conventional great power politician. He’s fundamentally an identity entrepreneur. His singular achievement has been to help Russians to recover from a psychic trauma — the aftermath of the Soviet Union — and to give them a collective identity so they can feel that they matter, that their lives have dignity. The war in Ukraine is not primarily about land; it’s primarily about status. Putin invaded so Russians could feel they are a great nation once again and so Putin himself could feel that he’s a world historical figure along the lines of Peter the Great ... ... The end of the Soviet Union could have been seen as a liberation, a chance to build a new and greater Russia. But Putin chose to see it as a catastrophic loss, one creating a feeling of helplessness and a shattered identity. Who are we now? Do we matter anymore? Like identity politicians everywhere, Putin turned this identity crisis into a humiliation story. He covered over any incipient feelings of shame and inferiority by declaring: We are the innocent victims. They — America, the Westerners, the cool kids at Davos — did this to us. Like other identity politicians around the world, he promoted status resentment to soothe the wounds of trauma, the fears of inferiority ... ... But now it’s all spun out of control. Putin’s identity politics are so virulent because they are so narcissistic. Just as individual narcissists appear to be inflated egotists but are really insecure souls trying to cover their fragility, narcissistic nations and groups that parade their power are often actually haunted by fear of their own weakness. Narcissists crave recognition, but they can never get enough. Narcissists crave psychic security but act in self-destructive ways that ensure they are often under assault.
Putin Has No Good Way Out, and That Really Scares Me - by Thomas L. Friedman for The New York Times excerpt: ... In the coming weeks it will become more and more obvious that our biggest problem with Putin in Ukraine is that he will refuse to lose early and small, and the only other outcome is that he will lose big and late. But because this is solely his war and he cannot admit defeat, he could keep doubling down in Ukraine until … until he contemplates using a nuclear weapon. Why do I say that defeat in Ukraine is Putin’s only option, that only the timing and size are in question? Because the easy, low-cost invasion he envisioned and the welcome party from Ukrainians he imagined were total fantasies — and everything flows from that ...
... He completely overestimated his own armed forces. He completely underestimated President Biden’s ability to galvanize a global economic and military coalition to enable Ukrainians to stand and fight and to devastate Russia at home — the most effective U.S. coalition-building effort since George H.W. Bush made Saddam Hussein pay for his folly of seizing Kuwait. And he completely underestimated the ability of companies and individuals all over the world to participate in, and amplify, economic sanctions on Russia — far beyond anything governments initiated or mandated. When you get that many things wrong as a leader, your best option is to lose early and small. In Putin’s case that would mean withdrawing his forces from Ukraine immediately; offering a face-saving lie to justify his “special military operation,” like claiming it successfully protected Russians living in Ukraine; and promising to help Russians’ brethren rebuild. But the inescapable humiliation would surely be intolerable for this man obsessed with restoring the dignity and unity of what he sees as the Russian motherland ...
We Have Reached a Hinge of History (Out of the righteous rage of this moment, perhaps a new world can be born.) - by Ben Rhodes for The Atlantic My note: This writer has interviewed Navalny for a book and compares him favorably to Ukraine's president, Zelensky. Readers might find it interesting what Navalny, the former mayor of Moscow, thinks (there are quotes from quotes from Navalny in this article) excerpt: Europe’s largest invasion since World War II is a logical outcome of Vladimir Putin’s dominance of Russian politics in the 21st century, a reminder that grievance-based ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism lead inexorably to conflict. Putin’s efforts to reconstitute empire and “protect” Russian speakers beyond national borders tap into currents of history running deep underneath our collective experience. And in many ways, the tolls of the war—cities reduced to rubble, civilians caught amid armies, refugees moving en masse across European borders, threats of nuclear annihilation—recall the circumstances that shocked world powers into creating an international system to prevent another world war. Perhaps it is no coincidence that at precisely the time when living memory of World War II is fading away, humanity has failed to heed the lessons of our worst history ...
... How could this many nationalist autocrats emerge in so many different places, working from such a similar playbook? How much more strain could a creaky international system bear before it broke? ...
Marina Ovsyannikova: Search for journalist who protested war on Russian TV - BBC News Excerpt: A Russian journalist who burst on to a live TV news programme to protest against the war in Ukraine has been reported missing overnight. Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at state-controlled Channel 1, was detained after she ran on to the set on Monday holding an anti-war sign. The sign, clearly visible for a few seconds, read: "No war, stop the war, don't believe the propaganda, they are lying to you here." Her whereabouts are now unknown. Ms Ovsyannikova's lawyers say they have been searching for their client but have been unable to find her.
The fate of humanity suddenly seems to be in the unsteady hands of an isolated, frustrated, and potentially unhinged Vladimir Putin. And people are understandably panickedaboutthat prospect. “The fact that there’s a very short path from, say, Putin feeling humiliated to the end of life as we know it,” the sociologist Kieran Healy wrote, “is literally insane.”
This Is Why Autocracies Fail - by David Brooks for The New York Times excerpt: ... People rise through autocracies by ruthlessly serving the organization, the bureaucracy. That ruthlessness makes them aware others may be more ruthless and manipulative, so they become paranoid and despotic. They often personalize power so they are the state, and the state is them. Any dissent is taken as a personal affront. They may practice what scholars call “negative selection.” They don’t hire the smartest and best people.
Russia Is Destroying Kharkiv (Residents describe what has been lost after three weeks of attacks.) - by Allison McCann, Lazaro Gamio, Denise Lu and Pablo Robles for The New York Times (March 17, 2022) My note: It is beyond horrendous what one man has done to this city. It is stealing, and then breaking the property of others, damning the citizens of a hitherto beautiful city with historic buildings and universities to homelessness, poverty, squelch, hunger and PTSD - something that all malignant narcissists like to inflict on someone in their lives ... it is why it has to be a "never again" situation, where "type of person" matters, just as in mate selection matters to keep out of domestic violence situations for women.
SOME OF ANNE APPLEBAUM'S ARTICLES
SHE WARNED ALL OF US LONG BEFORE THE WAR THAT THERE WOULD BE WAR AND THAT RUSSIA WOULD START IT
Anne Applebaum, as a result of her insights, forethought and articles, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee scheduled a hearing on March 15 about how the United States should combat authoritarianism. Senator Robert Menendez, chair of the panel, invited Applebaum to speak. The first article, "America Needs a Better Plan to Fight Autocracy" is her written submission to the committee (only lightly edited from the article here - for The Atlantic).
her book: Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism description: NATIONAL BESTSELLER - How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer. --Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.
conference (April 6 - 8) may be on-line for future viewing: Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracyfeaturing Anne Applebaum, the Nobel Prize–winning journalist Maria Ressa, Representative Adam Kinzinger, and Jeffrey Goldberg excerpt: With democracies across the globe under assault, the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and The Atlantic are hosting Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy, a groundbreaking three-day event exploring the organized spread of disinformation and strategies to respond to it. The conference, April 6 to 8, will explore the roots and scope of the problem, the next-generation threats posed by new technological advances, and the tools and policies required to neutralize them. Panels will also discuss the challenge presented when the term disinformation itself becomes fractious, and the tension between free expression and the need to combat wanton and willful disinformation aimed at eroding it. To register to attend and to find additional details about participating speakers and our agenda, please visit disinfo2022.com.
SOME OF THE OTHER CARTOONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OUT THERE
