Narcissus

Narcissus

Watching the ongoing slurp-fest McCain’s political opponents offer up to him, one FDL contributor shared this insight about Dem pols and pundits:

Fundamentally when these gasbags go on tv they’re talking about themselves, and they’ve all been running around saying "McCain is an honorable man" for so long they can’t switch message without feeling foolish. So their first impulse is to contextualize their own history of praising him.

In narcissistic personality disorder, deferring defense of perceived shortcomings creates intolerable emotional discomfort.

For the true clinical narcissist, being experienced as flawed or lacking is the subjective equivalent of risking annihilation.

Who cares about a nation, much less an election, when there’s a precious self to preserve?

In the natural world, what holds bubbles together is surface tension. In the Village of pols and pundits, what holds the opinion bubble together is inner tension. Surface tension depends on physics. The Villagers’ inner tension depends on the endless fear narcissists carry through their lives: the fear of being seen as flawed.

Of course, we’re all flawed…which is why clinical narcissism is a very real diagnosis: emotionally healthy people don’t have to go create the illusion of their perfection to get through life. Narcissists, however, do. That’s why the Villagers keep lying to us 24/7: it’s what they do every second of their own lives, as well.


Emotionally healthy people can experience the knowledge they’ve made a mistake and tolerate the discomfort that knowledge brings. Folks suffering from clinical narcissism can’t tolerate that discomfort. For folks with clinical narcissism, their inner experience is a world in which their self-worth feels so tenuous they experience any failure as an intolerable threat to their selves. From this perspective, any serious mistake feels like it could annihilate the self, and hence destroy them.

So they go through life telling themselves — and everyone around them — they don’t make serious mistakes. This self telling takes shows up in two different narratives. The more obvious narrative comes from the narcissists who walk around telling us all how glorious they are. Sound like any politicians or CEO’s you know of? Sound like all nearly all of ‘em? Yep — sounds like that to me, too.

The less obvious narrative narcissists tell themselves and everyone around them is how free of error they are. Sound like any pundits, Village stenographers, or jounanamalists you know of? Sound like nearly all of ‘em? Yep — sounds like that to me, too.

These two pathologically false narratives provide the endless stream of inner tension that keeps the Villagers’ shared delusional bubble so impermeable to mere reality. For narcissists, facts are stupid things – and dangerous things, as well.

Narcissists flock to life as pols and pundits for the same reason flies flock to shit: there they find what they need to survive. Where else but hand-picked crowds and hand-picked interviewees could these deeply damaged people get the continual reinforcement of their inerrancy and splendor?

Of course, all forms of nourishment have their price. In biology, the only free lunches come from photosynthesis. All the other critters have a tab to pay. For flies, the price of their nourishment is always walking on and eating shit. For narcissists, the price is never eating metaphorical shit: they can never admit serious error. Social networks comprised of narcissists — like those of CEO’s and their busisness "press" worshippers…and that of Village pols and their pundit "press" worshippers — require everyone in the network to profess their collective inerrancy.

Just keep the lies going, and no narcissists’ selves get hurt.

The risk of inner annihilation shores up the Village’s delusional narratives from within. Outside the Village, the corporatists making billions from the straightjacket these delusions put around political debate and the policies that may come from such debate keep their Righty Wurlitzer aimed at the pols and pundits, ready to publicly take down any Villager who gets off the reservation.

Narcissism as public political discourse. America, what a country Village.

Look on the bright side — it could be worse. We could have a major political leader so terrified to admit his beloved "post-partisan" platform smells like dung he’d rather throw the election to the Rethugs than flush what his supporters already know is a steaming pile.

Now that’s enough to cause depression.

Who wants to buy the first round of St. John’s Wort?