Narcissist Games Show How Dangerous Trump Is To America
Imagine being asked to see your boss in his office. You don’t know what he wants, since you don’t
really know him too long, but he has built a reputation of being a “genius”.
You see him in his office, and he says that he has a new
opportunity for you. A promotion and a
raise would be involved. He tells you
that your years of hard work and loyalty to the company will be rewarded. He just has to make some arrangements first,
but he wanted to give you the heads-up.
Rumors circulate in the water cooler talks of this new
opportunity being set out for you, although there are no real details of it and
neither he nor you are saying anything about it.
Then, a couple of weeks later, you get called back to the
office to meet with your boss, presumably to talk about the opportunity. But instead of talking about that possible
raise and promotion that has supposedly been long overdue, he comes down on you
on the amount of paid overtime that you spend at work. You try to defend yourself, but he just comes
down even harder on you, saying that it’s costing the company too much money
and if you need to work overtime, it should be unpaid. He then holds an impromptu meeting and tells
everyone in your department that there will be no more paid overtime at all,
singling you out as the example.
Congratulations.
You’ve just been played by a narcissist.
Ever since he took office in 2017, people have gradually
come to realize that there is something wrong about Narcissist President Donald
Trump. Not “different”, but “wrong”. Who brings a
cheering squad to a CIA tour? Who
demands that people ignore what their own senses tell them, as was displayed by
Narcissist Trump’s own assertion just twenty-four hours after his inauguration about the
size of people in attendance? Who
can make in excess of ten-thousand
recordable lies, falsehoods, and exaggerations in
just two years? Who attacks our
allies and befriends our enemies? The
list goes on and on, but sufficient to say, even people who have to work with
him know that there is something wrong with him.
Yes, his myrmidons and propagandists will say that
Narcissist Trump is “different” because he is “special”. He is, according to his own words, a
“very-stable genius”. But we’ve had
smart people in the White House before.
None of them have behaved like Narcissist Trump. That’s because what makes Narcissist Trump
“different” is not “special”, but dangerous.
Narcissists are skillful manipulators. They use bullying tactics to get what they
want. They live for drama and chaos. And even when people are “wise” to their
games, narcissists find ways to get those people to re-engage with them. They trick people with bait-and-switch games,
luring them in with something nice, only to take it away and turn it into an
opportunity to attack.
We saw this twice with Narcissist Trump in just six months
of this column’s posting.
The first was concerning the federal budget this past
December. Trump invited Democratic
leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer – then House Minority Leader and Senate
Minority Leader, respectively – to the White House to discuss keeping the
federal government running. With media
cameras recording it all, Trump shut down the
discussion of the budget and then brought up his demand of money for his
ego-wall and openly threatened to shut down the government if he doesn’t get
the money for his ego-wall.
Bait-and-switch.
And the only reason why Trump relented was that now-Speaker
Pelosi told the narcissist that he couldn’t give his precious State of the
Union speech as long as the government was shut down. Kudos on Pelosi for using Trump’s own narcissism
against him.
Most recently, as of the past week of this column’s posting,
Narcissist Trump did it again to Pelosi and Schumer. This time it was about the need to fix
America’s infrastructure.
Our roads and bridges are falling apart. They need to be maintained and even improved,
but decades of budget-cutting and so-called “austerity” measures have left
federal, state, and local governments with no money to make the needed repairs. So at the end of April, Narcissist Trump
calls Pelosi and Schumer back to the White House and supposedly comes
up with an agreement that would cost two trillion dollars, provided the
Dems could find a way to get the money.
No problem, right?
Fast forward to May 22nd. Pelosi and Schumer meet with Narcissist Trump
again to talk about infrastructure.
According to Pelosi and Schumer, the meeting was brief and didn’t talk
about infrastructure at all. Instead,
Narcissist Trump goes outside to a prepared
supposed “impromptu” press conference where he complains about all of the
investigations being made on him.
Bait-and-switch.
This is the game that Narcissist Trump plays. Find something that you want, something that
you want to have happen, pretend to go along with it and give you what you
want, and then turn around and hold that thing hostage for something that he
wants.
Those of us who are wise about who and what Narcissist Trump
is knew that what he was doing was a trap.
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told Pelosi and Schumer that as well,
but they still played it, thinking that somehow things would be different.
Now, I’m sure Narcissist Trump’s myrmidons and cult
followers and propagandists will claim that this just the same kind of
deal-making that politics is notorious for.
And Narcissist Trump does pretend that he is the master dealmaker. Except that normal deals don’t engage in
bait-and-switch tactics. You don’t
commit – or pretend to commit – to a course of action and then cancel it in
exchange for something else.
And when you look at what is being switched in this
bait-and-switch game, it’s always something for Narcissist Trump
personally. First it was “You want the
keep the government from shutting down, you’ll give me $3-billion for my wall”,
and now it’s “You want the infrastructure fixed, you’ll stop investigating me
and stop talking about impeachment.”
What makes this game dangerous for America is that nothing
is safe when it comes to Narcissist Trump.
No subject, no agreement, no course of action that Narcissist Trump
pledges is immune to this tactic. He’s
already shown that even long-held treaties are subject to re-negotiation. He’s already shut down the government over
his ego-wall. Now we’ve seen that even
the things that he wants – like
his much-promised infrastructure program – are subject to his
bait-and-switch games. Everything he
touches is subject to re-negotiation for something else that benefits him or
strokes his ego.
Let’s get brutally honest here... we all need to understand
and accept that Narcissist Trump is not your typical leader. He is a narcissist. Everything is seemingly done for his benefit,
his glory, his ego-stroking. It’s not
about the good of the nation anymore. It’s
about the good of Trump.
This is what separates Narcissist Trump from his predecessors. Past presidents, no matter who they were or
what they did, had some modicum of honor and respect for the office they held. Even Richard Nixon, considered by many to be
the worst of the worst before 2017, had some respect for his job. That’s why he resigned rather than be
impeached by Congress. This commentator
seriously doubts that Narcissist Trump would have even a tenth of that kind of
honor and respect that Nixon held for the position even during his worst of
times.
As long as Narcissist Trump is in the White House, nothing should
be taken for granted. Honor, respect, ethics,
decency... these do not exist in the wheelhouse of a narcissist. His word, his oath, his promise, should
always be suspect and subject to change.
We’ve seen it happen twice, with cameras rolling. There is no reason in the world why we should
somehow expect that to change.
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