“All violence,” says psychiatrist James Gilligan, after years working with violent inmates in American prisons, “is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.” Fear of shame drives all kinds of extreme, harmful behavior.

Self-delusion is another adaptation to fear of shame. “I could not have lost, because I am a winner and winners never lose. So-called reality is conspiring against me because it is jealous and it fears me, and rightfully so. I will destroy so-called reality and all the feeble cucks who try to cite facts as though they are more real than my feelings. Nothing is more real than my feelings, they rule the universe!”

Give someone like this power over others (and they often crave it as the only way to feel safe from a feeling of worthlessness) and hold on to your seat. The driver is now a hostage and a lunatic is at the wheel with only one goal — never to feel the traumatic agony of his shame again. If it takes driving off a cliff to prove he’s fearless, not a problem to someone hellbent on outrunning the terror of shame, failure, a paralyzing fear of utter worthlessness.

We have been watching this struggle play out in public for the last nine years. It is playing 24/7 at the moment in a party that must swear loyalty to a debasing lie about a lost election that was, like the Civil War, never lost, but stolen. This power dynamic has always operated behind the scenes, in throne rooms, corporate boardrooms, courtrooms and behind closed doors, but now the agents of this divisive, controlling rage have their perfect front man. He has no filter, will say and do absolutely anything, and insist on his perfect right to whatever he feels he must say or do. No human laws can stop him, he is superhuman, magical in his powers to overcome reality itself.

To my great personal sorrow, I had a painfully close front row seat to the highly personalized version of this dynamic a few years ago. My closest, most trusted friends, people I’d known and counted on for fifty years, all sneered angrily at me from the windows of a bus driven by one of these unleashed fucking maniacs. There was no appealing to their humanity, to our long friendships, to our actual experiences of each other over decades. They were united in their sudden certainty that I deserved only their united contempt and eternal anger for my stubborn refusal to take responsibility for willfully and singlehandedly destroying the happiness of a group of lifelong friends. The best formulation I got for my permanent expulsion from this close social circle was a demented “we can never forgive you for not being able to forgive.”

The lesson I was forced to learn was an extremely harsh one. In certain circumstances, a popular person can quickly and easily convince all the other kindergarteners in the schoolyard that you have cooties. Cooties are highly contagious. If you go near Cootie-boy you will have cooties and that will be the end of you, too. Life, my little five year-old friends, is a binary choice, always. You choose black or you choose white. In a shame-based world there are no other options, no nuance, no gradation, no possibility of EVER working out any problem with a loved one that might make their shame rear its monstrous head for them.

Therapy doesn’t work with these creatures, although often everyone around them, not as strong and self-sufficient as the shame-based charismatic, will seek therapy. To begin to change anything about yourself that causes you pain you must be able to look at faults in yourself, your reflexive reactions that often lead to misery. The idea of honestly looking at their own faults is terrifying to someone whose entire personality and worldview is based on never again being traumatized by shame. They will not do it. Nothing bad can ever be their fault in any way, that’s the inhuman rule these poor bastards live by.

Poor bastards or not, they can’t be negotiated with, persuaded or made more empathetic. They cannot change in any significant way, because of the particular nature of their damage. They are doomed to their fate, but we are not. We can be polite to them, speak calmly with them, but they can’t be counted on for anything besides their own self-preservation. Horrible but not uncommon, the worst feature of their affliction is their ability to convince others of their magical worldview.