A person wounded deeply enough in early life to become incapable of compromising, admitting fault, empathizing with anyone else, who sees every conflict in terms of a war to the death, creates an alternate, transactional reality in which they can live feeling intact. In this reality they are always the persecuted, innocent victim, can never be wrong, and therefore there is never a need to compromise with anybody. In the narcissist’s mind they are entitled to do anything necessary to intimidate and silence anyone they fear. Every conflict, no matter how minor, must be fought to the death.
When narcissism rises to the level of psychopathy (“I will literally kill anyone who says I’m not perfect, even if it’s a million of you fuckers”) you have your Mr. Hitler, Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk. They will resort to any lie to dominate and destroy their deadly enemies. It is hard to avoid watching this alternative-reality shell-game playing out in real time in our Age of Narcissism. These unmasked, emboldened monsters will say and do absolutely anything to shield themselves from their own enraged sense of inferiority and humiliation.
To please his benefactor Mr. Putin, who is also holding out billions of dollars in business opportunities in Russia for Americans who please Mr. P., Mr. Trump announced that Russia’s war on Ukraine was Ukraine’s fault. Trump claims Zelensky is not the legitimate president of Ukraine, for reasons too moronic to detail here, and therefore his government has no right to be at Russia-Ukraine “peace talks”. He is also demanding 50% of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, apparently in payment for past American support, including the millions in arms he held up to blackmail Zelensky into announcing a fake investigation into Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma to hurt Trump’s political rival — the illegal quid pro quo “favor” Barr covered up and Trump was later impeached for the first time. Ukraine’s not inclined to take this 50% deal. For these and other reasons, Ukraine is not permitted to participate in “peace talks” between Trump’s loyal puppets and Putin’s representatives.
The media routinely calls this confab, in the Kingdom of Muhammad bin Bonesaw, between agents of Mr. P. and Mr. T. “peace talks”. They do resemble the talks leading up to the “peace deal” between Netanyahu and wealthy Arab oil billionaire dictators that Jared Kushner bragged about negotiating, several years back, peace talks ostensibly about the fate of the Palestinians. No Palestinians were allowed to participate in those talks, and the Palestinians, not surprisingly, got fucked. Of course, self-taught diplomat Jared angrily blamed the Palestinian’s for being “stupid” and never failing to shit on a deal that was in their best interest. There were other famous “peace talks” that involved only one party, the weaker one, and benefited the only aggressor. The Munich confab in 1938 that peacefully ceded strategic Czechoslovakia, producers of the best munitions in Europe, to Mr. Hitler comes to mind (Timothy Snyder wrote a brilliant take on the 1938 and 2025 Munich meetings and how the 1938 deal probably led directly to Hitler’s conquest of Europe with all that followed).
This reflexive lying, constant resort to brazen incoherence, the literal inversion of cause and effect, reflexive reversal of victim and aggressor, came to mind when I read the Trump administration’s brazen, incoherent explanation for why Mr. Musk has the legal authority to possess all citizen information and shut down any agency investigating Musk’s conflicts of interest, violations of law or for any other, or no, reason. Here’s what Trump’s handpicked “ring kisser” wrote to the court, in a sworn statement supporting the Unitary Executive’s right to do whatever he likes. Heather Cox Richardson:
In a court filing last night, the Director of the Office of Administration in the Trump administration, Joshua Fisher, clarified the government position of billionaire Elon Musk. In a sworn declaration to the court, Fisher identified Musk as “a Senior Advisor to the President.” He explained: “In his role as a Senior Advisor to the President, Mr. Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors. Like other senior White House advisors, Mr. Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself. Mr. Musk can only advise the President and communicate the President’s directives.”
Fisher’s statement went on to say that Musk is neither an employee nor the service administrator—that is, the leader—of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Therefore, Musk gets to have unlimited access to all the social security, financial, tax, health and other personal data of every American citizen, because… his job title doesn’t actually exist and DOGE, the “Department” of Government “Efficiency” is not actually a department of government at all, and since the department doesn’t exist, it is not an entity for purposes of security vetting, Senate confirmation, ethics rules, conflict of interest laws, labor laws, miscellaneous law enforcement including for financial crimes, neither is Musk responsible for its actions, nor any conflicts he might personally have, nor …
. . . anyway, the point is the ring, the ring, the irresistibly delicious ring. Historians and those who love its unique flavor are saying they’ve never seen anything like it, since the famously kissable German ring that guaranteed world peace in Munich 1938.
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