Category Archives: January 6 MAGA riot

You say he admires Hitler like it’s a bad thing

Retired General and former Trump chief-of-staff John Kelly’s recent on the record revelations about Trump’s frequent expressions of admiration for Hitler, Trump’s desire for not only another Roy Cohn to defend him (Bill Barr did an impressive imitation) but for loyal generals like Hitler had, Trump’s disdain for military service and sacrifice and his ignorance of history, will make little difference in an election that is all about feeling. On a wave of strong feeling either Trumpie or Harris will surf to victory, and God help us all if that wave breaks the wrong way.

To someone like me, who lost virtually his entire, once large, family to a killing machine unleashed by Mr. Hitler [1], news that a presidential candidate a statistical coin flip away from achieving his dreams of revenge admires, and frequently cited the successes of, Mr. Hitler is sickening.

But as Mr. Trumpie pointed out in his own defense, Hitler did a lot of great things too, and he was loved and unquestionably obeyed by his generals, even the ones who tried to assassinate him a couple of times, which many people don’t know, by the way. Hitler’s generals all revered him, even the ones who, with tears in their eyes, admitted under torture “sir, I tried to kill you”.

Chrump, of course, is a famously “transactional”, incurious, strongman-venerating moron who only knows that Hitler, whose word was literally law, dreamed big about making the Fatherland Great Again and, for a while (presumably before being betrayed by his own sick, disloyal people) was a huge winner. Nobody got ratings, or dominated, like Mr. Hitler at the time, nobody besides Mr. Trump, of course, if he’d been there, on German reality TV.

On the other hand, to someone who thinks Jews have too much unchecked power, that they control the weather (actually, I do that sometimes) and are hellbent on importing tens of millions of raping brown people to pervert democracy and impose their anti-Christian values by Jew trickery, using brainwashed, savage Blacks, Browns and Yellows, who will replace all White Christians, as Q foretells, well, Hitler, whatever his possible faults, had basically the right idea.

Lock the Soroses up, take their ill-gotten wealth (only white Christian billionaires deserve their honestly acquired wealth) and eventually, just quietly get rid of the eternal enemy of Jesus Christ. Where’s the hole in that plan? It’s perfect for someone who believes a violent mob assault on the Capitol police was totally justified “legitimate political discourse” or that the virtuous South was forced to become the Confederacy after the “union” viciously attacked them. Only a Jew could argue against propositions so straightforward.

The two sides do not have equally strong arguments, of course, but that’s not the point. Scholar of fascism Robert Paxton pointed out that fascism is not an ideology based on reasoned arguments but appeals to blood, soil, national grievance and violent action. Here’s Paxton:

“It seems doubtful,” Paxton wrote in The New York Review of Books in 1994, “that some common intellectual position can be the defining character of movements that valued action above thought, the instincts of the blood above reason, duty to the community above intellectual freedom, and national particularism above any kind of universal value. Is fascism an ‘ism’ at all?” Fascism, he argued, was propelled more by feelings than ideas.

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In this way fascism closely resembles the worldview of any narcissist and the little social circle they control. The infallible leader’s appeal is always to feelings, their own and the supreme values of loyalty, faith and love of those in their orbit. These appeals bypass observable cause and effect, context, ideals, facts, reason, logic, discussion, deliberation or anything else that “enlightened” souls try to guide their behavior by. If I feel it, says the leader, it’s fucking true. If you have a defiant feeling against mine, you’re fucking dead, asshole!

And so it always is, from Mr. Hitler to Mr. Koch to Mr. Nixon to Mr. Stone to Mr. Trump. The only people bothered by this natural hierarchy of strength are handwringing losers who sit worrying, and tapping, while virile men of action martyr themselves for a glorious cause that makes them feel righteous. In an advertising-based world where ads are ubiquitous and only strong feeling matters, how can you fault them for doing what heroes always do, being ready to die, and righteously kill, for their faith?

[1] I love this New York Times style tic. In a long ago article about Eric Clapton and Bo Diddley, the two guitar players were referred to throughout as Mr. Clapton and Mr. Diddley. That tickled me greatly.

Look at everything Trumpie accomplished in just his first year in office

The New York Times editorial board features a hard-hitting interactive timeline, apparently published in July 2024, of everything the Orange Menace accomplished in just his first year as wannabe dictator from day one.  The report goes through all four action packed years of fighting and lying like hell. A hard-hitting recitation of facts from the newspaper whose spokespeople over and over claim the Grey Lady refuses to get involved in “politics”… The first year by itself is very impressive. Click the image below for the show.

“Fun” fact:  More Americans died in Trump’s beautiful lovefest/January 6th Capitol riot, at the hands of their fellow Americans, than died in Benghazi, at the hands of enraged Libyans, an event weaponized against then Secretary of State H. Clinton to the eternal fury of the American right.  

Here’s an angry patriot, in Bayside, New York, standing under his Trump’s God, America, Freedom flag, with a t-shirt reminding Americans of those killed in Benghazi.

Don’t tread on me, bro

Legitimate political discourse, USA! USA!!! style

In a country where a deadly riot conducted by followers of an enraged candidate who lost an election that wasn’t close, lied about losing and sent a mob of patriotic martyrs to overturn the will of the voters, an estimated 50% of likely voters appear to believe that this riot was not a riot at all but “legitimate political discourse.” That was the phrase Ronna Romney McDaniel, head of the MAGA Republican National Committee parroted to describe the direct, frontal assault on democracy, with very fine people on both sides. the finest people.

“We had no guns,” claimed their madly riffing candidate the other day, lying, as is his reflex, “only they had guns”. The “they” in question was law enforcement. Ha ha ha! Isn’t that hitlerious? “Arnold Palmer, gigantic cock, I shouldn’t say this, but mine is only slightly bigger. I know, I know!”

Belief is all that matters in the United States of advertising, and if you truly believe it, you have every right to act righteously on that belief. The triumph of American Exceptionalism right there, boys and girls.

You claim my God is imaginary? Blasphemy! That gives me the right to put you to death. God sez so!!!

Shawn McCreesh summed up this “vicious and absurd” election beautifully in the New York Times today. He sets the scene the Troll-in-Chief whipped up outside his quick McDonald’s photo op in swing state Pennsylvania:

The parking lot throbbed with hatred, fear and neighbor’s suspicion of neighbor. It became a microcosm of this year’s election, vicious and absurd. There was shouting about Project 2025 and the Jan. 6 riot. Transgender youth and vaccines. Tariffs and abortion. Fascism and communism. Mr. Trump’s supporters wore T-shirts that said “I’m voting for the convicted felon.” The other side yelled, “Lock him up.” One person wore an orange prison jumpsuit and a mask of Mr. Trump’s face.

This is what the mood is like in a swing state, 16 days before an election. Sixteen days before this election. Nearly a decade into the Trump-era of politics, the language is apocalyptic. Social media has supercharged the crude negativity.

campaign notebook

Maybe this social media blasted country really is mad and stupid enough to allow Trump, Bannon, Musk, Giuliani, Kerik, Flynn, Ginni Thomas, Peter Thiel, Miriam Adelson, JD Vance and random Hitler fans to establish massive righteous concentration camps in the name of Jesus Christ and intoxicatingly unfettered predatory capitalism. I hate to say it, and I’ll probably be saying it through broken jaws on the train to camp, but this country will deserve it if violent xenophobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia, lust for tax breaks and other forms of bullying stupidity tilt this unaccountably close election to triumphant American Nazis, based purely on advertising stoked rage.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press uncritically retailed three Trump whoppers in a one minute and nineteen second account of Orange Manhood’s Mickey D trolling exercise in Feasterville, Pennsylvania the other day. The compulsive liar, wearing an apron like a real minimum wage worker, spat out three juicy ones in seconds in this beautiful, free Trump campaign ad. “She never worked at McDonald’s,” (she did) “McDonald’s just confirmed that again, by the way” (the corporate giant, taking a principled moral stance, declined to comment. again) “in other words, she’s Lying Kamala.” (don’t you mean Lyin’ Ted, you demented fascist?)

Why lying works for psychopaths

People want to feel right, righteous, on the side of good and standing firmly against evil. This impulse to be on the side of good is deeply wired into most of us. If we believe someone is a monster, we recoil from them, marginalize them, want to see them gone. It is this human desire for righteousness that the greatest liars exploit. It feels good to be right, and if a well-placed lie makes you feel more righteous than the complicated, sometimes difficult, truth, what is the real harm in that?

We see the power of determined, shameless liars’ use of incendiary lies, designed to produce righteous anger and persuade people to follow them, in politics every minute of every day. It works perfectly to persuade millions of the righteousness of an objectively rotten cause and it works equally well among much smaller groups. There is no group too small for this principle to work in. Here is a personal example.

I had a small, almost senseless conflict with a dear friend of fifty years. It was over, literally, nothing. Hearing the actual details, few would be able to figure out how this stupid impasse was not worked out easily between old friends, how it became a fatal fault line. In hindsight, this woman who insists on being in charge had been spoiling for this final fight for a while. Given the opportunity to righteously rage, she glared at me with silent hostility, refused to speak, letting her implacably fierce stare speak for itself.

I offered compromises, proposed solutions, her husband tried to explain her irrational objections which she refused to address herself. She remained silent and glared a laser beam of hostility at me, before snarling her final refusal of even a small compromise as she closed the door behind her for the night.

In the end, because I could not accept that my “defiance” had completely justified her totally understandable rage, I had to be destroyed. I’d seen a humiliating weakness in a person with an outsized need never to be wrong. Since she does not possess first class tools to make her case persuasively, she resorts to emotional terrorism, a very effective form of control, as I would learn. She is well-known for her willfulness, her need to be obeyed, to have the final word on everything from which restaurant everyone goes to to what topics may be discussed at dinner.

How did she convince everyone else in our group of longtime friends, and their entire families, that I was suddenly the incarnation of Adolf Hitler? She told them that rather than trying to make peace for a year, I’d spent a full year relentlessly torturing her husband, my closest friend, to “bend him to my will.” To my amazement, the reality that I’ve never tried to bend anyone to my will, readily apologize when I know I’ve hurt somebody, am always ready to compromise rather than fight, was completely disregarded by people who’d known us both well for fifty years. She bent everyone to her will with conscious lies, repeated with enough passion to convince a group of my oldest friends that I was toxic, a person to be shunned unto the death.

When I see JD Vance bristle that the CBS moderators are fucking liars because they promised not to fact check his lies at a debate where he lied over and over, when I see trump’s sphincter of a mouth move, his angry petulance when asked a question he takes offense to, I see my former dear friend. Not everyone will immediately lie when they feel themselves under stress, or challenged. Every one of these desperate people who can never be wrong will lie exactly the same way whenever they feel under pressure. They will do whatever is necessary to bend others to their perverse will to control the people around them.

That the angriest, most insecure, insane, mendacious pieces of shit in the world often have the final say in human affairs is a horrifying tragedy. Netanyahu and his perverted Jewish fundamentalist extremists vs. Hamas and their perverted Muslim fundamentalists extremists get the last word about whether millions of peace loving people in Israel/Palestine will live quiet lives of hope or suffer gruesome, endless warfare and death. Trump and his billionaire handlers currently decide whether millions of Americans live in fear and rage, and resort to deadly violence, or come together to peacefully work out our common problems.

Sadly for humanity, sick motherfuckers very often get the last word. Look at fucking Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, Ginni Thomas, cherub-faced fanatic MAGA Mike Johnson and the rest of their stinking divisive, constantly aggrieved ilk. Every one of them righteous as hell in their own mind and intent on convincing others they’re on the side of the angels, resolute in their determination to exterminate all demons. As it is written: fuck those fucking putos.

We fight, we fight like hell.

and if you don’t fight like hell, we’re not going to have a country anymore.

Roy Cohn, a truly grotesque incarnation of human evil, a vicious homophobe who was promiscuous with young men, a corrupt lawyer disbarred, finally, as he was dying of AIDS, had three rules he taught young Donald:

Attack, attack, attack. Admit nothing, deny everything. No matter what happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat.

Sound familiar?

Fitness for office — not an issue for MAGA

Fitness for any powerful office is based on competence, experience, character, intelligence, the capacity to reason and a measured temperament. Fitness for office should be a prerequisite for anyone who exercises power over others (as it is for active US military commanders), particularly those in control of the deadly force of a nation. Fitness and judicial temperament are particularly vital for a judge, someone who must fairly weigh facts in light of law and precedent. It applies as well to anyone bound to faithfully carry out the law.

Someone who is always aggrieved, angry, competitive, spiteful, vengeful, untruthful, entitled, grandiose, impulsive, given the power to appoint people to positions of power, will always choose people with these same attributes. Case in point:

Donald Trump’s inability or unwillingness to distinguish fact from fiction, wanton disregard for the rule of law, intolerance of perspectives different from his own, rageful responses to criticism, lack of impulse control and sweeping condemnations of entire populations rendered him temperamentally unsuitable to be in command of the nuclear arsenal.                                                                             

— Dr. Nanette Gartrell from The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

Outside of Trump gastroenterologist Dr. Harold Bornstein’s 2016 claim that “Donald Trump will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” and a one page letter released by a loyal White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, (whose name Trump got wrong in bragging about the letter), a man demoted by the Navy for various infractions including being drunk on duty, bullying subordinates and dispensing pills like Pez, a loyalist who is now a MAGA Congressman, we know nothing of the Orange Temper Tantrum’s health, physical or mental.   We do know a lot about his readily observable behavior, which is as predictable and unalterable as anything in the universe.

Dr. Judith Herman sums up the mix nicely as “grandiose, belligerent and unpredictable behavior” — unpredictable only as to the full extent of his impulsiveness.

An insecure, grandiose braggart who makes all his school records, tax records, medical records and conversations with Vladimir Putin top secret, who insists everyone around him sign NDAs, while sharing actual top secret government documents with undisclosed persons, after leaving office, certainly has nothing to hide.

If asked a question about what happened on Election Day 2020, or on January 6, 2021, it’s not hard to predict the answer of Trump’s VP pick, chosen by Trump for this Trump-like characteristics. His answer will be an angry demand for the questioner to answer an unrelated question. He will do this over and over, challenging the poser of a legitimate question in the manner of a hectoring bully. Is anyone surprised Trump’s VP pick responds with anger whenever he’s “fact-checked”?

Of course, the whole conversation about fitness for duty is a nakedly partisan issue raised only by rabidly Marxist, Communist, Fascist, Democratic, Egalitarian cuck types like yours’ truly. Forget I mentioned it, or I will send the National Guard to your house to take care of you, if you know what I mean, while you resist arrest, cuck.

My first note to Dr. Bandy Lee

This was my first comment to Bandy Lee, a few days earlier. At the end is a link that explains why I think Ryan Reynolds would be a good person for her to contact (assuming he shares our concern with the unthinkable possibility of a violent madman becoming “president” again, against the will of the majority of voters).

What you have to say is so important, so crucial, to protecting our society. I learn something new from every interview you do and every article you publish.

I wish you would have your media team put out 15 to 30 second shorts that could go viral. Take one great point at a time and just present it to the camera. No undecided voter could remain undecided after hearing what you and your colleagues have to say about the clear and present dangerousness of Trump and his myrmidons.

I’ve been thinking you bury the lede when you save this for paragraph two:

At no time has mental fitness in leadership been more important. Yet, at no time have we had a presidential campaign where mental fitness has been a more precarious issue.

Keep up the good work, and please, please, create some short clips that can become memes. This is, sadly, the age of information and public relations we live in. Although it couldn’t be further from our purposes, check out this short for an example of the power of well-wielded social media: https://youtube.com/shorts/cesrZd73sQY?si=26eefs5di6eb3e9X

At another point I suggested this very compelling story I’ve heard from her, which she told in about half a minute:

Your story about the American Psychiatric Association gagging public discussion of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump might make an excellent illustrative short. 

A powerful psychopath feeling under attack, in a position to reward a US government-funded organization with a record allocation and a new $10,000,000 headquarters in DC, who then rewards them for their favor, ably put into effect by no less than the venerated/hated NY Times, gagging all experts by publicly enforcing the association’s own voluntary rule as if it was federal law.  

That story of the “inviolable” Goldwater Rule, and its always clear political intent, and how it was used to silence the experts to the advantage of the dangerous, powerful psychopath, is too good not to be shared by millions before the election.    

The story of that Trump-facilitated nationwide gag order of professionals acting out of a duty to warn of imminent danger is the perfect illustration of how this malignant type gets away with this open corruption. 

Help Bandy Lee’s message go viral!

Bandy Lee is a forensic psychiatrist who has great, and highly relevant, expertise from years working with violent psychopaths. Feeling that she had a professional duty to warn, based on her observations of newly elected President trump, she convened a 2017 conference on the Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. Lee and twenty-six highly respected colleagues, including Robert J. Lifton (author of, among other works, “The Nazi Doctors”) published The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, NY Times best-seller and invaluable primer on malignant narcissism. I recommend that book to everyone.

Trump’s allies were able to marginalize the indispensable guide to Trump’s pathology and largely remove it from public discussion. The conservative American Psychiatric Association, ably aided by the powerful NY Times, attacked and vilified the book as a clear violation of the APA’s Goldwater Rule.

That rule (binding only on members of the APA, but treated as an inviolable federal law) states that, no matter what public evidence exists, psychiatrists are forbidden from offering their informed opinions about any public person they have not personally interviewed — and may publicly draw psychiatric conclusions only if the person in question authorizes it.

In other words, the Goldwater Rule states that, if an angry psychopath in a position of public power is cool with public discussion of their rage and unslakable thirst for revenge, after personally consulting with a shrink, only then may the psychiatrist publicly speak about it.

Bandy Lee is brilliant, courageous, articulate and she has a CRUCIAL message that would wake up millions of undecided voters, if they were exposed to it. She has assembled great experts, and recently held a second conference on trump’s dangerous unfitness at the National Press Club [1]. What she has not been able to do is disseminate her message widely, in a way succinct enough for the average distracted, traumatized, non-intellectual American voter to digest, or even encounter.

Bandy Lee’s website is http://www.bandylee.com. Her Substack newsletter is at https://bandyxlee.substack.com/. You can read her detailed assessments and hear long form interviews at those sites, along with a video of the full recent conference. Sadly, you will never encounter her CRUCIAL information in a short, shareable form that could (and should, and MUST) go viral.

I URGE ANYONE READING THIS to put on your thinking cap and find a way to recruit a Ryan Reynolds, or some other genius of social media manipulation, for help getting Bandy Lee’s crucial message out to millions, particularly as it could well be the deciding factor for the “undecided” voters out there.

As I wrote to her on Substack:

Corporations (including a democratic forum like Substack) control most communication in the US, one way or the other.  There are only two ways to influence mass public opinion, both engines for disseminating persuasive information/content, true or false, are problematic.  

The corporate mass media news and editorial narrative leaves out context, engages in false equivalencies, allows lies to air unchecked, consents in the destruction of norms, normalizes pathology, etc.  Profit-driven mass media, whose only motive is financial gain, exerts tremendous influence on most Americans, particularly older voters.

“Social Media”, odious and divisive as it also is, is a powerful driver of public opinion, for better and for worse.  A meme is born when it hits quick, memorably makes a good point, and makes people want to share it.  Billions of shares of a video featuring a memorable dance to a song called Gangnam Style.

I don’t know how to use social media myself, as I’ve learned again recently trying to get answers for why trump appointees Louis DeJoy (slow the mail, cut costs) and Joseph Caffari (Homeland Security IG who, uh, accidentally let all January 6 secret service evidence be irretrievably destroyed) are still in positions of power, but there are geniuses in the field of internet marketing with expertise in how to create viral short videos.  Talk to the folks at Meidas Touch about how to make important, individual points in shareable 30 second bytes.   

Your expert insights need to be set out in short, shareable videos.  If undecided voters are exposed to your message, it’s hard to believe many would vote for trump.   You should be in touch with the Lincoln Project, for example, their take on your main points about Trump’s dangerousness, coming from experts in violent pathology assisted by experts in propaganda, would get wider exposure.  Talk to Anthony Davis about creating some shorts from your interviews with him, I have seen many 30-60 second sections of those talks that would make great shareable shorts.   We need 30 second clips of some of your best points, points that can instantly be shared. Millions of people need to hear them!

Your best-selling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump is an indispensable primer for understanding the personality type capable of pathological violence.  That we have a presidential candidate for a major political party possessing all the clear warning signs of destructive rage, on steroids, is CRUCIAL for undecided voters to know.  

Trump’s brand is violence, fighting, oppositionality, never admitting fault or defeat.  A classic psychopath.   He’s already fomented criminal violence in his name that he’s promised pardons for, as well as constant threats of, and pardons for, future violence.   His handpicked (by his handlers) Supreme Court majority recently ruled that his pardons may not be questioned or appealed, even if they are offered for sale.

Blah, blah, blah. . . Dr. Lee is busy and I haven’t heard back from her.

On the well-funded extremist right, they always march in lockstep, speaking in one voice, defiantly repeating the same disproven lies over and over until they wear people out. On the non-fascistic side of the spectrum there are a million voices, ten million shades of nuance, and those diverse and personal messages have neither the persistence nor the compelling public force of a unified, infuriating talking point grunted over and over and over and endlessly amplified by mass media.

Bandy Lee correctly diagnoses the danger we face right now — Trumpism is a public health emergency, like the recent pandemic. Trump contagion (which, to be fair, emanates as much from Charles Koch, Leonard Leo, John Roberts and their filthy ilk as from their current performative avatar, the Orange Polyp, himself) has made millions admire and imitate his lowest impulses, impulses he cannot control. This way lies rage, more and more violence and eventually mass murder, guaranteed.

Want a nice factoid? In 2014 there were 912 antisemitic incidents in the United States, a number that has gone up every year since Trump’s (oops, trump’s) 2016 election — last year there were 8,873 reported antisemitic incidents [2]. I would assume all hate crimes in the US have increased in similar numbers, remember the violent aftermath of trump’s witty, peaceful Kung Flu call to violence?

You want to argue about whether Trump is dangerously, violently insane, an American Hitler or not? Put him in back power, surrounded by loyal MAGA appointees, wait a couple of years and — guaranteed, I’ll meet you in a death camp somewhere (if we’re lucky, that is). It took the actual Hitler twenty full years, from his violent attempted coup, to the opening of the first true Nazi death camps. All these creatures need is time.

[1] Bandy Lee, earlier today:

The theme of our conference was that fitness is not a subjective, partisan, or even political “opinion” but a scientific finding based on extensive research, clinical experience, and uniform application of medical standards to military officers, officers handling nuclear weapons, surgeons, and executive officials.  The consensus at the conference was that mental fitness is critically important for the U.S. presidency and that Donald Trump is decisively unfit.  It should become widely known that Trump’s mental unfitness has now been objectively measured in multiple ways; that mental health expertise is critical to explaining what he is and is not capable of doing; how dangerous it is to have a mentally unfit person in a position of power; and how his psychological dangers can quickly spread into social, cultural, and geopolitical dangers, by rendering domestic legal and political institutions, and global balances and alliances ineffectual.

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[2] Reporter Bob Garfield, in a particularly brilliant post, includes this:

The preemptive blame, of course, is meant to both intimidate Jewish voters and rally the violent among MAGA faithful, such as the ones who attacked the Capitol over his 2020 “stolen election” lies, such as the “very fine” neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” such as the mass murderers who shot six Jews to death at a deli in Jersey City, NJ, such as Robert Bowers, guilty of gunning down worshipers in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, such as the perpetrators of 8873 antisemitic incidents in the United States last year alone (in 2014, the year before Trump’s first presidential campaign, there were 912, and the number has risen every year since), such as the Proud Boys, Goyim Defense League, Blood Tribe, Ku Klux Klan, QAnon, Black Hebrew Israelites, Atomwaffen Division and other hate groups.

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Traumatically low self-esteem

As psychiatrist James Gilligan, who spent years working with violent prison inmates, observed: all violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem. It is an illuminating and important insight.

How does a child turn into a violent sadist? By being traumatized at the hands of those they relied on, beyond the ability to trust anyone, beyond hope of self-esteem. They internalize this hopeless, isolated, humiliation and must inflict violence on others to get a twinge of what feels to them like self-esteem. The suffering and helplessness of their crushed victims confirms for them that they are powerful after all, to be respected, and feared.

In one sense this seems obvious, after years watching the nonstop sickening performance of a thin-skinned, whining “strongman” who controls one of our two major political parties, banished all critics and bent it to his perverted will. He perceives violence carried out in his name as love, as he observed on January 6 when the “patriotic” mob of political martyrs were forced, by a massive bipartisan cabal of his cheating enemies, to attack Capitol police. He’d never seen so much love, he tweeted, as when his people were passionately injuring dozens of cops in his name.

It is true of any narcissist who is far enough on the scale to behave psychopathically. They literally cannot help what they do, though that’s no excuse for their predictably treacherous behavior. They are compelled by a desperation someone not traumatized to the extent they are can ever fully comprehend.

These creatures need to feel the power of hurting others, otherwise they feel utterly worthless. The humiliating feeling of being undeserving of love motivates monstrous behavior. The attempt to gain self-respect, respect and love by dominance, fear and manipulation is, as Gilligan points out, a misguided attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.

I point this out because knowing this basic mechanism of all abusers is important, if you are faced with one of these supremely destructive assholes. Once you see abusiveness in your personal life, say nothing (appeals to empathy or fairness are futile with these assholes) but put maximum emotional distance between yourself and one of these hopeless, reflexively harmful humanoids.