Everyday narcissism

In which a psychopath laughs as some empathetic people show off their inner narc.

And the award for most tactful photograph goes to…

 

“We all go a little bit mad sometimes”, so said the totally non-psycho Psycho Norman Bates. I had managed to reach my 20th year without ever having the twist to Hitchcock’s horror classic spoiled, so was genuinely gobsmacked when ‘Mother’ finally showed up. If nothing else, Norm taught us that under every seemingly normal person’s façade, there could be some craziness hidden deep.

Except sometimes it’s not very well hidden, and is not usually at the level of stabbing women in the bath, or similar depths of depravity. Most commonly, it shows itself as narcissistic dickishness.

You know the type I mean, he takes delight in getting one over on you, and loves nothing better than a nice gloat, while cackling away like a horny witch. Or is that just me?

The point is, we are living in an increasingly narcissistic society. We need to have the latest iPhone, the best clothes, the biggest, coolest / most environmentally-friendly car (depending on your clique); we take selfies, and our online worth is decided entirely on how many ‘likes’ we get. But there are still some instances of inflated ego that come from otherwise normal people, which can make even me stop and stare.

Such as the people who take it upon themselves to talk badly about people they don’t know, judging others based on no evidence whatsoever except it feels good to tear them down. This can come in the form of cyberbullying (teenagers are actually killing themselves over comments from strangers online), street harassment (we’ve all seen the videos: ‘woman walks through NYC‘, ‘Jew walks through Paris‘), or even just a series of idiotic comments on social media (such as deciding to push a string of nonsensical, depraved and increasingly desperate arguments attempting to undermine the credibility of others, for two entire days, while allegedly being a busy young mother and student) that are all about one person putting another down in order to feel better about themselves.

Or people who engage in ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ dick-swinging. At a recent dinner party, my father (not a narc or an ‘opath) made a bit of a fool of himself bragging about how much pension he is paid. He went on to say knowingly that for a good meal at a fancy restaurant, “we’re talking up to £40 per head”, which is about 57€ or US $61. Someone else chipped in that such an amount is “chicken feed” and that for his wife’s 60th birthday, he had forked out £150 (in total, so depending on the number of people the actual per head ratio might have been much smaller than 40 quid. Even £75 each for two of them, while on the expensive side, is not exactly going to get you the Ritz treatment). My dad, keen not to be outdone even though the guy was obviously just trying to mock him, spluttered “well the really good place near us, the hotel, I’ve taken Julie (my mum) and James there and I’ve often paid £300 for just one meal”, which is absurd and untrue.  How stupid and petty. But it is, nonetheless, a funny example of people trying to outdo one another over money.

Sweet obliviousness

Or the people who exploit worthy causes to make themselves look better. You know the type I mean. They share and re-share the same viral posts from ‘social justice warriors’ and hate on and shame those with differing opinions. Feminism, anti-racism, sexual and gender freedom… equality in general, these are good things, but they become tainted when they are hijacked by people who care not about the issues, but about showing how enlightened and superior they are.

That is why some of these ‘progressives’ are so aggressive to anyone with differing opinions, because to argue with them causes narcissistic injury that must be dealt with. Would anybody who really cared about equality and diversity viciously attack people who see things differently to them? They’re the same idiots whose profile pictures are now overlayed with a transparent version of the French flag to show how much they ‘care’ about “Paris’ suffering” (not, you know, the suffering of people who were caught up in the attacks, but the imagined suffering of an inanimate city, the idealistic Gai Paris of schmaltzy stereotype), when in reality they only care about boosting their own image by claiming to empathise with the current in vogue ‘problem’. Want proof? Here’s two for the price of one:

(1) Few or none of them said anything about what happened to the Russian passenger jet which was shot down over Egypt, and no-one turned their profile pic into a Russian flag. Think of any other recent tragedy, and repeat.

(2) The Tricolore of solidarity is superimposed over these people’s own faces. They are saying not “Vive la France et à bas la tyrannie*”, but rather “look how sensitive and in-touch I am, and blue, white and red goes really well with my hair, I wonder how many likes this will earn me?”

Are these people self-aware? Some probably are; they are the true narcissists of this world. The bulk, just ordinary people, are not. They genuinely believe their own shit smells sweeter, because they have never stopped to think about their actions.

Even worse are those smug superior people who view themselves as above it all, specifically making fun of delusional types, for cheap ‘likes’, ‘shares’ and an ego boost of “At least I’m not like that. I don’t take myself so seriously. I have taste. I have standards. I am so much better than everyone else, and just to prove it I’m going to write a fine old diatribe, a rant if you will, against everyday narcissism. Then I’m going to put it on my blog about psychopaths, and show everyone how totally cool and non-hypocritical I am. I wonder how many of my little pawns will read it…”

Chers lecteurs, chères lectrices, avant de laisser vos commentaires, veuillez vous détendre un peu avec Monsieur Joe Dassin, et penser à ceux qui ont souffert aux mains de mal :

*”Long live France and down with tyranny”, in case you were snoozing in French class.

NB: I have been to Auschwitz and never once thought of taking a selfie. Do I get to brag about that too?

The Sneaky Bastard’s (Sociopath) Playbook

Excerpt from BOOK REVIEW: The 48 Laws of Power By Ox Drover

Many times on Lovefraud, bloggers have joked with me that a particular phrase or behavior “came out of the ‘Psychopath’s play book,’“ the kind of book in which a football team would write all their usual plays.

I recently bought a book entitled, The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene, because it sounded like an interesting book. But the more I got into it, I realized that the heretofore-thought-mythical “Psychopathic Play book” does exist, and this is it!

Robert Greene, by the way, also wrote The Art of Seduction.

Here’s what the jacket blurb on the back of The 48 Laws of Power says about its content:

The best-selling book for those who want POWER, watch POWER, or want to arm themselves against POWER. Amoral, cunning, ruthless and instructive, this piercing work distills three thousand years of the history of power into forty-eight well explicated laws. As attention-grabbing in its design as in its content, this bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Carol Von Clausewitz and other great thinkers. Some laws require prudence, some stealth, some total absence of mercy, but like it or not, all have applications in real-life situations. Illustrated through the tactics of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, P. T. Barnum, and other famous figures who have wielded, or been victimized by power, these laws will fascinate any reader interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.

The 48 laws are listed in the contents

Law 1: Never outshine the master

Law 2: Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies

Law 3: Conceal your intentions

Law 4: Always say less than necessary

Law 5: So much depends on reputation—guard it with your life

Law 6: Court attention at all cost

Law 7: Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit

Law 8: Make other people come to you—use bait if necessary

Law 9: Win through your actions, never through argument

Law 10: Infection: avoid the unhappy and unlucky

Law 11: Learn to keep people dependent on you

Law 12: Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim

Law 13: When asking for help, appeal to people’s self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude

Law 14: Pose as a friend, work as a spy

Law 15: Crush your enemy totally

Law 16: Use absence to increase respect and honor

Law 17: Cultivate an air of unpredictability

Law 18: Do not built fortresses to protect yourself, isolation is dangerous

Law 19: Know who you’re dealing with—do not offend the wrong person

Law 20: Do not commit to anyone

Law 21: Play a sucker to catch a sucker—seem dumber than your mark

Law 22: Use the surrender tactic: Transform weakness into power

Law 23: Concentrate your forces

Law 24: Play the perfect courtier

Law 25: Re-create yourself

Law 26: Keep your hands clean

Law 27: Play on people’s ‘need to believe’ to create a cult-like following

Law 28: Enter action with boldness

Law 29: Play all the way to the end

Law 30: Make your accomplishments seem effortless

Law 31: Control the options: Get others to play with the cards you deal

Law 32: Play to people’s fantasies

Law 33: Discover each man’s thumb screw

Law 34:Be royal in your own fashion: Act like a king to be treated like a king

Law 35: Master the art of timing

Law 36: Disdain things you cannot have: Ignoring them is the best revenge

Law 37: Create compelling spectacles

Law 38: Think as you like but behave like others

Law 39: Stir up waters to catch fish

Law 40: Despise the free lunch

Law 41: Avoid stepping into a great man’s shoes

Law 42 Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter

Law 43: Work on the hearts and minds of others

Law 44: Disarm and infuriate with the mirror effect

Law 45: Preach the need for change, but never reform too much at once

Law 46: Never appear too perfect

Law 47: Do not go past the mark you aimed for; in victory, learn when to stop

Law 48: Assume formlessness

Perfect advice for psychopaths

The preface of the book gets right down to business:

No one wants less power, everyone wants more … in the world today, however, it is dangerous to seem too power hungry, to be overt with your power moves. We have to seem fair and decent. So we need to be subtle—congenial yet cunning, democratic, yet devious.

This game of constant duplicity most resembles the power dynamic that existed in the scheming world of the old aristocratic court(s).

The author, Greene, then goes on to perfectly describe the psychopath’s ways, without naming him such “…those who make a show or display of innocence are the least innocent of all.” What else but a psychopath could “recognize…by the way they flaunt their moral qualities, their piety, their exquisite sense of justice … but (they) are merely throwing dust in our eyes distracting us from their power plays with their air of moral superiority….you will see they are often the ones most skillful at indirect manipulation, …and they greatly resent any publicizing of the tactics they use.”

Emotions

In directing his readers how to master the most important skills in acquiring power, Greene tells them that the most important foundation is to “master your emotions.” He states that an emotional response is the single greatest barrier to gaining power. In this particular thing, I totally agree with him, because if we are emotional about a situation, we lose sight of the ultimate goal, and as he says, “cannot prepare for and respond to it with any degree of control.”

Greene goes on to say that anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, and “clouds your vision the most.” Again, I totally agree with Greene in this statement, but then he goes on to add what I would think is directed more toward the vengeful psychopath than to less pathological people, “If you are trying to destroy an enemy who has hurt you, far better to keep him off-guard by feigning friendliness than showing your anger.”

The mask

Psychopaths have been described by many writers as “wearing a mask” or even “the mask of sanity.” Greene seems to be very aware of this “masking” when he advises his readers that, “You cannot succeed at deception unless you take a somewhat distanced approach to yourself—unless you can be many different people, wearing the mask that the day and moment require.”

Psychopaths tend to project blame for their behavior on to other people, to refuse to assume responsibility for any of the things they have done. They lie “when the truth would fit better.” Greene says, “Power requires the ability to play with appearances. To this end you must learn to wear many masks and keep a bag full of deceptive tricks.” He goes on to say, “Playing with appearances and mastering arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also the key components in the acquisition of power.”

Green does not seem to view deception or the acquisition of power as anything immoral, and he actually says, “Power is essentially amoral…power is a game…and in games you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effect of their actions.” He goes on to advise the reader to not be caught by assuming that someone has good intentions, or that their good intentions matter. Greene advises his readers that some sets of moral judgments are “really an excuse for the accumulation of power.” I can definitely agree with that last statement. Frequently, religion and moral judgments are used as justification for a power stance that has no other legitimacy, and does great harm to the victims.

Chapter One

For each of the 48 laws of power, Green has a short chapter that consists of the name of the law, the first being, “Never Outshine the Master.”  Then he has a section called “Judgment,” in which he explains more fully the named law of power. The first law is reasonably self-explanatory and makes sense, really, because if you show your boss you are superior to him/her, then he/she will resent you.

After giving several good examples of using this law, or failing to use this law, Greene finishes up Chapter One by saying, “You cannot worry about upsetting every person you come across, but you must be selectively cruel. If your superior is a falling star, there is nothing to fear in outshining him. Do not be merciful—your master had no such scruples in his own cold-blooded climb to the top. Gauge his strength. If he is weak, discreetly hasten his downfall: Outdo, outcharm, outsmart him at key moments.”

While this book seems aimed at the “amoral-wannabe-politician on the way up,” rather than the psychopathic “wannabe-gang-banger thug” on the corner who is illiterate, I think that those of us who have had or even will have associations with psychopaths, or “Snakes in Suits” (to highjack the name of the book as a noun), should read this to learn how to discern when we are being played by the power-seeker. If we can recognize the masks for their deceptive cover, we can avoid the consequences of being played, or possibly turn the play back on to the player.

Disturbing, but necessary, reading

Frankly, this book made me uncomfortable while I was reading it, I think possibly by showing me “red flags” of power plays that I had experienced in the past, but had not quite recognized at the time I was being played. However, I do think the knowledge I gained by reading this book is well worth the slight discomfort. It isn’t a book that you can “zip through” quickly, but one that must, like the textbook that it is, read and ponder, and even re-read, and ponder again.

The most personally disturbing part of the book was one in which he was discussing the siege of Troy, and he said, “Image: The Trojan Horse. Your guile is hidden inside a magnificent gift that proves irresistible to your opponent. The walls open. Once inside, wreak havoc.”

We must learn to protect ourselves from those power-players who have no conscience, the power players who will use calculated acts of kindness or proffered gifts to earn our trust. Selective kindness can be the biggest part of the arsenal of deception. “Aimed for the heart, it corrodes the will to fight back.”

The 48 Laws of Power is available on Amazon.com.

Source:  BOOK REVIEW: The 48 Laws of Power, by Ox Drover, December 2010

Photos courtesy Ged Carroll, Kris Krug, Mary Doodles

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Psychopath Test Politicians

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The Raping of America: Mile Markers on the Road to Fascism

by By John W. Whitehead

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”—Martin Luther King Jr.

There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry.

Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

Despite the recent outrage and protests, nothing has changed to restore us to our rightful role as having dominion over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.

Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases—these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. Thus far, the courts have done little to preserve our Fourth Amendment rights, let alone what shreds of bodily integrity remain to us.

Indeed, on a daily basis, Americans are being forced to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States.

In other words, we are all guilty until proven innocent.

Worst of all, it seems as if nothing will change as long as the American people remain distracted by politics, divided by their own prejudices, and brainwashed into believing that the Constitution still reigns supreme as the law of the land, when in fact, we have almost completed the shift into fascism.

In other words, despite our occasional bursts of outrage over abusive police practices, sporadic calls for government reform, and periodic bouts of awareness that all is not what it seems, the police state continues to march steadily onward.

Such is life in America today that individuals are being threatened with arrest and carted off to jail for the least hint of noncompliance, homes are being raided by police under the slightest pretext, and roadside police stops have devolved into government-sanctioned exercises in humiliation and degradation with a complete disregard for privacy and human dignity.

Consider, for example, what happened to Charnesia Corley after allegedly being pulled over by Texas police for “rolling” through a stop sign. Claiming they smelled marijuana, police handcuffed Corley, placed her in the back of the police cruiser, and then searched her car for almost an hour. They found nothing in the car.

As the Houston Chronicle reported:

Returning to his car where Corley was held, the deputy again said he smelled marijuana and called in a female deputy to conduct a cavity search. When the female deputy arrived, she told Corley to pull her pants down, but Corley protested because she was cuffed and had no underwear on. The deputy ordered Corley to bend over, pulled down her pants and began to search her. Then…Corley stood up and protested, so the deputy threw her to the ground and restrained her while another female was called in to assist. When backup arrived, each deputy held one of Corley’s legs apart to conduct the probe.

As shocking and disturbing as it seems, Corley’s roadside cavity search is becoming par for the course in an age in which police are taught to have no respect for the citizenry’s bodily integrity.

For instance, 38-year-old Angel Dobbs and her 24-year-old niece, Ashley, were pulled over by a Texas state trooper on July 13, 2012, allegedly for flicking cigarette butts out of the car window. Insisting that he smelled marijuana, he proceeded to interrogate them and search the car. Despite the fact that both women denied smoking or possessing any marijuana, the police officer then called in a female trooper, who carried out a roadside cavity search, sticking her fingers into the older woman’s anus and vagina, then performing the same procedure on the younger woman, wearing the same pair of gloves. No marijuana was found.

David Eckert was forced to undergo an anal cavity search, three enemas, and a colonoscopy after allegedly failing to yield to a stop sign at a Wal-Mart parking lot. Cops justified the searches on the grounds that they suspected Eckert was carrying drugs because his “posture [was] erect” and “he kept his legs together.” No drugs were found.

Leila Tarantino was subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic during a routine traffic stop, while her two children—ages 1 and 4—waited inside her car. During the second strip search, presumably in an effort to ferret out drugs, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. Nothing illegal was found. Nevertheless, such searches have been sanctioned by the courts, especially if accompanied by a search warrant (which is easily procured), as justified in the government’s pursuit of drugs and weapons.

Meanwhile, four Milwaukee police officers were charged with carrying out rectal searches of suspects on the street and in police district stations over the course of several years. One of the officers was accused of conducting searches of men’s anal and scrotal areas, often inserting his fingers into their rectums and leaving some of his victims with bleeding rectums. Halfway across the country, the city of Oakland, California, agreed to pay $4.6 million to 39 men who had their pants pulled down by police on city streets between 2002 and 2009.

It’s gotten so bad that you don’t even have to be suspected of possessing drugs to be subjected to a strip search.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Florence v. Burlison, any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials without reasonable suspicion that the arrestee is carrying a weapon or contraband.

Examples of minor infractions which have resulted in strip searches include: individuals arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, driving with an inoperable headlight, failing to use a turn signal, riding a bicycle without an audible bell, making an improper left turn, engaging in an antiwar demonstration (the individual searched was a nun, a Sister of Divine Providence for 50 years). Police have also carried out strip searches for passing a bad check, dog leash violations, filing a false police report, failing to produce a driver’s license after making an illegal left turn, having outstanding parking tickets, and public intoxication. A failure to pay child support can also result in a strip search.

It must be remembered that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to prevent government agents from searching an individual’s person or property without a warrant and probable cause (evidence that some kind of criminal activity was afoot). While the literal purpose of the amendment is to protect our property and our bodies from unwarranted government intrusion, the moral intention behind it is to protect our human dignity.

Unfortunately, the indignities being heaped upon us by the architects and agents of the American police state—whether or not we’ve done anything wrong—don’t end with roadside strip searches. They’re just a foretaste of what is to come.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government doesn’t need to strip you naked by the side of the road in order to render you helpless. It has other methods, less subtle perhaps but equally humiliating, devastating and mind-altering, of stripping you of your independence, robbing you of your dignity, and undermining your rights.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives. As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation, militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.

If there is any hope to be found it will be found in local, grassroots activism. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., it’s time for “militant nonviolent resistance.”

First, however, Americans must break free of the apathy-inducing turpor of politics, entertainment spectacles and manufactured news. Only once we are free of the chains that bind us—or to be more exact, the chains that “blind” us—can we become actively aware of the injustices taking place around us and demand freedom of our oppressors.

SOURCE: The Rutherford Institute, August 2015

Psychopath TEST Politicians