[FRIAM] narcissism

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Well, Gil should accuse *me* of yapping, too. So yes, you and me both.

But his narcissism is irrelevant. You may as well claim that his *hair* makes him dangerous. It's irrelevant. What's relevant is his incompetence. My guess is that Obama is a narcissist, too ... anyone who *wants* to be President is probably a narcissist. Your use of "malignant" is loaded and baiting, of course. We could equally say his malignant obesity makes him dangerous. Malignant *anything* is bad. Granted, "malignant narcissism" is jargonal and you might be tempted to argue that it means something different when it qualifies narcissism instead of qualifying, say, tumor. But as soon as you wander into subcultural jargon, you lose the American public and your message is then lost. And that makes it even less relevant.

Now, you *could* argue that were he *not* a narcissist, he could learn from his stupid mistakes like querying Birx in front of the nation about injecting disinfectant [†]. But even here, his narcissism simply exacerbates his incompetence. It's the incompetence that's the problem, not the narcissism.


[†] This article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167487017306165 makes the case that vulnerable narcissists might be more honest (subject to corrective feedback) than grandiose narcissists because the vulnerable types respond to shame (though not guilt). From that, we might be able to infer that his *type* of narcissism is relevant. I.e. I'd be wrong. His type of narcissism would be an inflection point we could make actionable.

On 4/28/20 5:06 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Trump's incompetence and his malignant narcissism *both* make him dangerous in the position of president.
> 
> Were you referring to me when you wrote "yapping"?  :-)

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