Bigger Imagination Revelation

The Republican political violence illusion.

Author’s Note: Based on the subject matter, comments are limited to avoid the predictable lunatic fringe responses. Thanks so much for your understanding!

Bigger Imagination Illusion

I get the sense that a lot of people have been spinning a bit by having thoughts and feelings that are all over the place and are having trouble focusing with all the new forms of insanity that have suddenly come up recently in America and around the world. Several people have said as much, and I have certainly been one of the people feeling that way to a degree, which is part of why CNI’s new content production level is down this month.

Another part is the biblical tragedy in the Middle East is also overwhelming the comparative relevance of less “in your face” tragedies or other important psychology that needs analysis but emotionally pales in comparison.

In fact, I have several almost done pieces on a variety of subjects waiting for more appropriate release times and have started four different Middle Eastern psychological analysis pieces to follow up the very well received Middle Eastern Axioms and Quicksand, got halfway through all of them, and then thought about how the CNI focus is to always work to be constructive and/or solutional.

With emotions on all sides still running white hot and continuing to heat up in the ongoing trauma of it all, it quickly becomes clear most Middle Eastern nuances still seem blocked from being anything more than divisive and destructive for too many at the moment, unless they are explained as part of something very long and very complex, which is a poor way to communicate with so many understandably experiencing PTSD. However, I did have a mini-revelation the other day due to the most recent “tragedy” in America.

We have been hearing for a while now that polling says Republicans are becoming far more accepting of using violence to achieve their political goals. Honestly, I have not known exactly what to make of these polls because narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths get off on creating threats of violence to scare targets, prey, rivals, and enemies into more easily giving in to what the narcissist wants, often under the guise of protecting you, and it also makes them feel powerful.

Just think about how you felt when you heard trump or Putin warning there would be the use of nuclear weapons and WW3 unless they got all they wanted. At least from Putin’s end, so many friends took his threats seriously that I felt compelled to do a psychological profile on Russia and its wannabe Czar to help people understand his nuclear threats are 99.98% BS.

Threats of primaries and violence against Republicans and their families are the primary reasons we keep hearing about why they will not stand up to trump. The truth is most, if not all, show every indication of being weak-willed narcissistic cowards who will always fold to better and more dominant narcissists. That is one of few viable answers to why they continuously surrender to the people whose supporters send death threats anytime they go against him, his cult, or other far-right qanon fascist “crazies” that apparently make up a large portion of the GOP base.

We constantly hear trump warning people there “could be violence” against his enemies, bureaucrats, and professionals if they keep trying to hold him legally accountable for his endless lawbreaking, which is standard malignant narcissist behavior in trying to trigger and send messages to their conscious and unconscious flying monkeys. Over and over he will keep trying to instigate violence by extremists and crazies against every public servant not giving him what he wants, just like he did and mostly got away with on January 6th.

Again, considering that trump is the runaway Republican front-runner for president despite multiple criminal indictments, obvious pathological narcissism, and rapidly degrading cognitive abilities, there are very few useful explanations for this cult behavior beyond the psychological.

The Revelation

In the context of the trump-driven insurrection and invasion of our capital, it makes sense that when we think of political violence, we think of something large-scale like that. Certainly many like me living in safer blue states such as California have a tendency to think of political violence as done by a group of people, and that seems unlikely to happen here, or at least last very long, but I realized I had fallen into a trap, whether natural, spin-doctored, or of my own making.

This revelation was triggered by every other notification in my inbox a few days ago warning of American “political violence” and “democracy in peril,” in conjunction with yet another mass-murder spree with a “high-powered assault rifle.” It all made me realize how we have been gaslit once again by an individual murdering and wounding over 30 innocent Americans at a bowling alley and restaurant, that my thinking of political violence only in group form was a psychological trap I fell into, or had been lured into, and made my conceptualization on the subject wrong.

I have certainly heard the drumbeats for a few years about how gun violence is political violence. It was not that I doubted it, I just didn’t make a useful connection between the two because the connection was a little abstract even for this abstract thinker.

In this most recent shooting, the shooter sent out threats to the world that he was going to kill, he had severe mental health issues, he was observed acting strangely at a military training facility, police were notified, and he was sent to a mental health facility, where he “threatened to shoot up a base” and was “allegedly hearing voices.” He was released after only two weeks, which seems very strange for someone hearing voices, let alone threatening to shoot people. Sure, his state has a weak version of a Red Flag mental health law for guns, but no doubt, thanks to consistent Republican obstruction, it failed to pick up any warning signs as well.  

What I now realize from this incident is that a large portion, if not the vast majority of Republican political violence is likely going to come from one or two lone gunmen who are triggered for any reason. Sure, many have been constantly groomed, gaslit, and triggered by Republican and trump hate and propaganda, but the fact that virtually anyone can get weapons of war after they have been triggered by anything is itself political violence, with a ready-made “mentally disturbed” “patsy” to take the blame as the effect, rather than the real cause having any accountability. What a coincidence that is standard narcissist, sociopath, and psychopath manipulative behavior as well, or is it?

Republicans both recklessly trigger vulnerable people with hateful, divisive, and apocalyptic politics and then ensure these same vulnerable people have easy access to weapons of mass destruction, like “high-powered assault rifles.” Essentially, every mass murder with an assault weapon is now political violence, because the Republican Party triggers it and refuses to do almost anything to remove the ability of people to legally bring weapons of war to every Main St. in the United States and then go off and shoot their guns when they are disturbed psychologically, politically, or both.

What a non-surprise that in 2017, the Republicans in Congress lifted the Obama-era rule that strove to keep the mentally ill from buying guns. This was literally creating ticking time bombs that could go off anytime if someone vulnerable is triggered into believing hateful far-right propaganda, has a psychotic break, or goes off their meds for whatever reason.

I vividly remember tweeting at the time that the Republican Party must have gone insane. I knew this for a fact because my little sister has schizophrenia. She is the sweetest, kindest, and gentlest Snow White, but the effectiveness of her medications can fluctuate from time to time, and environmental factors can trigger her into inconsolable rage, anger, and destruction or trash-canning of all the possessions she loves most. Long ago in fits of rage, she threatened to stab our parents a few times. This is part of what happens when someone with schizophrenia starts seeing scary people or has scary thoughts.

Now imagine what she would do if she had a “high-powered assault rifle” that is designed to kill humans in war as efficiently as possible, and someone purposely was trying to trigger her. Hence, the Republican Party confirmed they went insane and are completely owned by the gun lobby in 2017 by letting those who have moments of insanity have easy access to weapons of war, but I now realize it is even worse than that.

Every time someone commits murder with an assault weapon, that is Republican political violence, because they refuse to do anything about ending this domestic genocide, so they must want it to happen. Year after year, multitudes of Red Flags have been ignored because the Republican Party refuses to lift a finger to protect the American people from those they make ticking time bombs by allowing them easy access to assault weapons.

As Anna Applebaum says, “authoritarians win by exhausting society,” and there is no doubt our society is exhausted from the Republican political violence of aiding and abetting every assault weapon mass-murder and most gun violence in America.

How else do you describe the most recent example where someone regularly and publicly was threatening to kill people to the point where his family was trying to warn authorities that he is losing it and has easy access to weapons of war?

In Maine, you don’t even need to have a background check to purchase a gun from an unlicensed or private seller, and he was an unknown loner. This was a small community that knew him, knew he had mental issues, he made threats, and had “lots” of guns.

After this latest “high-powered assault rifle” shooting with so many people dying again, the complete capitulation of the House Republicans to trump with a new trump-approved christofascist minion Speaker who just a few years ago blamed women’s rights for mass shootings, trump being repeatedly allowed by judges to demonize anyone involved in his four cases of 91 indictments, and now yet another unstable flying monkey and apparent fan of his has attacked and murdered and injured more than 30 people, it is now clear to me that there is likely to be a lot more politically murderous violence than I had previously comprehended.

I was not fully considering how many people with “high-powered assault rifles” are going to be triggered by trump and other far-right narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths, and how that in itself is political violence Republicans are not only accepting but fully facilitating by allowing weapons of war for sale to the public and almost no protections for the public from people who should never have access to a gun, let alone a “high-powered assault rifle.”

Indeed, nearly all forms of malignant narcissists get off on triggering people to hurt others and the trauma of the constant threat we feel from any random disturbed and/or indoctrinated triggered gunman popping up at any time. This is certainly traumatizing and part of the effort to give America PTSD so we accept authoritarian fascism.

Even better if they can get away with no one realizing they are a mass murderer’s trigger or puppet master until they can achieve the power to call for political violence against their enemies legally. Certainly being above the law is something trump has told us he plans to be if he can exhaust America into giving him a second term as a wannabe dictator president.

It is no coincidence trauma is the primary creator of narcissism, and narcissists try to create more trauma to get more people to think like them or be more vulnerable to sinister logical fallacies that are sold as solutions, such as giving those who instigate most of the trauma authoritarian powers.

So in light of yet another mass-murder spree with a weapon of war, we need to remind ourselves that the forces of darkness are trying to narrow our views, interpretations, and perceptions to maintain the status quo that is leading us down a path of surrendering our democracy and freedoms to them if we do not effectively fight off these self-serving forces.

It starts with each of us having bigger imaginations so we can better conceive, protect, and fortify our collective and individual blind spots. In that spirit, I hope sharing a blind spot of my own will show that it happens to everyone, including those of us with narcissist psychology cheat codes, and thus encourage more of the forces of goodness to try to expand their own imaginations so we can all be more aware of what we are really up against and fight it in more effective ways as individuals and groups.

One thing for sure, FBI Director Wray, the ATF, and AG Garland better WTFU and quickly start seriously charging the coup-plotting puppet masters, including GOP House members, because putting it all on their narcissist “Dear Leader” and not his co-conspirator coup-plotters, or dismissing repetitive political violence as a disturbed lone gunman, is neither justice nor sustainable.

Otherwise, Biden needs to replace them quickly with people who will defend democracy (from kleptocrats, authoritarians, fascists, and nazis), because there are always more puppets who have already been groomed, conditioned, and gaslit with the right-wing fascist and narcissistic propaganda we have let fester and metastasize in America.

Warning to all other people who care about democracy. Don’t make the same mistake of limiting your imagination of what narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths are capable of, because there is no bottom.