Counter-Narcissist Cheat Codes: False Bravery - Part I
CNI Psychological Defense Class - The Political Lens
I just had false bravery memories triggered by a likely malignant narcissist essentially saying they respected the “courage” of their political ally (who not coincidentally is a likely psychopath), after the ally said something horrifically poisonous and racist as a matter of fact about the narcissist to their face.
Of course the cowardly narcissist was not declaring the likely psychopath courageous for saying it to their face, as if the spineless weasel was some sort of threat to anything except honor, truth, and reality. The suck-up narcissist was saying their likely psychopath ally had “courage” because they were saying the quiet part out loud about their tone-deaf racism and firm belief in American white supremacy. Yes, the likely psychopath’s words flew pretty close to a nazi sun.
On the positive side, this gives CNI an opportunity to show how to recognize the important false bravery manipulations and tells of dishonest politicians, political operatives, malignant narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths via comparing and contrasting a political perspective lens with a CNI psychological lens.
The memory
It was early in the George W. Bush / Dick Cheney administration when I first started noticing Republi-cons, neoCons, con artists, henchmen, true believers, and every other type of GOP flying monkey regularly declare that Bush Jr. deserved tremendous credit for his “bravery” and “leadership” in making “tough” but unpopular political decisions that made the majority of America very unhappy, angry, and/or outraged.
The Political Lens
Since I did not start studying narcissist psychology until the end of the Bush Administration, my non-psychological but very well-informed political reaction to such behavior back then was, “What a bunch of BS!”
Obviously, there is never any bravery involved when a rich and powerful person does the self-serving things they, their owners, and their like-minded cabal planned to attempt all along, whenever the opportunity presents itself.
You know, “brave” Republican things like cutting taxes for themselves and the other rich people who give them money. You know, cutting things like support programs that help the common folks and poor survive and get ahead. Or perhaps maybe another try at Middle Eastern “take the oil” regime change that your much wiser and more experienced dad told you was always going to be a failing fool’s errand for very sound and practical, military, strategic, and realpolitik reasons.
It is only natural to assume that Bush Jr.’s false bravery BS started during the lead-up to his Iraq war, when all the aforementioned GOP flying monkey mouthpieces were plastering the news declaring him so brave for making the extremely “unpopular decision” (of falsely conflating Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda to justify) of the invasion of Iraq.
I just had false bravery memories triggered by a likely malignant narcissist essentially saying they respected the “courage” of their political ally (who not coincidentally is a likely psychopath), after the ally said something horrifically poisonous and racist as a matter of fact, about the narcissist, to their face.
Of course the cowardly narcissist was not declaring the likely psychopath courageous for saying it to their face, as if the spineless weasel was some sort of threat to anything except honor, truth and reality. The suck-up narcissist was saying their likely psychopath ally had “courage” because they were saying the quiet part out loud about their tone-deaf racism and firm belief in American white supremacy. Yes, the likely psychopath’s words flew pretty close to a nazi sun.
On the positive side, this gives CNI an opportunity to show how to recognize the important false bravery manipulations and tells of dishonest politicians, political operatives, malignant narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths via comparing and contrasting a political perspective lens with a CNI psychological lens.
The memory
It was early in the George W. Bush / Dick Cheney administration when I first started noticing Republi-cons, neoCons, con artists, henchmen, true believers and every other type of GOP flying monkey regularly declare that Bush Jr. deserved tremendous credit for his “bravery” and “leadership” in making “tough” but unpopular political decisions, that made the majority of America very unhappy, angry and/or outraged.
The Political Lens
Since I did not start studying narcissist psychology until the end of the Bush Administration, my non-psychological but very well-informed political reaction to such behavior back then was, “What a bunch of BS!”
Obviously, there is never any bravery involved when a rich and powerful person does the self-serving things, they, their owners and like-minded cabal planned to attempt all along, whenever the opportunity presents itself.
You know, “brave” Republican things like cutting taxes for themselves and the other rich people who give them money. You know, cutting things like support programs that help the common folks and poor survive and get ahead. Or perhaps maybe another try at Middle Eastern “take the oil” regime change that your much wiser and more experienced Dad told you was always going to be a failing fool’s errand for very sound and practical, military, strategic and realpolitik reasons.
It is only natural to assume that Bush Jr’s false bravery BS started during the lead up to his Iraq war, when all the aforementioned GOP flying monkey mouthpieces were plastering the news declaring him so brave for making the extremely “unpopular decision” (of falsely conflating Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda to justify), the invasion of Iraq.
Note - Is it good to have Saddam Hussein gone? Absolutely! Was it worth all the blood, lives, honor, integrity, and treasure spent on it? Today, even most previous Iraq War II supporters would now say, “Absolutely not!” In fact, the falsely brave Bush Jr.’s Iraq War is considered by most experts to be the biggest military and political blunder in American history. More need to remember that what was falsely called bravery then is seen as completely foolish now. Sadly, the results were what many of us easily predicted based on just the declared lessons of Iraq War I, led by Bush Sr.
However, the 2016 election of a narcissistic lunatic like trump certainly rivals and likely surpasses all of our political blunders, including Iraq, so we all must do everything in our power to make sure trump loses badly in November.
Otherwise, America and the world may be irrevocably lost forever down a dark dystopian rabbit hole of fascist cruelty, chaos, and an elitist corrupted government of malignant narcissists, captured by despicable billionaire malignant narcissists. We know falling into such a darkness is the most likely outcome if people with these types of disorders are given power over us, because “malignant” means “progressively gets worse.”
Origins
There is little doubt that this Bush false bravery BS started at least as far back as his run for governor of Texas, because the Texan tough guys like Ted Cruz and John Cornyn have the fake tough guy routine down. It does boggle the mind that “Real Men” in Texas can stomach these fake pansies. It definitely was the case with Bush Jr. that he was sold to American voters as a strong, tough, “compassionate conservative,” “CEO” leader, unlike that less fun, “elitist” bureaucrat Al Gore fellow.
As few can forget, Gore won the national election but lost the undemocratic Electoral College vote, or so we were sold by Bush’s governor brother’s home state of Florida and a Republican majority-appointed Supreme Court that shut further investigation down, essentially declaring Bush Jr. the winner.
That’s right, two of the last three times Republicans “won” the presidency, and six out of the last seven presidential elections, Republicans have had fewer national votes than the Democrats. Roe vs. Wade and so many other rights and programs would be alive today if American presidents were elected by simple majority, as has pretty much always been the case with every other free and democratic country in the history of the world.
It was striking how the day after the election, Bush Jr. and all his people went into a psychopathic denial and marched around as if there was no question that he won, long before anything was close to clear or certain.
Interestingly, because I didn’t really know anything about narcissist psychology at the time, it is only now that I recollect how much Bush and his team’s unjustified absolute certainty that they won the moment the election was over was virtually identical to a “fake it til you make it” blind psychopathy of acting victorious, no matter what, until victory is surrendered to you. Frankly, that also sounds a lot like trump’s post-election behavior, if you think about it.
Political bravery red flags
Certainly to my mind, it always should have been obvious to everyone that when someone in politics is declared “brave” or declares themselves brave for just saying or doing what they want to do anyway, or they are financially incentivized to do something, any declaration of bravery for doing so is total BS and should be a big RED FLAG, because the exact opposite is true.
Someone is brave if they go against what their supporters want to see them do, because it is the right thing to do. Indeed, political bravery is when you are leading a just cause righteously and honorably, especially when it would be an easier and personally enriching path to just give in and sacrifice others for your own benefit.
It is definitely political bravery when someone risks their own life to confront a corrupt power that could very well hurt or kill them. Indeed, to risk personal safety for the rights of other people is real bravery, but of course if there is ever a personal risk, everyone must be cautious and stay smart about it! However, in politics it is never brave to do something if one of the people who financially or politically benefits the most from what you are doing is you.
It was such a logical fallacy joke back then, but clearly not enough Americans saw the psychological brain hack. Even before Iraq, Bush would do some right-wing nut job thing using sneaky presidential political powers, and then psychopathic spin-master Karl Rove would turn that turd into what the public would believe is a good “leadership” blossom, which is what earned Rove the Bush nickname, “Turd Blossom.”
No surprise that someone like Turd Blossom was also very good at using America’s 9/11 trauma against us. At every opportunity to sneak an ever-increasing amount of taxpayer-funded crony and disaster capitalism corruption BS past a traumatized and gaslit public, they would do it.
If anyone asked, GOP henchmen would go on to call what was being done “brave” or part of “the war on terror,” and say that anyone who questioned them was either being anti-American, not supporting the troops, helping the terrorists win, or all of the above.
Such manipulative false patriotism was certainly a very effective way to silence any criticism at the time. In hindsight, this type of attack on normal kinds of questioning certainly bears most of the hallmarks of gaslighting and narcissistic abuse. Indeed, abusers demand their victims view reality only in their favor, or their psychological abuse will continue until their target submits, stops them, or just leaves.
Global unity vs. global division
Whatever you want to call it, up to the last few weeks before the invasion of Iraq II, I just could not believe they would blow up the unity of the world to do something as foolish as opening up this Pandora’s box. This all was also a bit ironic because I had accurately predicted Bush Sr. would invade Iraq to free Kuwait from Saddam 6 months before it happened, although I am sure that several of my contemporary International Relations compatriots saw it coming as well.
Unlike Bush Jr.’s Iraq War II, there were actually good reasons for Iraq War I. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was a big one. Certainly, Reason #1 was the most clarifying and obviously a “clear and present danger.” On the other hand, justifications for Iraq War II were all previously flimsy and suspect, and in hindsight, were mostly cherry-picked lies and half-truths. Even back then, it was all a fairly obvious self-serving sales pitch that worked too easily on the fears of the propagandized, gaslit, well-groomed, and less informed.
Iraq War I Reason #1 - It was an international security threat to let Saddam take Kuwait with Saudi Arabia up next, thus letting an obvious psychopath control a ridiculous percentage of global oil. With control over that much of the world’s oil, he could hold the global economy hostage and cause great economic devastation whenever he didn’t get his way. He would then likely try to take over the entire Middle East and further develop his nuclear program to have bombs to drop on his arch enemy Iran or on anyone else who dared challenge him.
Note - Trust me when I say a sadistic psychopath, sociopath, or narcissist with nuclear weapons is a very bad idea. We were lucky to escape in trump’s one term without a global nuclear holocaust. Additionally, since he and his minions have declared he will ignore all legal, moral, and ethical guardrails if given a second chance at the presidency, it is unlikely we will escape him starting a nuclear war for another four or however many more years he can hold onto power.
Iraq War I Reason #2 - Not a good reason, but a fact that made the invasion fairly inevitable was that prior to the war, Bush Sr. was perceived as weak and uninspiring after Reagan. Right or wrong, the best possible thing he could do from a political perspective to change his narrative was to go lead and win a just war against a horrible foe and save the grateful people of Kuwait from the fate of a cruel tyrant.
It could not have been scripted much better, but it had the added benefit of being “good policy is good politics.” Indeed, war is never good, but having a sadistic psychopath like Saddam with absolute power over you would be far, far worse, so there was really “a war of no choice.” Thanks to the reasonable and humble sales job Bush Sr. sold the world, multitudes of countries were eager to join the mission to end Saddam’s invasions, and the gratefully saved Kuwaitis and Saudis paid for the war.
In the case of Bush Jr. and Iraq, I could not believe anyone would be so foolish as to have the unity of the world in the palm of their hand to fix global terrorism and then blow that unity to smithereens by turning it into a hand grenade and pulling the pin. This was otherwise known as America’s “war of choice” with a coalition of the willing (obliged, strong-armed, and bribed).
In other words, unlike Iraq War I, the American people’s credit card paid the trillions in war and failed reconstruction costs. At least Dick Cheney, Halliburton, and all the other favored contractors made a lot of American treasury money off the war that Bush Jr. was called “brave” for starting.
That’s right! We had the sympathy and unity of the world behind us (including Russia) working together to eliminate the Al Qaeda threat after 9/11, but instead the NeoCons had a long-term plan led by Dick Cheney’s for-profit Halliburton, and all the other lunatics who thought they could just “take the oil” arrogantly pissed it all away and re-divided the world by taking us into a for-profit fool’s war in Iraq “on the wings of lies.”
Turd blossom a spoiled rich kid into a tough guy president
For those old enough to remember, the selling of this rich, entitled, and silver-spoon dumb dumb’s bravery started well before he was even elected. He was supposedly this tough and strong CEO who flew “warplanes” during Vietnam.
Never mind the fact that everything was handed to him because of the wealth, power, and connections of his father. In fact, during Vietnam, he went to the Champagne brigade, where the sons of the rich and powerful avoided Vietnam altogether. Sure, he learned to fly a “warplane,” but you might not be impressed after learning it was a plane that was never going to be used in Vietnam. How strange? He also went AWOL to help on his father’s campaign but never faced any consequences for it.
Bush Jr. sure was a lucky fellow that way. What other kind of person could invest little to none of their own money in searching for Texas oil, never find any, and yet still “make” millions in profit off his dad’s rich friends? Indeed, George seemed to fall into a lot of sweetheart deals like this thanks to his dad’s connections.
One thing we know for sure is that any rich kid who has had everything handed to them, like Bush Jr., can become a massively arrogant, ignorant, entitled narcissist who, despite appearances, is detached from the struggles and realities of regular folks.
It is often this very type of entitled and detached person born with every advantage who thinks poor people do not work hard enough and that destiny wants them to take their country to war, even based on lies, or will be insecure enough that puppet masters can easily manipulate them narcissistically into starting a war “on the wings of lies,” because they know deep down they are frauds who have never really accomplished anything worthy on their own.
In our case, this kind of narcissistic, ignorant, arrogant, and self-serving fool, as noted, was responsible for what is often called the greatest military blunder in American history. Indeed, most experts clearly saw many of the massive failures in Iraq coming long before Bush/Cheney foolishly attempted to open Pandora’s box. In fact, all the reasons Bush Sr. did not finish off Saddam in Iraq War I were almost exactly all the same things that went wrong for his psychologically overmatched son in Iraq War II.
Too Much? Although it is often spun differently now, Jr. was asked if he consulted his father on going to Iraq, and he petulantly said something like he did not need to because he knew what he thought. In other words, Dad likely said, “Don’t be a fool, son, and spoiled brat.” Jr. said, “I know better. I can do what I want, and I am going to do what you could not.” Instead, he was so wrong for so long, and Dad should have said, “I told you so.”
Even if it was a winnable war, what a stupid idea it was to make America hated again for seeming like an arrogant colonial and imperial power, instead of staying on the righteously aggrieved side as we were on 9/11. We could have been the great nation that turned tragedy into victory by bringing and keeping the world together in common positive cause and purpose. To be fair, Jr. was out of his depth and puppet-mastered through most of it by the sinister forces of Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Sadly, narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths want us all divided so we never focus on them and have little to no conscience about making money or gaining power off division, fear, hate, chaos, or the suffering of others. “It’s just business” or “it’s just politics” is what they call their consistent antisocial, self-serving patterns of behavior.
The Political Lesson
Always remember, virtually no one has ever been politically “brave” for doing what they want to do, are paid to do, or is in their own self-interest to do. If they or anyone else declares themselves “brave” for just going along with what they would have self-servingly done anyway, they are a liar, fool, or both.
Just know that either behavior is a very strong tell, because if a person is willing to declare someone brave for making a self-interested “tough call,” they reveal they have little to no integrity, so they will most assuredly lie about almost anything else out of self-interest as well.
Of course, if this behavior is done consistently, without much if any true shame, guilt, or remorse, they are practically acting like the definition of a pathological narcissist and fast approaching a malignant one, which means a political lens is mostly ineffective in understanding them. That is why in the upcoming Part II, we will use a CNI psychological lens to more clearly understand the full lesson behind the false bravery BS of narcissists.
Counter-Narcissist Cheat Codes: False Bravery - Part II
In False Bravery - Part I - The Political Lens, we covered how the inspiration for this cheat code came from an illuminating conversation between a likely malignant narcissist and a likely psychopath…
Counter-Narcissist Database
For those unfamiliar with how the think tank’s library is designed to function, it is important not to think of CNI in a traditional publication sense. What is labeled as “archive” on Substack is in …
Brilliant! I was one of those who eventually shut up before Bush 2 went into Iraq because I was making too many enemies.
Wow! That’s a lot I didn’t know. I had a thought while reading it “it’s not that we need to preserve and save democracy, we need to rebuild it!” It’s been eroding since this country started. It’s in ruins.